Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00067)

"This is the presence and power that is indicated by the divine
name Yahweh, which as mentioned previously means "that which
was, is and forever shall be." Likewise, as previously mentioned,
the name Yeshua means "Yahweh delivers," hence "Knowledge of the
truth will set you free." In the process of self-realization,
this truth and light may be experienced as completely impersonal,
but by the very nature of consciousness, it may also be
experienced as personal, which is to say appearing through
divine images in consciousness.

We may glean an insight into this in terms of our own sense of
selfhood. We do experience a distinct sense of self; yet if we
turn inward and go looking for this self, we find that no self
appears. Then, again, when we stop looking and turn outward, the
appearance of the self sems to return. Thus, we experience self
and no self, and, in a similar way, in an altered state of
consciousness we can experience God and No God, or God appearing
as personal or as completely impersonal. In the Sophian view,
both perceptions are considered equally valid and represent the
relative truth in an individual's experience. However, ultimately
speaking, the experience of God or No God is viewed as a partial
truth. In the peak of the enlightenment experience, which is a
state of pure radiant awareness and inherently nondual, it is
said that one experiences the truth of God and the truth of No
Cod as one and the same truth — hence the essential meaning of
Ain in the Christian Kabbalah."

(Tau Malachi, "Living Gnosis")


"God is the source and substance of all that exists. Man is this
substance circumscribed and self-limited. He is in essence
Allah, for there exists nothing in all the worlds save His
essence. The sense of separateness is not real. Personality is a
veil. Unless this false sense of 'otherness' vanishes there can
be no true peace. Self, as it creates division and sorrow,
should be surrendered. The surrender is to be made through the
awakening of understanding. Man-arfa-Nafsahu (know thyself) is
the only remedy. Like the mist before the morning sun, of its
own accord it will dissolve and disappear, on realization of its
real nature.

...

One must realize that one's existence is not his own existence,
but the existence of God, without becoming the existence of God,
or entering into God, or proceeding forth from Him, or being
along with Him, or in Him, or ceasing to be, or ceasing to
cease. There is neither at-one-ment nor extinction, neither
becoming nor ceasing. Seek not God consciously and with effort.
See Him everywhere. For He is the whole of existence.
Self-surrender is not so much an attainment as an understanding.
It is not getting, through ceasing or becoming, but a condition
of pure knowing, which is being. It is emancipation from a false
conception.

Personal God is a necessary step to reach the Impersonal. As
long as the ego remains in any shape or form on the one side,
personal God will remain on the other. The Prophet never looked
askance at a personal God. In more than one place in the Koran,
we find God referred to as a friend and a guide, as nearer to us
than hands and feet, closer than breathing, and interested in
the welfare of each and every being. The Prophet knew full well
that all could not rise to the conception of the Impersonal all
at once. It is too intricate and difficult to be the religion of
the masses. Certain disciplines were, therefore, prescribed by
him, by following which all could, in time, attain to the same
understanding and insight reached by Muhammad himself.

It is to the heights of an Impersonal-Personal God that the
Prophet invites us. Be it remembered, his God is not a void or a
zero, but the only real thing that there is - the effervescing,
loving, intelligent life-essence, of which all things are made.
Nothing disappears except a false view, a limited horizon, an
erroneous idea, a circumscribed vision. Individuality does not
disappear, it is the sense of egoism and 'otherness' that
completely vanishes; the world does not go out of existence,
it is its power to ensnare and hold us captive that evaporates;
effort and initiative do not cease, it is striving towards
personal gain that becomes extinct. Thus nothing, in reality,
disappears; the universe, with all its reality, will abide as
fundamental as ever."

(Ahmed Ali, "What is Islam?" / The Theosophist, Aug. 1996)