Philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) provides the framework for this exploration.  In studying his own consciousness, Husserl recognized that we experience a given object in a variety of ways. Even while talking with a friend, for example, we may notice she acts differently than we remember, recall a dream in which she helped us, feel loving or annoyed towards her. At each level of consciousness – perception, memory, dreams, emotion — she will appear a bit differently to us.

To my mind, the same principle operates in spiritual experience. With each mode of consciousness we use to reach towards God, God may appear differently to us.

Dreams, for example, string together familiar visual images into a new story. Dream images may be well-known cultural icons or simply idiosyncratic personal memories. In their new context, the images express new meanings, often metaphorical or symbolic. God may appear to you as a face on a poster, an animal, or even a comedian’s voice. Dreamers often recognize the spiritual power of a dream not by its images, but by its emotional impact. A “numinous” dream may include within it a sudden emotional or perceptual shift; or it may seem bland but stay with you for hours or years. It may be comforting, terrifying, or puzzling.

From early childhood or the teen years, you might remember hearing adults talking at a late-night Passover Seder; seeing the Northern Lights and wondering, “Is this God?”; or questioning whether irrational ideas could really be true. You may struggle to fill in a vague memory or recall with exceptional clarity events you know could not have happened. You might recognize in a memory the beginning of your continuous spiritual evolution; or you might find a long-lost insight about God worth revisiting.

Philosophically, you might struggle to clarify concepts about God, asking, for example “In what sense could God be infinite?” You might juggle in your mind images of mathematical sets, trying to place them in hierarchical orders of infinity. You might imagine spheres beyond the earth and sky as you stretch your thought to its extreme borders. You may conclude that images are no help and try to open your mind to pure thought. In the opening you may find insight – or you may find frustration.

You may find it helpful to think along with medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. “This God is one. He is neither two nor more than two, but a ‘one’ whose unity is unmatched by any of the ‘ones’ that exist in the universe: neither ‘one’ like a species, which subsumes many ‘ones’ nor ‘one’ like a body, divisible into parts and boundaries, but rather a unity, the like of which nowhere exists” (Mishneh Torah).

This summer, at two retreats (ALEPH Kallah and Naramata Centre) I asked students “What do you find when you encounter God in dreams, memory and intellectual reaching?” And then, “Based on what you find, how does God appear to you today?”

Here is the record of one person’s exploration – mine, as that violates no confidentiality.

Dream: I am hitchhiking with a friend; we sit in the backseat of a car; the two chatty young men who picked us up sit in the front. One of them turns around to look at us, and his face is a huge luminous oval with a terrifying, cartoonish, malicious smile. The car takes us to the top edge of mesa where forty or so people are lined up, looking out, expecting a momentous event. What they expect is not clear – it may be a UFO, the coming of a divine being, or an incredible sunset – but the sky and land glow with color, the expanse calls to all of us, and our grand expectation is going to be fulfilled.

Memory: I am five years old, maybe only three years old, hanging out with two friends who live on my street. We are in Renee’s back yard, sitting on a four-person swing set, pumping furiously with our little legs to keep the set spinning. We get tired, so we pause and let the noisy machine wind down. And then, out of the silence, we hear it: a fast, high-pitched clicking sound. We can’t see the source, but we can tell it’s beyond the boundaries of the yard. One of us whispers, “What is that?” And another one says, “It’s God.” Filled with awe, we agree.

Intellect: I often say that we have only one dogma in Jewish thought about God: God is one – and then we all disagree about what that means. Of course we disagree, because no familiar sense of the word “one” expresses anything relevant. No concept works at all. No unified overview is available to us.

How does God appear to me right now? As an expectation. Daily, I ask myself: What am I waiting for? Is this it? Would it even be helpful if I could answer these questions?

Image: numinous.usegrid.net