When Moses saw the burning bush and heard the voice of God, one of the first things he did was to ask a question, a very important question which had never before been asked. He asked God "What is your name?". This is a simple question but in most schools of esoteric spiritual thought, and in particular Judaic thought and the hebrew Kabbalah, names are very important indeed. That is because the name of a spiritual entity, be it angel, demon or god, is thought to represent their nature and to have a certain power when spoken. Up until this point in the Abrahamic tradition God did not have a name, and was simply refered to as the God of our forefathers or something similar.

The answer God gave to Moses was "my name is Ehyeh Asher Eyheh" and because of this although many other Hebrew names are used for God in the Torah / Old Testament (which names many people beleive to have also been imparted to Moses on the same occassion) it is a commonly held notion that Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (transliteration from Hebrew AHYH AShR AHYH) is the highest name of God. This is not a universal opinion, as others would hold that the tettragramaton (literally four letters - YHVH - sometimes translated as Jehovah) is the highest name of God, but nevertheless it is commonly stated.

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh is variously translated as 'I AM THAT I AM', 'I AM THAT WHICH I AM', I WILL BE THAT WHICH I WILL BE', or 'I AM IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING THAT WHICH I WILL BE'.

This hub is primarily about my own personal meditations on this Holy Name, and is therefore not supposed to represent any kind of orthodox view but just my own reflections mixed in with things that I have read and which appealed to me or made me think, although I will also include common practices, reference information and so on. Because of this it is probably relevant if a write a sentence or two about myself and where I am coming from. I am not Jewish, and nor am I Christian or anything else. I was brought up in a non-religious household and have not joined any particular religion, but I do have a long held fascination for the philosophy of religion and for various forms of esoteric theology and spirituality. For a number of years I have been particularly drawn to the study of Kabbalah, the esoteric branch of Judaism which has in recent years gained in popularity, including outside of the Jewish community itself. Ok, so that is my and now here are my thoughts.

The first thought which springs to my mind when I think about this mysterious name 'I AM THAT WHICH I AM' or 'I WILL BE THAT WHICH I WILL BE' (capitalization by convention) is that it seems deliberately to say nothing. As I have already said spiritual names were apportioned great significance in the tradition of though which Moses came from, and were though to impart the actual nature of the spiritual being. It is most likely, therefore, that in asking the name of God Moses wanted god to reveal His identity and say 'I am this', or 'I am that'. But the reply he got was circular -'I AM THAT I AM'.

God seems to be saying I am purely I am, and nothing else - pure undifferentiated being. Or to put it another way God is not this or that because God is all things. When you say 'I am' something, you are also saying that you are not something else. So this could simply be a statement that God is all things - and it is indeed often suggested that this should be interpreted as a message that god is all around us and in all things - literally everything has a divine spark and in some fundamental way is part of the body of God - but does it go further than that?

To say that God is Omnipresent - in all things - is, I would have thought, entirely uncontroversial. But there is also a further interepretation of Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. If this is the highest name of God then it could also be taken to mean that the highest nature of God is to be regarded as pure undifferentiated being. This seems to resonate with the eastern concept of pure being, or pure mind, as the deepest or highest spiritual reality, which appeals to me personal as a spiritual ecclectic with an interest in the perennial philosophy.

In terms of metaphysics and philosophical logic this second interpretation also makes sense. All 'things' must by their nature be temporal and spatial - and therefore not infinite or eternal - and so it makes sense to say that God cannot be any kind of something, as would be the case if He said I AM X, or I AM Y. And this leads me on to another interesting train of thought which I wanted to include on this page.

In the seventeenth century Rene Descartes, often regarded as the father of modern philosophy and one of the most important contributors to the early development of science, sought to attain certainty of knowledge through extreme scepticism in his philosophy of 'radical doubt'. In this book he wrote about this he claimed to have used this philosophy to demonstrate that God must exist, but this spiritual proof has largely been forgotten and overshadowed by his contribution to the burgeoning scientific scepticism of his age.

Later on a German philosopher called Arthur Schopenhauer took up the original intention behind the philosophy of radical doubt and took it to its logical conclusion. Here is what he said:

"We do not know a sun, only an eye which sees a sun;
and we do not know an earth, only a hand which feels the earth"

If you doubt everything of which you cannot be 100 certain Schopenhauer taught that you are left with only two things - the subject and the object of knowledge. Anything else, including the common sense fact that the objects of our knowledge exist independently of our knowing (or perceiving) them, can be doubted, but these two things are certain. They are therefore, according to Schopenhauer, the two fundamental classifications of existence. This is basically a refinment of the 'mind' and 'matter' found in Descartes writing.

The object, or that which is known, is conditioned by the a priori laws of time and space, and so is a descriton of the material world we perceive around us. But here is where it gets interesting: that which is object can never be subject, and vice versa - the two are mutually exclusive. If the subject becomes known itself, then by definition it ceases to be the subject and becomes the object. The subject is therefore, as Schopenhauer himself states, outside of material existence - it is never that which is known but always that which knows. In my mind this duality of subject and object mirrors the duality of material and spiritual existence.

What is eternity? Generally we would think of the eternal as something which occupies all of time, just as something infinite occupies all of space. But this is not the only way in which to conceive of the eternal and infinite. Something which exists outside of time, and would therefore have no definition - no beginning, no end in time - would also fulfill the necessary conditions to be considered eternal, and something which exists outside of space would also be infinite.

schopenhauer's subject therefore meets all the necessary conditions to be considered infinite and eternal, and is also very close the the concept of pure mind which is prevalent in eastern spiritual philosophy and with the second interpretation of the highest name of God described above.

So perhaps this is the nature of the ineffable God which is revealed in the name Eyeh Asher Ehyeh - He who always knows, but who cannot himself be know - pure undifferentiated mind and being. It may be worth noting in this respect that the according to the Sepher Yetzirah the intelligence associated with the path of Kether, to which the God name Eyeh Asher Ehyeh corresponds, is Sekhel Mufla - the Hidden Intelligence.

The literal translation of 'kabbalah' into English is 'to receive'. It is said that there are two parts to Kabbalah, the exoteric kabbalah which is written down in books and passed between people, and the esoteric kabbalah which each person must receive for themselves. Practical kabbalah is all about creating the conditions in which one can receive the esoteric kabbalah (the true kabbalah). It can therefore be thought of as the science and art of revelation, through which the nature of god is revealed to the individual aspirant.

One of the most common methods that is used to attain divine revelation using the 'keys' which the exoteric kabbalah provide is through chanting. In this case one would chant the highest name of god over and over again as part of a contemplative prayer. Many people also visualize the eternal as ain soph aur, or 'the limitless light'. To me this means limitless in the way I have described above, as being pure and wholly immaterial (a word very much in need of reclaiming fromits current usuage as irrelevant).

It seems to me that what a person might hope to gain from this has much in common with what people hope to acheive from contemplation of pure mind in traditions such as Buddhism - liberation from the sufferings of material existence. On a personal note I can say that it leaves me feeling lighter, energized and refreshed. It helps me to detach myself from my worries, problems, stresses, passions and so on and find a place where they are relevant. Or at least it does sometimes, as I don't always have the clarity and concentration of mind it requires to get anything at all from this kind of thing.

• One tactic of Kabbalah is to approach that which is beyond the scope of language through multiple symbols which serve as signposts. The tree of life, which has been described as a 'spiritual filing cabinet', divides existence into 10 spheres and 22 connecting pathways. THe highest name of God is associated naturally with the highest sphere, Kether, meaning the crown. Here are some of the other symbols of Kether:
• The archangel Metatron
• A chorus of angels known as the Chayoth Ha Qadosh (Holy Living Ones)
• Diamonds
• The Root of Air (from the theory of the five elements)

There are many others two, which you can see here