Exodus 3:13-14
Moses said to God, “…When they ask me ‘What is God’s Name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh - I Will Be what I Will Be…tell them: ”Ehyeh sent me to you.”
Moses Cordovero (1522-1570)
Or Ne’erav
A simple person things that God is an old man with white hair, sitting on a wondrous throne of fire that glitters with countless sparks, as the Bible states, “The Ancient-of- Days sits, the hair on his head like clean fleece, his throne - flames of fire.” (Daniel 7:9) Imagining this and similar fantasies, the fool corporealizes God. He falls into one of the traps that destroy faith. His awe of God is limited by his imagination.
But if you are enlightened, you know God’s oneness; you know that the Divine is devoid of bodily categories - these can never be applied to God. Then you wonder, astonished, “Who am I? I am a mustard seed in the middle of the sphere of the moon, which itself is a mustard seed within the next sphere. So it is with that sphere and all it contains in relation to the next sphere. So it is with all spheres - one inside the other - and all of
them are a mustard seed within the further expanses. And all of these are a mustard seed within further expanses.
Your awe is invigorated, the love in your soul expands.
Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935)
Orot HaKodesh
The fierce power of imagination is a gift from God. Joined with the grandeur of the mind, the potency of inference, ethical depth, and the natural sense of the Divine, imagination becomes an instrument for the Holy One.
Sefer HaBahir (12th/c)
Whoever delves into mysticism cannot help but stumble, as it is written, “The stumbling block is in your hand.” (Isaiah 3:6) You cannot grasp these things unless you stumble over them.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from the Lubavitcher Rebbe
The purpose of the giving of the Torah was indeed unity. But what is true unity? When a person recognizes the One in the many, then he perceives unity in the midst of diversity. If he knows only one kind of existence, we do not know what his response will be when he discovers another kind. Perhaps he will then say: There are two realities, God and the world. It is only when he has encountered more than one form of existence and still understands that God is the only reality that he has seen the true
Oneness of God....It is not within the Sanctuary, but within the diversity of the world that his sense of God’s unity is proven. And he can preserve it in two ways. He can suppress his awareness of other things besides God. Or he can be fully aware of other things in the world and IN THEM discover God. It is the latter which is the deeper response. The person who
suppresses his senses and closes his eyes to the ways of the world, believes that they form something apart from and in opposition to God, and must be kept at a distance. The unity of his religious life is neither deep or secure.