In last week’s parashah (weekly Torah portion), terumah, we learnt that the Tabernacle may not be a physical structure at all, but a structure in consciousness. The text says:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

And they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell within them. (Exodus 25:8)

This idea is echoed in this week’s parashah. At the end of very long and detailed instructions regarding the clothing of the high priest, the ornaments of the menorah, specific of offerings and other matters, the text states:

וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים:

I will dwell within the Israelites and I will be their God. (Exodus 29:45)

That is to say, the relationship with God is defined by this act of “dwelling within them”. This is elaborated in the next verse:

וְיָדְעוּ כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לְשָׁכְנִי בְתוֹכָם אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם:

And they shall know that I, YHVH, am their God who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might dwell within them, I YHVH their God. (Exodus 29:46)

Readers of this blog will remember, that the Exodus from Egypt has been explained as a metaphor for the liberation of the soul from boundaries in duality to freedom in unity (see commentary on the weekly Torah portion of shemot). Now the text combines this metaphor with another—the one about building a mishkan. Again, it is not a physical structure. It is a sacred space that one “erects” within oneself so that God can dwell within.

This verse tells us, that the only reason the people of Israel were liberated from Egypt is so that they can build a mishkan and God can dwell within them. In other words, liberation is not a “free lunch;” it has to be reciprocated by service, by one’s commitment to be empty enough so that a mishkan is erected within oneself and the shekhinah can dwell within one. With that reciprocity established, people shall “know that I, YHVH, am their God.”

* * *

This Torah portion starts with another form of reciprocity. In the first verse of the parashah Moses is commanded to light a lamp (candle) of perpetual light in the tabernacle:

וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן זַיִת זָךְ כָּתִית לַמָּאוֹר לְהַעֲלֹת נֵר תָּמִיד:

You shall instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps of perpetual light. (Exodus 27:20).

One may ask: what need does God have for our light? Many commentators throughout the ages wondered about that, referring to a quote from the Psalms:

בְּאוֹרְךָ נִרְאֶה אוֹר:

By your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:10)

Does the source of all light need us to light candles for him?

The commentators seem to agree that it is all about reciprocity. Maimonides, who takes the light to be symbolic of our mental faculties, explains how the “light by which we see light”, that divine spark of intelligence that allows us to see God, is also the light through which God sees us. (Guide to the Perplexed, Part 3, Chapter 52).

Said differently, the degree to which the light of God shines on humans depends on the degree to which humans recognize God.

A similar idea about the reciprocity of the relationship with the divine was brought up by the Hadith Qudsi:

Allah has declared: I am close to the thought that My servant has to Me, and I am with him whenever He recollects Me. If he remember Me in himself, I remember him in Myself, and if he remembers Me in a gathering, I remember him better than those in the gathering do, and if he approaches Me by as much as one hand’s length, I approach him by a cubit, and if he approaches my by a cubit, then I draw nigh to him by two hands’ length. If he takes a step towards me, I run towards him. (Musnad-e Ahmad Hanbal)

At the end of the 18^th century, Rabbi Yisrael Hofstein, known as the Koznitzer Maggid, wondered about it. In his ‘Avodath Yisrael he gives up any attempt to understand it, and just expresses his wonder:

We cannot penetrate Your secret, why it is that You should desire to hear Torah or prayer out of our mouths. The same is true of the candles. “In Your light we see light,” yet You command us to kindle lights. “Thought cannot grasp You at all” (Tikkuney Zohar 17a); no one can understand the secret of this matter. All we have is “the revealed things for us and our children” (Deut. 29: 28) to do. Amen.

The Koznitzer Maggid recognizes, with great awe, the incomprehensible, ungraspable fact that there is indeed a reciprocal relationship here, and is awed by that fact.

And this is how Arthur Green, who quotes the Koznitzer Maggid in his Speaking Torah, writes about this passage:

The confession of undiminished astonishment is rare in a literature that is so used to providing answers and explanations. In the end, we are being told here, they are all worth nothing. All we can do is stand before the mystery—and go on living and following God’s word in this strange world.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

A few verses into the portion, the Torah specifies the effect of building the mishkan:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

And they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

The verse seems to suggest, that the tabernacle, the mishkan, will enable God to dwell (lishkon) among the people of Israel. But that is absurd: God confined to a tent? And does that mean that before the construction, God is not able to dwell among them?

As King Solomon said in his prayer after completing the construction of the first temple:

הִנֵּה הַשָּׁמַיִם וּשְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם לֹא יְכַלְכְּלוּךָ אַף כִּי הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בָּנִיתִי:

Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27)

And as the prophet Isaiah declared:

כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי וְהָאָרֶץ הֲדֹם רַגְלָי אֵי זֶה בַיִת אֲשֶׁר תִּבְנוּ לִי וְאֵי זֶה מָקוֹם מְנוּחָתִי:

Thus says YHVH: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? (Isaiah 66:1)

But the verse may be saying something else. Firstly, the Hebrew word for “among them” is betocham,( בְּתוֹכָם), which means “within them.*” And it does not say betocho (בתוכו), which would mean “within it”, referring to the mishkan; it says within them, referring to the people of Israel.

The mishkan spoken of here is primarily a structure within the psyche. Each one of the people of Israel was enjoined on building a space within themselves, open themselves up in such a way so as to allow the divinity within them to shine through, to occupy the psyche. And then, God will dwell within them, within each and every one of them.

Some midrash commentaries support this understanding. We are told by the midrash hagadol that the structure of the mishkan parallels the structure of the cosmos as well as the structure of the human. It is not talking about the physical structure of the human, but the interior one: the one that is made of 248 limbs and 365 tissues, which parallel the 248 positive mitsvoth (commandments), the “do’s”, and the 365 negative mitzvoth, the “don’ts”.

Thus, the mishkan is truly an interior structure that comes into being when one lives according to YHVH’s will. And then YHVH is found to be dwelling in that structure. Even if an exterior, physical mishkan exists, it was only a sensory representation of the internal structure.

This is very reminiscent of the ideas of sacred architecture of both the Hindu and the Buddhist traditions: both model their temple according to their understanding of the human psyche, with the idea that the structure of the temple mirrors both the structure of the psyche and the structure of the universe.

According to these traditions, the actual physical experience of walking into the temple, from its outer boundaries into its sanctum, is said to be a mirror of the process of meditation, through which one realizes the divine Self within. Said differently, the structure of the temple points one to the fact that through meditation one creates this structure within one’s consciousness.

This Torah portion further describes the function of the mishkan:

וְנוֹעַדְתִּי לְךָ שָׁם וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרֹן הָעֵדֻת אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּה אוֹתְךָ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:

There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two Cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the people of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)

These words are addressed to Moses, but Moses is a metaphor for each and every one of us. For each of us to “hear the voice of God” within us, we need to construct this structure within ourselves, to created that sacred space within us through meditation so that we can be in tune with our deepest interiority—which is not different from the interiority of the universe.

* * *

This Torah portion is the first of five that deal entirely with the details of the construction of the mishkan. In fact, from now until the end of the book of Exodus, the Torah deals with nothing else.

Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his book “Seven Years of Talks on the Weekly Torah Portions,” points out that the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the construction of the mishkan is 450; in contrast, the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the “construction” of the world in the book of Genesis is 31.

And that reveals the status and purpose of the Torah. It is not a book about cosmology, neither is it a book about history. It is a book that aims primarily at providing a map through which human awareness can align itself with the divinity within. And it is in this light that everything in this text should be interpreted and understood.

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*See a similar comment in the commentary on vayigash

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

וַיָּבֹא מֹשֶׁה בְּתוֹךְ הֶעָנָן, וַיַּעַל אֶל-הָהָר; וַיְהִי מֹשֶׁה, בָּהָר, אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם, וְאַרְבָּעִים לָיְלָה.

Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

The Torah specifies that Moses stayed at the top of the mountain for 40 days and nights. Since the number 40 appears as a measure of time in various places in the Torah and the rest of the Bible (either as 40 days and nights or as 40 years), it will be good to consider its symbolism.

Whenever time is measured as 40, what follows is an event of great significance. For example, in the story of Noah, we are told that the rain poured down upon the Earth for forty days and nights; the people of Israel spent 40 years in the desert; in the book of Judges, we are told repeatedly that exactly 40 peaceful years separated the rule of one judge from the next; and 40 is the number of days that Goliath kept challenging the people of Israel to find him a worthy opponent before young David rose up to the challenge.

We are also told that Elijah walked from Beer Sheba to Mt. Sinai for 40 days and nights, without stop. And even in the Christian Gospel we are told that Jesus went to the desert without food or drink for 40 days and nights.

What unites all these periods measured by 40 is that they always precede transformative events. 40 is a symbolic unit of potent time that precedes major change, a change that gives voice to the timeless. The flood precedes a new covenant between God and humanity; Moses comes down with the Torah; Elijah receives a revelation of YHVH; Jesus overcomes the devil’s temptations.

It is highly unlikely that in some miraculous way, all these important events always had a period of 40 days or 40 years leading to them. The time is not physical time, and the events are not physical events in time and space. They are symbolic. But what is the symbolism of 40?

We may find a clue in the Hebrew alphabet, in which letters are also numerals. The letter mem (מ), the 14^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has the numerical value of 40. In the Kabbalah, that letter represents the element of mayim (מים), Hebrew for water.

Just like the number 40, the element of water often appears in the Torah around potent transformative events: The Flood; baby Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter when she pulls him out of the water (hence his Hebrew name, Moshe, word derived from the verb limshot, i.e. to pull out of the water); the people of Israel pass through the Red Sea on the way to the desert, and once again through the Jordan river on the way from the desert to the Promised Land.

But just as the number 40 in the Torah does not represent actual units of time, water (mayim) in the Torah does not actually mean what we now refer to as water. Rather, it is the principle of transformation. It is related to fecundity, to the creative feminine. It is that which brings about transformation and change. This is very similar to the Vedic literature, in which water symbolizes the feminine aspect of the divine, the principle of fecundity, as well as pure consciousness.

How are we to read these stories in which time is measured by 40? As invitations to action. When “Moses” goes up the mountain for 40 days, it is an invitation for us to go deep into our own height of consciousness and attempt to discover that the Torah is already there, alive within us.

When Elijah walks 40 days and nights, reaches Mount Horeb (Mt. Sinai) and receives the revelation that God is in the “sound of subtle silence” ((1 Kings 19: 11-12), it is an invitation for us to go within and find that sound of subtle silence within ourselves and attempt to be guided by it.

When the people of Israel walk through the Red Sea, having liberated themselves from bondage to Egypt or mitzrayim (lit. “duality of boundaries”), we are also invited to shed our investment in duality and in bound modes of behavior and thinking and embrace the unity and expansiveness, symbolized by Canaan, the Promised Land.

In this manner, understanding the symbolism can enable us to make the Torah a practical guide to life, here and now.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

Famously, Moses goes up the mountain and returns with the Torah inscribed in stone. Ancient lore has it that he received not only the written Torah (torah shebikhtav), but also the oral Torah (torah she’be’alpe), a tradition of interpretation of the written text which was initially passed on orally.

Few Biblical scholars take seriously the claim that the entire Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Even some orthodox and ultra-orthodox scholars acknowledge the fact that the books of the Torah—let alone the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and the Kabbalistic texts—are a collection of writings contributed by different authors at different periods (see this article).

Does that mean that the concept of divine revelation is a sham? Only if you relate to Torah as the text that appears in the books. But in the Jewish tradition, this is only one of a few ways of understanding the concept of Torah, and if you consider the others, the story gets interesting.  (This may appear a bit abstract to some).

Torah as Alive Primordial Intelligence

Rabbinic literature relates to the Torah as much more than a concrete text and a tradition of its interpretation. The Torah is also described as:

· The speech of God or the name of God;
· Embodied as chokhmah, Wisdom, the architect of creation;
· A sequence of expressions that serves as the blueprint for Creation (the DNA of the universe, if you will).

These three concepts of Torah emphasize its nature as an alive level of primordial intelligence, rather than as merely text.

Interestingly enough, this mirrors the attitude towards the Veda in the Hindu tradition*. While the Veda is commonly understood as a text, a collection of mantras that are recited during the sacred performances, the Veda is also described in the Vedic literature as:

· The Word, the essence of the ultimate reality, Brahman (this is parallel to the Jewish concept of the Torah as the speech of God or the name of God);
· The totality of knowledge, embodied as the Creator (parallels the Jewish concept of Wisdom or Chokhmah);
· A sequence of sounds which forms a blueprint for Creation (again, the “DNA of the Universe”).

What is the connection between the concrete words of the text of both Torah and Veda with these more esoteric understandings of them? Abiding by the concrete texts and by the performances derived from them is meant to align one with the alive, transcendental level of wisdom as a living reality within oneself.

Be Awake and See the Sounds

The close similarity between the notion of Torah and Veda in both traditions may be informative. By understanding what the Vedic tradition says about the process of cognition of the Vedic hymns we may glean something about prophecy and revelation in the Jewish tradition.

About the Vedic hymns, the Rik Veda proclaims:

यो जागार तमृचः कामयन्ते
yo jagara tamrichah kamayante
He who is awake, the richas [Vedic hymns] seek him out. (Rik Veda, 5.44.14)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one of the foremost teachers of Vedic teaching in our time, often commented on this verse. He explained that the Veda—much like the Torah—eternally murmurs to itself in the transcendental field of creation. The hymns zoom forth in the awareness (“the richas seek him out”) of whoever can bring his or her awareness to that level of reality [“he who is awake]”.

An interesting feature of this process of cognition is that it involves not only sound but also sight, not as two separate elements but as a unified cognition of sound and sight. For this reason, the person who is able to thus cognize the Veda is referred to as a rishi, a seer.

This may shed light on a peculiar expression in this week’s Torah portion. After listing the ten commandments, the Torah describes the experience of the People of Israel as they heard them, starting with a peculiar phrase:

וְכָל הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת הַקּוֹלֹת

And the people see the sounds (Exodus 20:15)

Sounds, of course, are heard, not seen. Could it be that the reason the text here says that the sounds were seen is that it describes a process of cognition similar to that describes in the Vedic texts?

Torah Revelation Now

The Torah phrase describing the process of revelation has another peculiarity: although it is referring to an event that occurred in the past, it uses the present tense. Instead of saying “the people saw the sounds” it says “the people see the sounds.” Just as the Veda spells out a principle—“He who is awake, the richas [Vedic hymns] seek him out”—so does the Torah suggest to us that we can realize the Torah as a living reality within our awareness right now.

In other words, instead of speculating whether or not the entire Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, let us be like Moses and allow the Torah to be a live presence in our awareness. That would be the fulfillment of what Moses declared that he wanted:

וּמִי יִתֵּן כָּל עַם יְהוָה נְבִיאִים כִּי יִתֵּן יְהוָה אֶת רוּחוֹ עֲלֵיהֶם:

Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them! (Numbers 11:29)

And this will also be the fulfillment of the words of Prophet Jeremiah:

הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים נְאֻם יְהוָה וְכָרַתִּי אֶת בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת בֵּית יְהוּדָה בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה:… כִּי זֹאת הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר אֶכְרֹת אֶת בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אַחֲרֵי הַיָּמִים הָהֵם נְאֻם יְהוָה נָתַתִּי אֶת תּוֹרָתִי בְּקִרְבָּם וְעַל לִבָּם אֶכְתֲּבֶנָּה וְהָיִיתִי לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים וְהֵמָּה יִהְיוּ לִי לְעָם: וְלֹא יְלַמְּדוּ עוֹד אִישׁ אֶת רֵעֵהוּ וְאִישׁ אֶת אָחִיו לֵאמֹר דְּעוּ אֶת יְהוָה כִּי כוּלָּם יֵדְעוּ אוֹתִי לְמִקְטַנָּם וְעַד גְּדוֹלָם נְאֻם יְהוָה כִּי אֶסְלַח לַעֲוֹנָם וּלְחַטָּאתָם לֹא אֶזְכָּר עוֹד:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,* says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

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* The analysis of the various non-scriptural understandings of Torah, as well as their parallel to the non-scriptural understanding of Veda in the Hindu-Vedic tradition, is based on Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, by Barbara Holdrege, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. The book is based on her PhD thesis at Harvard.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

One story in particular is relevant to the life of a spiritual aspirant in our day an age. We are told that while in the desert, the People of Israel received direct guidance from God:

וַיהוָה הֹלֵךְ לִפְנֵיהֶם יוֹמָם בְּעַמּוּד עָנָן לַנְחֹתָם הַדֶּרֶךְ וְלַיְלָה בְּעַמּוּד אֵשׁ לְהָאִיר לָהֶם לָלֶכֶת יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה: לֹא יָמִישׁ עַמּוּד הֶעָנָן יוֹמָם וְעַמּוּד הָאֵשׁ לָיְלָה לִפְנֵי הָעָם:

YHVH went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. (Exodus 21-22)

Wouldn’t we all want to have such a cosmic GPS? Would we not want God—the energy and intelligence that creates and maintains the entire universe—to guide our every step on our path from bondage to liberation?

Impossible, you say? Not so fast. It may be that this is precisely what this story is trying to tell us: that for those who have the eyes to see and ears to hear, divine guidance is as clear as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night at all times.

But how does one attune oneself to this “channel of perpetual guidance”? Surely, our physical eyes do not perceive pillars of cloud or fire in our immediate vicinity. Indeed, later in the Bible, in the First Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah is told where such guidance can be found.

We read that prophet Elijah, escaping the wrath of queen Jezebel, hides in a cave on Mount Sinai. At one point he is instructed to come out and “stand on the mountain before YHVH.” The text says:

וְהִנֵּה יְהוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהוָה: וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה:

And lo, YHVH passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of YHVH; but YHVH was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but YHVH was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire, but YHVH was not in the fire. And after the fire—the sound of subtle silence. (1 Kings 19: 11-12).

That “sound of subtle silence” (in Hebrew kol dmama daka, better known in English as “a still, small voice”) is that inaudible, sacred, ever-present frequency that underlies the tumultuous commotion of the world. That “channel” never stops transmitting, but we need to bring our attention there, and listen with different ears.

Meister Eckhart, a 14^th Century German mystic whose inspired sermons continue to excite generations of spiritual aspirants to this very day, gave a beautiful teaching on the subject. He was commenting on a story in the Gospels, about how Jesus’ parents lost track of him during a journey to Jerusalem. The Gospel says:

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.  And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.  When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. (Luke 2:41-47)

For Eckhart, this story is a metaphor for one’s search for God. When one lives unconsciously, one is so self-absorbed that one does not know whether or not one is connected to God. This is symbolized by the fact that “the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it” (the parents, in this story, symbolize the seekers).

As life progresses, one notices that something is missing, but thinks that the solution is near, and one is bound to stumble upon it sooner or later in the natural course of one’s life. “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.”

It does not take long for an introspective soul to realize that one has to look deeper. One may not be ready for a radical change yet—one still looks for God in the familiar—but the intensity of one’s search increases. “Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.”

When that fails, one decides to be much more focused and serious. One starts devoting all of one’s energy to the search, engaging in prayer, meditation, and holy practices. This, Meister Eckhart says, is what is meant by the fact that the parents returned to the holy city, to Jerusalem, and looked for boy Jesus within its walls. But even after three days of constant searching in the holy city, they could not find him. In other words, holy, religious pursuits in themselves are no guarantee for finding God.

Where do they find God eventually? In the temple, which for Eckhart is a metaphor for the deepest level of Self, the deepest level of one’s consciousness. When one finally steps into that inner realm, one realizes that God has been there all along, teaching. Like the pillars of cloud by day and fire by night, God is always there, guiding and instructing.

Both the Elijah story and Eckhart’s sermon point us to the depth of our awareness as the place where divine guidance can be found. And not surprisingly, the Qur’an agrees:

وَٱذۡكُر رَّبَّكَ فِى نَفۡسِكَ تَضَرُّعً۬ا وَخِيفَةً۬ وَدُونَ ٱلۡجَهۡرِ مِنَ ٱلۡقَوۡلِ بِٱلۡغُدُوِّ وَٱلۡأَصَالِ وَلَا تَكُن مِّنَ ٱلۡغَـٰفِلِينَ

And do thou remember thy Lord within thyself humbly and with awe, below thy breath, at morn and evening. And be not thou of the neglectful. (7:205)

Indeed, it is through perseverance in the internal cultivation of the awareness (“within thyself…below thy breath”), regularly (“at morn and evening”) and consistently (“And be not thou of the neglectful”) that the internal channel of divine guidance can be heard.

May the practice of all aspirants after Truth bear fruit!

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)