(Extracts from david Godman's article)
The differing opinions among theologians on the meaning and significance of 'I am that I am' have primarily arisen because no one can be really sure what the original Hebrew meant. Everyone agrees that the original phrase 'ehyeh aser ehyeh' is derived form an archaic Hebrew form of the verb 'to be', but there the agreement ends. One school of thought maintains that since in Hebrew the present and future tenses are identical, ehyeh might mean either 'I am' or 'I will be'. One variation of this theory has God say 'I am what I will be', meaning, 'What I am now is what I will always be'. Others have postulated that ehyeh is not 'I am' but 'I cause to be'. Thus, instead of saying, 'I am that I am' God is saying, in effect, 'I cause to be whatever comes into being', or something similar. This explanation has found much favour among the Christian theologians who prefer to see God as a creator rather than as pure being.
There is yet another theory which does not depend on grammatical niceties. In the ancient semitic world – we are here talking about more than 3,000 years ago – it was widely believed that anyone who knew a name had power over the being so titled. According to this theory, when Moses asked God for His name, God declined by giving the evasive answer 'I am what I am'. Proponents of this theory maintained that if He had revealed His true name, whatever it might be, it would have given Moses some power or hold over Him, and that would have been unacceptable because it would have diminished His transcendental omnipotence.
In modern times such a theory sounds amusing rather than plausible, but it cannot be denied that in the Old Testament era names were zealously guarded for precisely the reasons given in the preceding paragraph. After Jacob had wrestled with the angel in the story I have already told, he asked the angel for his name, but the angel refused to disclose it, possibly fearing that Jacob might use it to gain some power over him (Genesis 32:29). In another interesting story, Manoah, the father of Samson, asked another angel of God:
'What is your name, for we shall want to know it when your words come true?' The angel of the Lord said to him, 'How can you ask my name? It is a name of wonder.' (Judges 13:16-19)
Those who believe that God was merely being evasive when He said 'I am that I am' are in a minority for most authorities concede that the significance of the name is contained in the meaning of the word ehyeh, usually translated as 'I am'.
Though God clearly refers to Himself as 'I am' in Exodus 3:14, and though He specifically stated in the next verse that this was the name by which He wanted to be remembered, this was not the name that the Jews subsequently used. They preferred the name Yahweh, which is the third person singular of the present tense of the same archaic form of the verb 'to be'. So, instead of referring to Him as 'I am', the ancient Jews and the compilers of the Old Testament always called him Yahweh, meaning 'He is' or 'He who is'.(9) 'I am' was too holy a name for the Jews to use, and even the euphemism 'He who is' was so sacred and holy to them, it was never spoken by ordinary people. Only the high priest of the temple was permitted to say it out loud, and even he was only permitted to utter it once a year on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.
So how did the Jews get round saying the name of Yahweh when they read the scriptures or spoke of Him? They used two further euphemisms: 'Adonai', meaning 'Lord' or merely 'Shem', which means 'the name'. In the ancient Hebrew script there were no vowels, only consonants, and so Yahweh was written YHWH. Whenever the Jews came across this sacred combination of letters, they ignored the correct pronunciation and instead said 'Adonai' or 'Shem'. This habit eventually caused, inadvertently, the name Jehovah to come into existence. On some manuscripts written about a thousand years ago, when vowel sounds had begun to be added to the consonants, the vowels of the word Adonai were interspersed between the consonants of YHWH to remind readers to say 'Adonai' rather than 'Yahweh'. When these manuscripts were translated into English, the translators, ignorant of this convention coined the word Jehovah, which they thought was a correct rendering of the word. This is still the most common rendering of Yahweh in English, even though it is now known to be incorrect. So far as the Jews are concerned, Jehovah is a meaningless non-word; the real name for them remains Yahweh, 'He who is'.
Most English translations of the Bible have opted for the euphemism rather than the real name itself, even though there is no prohibition in Christianity against pronouncing the divine name as 'Yahweh'. The name YHWH occurs about 6,800 times in the Old Testament and is most commonly rendered in English as LORD, usually printed in capital letters. Thus, for example, when God speaks in the preamble to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2), He says, in English, 'I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt…'.
Though the divine name Yahweh appears thousands of times in the Bible, there is no evidence that the Jews conceived their God to be immanent being. Theological speculation of any kind was alien to the ancient Jews and there is no indication in the Old Testament that they thought of God as a formless abstraction. Rather, they conceived of Him anthropomorphically, attributing all kinds of human traits to Him. Nor is there any evidence that the Jews of the biblical period thought that the aim of life was to attain union with Him, or partake of His being in any way. YHWH, for the Jews, was a transcendent being who had to be worshipped, placated, served, and above all, obeyed. He was separate from His creation, rather than immanent in it, and so far above and beyond the creatures He had created that, none of them could ever dream of uniting with Him or even approaching Him. For the Jews, 'knowing God' meant having a personal relationship with Him in a totally dualistic way.
The only Jews who used God's revelation of Himself as 'I am' to develop both a theology of God and a spiritual practice through which He might be directly experienced were groups of mystics who followed a tradition known as Kabbala. They evolved intricate cosmologies, deriving them from a mystical exegesis of Old Testament texts, and broke with traditional Judaic thought by proclaiming that man could approach YHWH and in His presence commune with His beingness.
There is another crucial area in which Bhagavan's teaching differ fundamentally from those of both Judaism and Christianity. Bhagavan taught that 'I am' is not merely the real name of God, it also the real name and identity of each supposedly individual person. Extending the notion to its logical conclusion, Bhagavan maintained that if one could become aware of one's real identity, 'I am', then one simultaneously experienced the 'I am' that is God and the 'I am' that is the substratum of the world appearance. The following quotes are typical and summarise his views on the subject:
It [I am] is the substratum running through all the three states. Wakefulness passes off, I am; the dream state passes off, I am; the sleep state passes off, I am. They repeat themselves and yet I am. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 244)
The egoless 'I am' is not a thought. It is realisation. The meaning or significance of 'I' is God. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 226)
'I exist' is the only permanent self-evident experience of everyone. Nothing else is so self-evident [pratyaksha] as 'I am'. What people call self-evident, viz., the experience they get through the senses, is far from self-evident. The Self alone is that. Pratyaksha is another name for Self. So to do self-analysis and be 'I am' is the only thing to do. 'I am' is reality. 'I am this or that' is unreal. 'I am' is truth, another name for Self.
From "Day by Day with Bhagavan", 22nd March, 1946
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Chapter 1
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. He was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
4. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5. And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.
8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
10. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
11. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believed in His name.
13. who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Greek word Logos is used in the initial Greek and Latin translations but the Aramaic version is in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke and as Vik Alexander, (who traces his cultural heritage directly to the Syrian Orthodox Church and it’s people), explains in his excellent and authoritative video, that the original Aramaic version of the Bible uses the word Brasheeth, used both in the beginning of Genesis and the beginning St John’s Gospel.
Such things as the Kabbala , like yoga and other Eastern Initiations and paths ( including advaita) are understood by those qualified to tread such paths. In the English biography approved by Bhagavan ( ‘Self Realisation. Life and Teachings of Ramana Maharshi’ by B. V. Narasimha Swami) there are many references to Western and Christian Traditions. Later revisions by others of this fine English language biography have removed many of the elements that indicate that the Maharshi was not giving a specifically Hindu teaching but a universal teaching for modern man transcending religions or beliefs or philosophical creeds and differences.
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