I was immediately reminded of a piece of writing from Moses Cordovero, a sixteenth century Kabbalahist, excerpted from Or Ne'erav (and encountered by me in Daniel C. Matt's The Essential Kabbalah). It is long, but worth transcribing in its totality:
" An impoverished person thinks 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.' Imagining this and similar fantasies, the fool corporealizes God. He falls into one of the traps that destroy faith. He 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 the 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. "
The overlap between a sixteenth century Jewish mystic and an excommunicated rationalist Jewish philosopher from the seventeenth is deeper than mere coincidence. Spinoza's monist conception of God as the universal substance shares the vastness(if not the articulation) of Cordovero's conception of the nature of God. Both obviously express sentiments that the "unenlightened" would think are not authentically religious, which would suggest that the overwhelming majority of the so-called religious segments of society are not in tune with the true capacities of divine reality.
A nice bone to chew on, in any case, I thought.
