Video: What are the Divine Names of God?

So let’s talk a little bit about the nature of the divine names of God. This is a concept that’s known in many different religions and the religion of Islam and the Sufi mystical path are no exception. We have a concept of God’s names or attributes or qualities. These are all names that we use for the attributes of the Divine.

We need to understand them because the divine names of God are what are at work in creation. The only true existence and reality that is eternally real and eternally in existence is the essence of the divine, the essence of God, Allah, by whatever name you know the one God.

The true reality, is this eternal, never-ending absolute essence of God. Now, the reason students or people often question: Why did creation come about? And in the Sufi tradition there’s an explanation for this which is as follows: It came about through divine love and through divine mercy. And there’s a very famous saying, where Allah spoke to us through the tongue of the Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him. And the words that Allah spoke with regard to creation were, “I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known.” So we know from this message from the divine that creation came about through love. And the reason that Allah loved to be known, or described Himself or Herself or Itself, it’s hard to know what phrase to use there. The reason that a lot described himself as hidden was because the divine essence, which is the true reality of God the infinite eternal absolute reality of God, is undifferentiated.

You can think of it as a field of energy or we tend to think of it as light. But light of course is energy, light and sound and all of the different wavelengths of energy. So you can think about this essence as being this infinite field of energy, but it’s undifferentiated. And so Allah love wanted or loved to be known firstly by Himself as in all of his attributes and aspects which were all encompassed within the essence but were not separated out so that they could be looked at individually. And so in order to observe all of Allah’s attributes one by one so that Allah could know himself both as the undifferentiated essence, but as the differentiated attributes of God, the creation was brought about. The creation began to manifest.

And the way that creation began to manifest was that Allah began when a last spoke the word “Kun.” What began to stream forth from the essence were the divine names of God, the attributes of God, which were all so lights. And their lights which are all encompassed within the essence and lead us back to the essence. But none of them by themselves encompasses the whole of Allah, of course, whereas Allah encompasses everything including all of the attributes. And so as these attributes began to stream forth, the creation of this world and the unseen worlds, the unseen spiritual Worlds begin to take place.

And ultimately the ultimate truth, which isn’t at all apparent to us in this physical world because we’re observing it with their physical senses. The ultimate truth is that everything that is happening in this world is being brought about by the action of the divine names.

Sidi Muhammad expressed it in his book, The Music of the Soul, with the words: The divide the qualities of God, the divine names, Allah put them in the ground of his creation. So ultimately when we look around at this world, that seems completely real, what we’re really observing is Allah’s divine names in action. The divine names are all that truly exist in this creation. Which of course is not eternal. It’s eternal in as long as Allah chooses, God chooses to keep this creation in place. So these divide names are actually the things that control the manifestation and what happens in the manifestation of God’s essence. And this is why they’re important. And as I said God’s qualities and attributes are infinite but we typically take the major ones or the ones that we were aware of.

We talk about the 99 beautiful names of God and so we recite usually only 99 of them at any one time. There are different sets of 99, but there is one set that’s most commonly recited. And the reason that that set is recited in the order that it’s recited is that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him, one of his companions asked him to recite the Divine names of God and that set of 99 names in that particular order how the prophet recited them. And so people begin to emulate that and that became the most common recitation of the 99 names.

Now that desire to be known from Allah, that that loving to be known, also included a desire to know himself through the creation through us, as human beings. So we human beings carry within our soul these 99 divine names of Allah. They tend to become veiled in us by our life and our experiences in this physical world by the physical manifestation, what appears really real to us because we’re seeing it through our physical senses, and interpreting it in our minds as real. So these divine names become veiled in us but it’s part of our walking on the Sufi path to actually purify and unveil these divine names that these qualities of God that are living within our soul. That is actually the final aim of the Sufi path, is to purify these qualities which then lead us to the witnessing of the essence and to unity with God.