Your body carries about 38 trillion bacteria, roughly as many as your own cells. That is a 2016 estimate by Ron Milo and colleagues. You have never seen one of them.
The universe is the same, only more so. About 95% of it is made of things no telescope has ever seen directly. Al-Bāṭin, the Hidden, names the One who is nearer than anything, and unseen.
Start with what we know
Start with something we know. Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us: it is the Name.
Episode 1
In us
In 2016 Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs and Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute recalculated the numbers in a 70 kg 'reference man'. They found about 30 trillion human cells, and about 38 trillion bacteria, most of them in the gut. They help digest food, train the immune system and may even affect mood. They are closer to us than our clothes. And we cannot see, feel or count them without a microscope and a laboratory. Much of what is nearest to us is hidden from us: the air we breathe, the microbes inside us, the fields that pass through us.
Episode 2
In nature
Rattlesnakes and other pit vipers have small pits between their eyes and nostrils that sense infrared, the heat given off by warm bodies. In 2010 a team led by Elena Gracheva and David Julius reported in Nature that a heat-sensitive protein called TRPA1 lets the snake 'see' a mouse in total darkness. It is a sense we do not have. But it is still only one band, close by, and only what is warm. Every creature senses a little of what is hidden, and none senses all of it.
Episode 3
At our best
The European Space Agency's Planck satellite measured what the universe is made of. It found about 4.9% ordinary matter, the stuff of stars, planets and people; about 26.8% dark matter; and about 68% dark energy. We know dark matter is there from the way galaxies spin and bend light, and dark energy from the way the universe's expansion is speeding up. NASA admits that scientists know even less about dark energy than dark matter. We infer them; we do not see them. Most of reality is hidden even from our best instruments.
Episode 4
The Break
Usually hiddenness means distance, smallness or darkness. We call things hidden because they are far, tiny or out of our band. Al-Bāṭin is hidden for the opposite reason. He is nearer than anything, and inside everything, and no eye can contain Him. Scholars warn against picturing Him as a hidden substance, like dark matter. This is a Name of nearness. “We verily created man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.” (Qur'an 50:16, Pickthall).
Read: 57:3; Muslim 2713a 'Thou art Innermost and there is nothing beyond Thee'.
From the tradition: Isaiah 45:15 'a God who hides in concealment'.
Watch and listen
Films, documentaries and voices that reach towards this Name. Each links out to where you can watch it.
At the appointed time on the mountain, God spoke to Moses (peace be upon him). And Moses, who had already heard God speak, asked for something more. My Lord, he said, show me Yourself, so that I may look at You.
God answered: you will not see Me. But look at the mountain. If it stays firm in its place, then you will see Me.
When his Lord revealed Himself to the mountain, it crumbled to dust, and Moses fell down unconscious. When he came round, he said: glory be to You. I turn to You, and I am the first of those who believe. (Qur'an 7:143)
The Torah tells a closely related moment. Moses asks, “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory.” God answers that He will make all His goodness pass before Moses and proclaim His name. But “Thou canst not see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.” He places Moses in a cleft of the rock and covers him with His hand until His glory has passed (Exodus 33:18-23).
Both tellings honour Moses' longing. Both say no human eye can hold what it asks to see. And both leave him nearer to God than before.
What each faith says
Read:
Judaism
“Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.”
Isaiah cries out: “Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” Jewish thought has a name for this, hester panim, the hiding of the face. It means times when God seems absent, which the Torah itself describes (Deuteronomy 31:17-18).
At the same time the Psalms insist God is closest of all: “Whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there” (Psalm 139:7-8).
The rabbis found the book of Esther, which never names God, hinted at in that very Torah passage: “I will surely hide My face” is haster astir in Hebrew, an echo of Esther's name (Talmud, Chullin 139b). Every Purim, Jews read a story in which God is hidden and everywhere.
Christianity
“He alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see”
John's Gospel says plainly: “No one has seen God at any time.” Paul describes God as “dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see”.
Christians add that the hidden God has been made known in Jesus, who “has declared him” (John 1:18). Many congregations sing Walter Chalmers Smith's hymn: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” An anonymous fourteenth-century English book on prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing, teaches that God can be reached by love but never caught by thought.
Islam
“Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth (all) vision. He is the Subtile, the Aware.”
Al-Bāṭin appears once, in 57:3, with aẓ-Ẓāhir. The Qur'an says: “Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth (all) vision. He is the Subtile, the Aware.” (6:103, Pickthall).
The Prophet's bedtime prayer explains: You are the Hidden, and there is nothing beyond You (Muslim 2713). Muslims understand the Name as nearness and knowledge, not absence: God knows what the heart whispers.
Same and different
Moses on the mountain appears in the Torah and the Qur'an, and in both no one sees God and lives. All three faiths say God is unseen and yet nearer than anything. Christians believe the unseen God has been shown in Christ. Jews and Muslims hold that God is made known through His word and His signs, not in a human person. Judaism also has its own name for God's hiddenness in hard times, hester panim, and Islam counts the Hidden among God's own Names.
A moment to reflect
What is close to you that you never see?
Have you ever felt that God, or meaning, was hidden from you? What was that like?
Can something be hidden because it is too close?
Watch
Kurzgesagt on dark matter and dark energy, the 95% of the universe we cannot see.
BBC Earth shows how pit vipers sense the hidden heat of their prey.
Do it together
families / schoolsInvisible ink
Write a message in lemon juice and let it dry. Warm it gently (with an adult) to reveal it. Talk about things that are there before we can see them.
faith groupsMoses on the mountain
Read Exodus 33:18-23 and Qur'an 7:143 side by side. Ask a Jewish and a Muslim participant to say what the passage means to them, and notice the shared longing.
faith groups / schools / familiesIn light inaccessible
Sing or listen to “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”, then sit for three minutes in a darkened room. Afterwards, talk about how each tradition speaks of a God who cannot be seen: the Christian hymn, the Jewish hester panim, the Muslim al-Bāṭin.
Episode 1
