Fana (annihilation), which is the opposite of permanence, has connections with some of the other concepts in Sufism. For example, sincere repentance requires annihilating one’s resistance to acknowledging sin, asceticism requires annihilating carnal pleasures, the highest point of loyalty and love is the annihilation of the expectation for a pleasing life in both this and the other world, and absence (ghayba) as a result of intoxication is apparent annihilation. Each of these is an attitude, a feeling and state of pleasure for a traveler on the way to God, while being at the same time, with respect to the Divine Being, Attributes and Names, manifestations of the lights of the Divine Oneness in the sphere of contingent things and beings. Initiates live in tides of existence and non-existence due to these manifestations. This life is known as devastation (sahq). Their melting away before the Existence of the Ultimate Truth is known as destruction (mahq), and their feeling that their deeds are mere shadows of the Acts of the One Who does whatever He wills is known as effacement (tams). Devastation, destruction, and effacement are dimensions of annihilation. They remind one of the fact that everything other than He is a shadow of the True Existence and Knowledge, having no essential value inherent to itself. These states also function as a bridge between the relativity of truth and human perception, feeling and understanding.

The absolute truth never changes; it is always what it essentially is. Neither the assumptions of union or incarnation on the part of the Divine Being nor human absolute annihilation in God bear anything of the truth. Things and events are created by God. Human beings are His created servants, and He possesses absolute Existence and Knowledge. Every existent thing is a ray of the manifestation of His Existence and Knowledge, and humanity feels, witnesses, and interprets these manifestations. But humans can make mistakes, which should be corrected. Humankind are like the conductors of choirs singing the praises of the Creator. They interpret what constantly pours into their horizon or is presented to their view, reviewing it, and adding new melodies taken from the depth of their emotions and sensations. These melodies are sometimes in accord with the truth being played, but sometimes it happens that the states, pleasures, perceptions, and feelings of individuals are in discord with the truth in existence with the result that the accord and harmony in existence is spoilt in their mirrors of perception and consciousness. This gives rise to a confusion of views of Divinity, the Divine Oneness and multiplicity in contingent existence. Utterances such as “I am the Truth” (attributed to Hallaj al-Mansur), or “I am a denier if I pray, and an unbeliever if I do not” (attributed to ash-Shibli), and “The Lord is the servant, and the servant is the Lord, so I wish I knew who is responsible for God’s commandments” (attributed to Muhyi’d-Din ibnu’l-‘Arabi), and “Who is the criminal, and what is the punishment?” (attributed to Yunus Emre), are all examples of this confusion.

God knows the true intention and purpose behind such utterances. However, as far as I understand, while preparing for the Prayer, ash-Shibli was surrounded by multiplicity. When the lights of the Divine Oneness surrounded him during the Prayer, he, as an obedient servant who is seeking God but has been enveloped by the lights of Divine Oneness and has felt annihilated in the One sought and obeyed, he might have voiced his feelings of wonder and astonishment with the phrase mentioned above. The utterance of Ibn u’l-‘Arabi, which is apparently incompatible with the Shari‘a, must have been an expression of the pleasure of a similar state. Some common people among the Sufis, who are closed to such states of spiritual pleasure and the manifestations of the Divine “Facial” Light and who take such utterances as literal truth, without considering the state in which they are uttered, might suppose that people, after they have reached a certain level of spiritual awareness, are no longer answerable according to the Divine commandments. This view is nothing but a deviation from the true path. It is also wrong that certain people have accused of heresy and unbelief the great saints who made such utterances, which are the product of being lost in a state of spiritual bliss and which accordingly need to be interpreted.

If such words are the expressions of a mood of self-devastation and destruction that is beyond love and is identified with the pleasures of annihilation in God—and I believe that to be the case—the persons mentioned above who uttered such phrases should not be held to account for such words; these words must be interpreted. Those heroes of intense love should be viewed and perceived from the perspective of their care in practicing the religion. It was reported that Hallaj al-Mansur used to perform a hundred rak‘as of Prayer every night, and that the others were also deeply devoted to the Almighty. Their words, which are apparently incompatible with the rules of the Shari‘a, should be interpreted according to the basic principles of the Qur’an and the Sunna, and if they have uttered anything that cannot be reconciled with those principles, then a Muslim must, obviously, follow the guiding words of the Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings. However, these great persons are excusable because of the states that they were in when uttering such words; others who willfully imitate them, without sharing the same mood and spiritual state, will be held accountable. The author of the Lujja says:

If you are not together with the good ones in all your deeds, what use will it be to you that you bear the same name as them.
One of the two Messiahs restores the eyes of the blind while the other is one-eyed. [1]

Doing as the Prophets did in one’s manners and acts is the way of saints, while blind imitation and following those who lead the way to the precipice is bound to end in spiritual death.

Jalalu’d-Din Rumi expresses the same thought as follows:

Do not compare pure, virtuous characters to yourself;
though the words milk and lion are composed of the same letters (shir), they are not at all the same.
If a perfected one holds dust in his hand, it turns to gold;
while if another, defective one holds gold in his hand, it becomes ashes.

Self-annihilation in God has been dealt with in the following categories by the Sufi scholars:

• Annihilation in God’s Acts: Travelers to the Ultimate Truth who have reached this horizon feel in every act that there is no true agent other than God. On the face of all their moments or conditions of poverty, weakness, helplessness, and need, they discern the traces of His Power and Wealth. They hear constantly the voice of the points of reliance and seeking help ingrained in the depth of their
• Annihilation in God’s Attributes: Initiates who have reached this point feel that all lives, all knowledge and power, all speech, will, hearing and sight are rays of His Attributes of Glory and reflections of their Seeing themselves without any innate power or strength, they are greatly astonished by the lights of the All-Holy One called by the All-Beautiful Names, and experience extreme wonder at feeling the All-Sacred One having All-Sacred Attributes, and always aspire to meet with Him beyond all concepts of modality.
• Annihilation in the Divine Being: A person of truth who has reached the point of attaining a new existence in which all the directions are united into one direction falls into such a state that he or she cannot help but utter, “There is no really existent one save ” Those who have attained this state see all space and time as having existence in His Knowledge and proceeding from His Knowledge and perceive all existing things as manifestations of the lights of His Existence. Enraptured with the spiritual pleasures, they utter with every breath that everything is from Him, and regard annihilation in the light of His Existence as the price of being favored with existence.

Thus, as declared in the verse (37:96), God has created you and all that you do, travelers to the Ultimate Truth receive the first signal of annihilation with respect to the realm of acts. Saying, “Everything is from You, and You are the True Agent,” they advance toward self-possession. Then, as pronounced in the Divine declaration (8:17), When you threw, it was not you who threw but God who threw, they perceive their nothingness, melt away in the shadow of His Attributes and become mirrors reflecting them. Some even rise to the point where people and jinn begin to turn around them. If they are able to go further, they will go on as far as the realms beyond, as stated in, “There was God without there being anything that existed with Him. Now He is as He was before” [2]. They feel themselves to be in an indescribable and all but unattainable state of pleasure, wherein their existence is transient and where they have wholly annihilated themselves on the way to permanence. Such a feeling is akin to that where a drop admits what its origin, capacity and end really is with respect to the ocean. It also denotes that everything subsists by His being the Self-Subsisting by Whom all subsist and that nothing can come into existence or maintain its existence without being dependent on Him. So, transience and decay are essential to human nature—a fact of which everybody should be aware, while Permanence is necessary to the Self-Subsisting. When the journey comes to the end where the servants perceive this essential part of their nature and existence, the All-Holy Sovereign and Owner rewards them with permanence. In the language of Sufism, this favor is called “annihilation in God” and “subsistence by God with or in the company God.”

The heroes that follow the way of the people of the Sunna wa’l-Jama‘a and who are able to base all their views, words and manners on God’s absolute Oneness and Uniqueness, have always viewed annihilation in the endless ocean of Divine Knowledge and Existence according to the above considerations. They have meticulously observed the rules that issue from the Sphere of Divine Lordship, and the manners required by self-possession and wakefulness, even in states of intoxication and absence. Any extreme words or manners contrary to self-possession are not seen in their words and acts, even though they are under the overpowering influence of the state and spiritual pleasure in their acts. One of them says:

The moving tunes that come from the wooden instrument and which the singer plays come in fact from Him.

This means that that hero of annihilation and self-possession sees that all things other than He are but drops from the endless ocean of the Divine Existence, although he cannot distinguish the drop from the ocean, a particle from the sun, a mirror from what is reflected in it because he is deeply immersed in God’s Existence. As was once said,

O beloved, you have become a river ending in this ocean; how difficult it is to distinguish between the ocean and the river!

he becomes lost in the ocean or in the heaven of the Divine Oneness or Unity into which he has been immersed. Overpowered by the irresistible waves of the ocean or the depths of the heaven, he can neither see the shore nor find in himself the power nor consciousness to come ashore.

Another one among those intoxicated ones, those who reached the horizon of annihilation in God and was favored with the gift of a new existence by the Lord, saw all existence like a mirror in which he was looking upon himself and in which he was intoxicated, said:

Sometimes He has condescended to appear arrayed like Layla, and sometimes He has honored us in the form of Majnun.
When the Beloved has stepped out of the privacy of the meeting room,
The decoration and ornament of the interior has become most apparent.

The heroes of immersion who have reached this highest point express their sensation of Divine Existence and Oneness, joy and pleasure, they express the favor of God’s company, and the excitement of feeling Him by sometimes crying or screaming, sometimes by losing themselves and fainting, and sometimes by going into ecstasies and dancing. All of these happen during the spiritual journey on the hills of the heart. One of those who dove deeply into this ocean expressed himself in the flood of the ecstasies of his heart as follows:

I am such a falcon of love that
I have no place in either world.
I am such a phoenix of secrets that
I no longer display any trace of my essence.
I hunted the two worlds in a pleasant way with my eyebrows.
Look and know that
I have neither an arrow nor a bow.
I have become a voice to speak
and an ear to hear every language,
and an ear to listen.
But how strange it is,
for I have no ears nor a tongue.

The leading Sufi scholars have also dealt with annihilation in the following four categories:

• Annihilation in renunciation of people: an initiate is saved from fear of people and from having expectations of them.
• Annihilation with respect to the desires: this is the renunciation of selfishness and all worldly desires, aspirations, and bodily
• Annihilation of will-power: total submission to God’s
• Annihilation of reason: this is reason’s submission to God in the face of the manifestations of the This annihilation comes along with the astonishment and amazement which initiates feel, due to which they are unable to observe the criteria of thinking, judging, and acting that are valid in the sphere of causality. They usually cannot help but voice this astonishment and amazement.

For example, Junayd al-Baghdadi says: “For a certain time, the inhabitants of the earth and heaven wept for my amazement, and sometimes it occurred that I wept for their amazement. Now I am in such a state that I am aware of neither myself nor of them.”

The amazement or wonder of Gedai is also worth noting:

I did not know myself as I see me now, I wonder whether He is me or I am Him?
This is the point where lovers lose themselves; I have burnt away, so give me water!
The words of the author of al-Minhaj demonstrate a deeper aura of love and amazement:
I do not know whether I am myself or Him.I am in bewilderment, but I am sure I am not myself.
Am I a lover or the one loved or love itself?
I am intoxicated from the cup of Oneness, and I am not myself.
What am I? Am I a phoenix with no fame or mark? I am away from my home, and I am not myself.
I am transient in soul but permanent by the Beloved.
I am flying high, and I am not myself.

If we consider what annihilation is, these words are natural for a hero of annihilation. Annihilation means that travelers to God see, according to their level, none save God and set their hearts on Him alone. When they advance to the point where their inner and outer worlds, perception, and consciousness are illuminated with the knowledge of truth, then they begin to see clearly Who holds the reins of everything, and they always turn to Him in Whose Hand lie their existence and subsistence. Then, while they become more deeply immersed in truth by concentrating all of their thoughts on Him and endeavoring to reach Him, then they perceive that all existence is a manifestation of the light of His Existence. They reach the horizon of viewing all things and events differently with the consideration of Unity, and they are favored with being able to feel and interpret everything with their essential characteristics that the veil of corporeality hides.

Travelers on the way to the Ultimate Truth take a further step and are able to perceive with the certainty of conviction that all the events in the universe, including human acts and endeavors, depend absolutely on God’s Names and Attributes, and that everything has come into existence and has blossomed in the heart of these Sources. They also perceive that whatever happens happens by His Power and Strength and see more clearly the limits of their willpower in all of their deeds. Abandoning all shadowy existence, they take shelter in the protection and ownership of the Truly Existent One, and gain a new existence by Him.

If the traveler can take a further step, then he or she can feel with some certainty, a certainty that comes from experience, that all things and/or beings with their being, attributes and characteristics are transferred from their existence in God’s Knowledge and clothed in external existence by His Power as a manifestation of His Existence. Becoming more profound in their feelings, the travelers are immersed in the vision of the truth that everything exists and subsists by Him. They perceive in their consciousness that the truth of (55:26), All that is on the earth (and heavens) is perishable (except He), undulates throughout the universe like a flag, and everything created is bound to decay, and is maintained by the manifestation of God’s being the Self-Subsisting by Whom all subsist. They also feel in their consciousness that if a being suffers a moment’s interruption of this manifestation, it will perish, and they reach a further horizon of perception of the Divine Oneness.

The first step belongs to the verifying scholars, the second to those traveling on the way to the Ultimate Truth who have strong, inflexible willpower, and the third to those who have true knowledge of God and vision.

Those who are at the first step are annihilated to the extent of the depth of their consciousness of God and enter the way to “a revival after death.” Those who have left this step behind experience absence and immersion with respect to their inner world by means of a spiritual vision and discovery; they find seclusion in crowds and silence in noise and uproar. Others, who have reached the third step, renounce all human desires and aspirations, and wherever they look are immersed in the manifestations of the Divine Knowledge and Existence; they feel fully surrounded by His signs, as stated in (2:115), To whatever direction you turn, there is the “Face” of God. Whatever they see, they feel awe when enveloped by His rays, and whatever they observe they feel astonished at the burning manifestations of His “Facial” Light and they mention Him with many allegories.

When travelers to the Ultimate Truth have gone beyond all these steps and have become heroes of annihilation in God, the colors of subsistence by God begin to appear to them from all horizons. At every moment during their journey they go beyond one dimension of “there is no deity” (i.e., no one truly existent, no one truly witnessed, no creator, no provider, etc.) Every new dimension they go beyond confronts them with a new dimension of “but God.” Due to their taking larger steps and due to the uninterrupted shower of Divine favors, the universal Lordship and complete Subsistence begin to manifest themselves on their horizon. A time comes and they feel that His Throne has embraced the whole universe, and rising by the stairs of repentance, penitence and contrition, which comprise the way of turning to Him completely, they are immersed in the lights of His Divinity. They drown in the extraordinary pleasures of feeling awe and fear of Him in their acts of worship. They take a great pleasure in listening to the Divine Speech—the Qur’an. Finding themselves sometimes in the clime of self-possession that is embedded in fear, and sometimes on the hills of alertness that are embedded in awe, and sometimes in the oceans of mercy, they experience fear and hope or expectation, sadness and rejoicing, all together at the same time, and try not to fall away from His door. Unburdening themselves to Him in every thought, concept, utterance and breath, they become heroes of following the Divine commandment (15:99), Worship your Lord until certainty, which is bound to come, comes to you, and without being content with their worshipping, they advance further and further. They know that when they stop, both the way and the journey will come to an end, and they can no longer have the ambition of reaching their destination. For the journey is toward the Infinite One, and unending endeavor in this world is reflected as endless favors from the realms beyond.

O God! Guide us to the Straight Way, the way of those whom You have favored, not of those who have incurred (Your) wrath (punishment and condemnation), nor of those who are astray. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, and on his Family and Companions, all of them.

Notes

1. The poet refers to Jesus the Messiah, and the Dajjal who will appear before the end of time as a fierce opponent of Islam. The fact that he has one eye is usually interpreted to mean that he is blind to religion and the Hereafter. (Tr.)
2. al-Bukhari, “Tawhid,” 1; Ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad, 4:431.

No other place is blessed with the same charm of day turning into night, nor does it have a matching mystery. Seasons in other places are not as mild nor is nature as vivid and lenient as it is in this world. However, in the most fabulous corners of the earth there are times when daylight is blocked out, when the stars at night are drowned in darkness, and the days are obscured and monotonous. Yet, for those who can perceive and carry on their lives, following the path of the heart and spirit, nothing in our world loses its pleasure, nor do its attractions diminish. On the contrary, the springs in our world always cheer us with new life, the summers gently descend on the horizons of tenderness, autumn glimmer through the routine, reminding us of extinction followed by resurrection, winters elate our feelings of love and longing and inspire our spirits with new birth; thus, we are able to attain what our nature passionately seeks.

With the eye of the heart one can see that the arrivals and departures, the changes and transformations, the diversification and deformation in this land all have meanings that are different from those in other places. Life here exhibits eternal visions that are as expansive as a waterfall; flowing like a river that is fast and deep, racing along a sinuous course to reach its source. As the river bed narrows, it flows even faster and surmounts many seemingly impossible obstacles. It flows foaming downstream along its own path, as pure as the day it first gushed forth from the source, perhaps even purer. It spreads life along every mile for those who have the capacity, and runs to reunion like a lover separated from the loved one. And with reunion comes eternal serenity. This is the color, texture, and accent of life in our hearts, but it is not possible for those who do not empathize with us to comprehend this; they cannot appreciate the roots that make us who we are, nor can they perceive what we feel or think, or our ideals or objectives.

As a matter of fact, it is a privilege and joy to be born into and raised in this world, to be able to perceive its spirit and meaning which are rooted deep in the past. However, awareness of this privilege and bliss is only possible when our rich heritage, the spirit and meaning of this world, is duly appreciated and admired, as Majnun loved Layla. Love and yearning are commonly interpreted as ember or wood which easily flare up at the sight of good looks, a fine posture, and presence; this interpretation is correct, but not complete. The greatest love always blooms in direct relation to the refinement of the soul, as well as to the sensitivity and profundity of perception. Unrefined and insensitive souls may display some inclinations, but they can never truly love. Those with feelings that have been dulled can never be loyal, even if they incessantly speak of love. Loving something depends on knowing it well. Beauty may stir temporary interest, but if knowledge about the inner aspects is lacking, then there are no means for an everlasting connection. Such interest may generate passing fervor, but it cannot transform into a sparkle of love.

Those who do not know God have never been able to love Him; indeed, they cannot. Those who are not informed of the Prophet cannot show him due respect; indeed, they can not. And those who consider our lands to be mere geographical territory cannot be aware of the love for one’s homeland; this is not possible. Any territory is valuable according to the amount of riches found on the surface and underground. Likewise, a country rises upon its unique essence and values that have been inherited from the past; it is only in relation to these values that a country can be enthroned in the heart of the people. It becomes “my land” for those who love it as such, who shiver with the fever of longing.

Every one, no doubt, can feel a strong sense of belonging to the places they were born, from where they breathed and drank water, places with which they are more familiar, even if it were a desert. Yet, our love and desire for “our world” is not related to its being where we were born per se. We are bound to our homeland with a deeper connection and fascination-when we are home, it becomes as warm as our mothers’ embrace; when we are away, we think of it with a longing for the inner riches, the unique tastes and styles, and the magical expanses. Those with an unfamiliar perspective, who cannot discern its deeper qualities – in other words, those who have not been nourished from the same spring or nursed from the same breast – are unable to grasp the wonder; indeed, they never can.

Regardless of the feelings of others about our “world,” this land of wonders offers beauties of all kinds to us; these are unattainable elsewhere, even in the most beautiful corners of the earth. We feel inundated by the affluence we possess, enchanted by the charm of our accent and in this land we witness so many deeper dimensions that go beyond the material veils of our simple daily chores. When surrounded with traces, signs, and symptoms that connote these for us, we then become more connected to the present day; we get a deeper sense of our expectations for the future, of our life philosophy and of our past merits.

Facing an architectural pattern that is designed in the taste and perceptions of the past, or a decoration that reflects our conception of belief and thought, sentiments and esthetics, or when we set sail to the mysterious realm of the places of worship, schools, retreat centers, inns, baths, or caravanserais of this land, each of which is an ineradicable signpost of a noble history, we feel showered with the spirit and meaning of our past as our horizons spread out even farther. Then we are overjoyed beyond our expectations; our spiritual faculties and imagination are set free of time-bound considerations. We reach a point of consciousness in which heavenly words and voices can be heard in a harmonious blend with ordinary sounds. We find ourselves in the middle of a fantastic world which seems to have been constructed from a mixture of yesterday, today, and tomorrow-yet which does not fit into any of these time frames, while carrying traits from each. This is followed by a transformation of every object, every color, pattern, and accent in this world into something new: the sun, which was thought to have set, starts to rise in our skies, the moon and stars roam above our heads as if on a celestial tour, and everywhere glows with a cascade of smiles pouring over us. Then the spell of a darkness that has lasted for decades is broken and the shadows are defeated one after another by the guards of the light. The spring cries out, exhibiting all its beauties. Fountains that were thought to have dried up start running in abundance; clouds bow down to embrace the ground and converse with pastures and trees; rain strokes everywhere that has withered with mercy; the winds embrace us with a sweet breeze, as if celebrating a feast. In the present, but through the projection of the days of light from the past and those that are eagerly awaited in the future, mountains, rocks, singing birds all treat us with the best of sights and sounds, performing a fascinating music without lyric or composition, a tune of the spirit and meaning that does not belong to any one time, but indeed are the essence of all times.

Each time I think of this blessed land with thoughts filled with faith and hope, I say “here is a mystical country without borders, transcendent with a distinctive spiritual essence and an intrinsic beauty.” I consider myself fortunate if I am there; if I am away, I weep with yearning and to comfort myself, I rush to the apertures of my imagination to picture it in my mind. For me, it is always more beautiful than any other place. Its beauties have always remained unique, without any change, even when it was invaded with filth that tarnished the entire globe. It has always been a place that is desired.

Nothing has stained its spiritual potential and no dirt has been able to blur its inner purity. There were times when resentment, hatred, and sectarian fights festered everywhere; democracy was crippled, free thought was slaughtered, belief, Islam, and the Qur’an conceded against the most ferocious onslaughts and the winds of fall destroyed the gardens, the crops, and discolored the flowers and the roses mourned and wept tears of blood. Young saplings broke, giant cypress trees collapsed, and leaves were scattered around. Nevertheless, this “world” has always remained colorful with its inner treasures, spiritual pattern, and power of spiritual dynamics. It has always smiled gently on its own children, comforting their cries with joyful treats, softening the painful and harsh storms of reality with its magical hope-inspiring essence, and even in the most hellish conditions, cooled down the heat of those who took shelter in it with a peaceful “bard al-salam.”1

Hostility, rancor, discord, hatred and other foreign notions that originate from unbelief and which have sought to penetrate this land, have never been able to take up permanent residence, nor have conflicts and discord attained their objectives. Rancor and hatred have been defeated by love and leniency; envy and obsession have devoured and consumed themselves; and the unfortunate ones who have made the existence and continuation of such things dependent on these notions have never attained glory. The filth and the soiled ones have been rebuffed and dispersed, and only true humans and human values have remained in this land.

Yet sometimes perhaps all of us have been troubled by some unexpected events; we wish that they never happened, and bemoan the heartless and senseless acts of the people of this land, a land which is acquiescent to the heart and spirit, despite its rich historical heritage. Thankfully, such thoughts and the situation that lay behind them did not last for long; when the time came, everything reverted to its former shape; the heart was set in motion, the spirit made itself heard, the callous mood was replaced with sensitivity, and everything reclaimed its essential nature. Excluding the temporal fog that darkened the horizons, this land is indeed in possession of the treasures of pleasure, taste, and beauty from all times. We breathe in the spring in the mornings; we enjoy the colorful sceneries of the summer during the day, and at sunset we are filled with the pleasant sorrow of the fall. Days and nights, and the seasons that change reluctantly are so fresh, elegant, and soft that familiar hearts rise every morning as if invited to “resurrection,” waking up to a new day with the call for prayer and glorifications, finding themselves on a highway that leads to the heavens.

As it appears to our senses, everything in this world is seen as if through rose-colored glasses, through a mysterious veil that we cannot always perceive. The spiritual texture of this world which never fades, the pristine hearts of the people, the majority of the people being able to remain firm, with their behavior leaving indelible impressions; its marketplaces that feature noble characteristics inherited from the past; its porticos and fountains that have an impressive stance; the everlasting warmth in the sanctuaries of the places of worship; the glorifying of the Almighty by the believer singing “Hu, Hu” in chorus, accompanied by the bird song that soars up to the domes as well as into our hearts… it is not possible to witness these and many other magical scenes occurring in such a perfect way in other places. Nevertheless, not everyone is blessed with this testimony. Their inability to perceive is perhaps not a divine test or retribution upon them, but there is no doubt that it indicates a deprivation that has fallen to their share. It is most likely that these unfortunate ones were exposed to winds that blew a bit cold, or were hit by the autumn that passed a bit harshly, or were caught in an unseasonable hail, sleet or storm, and this is why they see this paradisiacal place as having the unpleasant face displayed by momentary events.

Nevertheless, such things do not last forever; they might cast our horizon in darkness for a time, but after a while they disappear, handing this world over to the brightest beauties that are inherently found there. Everywhere blossoms with its natural charm, and a peaceful spiritual expansion is felt throughout the land. Then the fog disperses and the sky is filled with the cotton-white clouds of the spring. Even if it does not rain, dew drops wash away the dust on the leaves. The dawn is followed by the sunrise, and the bright days that are celebrated in our hearts glow from a distance as every town and street, village and city assumes a spiritual transformation. This world becomes a corridor to what is beyond. As perceptions intensify, the elegance, mercy, and the poem that this storm of feelings pours into us pass beyond the upper limits of our comprehension. The gaps between our desires–dreams and the realities are filled and life becomes the way we would like to live it. Our horizons of thought are imbued with the colors of the heavenly slopes. Our disheartened feelings, our withered and cracked hearts, and our spirits, which are bent double and look like discolored flowers, pull themselves together as if the Trumpet (Sur) is heard. Then, everything and every one changes position and shouts out cheers of revival.

While some “homeless” ones suffer from a longing, although they are in their homeland, I have always kept myself occupied enjoying the beauties of my country that well up through the windows of my heart; my readings of this land have always been different from theirs. Even in our days in which hope has lost ground against the darkest thoughts, I can still hear a superb internal tune, singing the secrets from the deepest dimensions of my soul and my belief. I strive to keep my soul bound to hope and faith and as I visualize my glorious past with sweet memories, I also keep my eyes fixed on future days of splendor, days which I do not doubt will come. I try to simultaneously feel the charming colors, the glaring lights from both wings of time. Despite the suffocating grip of the present, I feel that I am strolling across a field that is more spacious than anywhere else. I leave all that is unpleasant today to be interpreted in time and submit these to the considerations of illuminated generations, for those for whom we have high hopes. In the meantime, I find myself between the light, shade, and breezes of my belief, hope, and good will. A future time of happiness caresses my sensations, even though the windows opened by my faith in God and certainty in belief do not yet yield a crystal clear view. I now witness a crude notion of darkness, which has tarnished the face of the earth in our recent past; I hear the groaning throes of agony on the deathbed on which our soul was sacrificed to our ruthlessness; I hear the requiems that are sung, for they resonate deep within, like history’s hymns of revival.

NoteSee the Qur’an 21:69, “O fire,” We ordered, “Be cool and peaceful for Abraham!”

Conventional water and wind turbines cannot function properly in a whirling current; the working of turbines depends on the existence of a steady and regular flow. In order to be able to obtain energy from vortices, turbines would need to mimic the movements of fish, adjusting their position to the differing angles of flow. A mechanical device to be developed in this respect should perceive the angle of the current flow instantly and adjust itself accordingly.

Normally, wind turbines are set up in high and open places. However, in cities the eddies that are formed by winds moving around buildings and roofs prevent conventional turbines from working efficiently. In order to overcome this challenge, scientists are aiming to develop turbines that benefit from the dynamic principles apparent in the movement of fish, though without imitating the fish exactly. They hope that in this way it will be possible to produce energy from turbulent currents as well. The projects being devised aim to develop different types of turbines to work in air and water. The energy production of these turbines will naturally be relatively low in comparison to common wind turbines operating in strong winds. However, these new types will make it possible to produce energy from winds moving at less than 32 feet per hour, when conventional turbines do not function. So, the total annual energy they are expected to produce will be no less than the regular wind turbines. If scientists can successfully model the admirable engineering applied in the bodies of fish, they will be able to boost the efficiency of these devices dramatically.

Notes

1. For further information see Liao J. C. et al., “Fish exploiting vortices decrease muscle activity,” Science 302, 1566–1569, 2003.
2. Dabiri, J. O., “Renewable fluid dynamic energy derived from aquatic animal location,” Bioinspiration and Biomimetics 2, L1-L3, 2007.

The meanings of beauty need to be redefined all together in order to be properly appreciated. Even though this has been done many times by masters of esthetics, we will try to explain our understanding of beauty in the context of our philosophy and belief, where every beautiful object is a mirror image or a reflection of Divine Beauty. Furthermore, anything that incites appreciation, love, and astonishment is seen as a reflection of Divine Beauty. Therefore, when our hearts are filled with these everlasting reflections, we are always able to perceive ourselves within beauty.

Through such a perspective, we conceive of even seemingly sad things, like death and decay, as being the essence of the most amazing harmonies, thus feeling ourselves to be among infinite beauty. In this way, we never feel upset or discouraged by the fading of our attachments. On the contrary, we experience the outward beauty of faith, breathe in the motivating air of hope, strive to do righteous deeds in the hope that we will fulfill our spiritual desires, seek sincerity in every deed, struggle to be tolerant, merciful, and constructive in all our behavior, and we strive to accept those deeds done for the sake of God as being the best moments of our lives. For us, faith becomes the light that illuminates our horizons, and a source of hope for our expectations. Only through faith can the chaos of nothingness be overcome. Only through faith can we reach the happiness that spreads from our hearts to the infinite Paradise. Through its vastness and power, faith becomes beautiful. Through faith one can find the Divine Unity, turn toward the Truth, and reach worldly and heavenly bliss, being released from all worries.

These are all the beauties within beauty that can be enjoyed through faith in God. The universe, events, objects, and human intellect that can evaluate these are all beautiful in that they help us find faith. Likewise, all righteous acts that stem from faith, good morals, and the desire to reach real faith and progress in the spiritual ranks of love and knowledge of God are also beautiful. Even acts of worship, or calamities that strike us, or sins that we find hard to resist, all of which may seem like hardship from the outside, represent beauty if we adopt the right attitude toward them. Real beauty belongs to God. He necessitates perfection, which is unique to Him alone. All of existence is a different mirror of God, reflecting His beauty as much as its potential allows. Stars sing of the beauty of light every night, they wink at us and remind us of Him through their unbelievable beauty. Moonlight touches the hearts with its softness and beauty and the sun spreads its mercy on each and every thing without distinction. It pours down its light and colors all day long, and sets, giving us another marvelous scene. The seas rise and fall through the tides, and take care of millions of living beings, like a merciful mother. Mountains, with a sheer size that makes our hearts pound, seem to be whispering something to the skies, playing along with the clouds. Mountains invite the rains, and stop the oceans with their proud look, yet they become mere earth. All the voices from the birds, sheep, forests, and mountains make up such a harmonious song, feeding our souls with the most peaceful rhythms. Yes, everything from the smiling skies to the thousands of glories of the Earth is so beautiful that they make us aware of the beauty of Heaven and we simply say “it just could not have been more beautiful!” And human beings themselves seem to be the most beautiful among all this beauty. With our outward looks, our inner world of senses, thoughts, and faith, we are like a sample, a replica of the universe. It is therefore apparent that humans have been created as a key to solve the riddle of creation. This is the way we should perceive beauty, seeing it only as a tool to interpret the real meaning of existence. In this enormous arena of beauty, everything can be seen as a point referring to the Creator. If, with our pure intentions and the right perspective, we can perceive existence as a mirror reflecting the beauty of The Beautiful, we can experience spiritual joy.

In fact, it should not be difficult to be aware of this. Sometimes, only a beautifully designed city or a place of worship is enough to make us enjoy this holy pleasure. Sometimes, a nice poem, a legend, a well-told story, or music that is meant to touch our human sensibilities, that wafts harmony into our soul, can draw us to this beauty, and make us hear the beauty of some other abode. However, the continuity of the joy that these spiritual pleasures give us and the avoidance of suffering depends on relating this worldly beauty to its real Owner. Otherwise, all will end at the most unexpected moment. The Sun will set and the Moon will disappear as our soul sinks into the darkness. It is impossible for souls in decline to appreciate and enjoy beauty. Since every beauty of this world fades away and leaves us one day, for our soul not to despair and to be able to enjoy the real and infinite beauty, it is necessary to establish the true Owner and Originator of the beauty we observe. A poet, relating this concept to a Qur’anic verse said: “Even faces as beautiful as the Sun set in the end. Thus I love not the temporary ones, but the infinite beauty that does not fade away.” Rumi illustrates the same point in the following verses: “My God, after seeing You, knowing You, I do not see the beauty of this world anymore . . .”

Yes, material beauty is just a means to acknowledge the Most Beautiful. Getting stuck at the “means” and not realizing the ultimate goal of this beauty, which shows us the real Beauty of God, is nothing more than being blind to the real goal, the real Truth. The Creator has placed all sorts of beauty and signs along the way so that we will not be blinded; however, for souls that have not reached this realization and which lack the faithful perspective, this beauty is nothing but a source of mischief, or means leading them to sin. But for those who can think clearly, even the love for the beautifully created is only the shade of the shade of the shade of the Beauty of the Beauty of God. As long as we are able to distinguish between the Real Source of Beauty and its reflection, the love we feel for the created is harmless. In this sense we can accept the created as beautiful.

Sometimes, we are aware of the innermost feelings in our souls which sense only the abstract beauty that fills our hearts with God’s love alone. At these moments, when beauty and love become intertwined, the soul, with its unique ability to see, feel, and hear, senses the Real Source in everything that it meets. Through its heavenly bestowed mechanisms, our soul perceives the essence of everything and attributes this to its real owner. It is the lack of this mechanism that renders the materialists and the naturalists short-sighted; they only observe the outer beauty of things, and fall short of perceiving the spiritual and infinite horizons. However, all beauty exists to take us to the Heavens, to the Godly realms.

Every human being displays themselves, their feelings, and their abilities in their works. This means that they are presenting something for others who will observe and perceive through the prism of their insight. God presents His works embellished with color, meaning, and content in order to make Himself known and loved for those seeking Him. We are sent to this world with the responsibility then, to affect and reshape things with His permission, to reflect our understanding, but also to be attentive to the true purpose and meaning of the creation of things. The universe and the happenings in it are thus perfect examples to imitate. However, no matter how perfect the example is, everyone will draw and interpret objects according to their abilities. Charles Lalo, commenting on esthetics once said: “The magnificent scene taking place at the time of sunset will remind a farmer of the rather unesthetic thought of dinner; the physicist, not of beauty or ugliness, but of rightness or wrongness of the analysis of a matter. Thus, the sunset is beautiful only for those who are aware of beauty.” Therefore, only those who see with God and hear with God can appreciate the beauty that spreads throughout existence as their senses are tuned to the spiritual realms.

A heart that beats with God’s love and which desires to meet Him, will be aware of many signs from God along the way. Such a heart will feel the excitement of meeting Him, as it reads the messages from the Moon, the sunset, the twinkling stars, colorful nature, the blowing of the wind, the snow. . . And such a heart would utter, in the words of one who has reached unity of sight and heart, “Everyone from everywhere is coming to watch Your beauty. From beneath and from above, every being is declaring You, displaying the reflections of Your beauty.” This heart looks at nature and objects, but sees the Unseen spiritual realms. This is the point of love and connection with God.

How Does God Hear and See?

This question raises certain difficulties. If treated improperly, it can lead to denying that God hears or sees, as in St. Anselm’s meditations on God’s Attributes.1 In his Proslogion, he introduces his famous ontological argument for God’s existence and asks: If only corporeal things perceive, because the senses exist in a body and are directed towards bodies, then how can you perceive? For you are not a body but the highest spirit, which is better than any body.(2)

He replies: But if to perceive is just to know, or is aimed at knowledge”for whoever perceives knows according to the appropriate sense, as, for example, we know colors through sight and flavors through taste”then it is not inappropriate to say that whatever in some way knows also in some way perceives. Therefore, Lord, although you are not a body, you are indeed supremely percipient in the sense that you supremely know all things, not in the sense in which an animal knows things through its bodily senses.(3)

The crucial points here are that perceiving is possible through bodily senses and that for God to perceive means to know. He seems to explain how God perceives without bodily senses by claiming that the essential outcome of perceiving is knowing. Therefore, if something were known with all details of its properties and qualities, all consequences resulting from perceiving it already would be obtained. If this were true, St. Anselm’s solution would make perfect sense. However, I argue that this is far from being true.

Perceiving and Knowing

To understand his flawed reasoning, recall the definitions of perceiving and knowing. Since we perceive only through our senses, and whatever we realize through our senses’ operation is perception, we define perceiving as a sensory-based experience. Constructing a precise definition of knowing is somewhat harder, for the word is used for too many purposes and in too many contexts. However, as a working definition of knowing something, we can say that it is having a representation of the object of knowledge in our minds.

The difference between perceiving and knowing something, if we take their meanings in the most general sense, becomes clear if we consider these processes’ temporal properties. We perceive something only when exposed to the sensory data caused by the perceived object. But if we know something, we can access this knowledge at will, provided that we do not forget it. In broad terms, perceiving is dynamic while knowing is static.

St. Anselm is right in the sense that we can know what we perceive, as expressed in: I know how banana tastes or in: I know how it feels But we can know these feelings only because we experienced them before. This is why we cannot explain color to a blind person or sound to a deaf person. Besides, knowing how it feels to see a red rose is not the same as seeing it. Let alone their dynamic versus static character, knowledge of an experience is a faint impression of the experience held in our memories.

Perceiving and Knowing in Relation to God

Our considerations about perceiving and knowing are based on circumstances relevant to human subjects. Due to the immense difference between the Supreme Being and us, we must remember that we can never know how our concepts apply to God. We only can assume that the essence of these concepts are shared by us”God knows and we know, but our knowing is a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of His knowing. So we can talk about God only through metaphors and analogies. Nevertheless, we can talk about God in a meaningful way, for we are taught about the Divine Attributes through Divine Revelation and are told that God created us in His image. Thus, being human lets us at least speculate about His nature.

In the light of the above, my main point concerning the relation between God’s perceiving and God’s knowing is that they are both existent and different Attributes, for the essence of perceiving differs from the essence of knowing. The former is a temporal experience; the latter is a nontemporal Attribute. Hence it follows that perceiving cannot be substituted for by knowing.

Realizing this, we see that St. Anselm’s solution to how God perceives without bodily senses is fallacious. To say that God perceives since He knows everything confuses the meanings of perceiving and knowing, and thus is a veiled denial of God’s seeing and hearing. Since St. Anselm’s explanation for the existence of God’s Attributes of All-Seeing and All-Hearing is invalid, or at least unsatisfactory, we must ask how God perceives without a body.

The Sense Organs

The above-mentioned question presupposes that perceiving is possible only through a body’s sense organs. This seems natural, as it is verified by daily experience. We do not witness people seeing without eyes or hearing without ears. Even though it appears obvious, the connection between perception and the sense organs is tricky. While we can say that the sense organs are somehow necessary for perception, we cannot say that they are sufficient.

To clarify this subtle point: A knife is sufficient for cutting bread, and a calculator is sufficient for multiplying 174 by 303. In other words, apart from discussing the absolute necessity in causal relations and given our universe’s physical laws, it is sufficient to have a knife or a calculator to perform those tasks. However, it is quite doubtful and even impossible for the sense organs to provide such a conscious experience as hearing a sound or seeing a color.

This may sound strange if we do not consider several stages and aspects of perception. Observations and experiments show that perception is a process initiated by the sense organs with incoming sensory data, such as a light pattern (an electromagnetic wave) or a human voice (a kind of pressure wave), and followed by evaluating such sensory data at the appropriate specialized areas in the brain. All stimuli arriving at the sense organs are transformed into nerve impulses”various patterns of electrical activity propagated through nerve cells (neurons).

Even though we do not know exactly how this sensory data is evaluated, all perceptions eventually are correlated with nothing but patterns of firing neurons in the brain. Thus, the brain represents and stores all data (e.g., color, shape, taste, softness), regardless of form, in terms of its neurons’ positions and firing rates. This is verified by stimulating various regions of the brain appropriately and watching the subject experience the corresponding sensations or feelings.

Brains and Computers

Analogous to a brain, a computer can represent and store data on its chips in terms of various electrical potentials. For example, an image can be loaded and stored by transforming its pixels’ brightness and color data into numbers so that a computer can distinguish colors and recognize patterns. Since different numbers represent different colors or color tones, a computer sees them as different objects and can discern them easily.

But unless a computer is programmed to signal when it sees green, it cannot perceive that green. It is not our recognizing, discriminating, representing, or responding to a color that makes us conscious percipients, but rather our experiencing a color. A brain or computer can have the necessary parts or circuits to represent, evaluate, and respond to a color or any other sensory stimulus. However, experiencing something, such as greenness, is a totally different and extraordinary phenomenon of perception.

Conscious Experience

How is it that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.(4)

To realize fully the essential unaccountability of conscious experience in terms of physio-chemical processes or the organization of brains and sensory organs, this kind of thought experiment might be very useful: Might your experience of red be the same as my experience of green? Sure, you might label grass as ˜green’ and the tomatoes as ˜red’, just as I do, but perhaps you actually see the grass as having the color that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as red.(59

Considering such unique and intractable aspects of conscious experience, the most reasonable conclusion would be to treat the sentience and feelings in our perceptions as belonging to a distinct domain beyond the realm of this physical universe. Sense experience cannot be reduced to physical activities or replaced by each other. In this sense, they are simple and fundamental, such as the dimensions of space“time or the fundamental forces in physics. They are not produced, but just happen to be correlated with stimulating bodily senses and the nervous system’s resulting activity. This is just as bizarre as correlating a supernova’s explosion with my pushing the button of my pen. The only difference is that we have been accustomed to the former since we were children.

Given this, how can we explain why we have conscious experience? Science gives us no hint. One may deny sentient experience, as some philosophers of the mind do, but this is not satisfactory. The only clue comes from Divine Revelation, which teaches us of an Ultimate Creator Who is Compassionate and Merciful. Reminding us of his bounties, God says in the Qur’an: Say: He has created you and made for you faculties of hearing, seeing, feeling and understanding: little thanks it is ye give (67:23).

Once the true character of perception as a special gift of God is understood, our eyes and ears and other bodily organs cannot be considered the real sources of our bodily senses; rather, we will understand that they are just like windows of the human soul that God breathes into each person: (Remember) when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am creating a mortal out of potter’s clay of black mud altered, so, when I have made him and have breathed into him of My Spirit, fall down and prostrate unto him (15:28-29).

Only in the light of this profound truth can we have an idea of why we have so many remarkable qualities and capabilities. Being human, we are like mirrors on which the manifestations of God’s Attributes are focused. Of course, we have only the faintest copy of His Attributes, such as All-Seeing, All-Hearing, and All-Knowing. As all our knowledge is like a drop in the ocean with respect to His knowledge, our seeing and hearing are insignificant with respect to His seeing and hearing.

Since such elements of perception as seeing and hearing are not products of bodily senses but rather faculties of the human soul breathed into us by God from His Spirit, the perfect modes of seeing and hearing naturally belong to God as the Attributes of All-Seeing and All-Hearing.

Conclusion

As a final point, we stressed that seeing and hearing are temporal experiences. This raises the following question: How can an eternal God have temporal experiences? However, since investigating God’s actions in relation to time is a huge issue, we will consider it as a possible subject of future research. Here, I remark that God’s greatest Attribute is that of All-Living.

Footnotes

1. St. Anselm (1033?-1109) was an Italian prelate, Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church, and a founder of Christian scholasticism.
2. St. Anselm, Monologion and Proslogion, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: 1996), 102.
3. Ibid.
4. Thomas Huxley, in Nicholas K. Humphrey, A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
5. Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1999), 146.

But direct vision is very limited and could never be an appropriate way of seeking the Unlimited. Let us explain:

There are innumerable bacteria in the human body, indeed innumerable bacteria in so small a space as a human tooth. These creatures are quite unaware of the tooth in which they live. To become aware of it, they would have to somehow situate themselves out of the tooth, and then, through the use of artificial means (telescopes and microscopes and the like) they might, conceivably, obtain some very approximate notion of the dimensions of the tooth, and then, perhaps, of the larger body to which the tooth is attached. Only through such an effort, which is scarcely imaginable, could the bacteria become aware of the human body which makes up the large ground or sustaining environment of their life. And this scarcely imaginable awareness is itself an immeasurable distance away from anything remotely resembling what we would call understanding.

Though on a very different scale, the sense-awareness of human beings is similarly limited. It may indeed be that, with the assistance of telescopes and other instruments, we can ‘see’ across distances of millions of light years. But all that we ‘see’ in this way is insignificant compared to the dimensions of the whole of which it is a minute fragment. In fact, allowing for the difference in scale, what human beings can ‘see’ is as insignificant as the bacteria’s awareness of the living tissue within which they exist and perish, when compared to the dimensions of the body of which that tissue is a minute fragment.

Further, if we consider the matter closely, we soon realize that our ‘seeing’ (or hearing or any other mode of perception) is conditional upon our understanding. We need to have some general ideas about what we ‘see’ in order to distinguish it and recognize it. If we did not have some idea, however vague at first, of what, for example, a tree is, we should be literally unable to make sense of that object before our eyes which we know as a tree. If our ‘seeing’ is as limited as it is, and if–even for the objects within creation, and within the reach of our ‘seeing’ or our ‘seeing’ instruments–we need some general understanding so that we can make sense of what we ‘see’, how improper a demand it is, how absurd a demand, to ask why we cannot directly ‘see’ or directly ‘know’ the Creator of the whole.

We are created beings, that is, finite, limited in our possibilities and our capacities. Only the Creator, God, is Infinite. By His Mercy, the Creation is available to us as the ground or environment within which we exist and perish, strive for understanding and virtue, and seek our salvation. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said: compared with the Seat of Honour (kursi), the whole universe is as little as a ring thrown upon a desert. Similarly, compared with the Throne (arsh), the kursi is as little as a ring thrown upon the desert.’ From that comparison we gain some understanding of how far the Infinitude of the Creator exceeds our power of apprehending it. How can we even begin to conceive of the reality of the kursi and arsh from which the All-Mighty in His Infinite Majesty sends out His Will and Command and sustains His Creation, let alone begin to conceive of God Himself? 

Why can’t we see God?

The Qur’an teaches: ‘Vision comprehends Him not, but He comprehends all vision’ [6:103].

After the Prophet’s ascent to the heavens, peace be upon him, his Companions asked him:‘Have you seen God?’ It is reported on the authority of Abu Dharr that, on one occasion, he answered: ‘He is the Light, how do I see Him?’ and on another occasion, he answered:’I have seen a Light.’ These statements clarify the well-known saying, ‘The light is the limit or veil of God’. Between us and God is the light which He created. All that we see by that light, within that light–the light is the ground and environment and the limit of our seeing, and that light shields or veils us from God. In fact, we see but a part of that light of creation, we see but a part of what veils Him.

Let us consider the matter from another direction. Ibrahim Haqqi says: ‘In the whole universe of creation there is nothing that is either the like or the equal or the contrary of God. God is Exalted above all form, indeed immune to and free from form.’

It is only because existing things have a like or an equal or a contrary that we are able to distinguish them and perceive them. We know what is ‘long’ only against what is ‘short’ by comparison or contrast; similarly, we know ‘light’ only against what is ‘dark’. How then should we distinguish or perceive One who has neither like, nor equal, nor contrary? This is the meaning of the statement that God is Exalted above form.

The reader will certainly have understood that the question of those who ask to directly perceive God is but an image of the question of those who ask to directly ‘think’ or ‘know’ His Being. But, in truth, we can no more ‘think’ or ‘know’ His Being, than we can ‘see’ Him. Just as He is beyond all measures of form or quality or quantity, He is also beyond all our powers of conception or reasoning. As the Muslims learned in kalam (theology) put it: ‘Whatever conception of God we form in our minds, He is other than it.’ And the Sufis say: ‘God is beyond; and beyond all our conceptions; and we are surrounded by thousands of veils.’

Men of wisdom have said that God exists and He cannot be comprehended by human reason, nor perceived by human senses. The only means to knowledge of Him is through the Prophets, that is, the men whom God appointed as bearers of His Revelation. Where perception and reason have no access, we need to, indeed we must, accept the guidance of Revelation.

Imagine that we are in a closed room and hear a knocking at the door of that room. We may well form some vague impressions about who is knocking, but we can no more than guess at his attributes. We know for certain only that there is knocking at the door, and that we are free to go to the door and, on opening it, ask the person to make himself known to us so that we obtain thereby a more secure knowledge of his true attributes.

This poor analogy may help us to more usefully approach the question of how to seek God. The fact of Creation, the immensity of it combined with an essential unity of form, the sheer beauty and harmony of it, and its usefulness to us as well as its demands upon our labour and our understanding, all make us aware of the existence of the Creator. In just the same way as we deduce from the manufacture of a wonderful diversity of fabrics out of a single material that there is certainly an agent who spins and mixes and dyes and weaves and otherwise prepares the final product, so we deduce from the stunning evidence of the Creation that there is a Creator. While a manufacturer of fabrics can be got hold of and may be persuaded to make himself known to us, no such impertinent curiosity can be addressed to the Creator. Indeed, it would be most incorrect to do so–as well as being impossible–just as impossible as it would be for the fabric to address such curiosity to the fabric-maker. Thus, without assistance from the Creator himself, we can get no further than when, hearing the first knocking on the door, we began to indulge hopelessly vague surmises about who was knocking.

But the reality is that, by the Mercy of God, the Creation of mankind was accompanied by Revelation. Through God’s Revelation to the Prophets and their teaching of us, the door is held open for us. We are enabled to respond to the Creation around us as signs manifesting not only the fact of the Creator’s existence but also His Attributes. Through the Prophets we learn to contemplate His Attributes and to call them–the One, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, and so on. A true understanding of these Attributes requires inward experience and contemplation, which are achieved only after sincere and total observance of the Divine decrees, objective study and long, profound meditation, according to the pattern of the Prophets. Only if a person has developed the inward faculties will he be able to grasp the meaning of the Divine works, that is, the Creation, and then rise to contemplation of the Divine Attributes manifested in it.

Even then, it is by no means possible for any person to comprehend the Divine Essence. That is why it is said–‘His Names are known, His Attributes are comprehended, and His Essence exists.’ In the words of Abu Bakr as Siddiq, may God be pleased with him: ‘To comprehend His Essence means to confess that His Essence can not be comprehended.’

What falls to us is to remain committed to our covenant with God, and to beseech Him in this way: “O You who alone are worshipped… It needs no saying that we are unable to attain to true knowledge of You. Yet we believe that You are indeed “nearer to us than our neck-veins”. We feel Your existence and nearness in the depths of our hearts through the universe which You have created and opened to us a like a book, and through the wonderful harmony of form between the least and the largest of what You have brought into being. We come to perceive that we are integrated into the whole realm of Your theophanies, and by that perception our souls are rested and consoled, and our hearts find serenity.’

But there are some who do not seek any such serenity or indeed any inward life at all. They are of a mechanical turn of mind and readily fall into a mechanical kind of sophistry which entraps and paralyses their reason, They ask: 

Given that god created every thing, who created God?

When I first heard this question, I straightway confessed again ‘and Muhammad is His Messenger’, for the Prophet, peace be upon him, predicted that this question would be raised. Indeed, he predicted a great many future events of importance-all have come true and will continue to do so as time unfolds. On one occasion he said: ‘A day will certainly come when some people will sit with their legs crossed and ask: ‘Given that God created everything, who created God?’

Of course, those who put such questions are atheists or inclined to atheism and seek to lead others astray also. The purpose of their question is to avoid the responsibility owed by a creature to the Creator, to avoid belief and worship. At best, the question is derived from the observation of (what are taken to be) ‘cause and effect’ relationships. Every circumstance can be thought of as an ‘effect’ and attributed to an antecedent circumstance or ‘cause’ which, in turn, is attributed to some circumstance antecedent to it, and so on. In the first place, it is obvious to anyone who reasons objectively that the notion of ‘cause’ is only a hypothesis, it has no objective existence: all that objectively exists is a particular, often (but not always) repeated sequence of circumstances. Secondly, if this hypothesis is applied to existence as a whole, we cannot find a creator of it because each creator must have a creator before that creator, in a never-ending chain. (In fact, the futile notion of a never-ending chain of creators was one of the arguments used by Muslim theologians to explain the necessity of believing in God).

It is self-evident that the Creator must be Self-Subsistent and One, without like or equal. If any created being can be said to ‘cause’ anything, that capacity to ‘cause’ was itself created within that being. Thus, no being in the universe can be said to be self-existent; rather, it owes its existence to the Creator who alone is Self-Existent as well as Self-Subsistent. It follows from the fact that the Creator alone truly creates that for each and every being He has determined all possible ‘causes’ and ‘effects’, all things whatsoever that come before or after it. Therefore we speak of God as the Sustainer, who holds and gives life to His Creation from first to last. All ‘causes’ have their beginning in Him, and all ‘effects’ find their ending in Him. In truth, created things are no more than so many ciphers or zeros which, no matter how many we put in a series, add up to nothing, unless a positive ‘one’ is placed before the series to give it value. In just this way the creation could have no real existence nor any value except by God.

What we call ‘causes’ have no direct or independent influence in existence, no direct or independent ‘effects’. It may be that we need to speak of ‘causes and effects’ in order to understand how, in a short space and over a little period of time, some part of the Creation is made (by the Mercy of God) intelligible to us and available to us for our use. But even this but confirms our dependence upon God and our answerability before Him. It is not God who needs ‘causes and effects’ to create; rather it is we who need ‘causes and effects’ to understand what He has created. He alone is the First and the Last, the Eternal, the Initiator and the Determiner–and all our busy little efforts after cause and effect are but veils between ourselves and His Majesty.

Let us and then affirm once more: He, God, is One, the Self-Subsistent and Enternally-Besought of-All, He neither begets nor was begotten, and nothing whatever is like unto Him.