divinity

Know however that God, in order to manifest Himself by His essence to His essence, has no need of creatures since, with relation to Essence, he is absolutely independent with respect to worlds and even with respect to His own names. . . . On the other hand, when He manifests Himself with His names and His attributes - which implies the manifestation of the effects - He needs (huwa muftaqir) the creatures. . . . This relation is . . . necessary in order that the divine Names, which are only distinguished by their effects, can be distinguished from one another. At the same time, the divine Names, by the one of their "faces" which is turned toward the Essence, are themselves totally autonomous with respect to worlds. In this respect, they are nothing other than the Essence itself and that is why each of them can be qualified and designated by all of the other Names in the same way as the Essence.

Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: This means: "Turn the [divine] face which is particular to you. . . ." This face is the secret (sirr) through which your spirit subsists. . . . It is the source of man's being and the command [formulated in the verse] is in reality concerned with this. God . . . does not consider your exterior form but only your heart - which is the "divine face" proper to each of you, and it is this "divine face" which, in you, "contains" God even though His sky and His earth cannot contain Him. . . . He who turns (toward the sacred Mosque} with his body alone, without also turning this face, has not truly turned. . . . He who looks with his finite eye only sees finite things - bodies, colors or surfaces. He who looks with the eye of his hidden spirit sees the hidden things - spiritual beings, forms of the world of the absolute Imagination, jinns - all of which are still only created beings and therefore veils. But he who looks with his face, that is to say, his secret (sirr), sees the face which God has in each thing; for, in truth, only Allah sees Allah, only Allah knows Allah. . . . As for the "sacred Mosque" . . . , although this term applies literally to the Mosque perceived by the senses, it should be understood as designating the degree which totalizes all the divine Names, that is to say the degree of the divinity which is the "place of the prostration" - of the prostration of the heart, not of the body.

And He is with you wherever you are. . . . (Koran 57:4) Commentary: . . . The companionship expressed by "with" is that of the Being and the non-being, for there is no Being other than Allah. . . . If Allah - May He be exalted! - was not, by His very Essence, which is the Being of all that is, "with" the creatures, we could not attribute being to any of these creatures and they could not be perceived either by the senses, by the imagination, or by the intellect. It is their 'being with' which assures to creatures a relation with Being. Better yet, it is their being itself. This 'being with' embraces all things, whether they are sublime or lowly, great or small. It is through it that they subsist. He is the pure Being by which 'that which is' is. The 'being with' of Allah consists therefore in the fact that He is with us through His essence; that is, through that which we call the divine Self (huwiyya), universally present. . . . Indications of this divine 'being with' are contained in the following verses: And He is witness of all things (Koran 34:47) And Allah, behind them, encompasses them (Koran 85:20) Wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah (Koran 2:116)

If the divine Mercy grants him the knowledge of himself, then his adoration will be pure; and, for him, paradise and hell, recompense, spiritual degrees and all created things will be as though God had never created them. He will not accord them any importance, nor will he take them into consideration, except to the extent that it is prescribed by the divine Law and Wisdom. For then he will know Who is the sole Agent.

. . . The divine Reality, when it "combines" with the creatures in a strictly conceptual mode, is hidden to the eyes of the spiritually veiled, who see only the creatures. Conversely, it is the creatures that disappear in the eyes of the masters of the Unity of contemplation (wahdat al-shuhud), for they see only God alone. Thus, both God and the creatures hide the other. . . . . . . In the same way, when there is the state of extinction (fana') - which the men of the way also call "union" (ittihad) - the worshipper and the Worshipped, the Lord and the servant, disappear together. If there is no worshipper, there is no Worshipped; and if there is no servant, there is no Lord. For, when two terms are correlative, the disappearance of one necessarily brings about the disappearance of the other, and therefore they disappear together.

The first "station of separation" corresponds to the state of the ordinary man who perceives the universe as distinct from God. Starting from here, the initiatic itinerary leads the being first to extinction in the divine Unity, which abolishes all perception of created things. But spiritual realization, if it is complete, arrives afterwards at the "second station of separation" where the being perceives simultaneously the one in the multiple and the multiple in the one.

The pleasure and the love of God for His creatures constitute the original state. His pleasure and love are the means by which He has brought His creatures into existence and are the cause of that bringing into existence. He who knows that he possesses neither being nor act rediscovers himself in that original state of pleasure and divine love.

Paraphrased: Among the degrees of the universal Manifestation, each sentient creature typically experiences an illusory sense of autonomy. At the same time, with or without the creature's awareness, the creature subsists eternally as an "immutable prototype" in the divine Knowledge.

When the sight will be dazed,when the moon will be eclipsed, when the sun and moon will be in conjunction, on that day man will say: "Where to flee?' But there is no refuge. (Koran 75:7-11) Commentary: "When the sight will be dazed"; when it will be stunned and perplexed. This relates to the moment when the theophanies begin, for the being has no previous knowledge of what he is now contemplating, no familiarity with what he is seeing. The "moon" symbolizes the servant in his contingency, and the "eclipse" his disappearance: that is to say, the evidence that his being is borrowed and does not belong to him himself for he "is" only in a metaphorical way. . . . The sun symbolizes the Lord - may He be exalted! - just as the moon symbolizes the servant. Their "conjunction" symbolizes the degree of the "union of the union" (jam' al-jam'), which is the ultimate degree, the greatest deliverance and the supreme felicity; and consists in seeing at the same time the creation subsisting by God, and God manifesting Himself by His creation. . . . The gnostic then asks "Where to flee?" because of the violence of the perplexity provoked in him by the multiplicity of the theophanies: their diversity, their fleeting character, the rapidity with which they disappear, the abundance of the divine descents (tanazzulat) which stun the intellect and plunge it in stupor. . . . "But there is no refuge" - there is no shelter, no way out. The gnostic who would leave this state to find repose is warned that the repose and the Gnosis are only found precisely where he is. The perplexity increases as the divine descents increase, but it is these divine descents which are the source of spiritual knowledge. This is why the foremost of the gnostics, our Prophet - on Him be Grace and Peace! - said "Oh Allah, augment my perplexity with regard to Thee!"

There was an old Fellow of Trinity, A Doctor well versed in Divinity; But he took to free-thinking, And then to deep drinking, And so had to leave the vicinity.