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Question 231 - The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 3

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Contents
  1. Question and answer
  2. Source footnotes
  3. References

Question and answer [link]

Question 231

What is the explanation of the Commander of the Believers’ statement (a) in one of his sermons: ‘Praise be to Allah, who has prevented imaginations from attaining anything but His existence … and has veiled intellects from imagining His essence because it is beyond resemblance and similarity’ ([43])? Sender: Mr. Zaki

Ahmed al-Hasan Response:

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, the Imams and the Mahdis, and grant them abundant peace. Knowing Him-‘He,’ Glorious is He-is through incapacity to know Him, Glorious is He. That is, knowledge is realized for the human being when he knows that he is incapable of knowing Him, Glorious and Exalted. This is realized when the human being travels the path to Allah, Glorious and Exalted, until he reaches knowledge of his incapacity to know. This incapacity exists at the two stations of the Reality-‘He’-and the Essence-‘Allah.’ At the station of the Reality, incapacity is certainly greater: there is no knowledge except that He exists, and even this existence cannot be attained or perceived. Perceiving Him-‘He,’ Glorious and Exalted-is impossible, as is perceiving His effect ([44]), meaning the divine Essence-‘Allah.’ Thus, even knowing that He exists is deficient and incomplete knowledge, because it is not based even upon His effect, but upon the effect of His effect and the manifestation of His manifestation, Glorious and Exalted. As for the divine Essence-‘Allah’-perceiving existence is possible here because perceiving the effect ([45]) is possible, since the effect of the Essence is a created being who encompasses its existence and reality because it is his very self. But the incapacity here is to perceive the Essence or conceive its reality as absolute perfection-‘Allah’-or as absolute mercy-‘the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’-or as absolute power, or absolute subjugation, and so on. Whatever knowledge is realized through the effect remains deficient compared with being the reality and the complete knowledge of the Essence. However much you know mercy, your knowledge remains knowledge within creation-because you are within creation-not within Divinity, so it does not represent the reality of mercy within Divinity. Knowledge here is therefore through incapacity to attain complete knowledge. Ahmed Alhasan

Source: The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 3; Author: Imam Ahmed Al-Hasan; Question 231; Page Not available; AL-JAWAB-AL-MUNIR-V3-Q231. View Arabic source · Open the original Arabic source ↗

Source footnotes

Footnotes are kept separate from the main question and answer and preserve their source-record association.

↑ [43] Al-Kafi: vol. 8, p. 18; Misbah al-Balaghah: vol. 1, p. 172.

↑ [44] The trace here does not mean what issued from Him, but what He, Glorious is He, manifested to His creation so that they might know Him, Glorious and Exalted.

↑ [45] The trace here means what issued from Allah, Glorious is He, or the creature Allah, Glorious is He, created.

View Arabic source

References

  1. ↑ Ahmed Al-Hasan. The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 3. Question 231; Page Not available. AL-JAWAB-AL-MUNIR-V3-Q231. View Arabic source
Cite this page

Ahmed Al-Hasan. The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 3. Question: 231. Page: Not available. AL-JAWAB-AL-MUNIR-V3-Q231. https://ahmedalhasan.org/ar/Library/BookContent/53

Subjects: Miscellaneous · Source library