Question 323 - The Enlightening Answer Across the Ether, Vol 4

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. The human being is the manifestation of the Divinity, Glorious is He, in the world of creation. The human being’s innate nature qualifies him to be Allah in creation-that is, the image of Allah, the face of Allah, or the hand of Allah. Abu al-Salt al-Harawi narrated from Imam al-Rida (a), who said: ‘The Prophet (s) said: “Whoever visits me during my life or after my death has visited Allah, the Exalted. The Prophet’s degree in the Garden is the highest of degrees, so whoever visits him in his degree in the Garden from his own dwelling has visited Allah, Blessed and Exalted.” He said: I said to him, “O son of the Messenger of Allah (s), what is the meaning of the report they narrated: the reward of ‘There is no god except Allah’ is looking upon the face of Allah, the Exalted?” He (a) said: “O Abu al-Salt, whoever describes Allah, the Exalted, as having a face like other faces has disbelieved. Rather, the face of Allah, the Exalted, is His prophets, messengers, and proofs-may Allah’s prayers be upon them. Through them one turns toward Allah, Glorious is He, and toward His religion and knowledge of Him. Allah, the Exalted, said: ‘Everyone upon it will perish, while the face of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honor, remains’ (^[55]). And He said: ‘Every thing will perish except His face’ (^[56]).”’ (^[57]). The human being’s striving to know himself passes, with every movement, through knowing the Lord at some level, then taking on the character of the Lord, Glorious is He, and adorning himself with His attributes, until the human being-if he is sincere and stripped of the ego-reaches the point of being Allah in creation, that is, the image of the Divinity and the face of the Divinity. At this stage and station, the human being will know himself, and his knowledge of himself is his knowledge of his Lord, because he is the face of Allah, and the Lord is known by the face through which He confronts. Every human being who journeys toward Allah sincerely is the face of Allah at some level according to his striving and sincerity. That is, he is the face of Allah according to the quantity and quality of Allah’s attributes his soul bears. Consequently, the face of Allah in creation is not a single level. Muhammad (s) is the face of Allah; Ali (a) is the face of Allah; Fatimah (a) is the face of Allah; al-Hasan is the face of Allah; al-Husayn is the face of Allah; the Imams (a) are the face of Allah; the Mahdis are the face of Allah; the prophets and messengers (a) are the face of Allah; and Salman the Persian is the face of Allah-but each according to his own measure. The true face of Allah in creation is Muhammad (s). Consequently, his knowledge of his Lord, Glorious is He, is the most complete in creation, because it consists of his knowledge of himself, and no one in creation knows his own self-which reflected the image of the Divinity in the most complete form in creation and was itself the most complete in creation-better than he (s). If we suppose that the human soul is a mirror in which the capacity to reflect the image of the Divinity has been deposited, then the image of the Divinity in this mirror will be more complete and clearer in proportion to this mirror’s orientation toward the Divinity. Whoever directs it completely will reflect a complete image of the Divinity, while whoever falls short in directing his mirror completely will have a deficiency in the image of the Divinity reflected in the mirror of his existence, in proportion to his shortcoming. His knowledge of the Divinity and of his Lord will correspond to the image reflected in the mirror of his existence. Therefore, whoever actually knows the reality of himself-and I emphasize actually, for the issue is not knowledge of words or meanings-will have known his Lord to the extent that he knows himself. I will give you an example to bring the stages of this knowledge nearer to your conception: Suppose a fire is burning before you. You see it with your eyes and feel its heat striking your face, but you do not know its effect upon you until, for example, you touch it with your hand and your hand is burned. At that point you will know that fire burns. Yet this knowledge of the reality of fire came through your self-your hand that was burned. Your knowledge of the burning that befell your hand first passed through an initial knowledge of fire: you saw it with your eyes and felt its heat, but did not know its effect so that you might know something of its reality. After you touched it, you knew something of its reality, but this knowledge passed through your self; that is, you knew it through what happened to your hand. Now we complete the example and say: to the extent that you are burned by the fire, you know its effect upon you and know its reality through its effect upon you. If you were entirely burned in the fire, you would become fire, and your knowledge of the fire would be your knowledge of yourself. Now, suppose this fire is the most complete image of fire-as though it were a white fire, for example-and you burned and became fire, but in a form lower than the white fire, let us say a red fire. Your knowledge of this white fire-which is your knowledge of yourself-would be less than the knowledge of one who burned and became fire at a degree higher than yours, namely a degree between red and white. If you are asking about a practical methodology, Allah has established a practical methodology and sent it down, Glorious and Exalted, in the Noble Quran. As an example, go and read Surat al-Isra and contemplate it; you will find that Allah, Glorious is He, has clarified this methodology. The Messenger of Allah Muhammad (s) confined the reason for his mission in his words: ‘I was sent only to complete noble character.’ If you want me to summarize this methodology for you in one sentence, I say to you: ‘Kill yourself and you will know your Lord.’ The human soul is light and darkness. A human being’s knowledge of his Lord corresponds to the extent that light controls and darkness is defeated within the human soul. If I call these things by their names, the light is ‘He,’ and the darkness is ‘I.’ Whenever you say ‘I’ in opposition to ‘He,’ you will find darkness expanding within your soul, and you will move away from knowledge and draw nearer to ignorance and blindness. Whenever you say ‘He’ in opposition to ‘I,’ you will find the light dominating the page of your existence, until the human being knows that his existence is a sin, because what makes him exist as a distinct being is his mixture with darkness, whose source is the ‘I’ and his demand for existence and persistence in opposition to ‘He,’ Glorious is He. For this reason Ali (a) said: ‘My God, I have wronged my soul by looking after it, so woe to it if You do not forgive it’ (^[58]). Iblis was destroyed by saying ‘I’: ‘He said, “What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?” He said, “I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay”’ (^[59]). So beware of it. Ahmed Alhasan The blessed month of Shaban, 1430 AH