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Topic January Circumambulating the Life of Muhammad (saw) - 3 from: Hazrat Inayat Khan: 'Unity of Religious Ideals' |
Islam has in every period held the idea of a formless God; but especially in the period when the Prophet Muhammed (saw) came - whose Message, since his coming, was named by the same name, Islam - great stress was put upon the idea of a formless God. It is difficult for us human beings to make God intelligible if we do not give Him any form; and yet a step higher in the realization of God is to make Him intelligible beyond the limit of form. God, therefore, in Islam, was made intelligible by His attributes. As Creator, as Father, as Mother, as Sustainer, as Judge, as Forgiver, as the Source and the Goal of this whole manifestation, One Who is always with His creature, within him, without him, Who notices all his feelings, thoughts, and actions, Who draws the line of human fate, before Whom we must appear to give our account, is the God of Islam. In Islamic understanding, there is One Only God with many attributes, and yet beyond any attributes; invisible, and beyond the comprehension of us humans; Almighty; Incomparable; no one save He having any power beside Him; the Knower of all things, and pure from all impurities; free from all things, and yet not far from all things; in Him all abiding, and He living in all. The whole essential teaching of Islam (which is called Kakamat) tends to explain clearly the oneness of God; and yet the attributes are suggested, not in order to explain God, but with a view to make God intelligible to the human mind. These attributes form the external part of God, which is intelligible to us humans, which is named Sifat; but that which is hidden under attributes, and that which cannot be intelligible to the human mind, that part of the Divine Being is the real Being, and that Being is called Zat. The whole tendency of Islam has been to disentangle the human heart from such thoughts of God as limiting and dividing, and to clear the human heart from duality, which is the nature of this illusory world, and to bring him to that atonement with God which has been the real aim and intention of every religion. The form of Islamic worship shows the improvement on the form of worship in the human evolution, for Islam prefers Nature to art: to see in it the Immanence of God when at worship. The call of the muezzin for prayer before sunrise, and his call when the sun is at its zenith; his call at sunset; the prayers in the afternoon, in the early evening, and at midnight, all suggest to the seer that, while worshiping God, a revelation from Him through the tongue of Nature was sought. It is said in the Qur'an: ‘Cry in the name of thy Lord, the most beneficent, Who hath by His Nature's skillful pen taught the human what he knew not,’ which means: ‘Who has written this world as a manuscript by His pen of Nature.’ If you desire to read the Holy Book, read it in Nature. There are several suras which support this thought. As is said in the Qur'an: ‘By the night when it covers, by the day when it brightens, by what created male and female, verily your aims are diverse.’ Read in the manuscript of Nature that diversity is natural; the very covering and brightening of the light in Nature, and the difference between male and female, show that your aims should be diverse. The laws of cleanliness are strictly observed in Islam: that no one is to offer prayer without an ablution, which is taught as a preparatory part of his worship. The worship of Islam embraces in it a universal code of humility - that the customs existing in all parts of the world of bowing and bending and prostrating are all devoted to the One Being only, Who alone deserves it, and no one else. The beauty in this is that, when a human being - the most egoistic being in creation, who keeps himself veiled from God, the Perfect Self within, by the veil of his imperfect self, which has formed his presumed ego - by the extreme humility when he stands before God and bows and bends and prostrates himself before His Almighty Being, makes the highest point of his presumed being, the head, touch the earth where his feet are, he in time washes off the black stains of his false ego, and the light of perfection gradually manifests. He stands then first face-to-face with his God, the idealized Deity, and when the ego is absolutely annihilated, then God remains within and without, in both planes, and none exists save He. Thine own desire I see fulfilled, O God, in the perfection of Rasul.
Aphorisms (these E-book are free of all charge - use their treasures well!) |
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