Third Light, First Gleam: The order, harmony and wondrousness of the Qur’an’s exposition concerning the reality of the realm of living beings and Divine names, acts and attributes.

THIRD LIGHT

The Third Light consists of three Gleams.

·FIRST GLEAM: An important aspect of the Qur’an of Miraculous Expositions’s miraculousness was explained in the Thirteenth Word. It has been included here so that it might take its place among the other aspects of miraculousness, its brothers. It is as follows: if you want to see and appreciate how, like shining stars, all the Qur’an’s verses scatter the darkness of unbelief by spreading the light of miraculousness and guidance, imagine yourself in the age of ignorance and desert of savagery where everything was enveloped in lifeless veils of nature, under the darkness of ignorance and heedlessness. Then suddenly from the elevated tongue of the Qur’an, you hear verses like:

Whatever is in the heavens extols and glorifies Allah, for He is the Mighty, the Wise.¹* Whatever is in the heavens and earth extols and glorifies Allah, the Sovereign, the Most Holy One, the Mighty, the Wise.²

See how those dead or sleeping creatures of the world spring to life at the sound of extols and glorifies in the minds of those listening, how they awake, spring up, and mention Allah’s Names! And at the sound of,

The seven heavens and the earth and all within them extol and glorify Him,³

the stars in those black skies, each a lifeless piece of fire, and the wretched creatures on the face of the earth present the following view to those listening: the sky appears as a mouth and the stars as wisdom-displaying words and truth-uttering lights. The earth appears as a head, the land and sea as tongues, and all animals and plants as words of glorification. Otherwise you will not appreciate the subtleties of the pleasure at looking from this time to that. For if you look at each verse as having scattered its light since that time, and having become like universally accepted knowledge with the passage of time, and as shining with the other lights of Islam, and taking its colour from the sun of the Qur’an, or if you look at it through a superficial and simple veil of familiarity, you will not truly see what sort of darkness each verse scatters or how sweet is the recital of its miraculousness, and you will not appreciate this sort of its miraculousness among its many sorts. If you want to see one of the highest degrees of the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition’s miraculousness, listen to the following comparison:

Let us imagine an extremely strange and vast and spreading tree which is concealed beneath a veil of the unseen and hidden in a level of concealment. It is clear that there has to be a relationship, harmony, and balance between a tree and all its members like its branches, fruits, leaves, and blossom, the same as between man’s members. Each of its parts takes on a form and is given a shape in accordance with the nature of the tree. So if someone appears and traces a picture on top of the veil corresponding to the members of the tree, which has never been seen, then delimits each member, and from the branches to the fruit, and the fruit to the leaves draws a form proportionately, and fills the space between its source and extremities, which are an infinite distance from one another, with drawings showing exactly the shape and form of its members, certainly no doubt will remain that the artist sees the concealed tree with an eye that penetrates and encompasses the unseen, then he depicts it.

In just the same way, the discriminating statements of the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition concerning the reality of contingent beings (that is, concerning the reality of the tree of creation which stretches from the beginning of the world to the farthest limits of the hereafter, and spreads from the earth to the Divine Throne and from minute particles to the sun) have preserved the proportion between the members to such a degree and have given each member and fruit a form so suitable that at the depictions of the Qur’an, all exacting scholars have declared at the conclusion of their investigations: “What wonders Allah has willed! How great are Allah’s blessings!” They have said: “It is only you who solves and unravels the talisman of the universe and riddle of creation, Oh All-Wise Qur’an!”

And Allah’s is the highest similitude⁴ -and there is no error in the comparison- let us represent the Divine Names and attributes, and dominical acts and deeds as a Tuba-tree of light, the sphere of whose grandeur stretches from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and the limits of whose vastness spread through infinite, endless space and encompass it, and the limits of whose deeds stretch from,

It is Allah Who splits the seed-grain and date-stone,⁵ and, Comes between man and his heart,⁶

to,

Who created the heavens and the earth in six days,⁷ and, And the heavens rolled up in His right hand.⁸

The All-Wise Qur’an has described that luminous reality, the truths of those Names and attributes, and acts and deeds, together with all their branches and twigs and aims and fruits, in a way so harmonious, so fitting for one another, so appropriate for one another, without marring one another or spoiling the decree of one another, or their being remote from one another, that all the people of illumination and those who have penetrated to the realities, and all the wise and the sage who have journeyed in the realm of the inner dimension of things, have declared: “Glory be to Allah!” in the face of that Discriminating Exposition, and have affirmed it, saying: “How right, how conformable with reality, how fine, how worthy!”

Take, for example, the six pillars of belief, which are like a single branch of those two mighty trees which look to the entire sphere of contingency and sphere of necessity: it depicts all the branches and boughs of those pillars -as far as the furthest fruits and flowers- observing such a harmony and proportion between them, and describes them in a manner so balanced, and illustrates them a way so symmetrical that the human mind is powerless to perceive it and stands astonished at its beauty. And the proof that a beauty of proportion and perfect relation and complete balance have been preserved between the five pillars of Islam, which are like one twig of the branch of belief, down to the finest details, smallest point of conduct, furthest aims, most profound wisdom, and most insignificant fruits, is the perfect order and balance and beauty of proportion and soundness of the Greater Shari‘a of Islam, which has emerged from the decisive statements, senses, indications, and allusions of the comprehensive Qur’an; they form an irrefutable and decisive proof and just witness that cannot be doubted. This means that the expositions of the Qur’an cannot be attributed to man’s partial knowledge, and particularly to the knowledge of someone unlettered. They rest rather on a comprehensive knowledge and are the word of One Who is able to see all things together and observe in one moment all truths between pre-eternity and post-eternity. In this we believe...

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1. Qur’an, 57:1; 59:1; 61:1.
2. Qur’an, 62:1.
3. Qur’an, 17:44.
4. Qur’an, 16:60.
5. Qur’an, 6:95.
6. Qur’an, 8:24.
7. Qur’an, 7:54.
8. Qur’an, 39:67.

Please click on the following links to continue reading;

Second Gleam: The Qur’an’s and Philosophy’s points of view on the world.

Third Gleam: A comparison between the works of scholars who take lessons from the Qur’an and the Qur’an itself.