Reflections

Since worldly life, a life directed solely toward this world, and the animal aspect of the human being pass away so quickly, you should leave behind your animal side, turn away from a life confined to this world, and enter the level of the life of the heart and spirit. There you will discover a sphere of life, a spiritual world, far more spacious than the vast world you had imagined.

As for the key to the gate of that world, it is to recite

لَا اِلٰهَ اِلَّا اللّٰهُThere is no god except Allah.

with the heart and to feel its meaning within the spirit. This opens the way to the mysteries of marifatullahThe knowledge and recognition of Allah through understanding His names, attributes, and manifestations in creation, leading to deeper faith, love, and awareness of Him. and the unity of Allah.

The Fifteenth Note

It consists of three matters.

The First Matter

The verses

فَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُ ۞ وَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرًّا يَرَهُSo whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it. — The Qur’an 99:7–8

indicate the perfect manifestation of the Name al-HafīzAllah, the Preserver, who safeguards, protects, and preserves all things..

If you seek a proof of this truth, then look at the creatures that form the pages of the universe, which is like a book written according to the pattern of the Lawh-i MahfūzThe Preserved Tablet, the immaterial record in which everything that has occurred and everything that will occur has been inscribed in detail.. You will behold many aspects of the perfect manifestation of the Name al-HafīzAllah, the Preserver, who safeguards, protects, and preserves all things. and find examples of the mighty truth proclaimed by the verses above.

Take, for example, a handful of seeds belonging to various trees, flowers, and plants, differing in kind and nature, and bury them in the darkness beneath plain, lifeless soil. Then give them ordinary water—fluid, unconscious, and unaware of what it reaches—flowing wherever you direct it.

Now observe carefully what happens when spring arrives and the angel of thunder—like Isrāfīl (as)One of the great angels of Allah, entrusted with blowing the Trumpet to announce the end of the world and the Resurrection on the Day of Judgment., who announces the beginning of the resurrection with the blast of the trumpet—summons the rain with the sound of thunder and proclaims that the flowers beneath the earth are to have their spirits breathed into them.

You will see that all those apparently identical seeds, mixed together in complete confusion, submit — through the manifestation of the Name al-HafīzAllah, the Preserver, who safeguards, protects, and preserves all things. — to the awāmir-i takwīniyyahThe Divine commands governing creation and the natural order, through which Allah brings things into existence and directs their functions and activities according to His will and wisdom. of Fātir-i HakīmAllah, Who creates all things from nothing with perfect wisdom. with perfect obedience and without error. They act with such order that consciousness, perception, purpose, will, knowledge, perfection, and wisdom are plainly evident in what they do.

For you see those apparently identical seeds distinguish themselves completely from one another and develop according to their own natures.