بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
و الصلاة و السلام على أشرف المرسلين
و على اله و اصحابه أجمعين
Say “Allah”!
Allah ﷻ says: “Say, ” Allah”. Then leave them prattling in their vain talk.” [Surah al-An’am, verse 91]
Sayiduna Ahmad ibn Ajiba commented this verse in his tafsir:
“The Sufi’s used [the expression] “say Allah”, in terms of indications understood (by them), to insist on the removal and the detachment of everything for Allah, as well as the nonconsideration of all the futile things on which common people worry. It means leaving those things in order to reach the station (maqam) of purity which is the spiritual degree of the divine Oneness perception and also the spiritual degree of the retreat at the heart of His secret.
Ibn ‘Ata Allah al-Iskandari said about the people of contemplation (ahlul Shudud):
“for they belong to God (Lillah) and to nothing apart from Him. “Say: Allah! Then leave them prattling in their vain talk.” They can be denied by those who do not understand their words, those who do not have a particular sensitivity in the heart which would allow them to understand an exoteric meaning as well as an esoteric meaning which is only understood by the people of Allah (al Rabbaniyoun).”
[tafsir al-Bahr ul-Madid fi tafsir il-Qur’ân il-Majîd]
By taking into consideration what is only One, the « second » cannot exist, because in accordance with the Haqiqa, nothing exists but The One who is at the origin of Existence. Allah is now as He ever was, and nothing exists but Him. The created things are only ephemeral shadows which do not persist and thus which do not exist, except in our poor understanding. And if the contrary was correct, then those things living besides Allah would contradict the verse “everything must perish, except His Face” [surah al-Qasas, verse 88], it means that everything is ephemeral and without existence besides His Face, in other words, besides his Essence. All the essences are in reality nil and they have no part in Existence, either now or in the past or in the future, they are as the dust grain in wind.
Abu Huraira (radiAllahu ‘anhu) reported the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying:
“The truest word uttered by a poet is this verse of Labid: “Behold! Apart from Allah everything is vain.””
[Sahih Muslim, Hadith 4194]
A poet also said:
Four letters by which my heart gained in Passion
By which my thought and my worries have been dispelled
An Alif which reconciled the Creation with itself
And a Lam by the blame.
Then (another) Lam adding deep meanings
And then a ha in which I fell in love and I Know
And we can read in the Aphorism (Hikam):
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is the One who manifests everything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him
since He is the one who is manifest through everything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is the One who is manifest in everything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is the Manifest to everything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He was the Manifest before the existence of anything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is more manifest than anything?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is the One alongside of whom there is nothing?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since He is nearer to you than anything else?
How can it be conceived that something veils Him,
since, were it not for Him,
the existence of everything would not have been manifest?
What a strange thing, how could the existence come from nothing? In other words, how can be settled in the same time what is by definition uncreated and what is created
And we add:
How can it be conceived that something veils Him since nothing is like Him?
And Sayiduna Abu Maydan al-Gath (qudissa sirruh) said:
Say Allah! and leave existence and all it contains
if your aspiration is to reach completeness
For everything other than Allah, if you verify its truth
is nothingness, in its detail and in its totality and summation
And know that you, and all the worlds
if it were not for Him, would have been eliminated, fading and disappearing
He who does not exist because of himself by cause of himself
then his existence without Him is utter impossibility
The gnostics faded and did not witness
anything except The Supreme in Greatness, The Majestic, The Most Exalted
and they saw everything else other than Him in its truth as perishing
either immediately, in the past, and in the future to come
So glimpse with your mind or with your sight: do you see
anything other than an act from among the acts?
And look at the height of existence and at its base
with a sight that you support by reasoning and interpretation,
you find everything pointing towards His Majesty
with what it displays by its status or by its words
while He is holding everything from its top to
its bottom, and creating them, without a similar or an equal
Imam al Baqili (rahimahuLlah) said in his tafsir of the Quran:
Allah ﷻ says: “everyone upon the earth will perish, and there will remain the Face of your Lord, Owner of Majesty and Honor.” [Surah al-Rahman, verse 26/27]
If we consider the universe and its people through the eye of Haqiqa (Truth), we understand its nonexistent nature. Although if we only consider them at first sight, one might be induced to think the opposite. Indeed, in the Haqiqa, something which needs another thing to exist is by definition nonexistent. The word “Existence” is only used for the Self-Existing being, and this is why we only assign Existence to Allah. How someone who began to exist in a specified time could claim Existing by Himself while He is nothing else but nil?
The true Existence is the pre-eternal Existence, and this is why Allah ﷻ says: “and there will remain the Face of your Lord, Owner of Majesty and Honor” [surah al-Rahman, verse 27], and the reality of what is called “al-baqa” in Arabic is only assigned to what exists from eternity which means in the pre-eternity and in the post-eternity. He whose beginning is nil and whose end is nil, his existence is indeed totally different from He who is beginless and endless. When we perceive a divine manifestation, we can understand that the Divinity is existing by Himself while we also understand that the creation only exists through Him. It is at this point that we access to the reality of what is nil (fana) and of what is eternal (baqa)… of what is the Existence (Wujud) and of what is the nonexistence (‘Adam).
Allah ﷻ gave to his creation the capacity to know His pre-eternity and His post-eternity through the nonexistent and ephemeral nature of this lowly world. And this is because he who enters in the post-eternity (baqa) without being totally annihilated in the Self-Existing, he did not enter effectively in the real state of baqa.
Imam al-Junayd has been asked on the verse: “everyone upon the earth will perish”, and he answered: “He who is between the two nonexistence is himself nonexistent.”
[tafsîr ‘ara`is ul-bayan fî Haqâ`iq il-Qur`ân]
And sayiduna Ibn ‘Ata Allah al-Iskandari (qudissa sirruh) said:
“By His divine grace, Allah wanted to manifest His supreme Knowledge and His Power through His Name, as far as people can support the Spirits of His creation, and this to ensure that people can be linked to Him. By His divine grace, He assigned a particular predisposition to his creation allowing His creatures to see what they can see in terms of theophany’s. All spirits have testified of themselves when their Lords told them: “Am I not your Lord?” and they all answered: “yes we have testified” [surah al ‘araf, verse 172]. After He created them and gave them existence, Allah then made them testify of themselves once more in this lowly world manifesting for them among all his Names, His Greatest Name (“Allah”), allowing them to Know it, facilitating its remembrance with the tongue and facilitating its access through its manifestation in the eternal word: “Bismillah r-Rahmani r-Rahim = In the Name of Allah, the most beneficent, the Most Merciful”.
Then, His Manifestation became so clear and so strong that He became hidden, in a such way that nothing would never be able to describe Him. And His evocation became so abundant that He was forgotten, in a such way that he is no more Known. He is the one who shapes the harmony between things. And His evocation transforms what was difficult to something easy. Through His evocation, the needs are satisfied as well as what concerns minds and we also begin all our deeds with His mention.
He whose heavens and earth could not contain Him, nor His Throne and His ‘Arsh. But the heart of his honored and predestined servants were able to contain Him, in accordance with the predisposition of each and their degrees of worship…then, He unveiled for them His Secret”
[al-Qasd ul-Mujarrad fi Ma’rifat il-Ism il-Moufrad]
