The Mosque: The Heart of Submission

Chapter 8. Space

8. Space The whole of existence, all the heavens and all the earth, forms a space for the Self to reveal Itself. But although space and time have no reality without the Self, they are not the same as the Self. The Self is goodness, but also infinite potential. Its creation out of goodness also testifies to non-Self, that which is not the first principle. All phenomena in space are signs which reveal the Hidden but add nothing to it. Individually and collectively, they have no reality other than Reality. Their condition is one of ultimate submission and servitude . The world is a house in which Peace reveals itself, in which the Lord receives His servants. All things return to God, and the revelation of what He has kept hidden begins as Spirit and ends as Humankind . As Spirit, the whole of existence is undifferentiated potential. This potential becomes differentiated in the world and then reassembled in the human individual. This enables us to climb from the depths of the valley of creation toward the mountaintop, which is where the Self begins to reveal Itself. The Intellect reveals the light of its message in the lesser world of signs—that is, through the prophets and their books. These books both 30 / The Mosque gather together and differentiate, as instructed by Intellect; and they both descend and ascend. Wherever we may be, the indestructible center that is open to the Spirit is always with us. When the Spirit firmly prevails over the material world in this center (that is, the heart), we can testify that all the signs in space and time belong to that Spirit. The Holy Mosque in the outer world corresponds to the center, the heart that is one and the same, in every human self. This duality of outer and inner serves to confirm Oneness as the source and destination of all things. And thus, wherever we may be, we are called to turn toward the masjid: Turn thy face toward the Holy Mosque; and wherever you are, turn your faces toward it.1 By dispersing signs throughout the outer worlds in a pattern re- flected in the human self, God selects the places and times where his We can show the various aspects of the fact that ‘‘He is the Truth.’’ And thus He says, through His Messenger: Glory be to Him, who carried His servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.2 By turning toward the Holy Mosque and knowing that all the signs in the Valley are images of the Mountain whose summit is the Spirit, we are carried through the night of existence to the Further Mosque. For only when the duality of outer and inner is resolved, only when we turn toward the Holy Mosque and attain that purity of heart which is the sole principle of all existence, can we perceive all the signs in the outer world and the inner self, together with their link to the Creator. Existence, from the prime Intellect to the furthest frontier with nonSelf , comes full circle and becomes revealed. All that is sent down is sent upwards again. The farthest is revealed in the nearest. Every point in space and time surrenders itself to the revelation of Oneness. Thus, Space / 31 by describing his state as one of liberation and perfect servitude, where all self-rule is surrendered, the Messenger reveals that God cannot be described in terms of material additions and imperfect metaphors . ‘‘By night,’’ that is, within the darkness of the bodily blights and the natural attachments, since ascent and advance take place only by means of the body. ‘‘From the Holy Mosque,’’ from the station of the heart. The heart is too holy for the circumambulation of the idolaters—the bodily faculties—and the commission of their indecencies and mistakes. And it is too holy for the pilgrimage of the animal faculties, whether the beastly or the predatory . The twin evils of their going to one extreme and the other extreme are exposed, since they are naked of the clothing of virtue . ‘‘To the Further Mosque,’’ which is the station of the spirit, the furthest from the corporeal world. This takes place through the witnessing of the...