The Mosque: The Heart of Submission

Chapter 10. Nature

10. Nature The world, as the differentiation of His Names into multiplicity, is the place that reveals non-place. We are created in the image of our Creator , and placed on earth to be its stewards. But we too, being created, are just as subordinate as everything else in the outer world. This subordination lies beyond multiplicity, and hence is perfect potential. At source, ours is the fairest stature: we stand upright on the earth, pointing toward heaven. Our path is vertical and leads toward infinity. At its uttermost limits, human being encompasses both the Self and the non-Self, from Fullness to the void. Our rule or stewardship of earth makes us responsible for the meaning of the earthly phenomena that are subject to us. They are signs that tell of Oneness; hence to deny them is tantamount to closing the gates of heaven, or denying the other face of phenomena: ‘‘Those that cry lies to Our signs and wax proud against them—the gates of heaven shall not be opened to them.’’1 Our purity, as the harmony of the inner self, is inseparable from the purity and harmony of the signs that are subordinate to us on earth. The earth’s surface is where we can bow down with the world in 38 / The Mosque prayer. Loving God and following His Messenger demands purity: ‘‘Truly, God loves those who repent, and He loves those who cleanse themselves.’’2 In so doing, we realize the whole of existence in ourselves. All of God’s attributes are revealed in us, for we are the sum total of creation . To achieve perfection, the servant reverts to his primal nature— that of servitude, of total openness to God’s overlordship. In submitting himself to this overlordship, the servitude of the Perfect Man is not sullied by impurity. Humanity means losing oneself and living in oneself. God says: ‘‘Be you securers of justice.’’3 And justice means knowing the right measure, without shortfall or excess. Knowledge of this kind is impossible without purity of self. Indeed, it is the purpose of human life to purify the soul and connect it with the light which sent it down. Purity of soul brings salvation by passing on and preserving in human experience what the Intellect has pledged. The soul acts along a spectrum ranging from the purity and satisfaction of peace to the benightedness and temptations of evil. And God swears by this differentiation: By the soul, and That which shaped it and inspired it to lewdness and godfearing! Prosperous is he who purifies it, and failed has he who seduces it.4 The purity of nature is the image of the purity of the soul. Only from the purity of nature can the soul learn how nature is differentiated into an infinite multitude of signs which, individually and collectively , have their primordial origins in the hidden Treasury and are gathered together in the self. The self manifests life, knowledge, power, will, sight, hearing, and speech, all of which are attributes of the Creator. The self brings these together in the heart, so that all that is differentiated in the outer world and the inner self can flow through its fullness. And here, in this oneness and sameness, lies the Treasury: Nature / 39 Naught is there, but its treasuries are with Us, and We sent it not down but in a known measure. And We loose the winds fertilising, and We send down out of heaven water, then We give it to you to drink, and you are not its treasurers. It is We who give life, and make to die, and it is We who are the inheritors.5 When the soul submits to the Spirit, the center of being gathers everything together out of differentiation and restores it to the oneness of the Treasury, and vice versa. But when the soul sets itself over the heart, when it does not submit to the Spirit, its aspiration to subjugate rather than submit makes its lusts unquenchable. ‘‘Had the truth followed their caprices, the heavens and the earth and whosever in them is had surely corrupted. Nay, We brought them their Remembrance, but from their Remembrance they turned.’’6 Hence the purity of nature is one great mosque, the mirror of the heavens. Our status in nature makes us its stewards. But the purity of nature, though subordinate to...