The Mosque: The Heart of Submission

Chapter 18. The Name

18. The Name The more we become accustomed to the space that receives us, the more it presents to us the side that faces non-Self, nothingness. Habit leads us to believe that the place where we are is at the top of the ladder by which we climbed to it—that we are at the summit, the end of the ascent. But the Face of God is everywhere, and He responds to the call of humankind. Nothing can surpass that Face. As we draw near to Him, passing from the self as reality through the various levels of His manifestation , all illusion evaporates. Liberation from the habit of seeing the surface of signs enables us to remember that we are guests, and that nothing in the inner or outer worlds is ours. The Name of God is revealed to us in all the breadth of the earth, all the heights of the heavens and all that lies between. In the light of His Name, everything before us becomes recognized as a table spread from God. We are travelers on the path to Oneness, and all phenomena in the inner and outer worlds are only signs along that path. They too are all gathered within the Name. This is why Noah left the expanses of earth and surrendered his soul to the Spirit on the face of the waters, surrendered his fate to the Will that steered the ark across the expanses of the ocean. 70 / The Mosque This is why Abraham left his home and his city, and set off into the open desert that reached farther than the eye could see, to renew his memory of the Ruler and Provider by seeing the same Oneness in the outer world and his own inner center—all for love of the One Who had announced His Name to him. The same reason prompted Moses to abandon the luxury of Egypt and guided him along the desert and mountain paths. With the same dedication to his own inner center, Jesus knew that the mercy of the One Who manifests Himself in creation transcends and suffuses all the signs in all their states. These and all other prophets denied that the world had any cause other than the Creator. Their journeys were the realization of the testimony that there is no god but God and that the Praiser is His servant and messenger. The Name of God is the only true wealth we have at any place and time; and so the reality of all things lies in our existing in the Name of God and in praising Him through our testimony. The I that is the hidden Treasure is also the Mystery. Proclaiming the Mystery turns the hidden Name into presence: when our human selves call the Self by His Name, God reveals Himself. Every phenomenon has its own name in the Hidden Treasury; and when it becomes existent, its names are revealed. We encompass all that is in existence by knowing all the names that God taught us.1 All these names, which God has taught us, enable us to see everything in the outer and inner worlds as provisions from God, as the treasury that He sends down. In their entirety, these names grant us the ability to call to God. Our knowledge of all the names includes those which we may use to summon Him, as well as the names of all the phenomena that manifest the various attributes of the Named. Calling to God by His Name is humanity’s supreme potential: Say: ‘‘Call upon God, or call upon the Merciful; whichsoever you call upon, to Him belong the Names Most Beautiful.’’2 The Name / 71 It is through His most beautiful names that the whole of existence —the earth, the heavens, and all that lies between—proclaims the Ineffable Name, the Treasury where God has His being. In telling of Him, all the differentiated signs in the outer world manifest the Name that is one and the same through all the myriad phenomena. What is sent down into existence speaks His Name, and cleaves to it in the tiniest individuality and in all the created worlds. The potential of the human heart to gather together and unite all this differentiation also includes the potential to receive the Ineffable Name which manifests itself in the most beautiful names. By calling out the various names in...