Besides all of this, however, what is really meant by ‘Adam’ is a human who has consciously recognized and accepted all of the meanings of the Names and thus deserved the title ‘vicegerent’. This is what truly matters. All the rest are details and probably even unnecessary, as it doesn’t really matter from where and how the material body, which will eventually decompose back into simple matter under the earth, came about. Certain symbols and metaphors have been employed to imply his biological aspect was created from the earth’s atomic constituent, like all other earthlings, but his biological body is of no relevance to what is really being denoted by this name. ‘Adam’, is ‘pure consciousness’, formed from nothingness, and composed of (‘ja’ala’ not ‘khaleqa’) the qualities of the Names and designated as a ‘vicegerent’ (khalifa) on earth. It is a shame that many fail to understand this reality and spend their lives arguing over the creation process of his mortal biological body!
The satanic being referred to as ‘Iblis’ has an interesting story. Iblis, while essentially a Name composition comprised of angelic qualities, displays an inadequate expression of the Names al-Waliyy, al-Mumin and al-Hadi. Due to his own inadequacy, he fails to recognize how profoundly the Names are manifested on the creation of supreme form (‘ahsani takwim’). Hence, he evaluates Adam according to his apparent qualities and fails to see his superiority in terms of the Names and their expressions. Moreover, he assumes that accepting the superiority of Adam over his own creation will mean denying his own reality, since he too is created with and from the Names, and thus he refrains from prostrating. Evidently, it is impossible for one to evaluate a quality that he himself lacks.
Eventually this leads to pure consciousness in the form of Adam approaching the forbidden tree, i.e. becoming restricted by the requisites of the bodily life. This is also an interesting anecdote. Satan convinces Adam to the ‘wrong’ according to his own ‘right’, imposing the idea: “You have been created with the Reality of the Names, you cannot be restricted or conditioned by anything, you should do as you wish. If you don’t eat from the forbidden tree, that is, if you don’t live the requirements of the bodily life, you would be accepting limitation and thus denying your essential reality, thereby depriving yourself of immortality!”
Consequently, humanity at the level of the Inspiring Self (nafs-i mulhima), symbolized with the name Adam, becomes veiled from the higher states of pure consciousness, and falls to the bodily state of the Commanding Self (nafs-i ammarah), becoming conditioned by bodily needs. When this reaches the ultimate point of forgetting their own essence, the reminders and imparters of reality, i.e. Rasuls, become manifest, inviting mankind back to their essence, back to having faith in the higher states of consciousness.
When human beings, who are manifestations of Universal Pure Consciousness, begin to experience themselves as individualized conscious beings in this physical body, the struggle of this relationship with their ‘partner’ (body) and the battle to go back to their essential reality commences.
In short:
There are two types of consciousness. The first is the manifestation of the Names as a whole, to observe itself through the appearance of individualized compositions. This is the Universal Pure Consciousness. The second kind is the individual consciousness of each manifestation, formed by genetic inheritances, environmental conditionings and astrological influences. For the purpose of clarity in this book, we will refer to the second kind as ‘consciousness’ to avoid confusion. Consciousness is an output of the brain and hence confines itself to comprise only the body (humanoid). Consciousness uses the mind to evaluate ideas and to live accordingly. But the mind, pressured by the body’s biological make-up, often malfunctions. As such, it is near impossible for the mind to find the Reality all on its own. Furthermore, the mind makes judgments based on sensory perception. This is why the mind is invited to ‘believe’, to have ‘faith’ in what lies beyond its area of perception. For, the reality ‘beyond’ matter encompasses matter.
While the stories of Abraham (SAW) caution us from idolizing and deifying our exterior and interior faculties, i.e., the body and its components, the narrations about Lot (SAW) give examples of the felonious lives led by those who were captives of their bodily demands and sexuality. In the case of Moses (SAW) on the other hand, the emphasis is on the Pharaoh’s claim to be God, warning us from the grave danger we may encounter in pursuit of getting to know our true selves.
When the fruit of reality manifests in one’s consciousness, no matter how essentially true it may be to claim ‘I am the Reality’, it is ultimately only one compositional reflection of the infinite Names that compose one’s essence! The whole of manifestation comprises the compositional Name qualities. Thus, even though by ‘essence’ everything obtains its life force from ‘Allah’ and everything is the ‘Reality’ they are not the ‘Rabb of the Worlds’ (the source of the infinite meanings of the Names), that is, nothing that has become manifest in the apparent cosmos can be the ‘source’ and ‘discloser’ of the infinite and illimitable Names! Nothing that has become manifest can be the ‘Rabb’ of other manifestations. Hence, the Pharaoh encountered what he did because of his ignorance to this truth. All those who aspire to attain and live the reality go through this perilous state, known in Sufism as the station of the Inspiring Self (nafs-i mulhima)! Resultantly, just when one is a step away from the Reality, one becomes seized by the idea with which Satan infused Adam: “Do not restrict yourself! Do as you wish, become limitless!”, and falls into the dense and base pit of the bodily state, the station of the Commanding Self (nafs-i ammarah). This is why the Quran repeatedly narrates the story of Moses (SAW) and the Pharaoh.
The event known as doomsday (qiyamah) points to the various experiences of one’s consciousness during the process of death. The imminent doomsday is one’s personal death. For, with death, an unchangeable state of existence known as the afterlife commences. The global doomsday has been awaited for approximately 1400 years now, whereas all that has been said in reference to doomsday has direct pertinence to one’s own death. While everyone has their own Savior (Mahdi), Antichrist (Dajjal) and Jesus (Isa), and is subject to the activities symbolized by these names throughout their whole lifetime, people ignorantly think ‘doomsday’ is only a galactic event involving the end of our solar system or the world, supposedly to take place at some time predicted by some people!