Allah has created man!

“Has there not been a time, when man was not a thing even mentioned? (Man was not yet manifest; he was the unmanifest within the dimension of the Names)!”[1]

The primary purpose of man’s creation is so Allah can observe Himself through the meanings of His names manifesting in the form of compositions.

It is impossible to talk about or discern Allah in terms of His Absolute Essence (dhat). 

Yet this is a mandatory existence! His in-existence is inconceivable, in terms of His Absolute Essence. Why? Because of the ‘Self’. Anything that has a sense of self, anything that can know its ‘self’, must have an essence. That essence makes-up the existence of that thing. It is its quintessential reality. If one does not have an essence, a core, a self, how can it know itself?

In this respect the existence of the Absolute Essence is imperative. But it is absurd and senseless to try and conceive or understand the essence of this mandatory existence.

For whatever example you take it has been created subsequently. Something that has come into existence ‘later’ cannot be a precedent to the Absolute Essence, nor can it take you closer to understanding It.

The Domain of Attributes refers to the state of being aware of the Self. It is the state of knowing His existence and knowing the impossibility of His non-existence. 

Knowing the existence of the Self takes us to the station of “Life”. That is, when one reaches the consciousness of “I exist” and by this I don’t mean the primitive state of knowing, for one never claims “I exist” to himself, he just knows he exists. This pure knowing of one’s existence, being aware of the state of being “alive” and manifesting the quality of ‘life’ is what I mean by the station of “Life”.

This state of knowing that one exists and knowing himself is described with the attribute of Knowledge.

The natural result of knowing that one exists is ‘will’. When one knows he exists this knowing leads him to will and desire things and hence the name “Mureed” is expressed.

When will and desire drives him to act and attain his wants the attribute of “power” comes into play. For without power will cannot be actualized. A will that isn’t realized is inadequate. Since inadequacy is unacceptable for the One, the natural product of will is the attribute of power.

When One begins to know Himself in detail, the attributes of Sami (hearing) and Basir (sight) emerges. 

This in turn leads to the attribute of speech and expression (Kaleem). Eventually the attribute of “takwin” that is formation, i.e. forming the universe takes place.

Knowing Himself at the level of these qualities comprises the Domain of Attributes. The natural result of this domain – knowing thyself – allows Self-observation; observation of His various meanings.

A part of these meanings is observed through Self-observation and a part through observing the manifestations of His qualities and attributes.

When we refer to the meanings that He wills to observe on Himself we say the ‘Names of the Divine’ (Haqq) and when we talk about the qualities and meanings He wills to observe as compositions we say the ‘Names of creation’ (halq). The latter actually constitutes the meaning of the word ‘creation’. For example, the name ar-Razzaq necessitates the existence of a creation, for without a creation that needs provision the point of a provider becomes redundant. Hence it makes creation mandatory. 

The realm in which all the meanings of all the names are seen is the realm of acts. 

Conceiving these four realms as four separate dimensions is a grave mistake and clearly the result of being veiled.

The ‘universe’ is nothing other than the Absolute Essence! There is nothing other than the Absolute Essence inside, outside, within or beyond the universe. He is the crux, the soul of the universe! The ipseity of the universe pertains to Him. His meanings take various different shapes and forms as different compositions to bring about what we call multiplicity, or the observable universe.

Multiplicity, or the corporeal word that we observe, is nothing more than the manifestation of the different compositions of the meanings of the divine names. It points of fact, it is the domain in which the compositions observe one another. In this respect, there is no separate domain of acts, for the very thing you call acts is merely the manifestation of the compositions. Call it whatever you want, they are all the same. The compositional manifestations of the divine names.

Now let us move on to the Domain of the Names, the source of the Domain of Acts, and examine the compatibility and incompatibility of the different Names.