Does your fasting enable you to experience the Night of Power (Qadir) when the whole of existence meets nonexistence in the dark of the night? Does the spirit (knowledge) and the angels (forces; names) become revealed to you and become your eyes to see with, your ears to hear with, your speech to talk with and hands to hold with, enabling you feel your non-existence?
Can you comprehend who it is that you’re actually interacting with, from whom the call is coming?
Do the divine morals become exposed to you as you experience the reality of true fasting as the result of your faith?
Or do you begin to eat the flesh of your brother long before its even time to break fast?
Anyway, we’ve delved in too deep; perhaps we should complete this chapter with a story:
I realized recently that our TV has a superiority complex, it keeps looking down at the 130cm TV in the next room and boasts on about its own ‘great’ size. Its only 180 cm big, the poor thing has no clue about the 265 cm plasma TV yet!
Last night I heard it going on about how he’s the greatest; I asked him, “What makes you think so?” He said, “Cant you see? The whole universe with all its billions of galaxies are all within me!”
My eyes shifted to the program that was playing and I realized it was the documentary called ‘The Universe’. Indeed the universe was being screened at HD quality with all its glory and magnificence! It was amazing, hundreds and billions of galaxies, stunning images…
The 180 cm TV continued to boast, “I’m the greatest, the universe is in me, look at how all the galaxies fit inside me!!”
Our TV used to receive normal cable broadcast before, but after the 30 odd HD channels that were added to him via the satellite he became a little arrogant. I think he got a little carried away thinking the images he was projecting belonged to him. Clearly he was unaware of the satellite, because he was able to broadcast all sorts of different shows based on the choice of the audience, so he thought he was limitless, little did he know that he was completely limited by the satellite. In short, he thought he was the universe. He had no idea about either the satellite from which he was receiving the broadcast, nor did he know he was merely a device that projected incoming broadcast. He had no understanding of the fact that he was being uploaded with various waves, which were then being decoded by his brain and being reflected on the screen.
O dear satellite!
I wonder what other interesting things you’re going to put my poor TV through…
I only watch him; I don’t interfere, as this is what he has been designed. He has been designed to reflect the waves that reach him. He can’t wash clothes or be a refrigerator!
The verse says we have given many examples for those who think.
Thank you my dear TV for the many lessons you have taught me, I love you.
Yes my dear friends, blessed may be this month of Ramadan, this brief period in which we get a chance to taste the essence of fasting.
10 September 2007