In respect of His absolute essence he is Wahid-ul Ahad (The Absolute One).
In respect of His attributes, He is Hayy (The One who gives life to the Names and manifests them), Aleem (The One who, with the quality of His knowledge, infinitely knows everything in every dimension with all its facets.), Mureed (The Possessor of Absolute Will), Qadir (The absolutely boundless One who manifests and observes His knowledge without depending on causality), Basir (The One who is constantly observing His manifestations and evaluating their outputs), Kalim (The Discloser).
He possesses infinite meanings and qualities, which have all been expounded by Muhammad (saw).
This realm of activity referred to as the world of acts (af’al) can also be called the perceived universe as its existence depends on the sensory perception of man, angels and the jinn that reside within it. They constitute materialized manifestations of knowledge within Allah’s knowledge.
To put it another way, everything in existence is essentially localized, densified apparitions of knowledge, which, according to the enlightened ones, haven’t even sensed existence yet!
In short, nothing in the universe has an actual existence; their existence is only within the knowledge of Allah. To put it simply, they are imaginary beings!
No matter what age man lives in and what level of knowledge he has, based on his five senses, he can never perceive the actual essence (origin) of existence!
Knowledge based on the five senses will only take you to the infinite space and dimensions of the universes within the microcosm or the macrocosm. Knowledge based on the five senses will take you to the stars, the galaxies, the black holes and white holes and to other universes perhaps, but you will always pursue your life with the false belief of a god beyond…
In my book Spirit, Man, Jinn I had talked about the alien beings to which the older generations referred as jinn, and how they deceive and delude man, including depriving man from the reality of Allah by injecting false ideas and visions of religion and reality. I want to briefly touch upon this topic here also. Alien beings, or in Islamic terms, the jinn, are deficient in two areas of knowledge, and these are the areas from which they usually try to deprive their subjects. The first of these is the AHAD (oneness) quality of Allah and the second is fate, or destiny, which is the natural derivative of the Oneness of Allah.
The Unity (non-duality) aspect of the Islamic faith, that is, the system of belief explained by Muhammad (saw), is founded on the belief that there is no god to be deified and idolized (hence, there is no god-concept) and that people will inevitably face the consequences of their actions.
The Quran confirms this notion with various verses:
“And man will only accrue the results (consequences) of his own deeds (what manifests through him; his thoughts and actions)!” (Quran 53:39)
“Indeed, you will be tasters of the painful suffering! And you will not be recompensed, except for what you did (your own actions)!” (Quran 37:38-39)
“...You will not be recompensed, except for what you did (you will only live the consequences of your own actions)!” (Quran 36:54)
“All of them have degrees (formed) as a result of what they have done, so they may be fully compensated for their deeds, without any injustice.” (Quran 46:19)
Since, as the above verses point out, we will be recompensed for our deeds, we should urgently study and learn about the life awaiting us after death and understand what Allah really is. For the concept of Allah is what constitutes the foundation of religion.
Let us know that, without understanding the meaning of the name Allah, we can never correctly know the essence of existence. Indeed, man and the universe can only be addressed and understood after comprehending Allah. Otherwise, we will have to make do with local evaluations and be deprived of the essence of reality.
Let us now, with this awareness, explore the encrypted words that depict Allah in chapter al-Ikhlas…