What do you mean by saying God is one? According to the BOOK, teachings of the Holy prophet, Imam and the ray of the Divine light inside me, I absorbed and realized TAWHID that - God’s oneness being in any way is not a “numerical” or “countable” oneness. It is not legitimate to say ‘one’ while having any numerical conception for God. “For that which has no second does not enter into the category of numbers”. A must read to assimilate the Understanding of TAWHID - Oneness of GOD La ilaha illallah - There is no god, but God. A shift of consciousness from the dogmatic notion of one god versus many gods to the mystical apprehension of the One and only REALITY. Titus Burckhardt [From: Introduction to Sufi doctrine] The supreme and incomparable Unity is without “aspects”: it cannot be known at the same time as the world; that is, it is the object only of Divine, immediate, and undifferentiated Knowledge. Uniqueness (al-Wāḥidīyah), on the other hand, is in a sense a correlative of the Universe and it is in it that the Universe appears divinely. In each of its aspects—and they are beyond number—God reveals Himself uniquely and all are integrated in the unique Divine Nature. This distinction between the Divine Unity and the Divine Uniqueness is analogous to the Vedantic distinction between Brahma nirguṇa (Brahma unqualified) and Brahma saguṇa (Brahma qualified). Logically, Unity is at the same time undifferentiated and the principle of all distinctions. As indivisible unity, in the sense of al-Aḥadīyah, it corresponds to what Hindus call “Non-Duality” (advaita); as Uniqueness, in the sense of al-Wāḥidīyah, it is the positive content of every distinction, for it is by its intrinsic uniqueness that each being is distinct apart from the distinction by its mere limitations. Things are distinguished by their qualities and these, in so far as they are positive, can be transposed into the universal realm according to the formula: “There is no perfection if it be not The (Divine) Perfection.” Now Universal Qualities are connected with the Divine Uniqueness for they are like possible “aspects” of the Divine Essence immanent in the world. In regard to the Unique Being revealing Himself in them, they can be compared to rays emanating from the Principle from which they are never separate, and these rays light up all relative possibilities. They are in some way the “uncreated content” of created things, and it is through the medium of them that the Divinity is accessible, subject to the proviso that the Supreme Essence (adh-Dhāt), in which their distinctive realities coincide, remains inaccessible from a relative starting-point. The outspreading of these rays is symbolized by the sun whose rays we see, though we cannot look on it itself directly because of its blinding brilliance. We must not lose sight of the fact that the principal aspects of Being are also fundamental modalities of knowledge; the Universal Qualities are in the Intellect as they are also in the Essence; in both, they can be compared to the different colors included in white light. The whiteness of the light is moreover really an absence of color, and this is analogous to the fact that the Essence, which synthesizes all the Qualities (Ṣifāt), cannot be known on the same plane as the Qualities. For the mind the perfect Qualities are abstract ideas; for intuition, which “tastes” the essence of things, they are more real than are things themselves. All that Sufis teach about the Divine Qualities the contemplatives of the Eastern Orthodox Church say of the Divine “Energies”, which they equally consider as uncreated but immanent in the world: the “Energies” cannot be detached from the Essence (Greek: Ousia) which they manifest and yet are distinct from it. This is something which, as St. Gregory Palamas puts it, can be conceived only through an intuition which “distinguishes the Divine Nature by uniting it, and unites it by distinguishing it”. This same truth is expressed in the Sufi formula which defines the relation of the Qualities to God: “neither He nor other than He” (lā huwa wa lā ghayruhu). The Essence, says St. Gregory Palamas, is “incommunicable, indivisible, and ineffable and is beyond every name and all understanding”; It is never manifested “outside Its own Ipseity”, but Its very Nature implies “a supra-temporal act” of revelation by virtue of which It becomes in a certain manner accessible to creatures in the sense that “the creature is united with the Divinity in Its Energies”. The Divine Qualities, each of which is unique, are indefinite in number. As for the Divine Names, they are necessarily limited in number, being nothing other than the Qualities summarized in certain fundamental types and “promulgated” by Sacred Scriptures as “means of grace” which can be “invoked”. But Sufis speak of “Divine Names” meaning by that all the universal possibilities or essences included in the Divine Essence immanent in the world. This terminology is only an extension of the symbolism of the Qurʾān. In the Qurʾān God reveals Himself by His Names, just as He manifests Himself in the universe through His perfect Qualities. When considered as a determination, the Names or Qualities are “universal relationships” (nisab kullīyah), “non-existent” in themselves and so “virtual” and permanent in the Essence. They are only manifested, i.e. known in a distinctive mode, in so far as their implicit terms, such as active and passive, are defined. This amounts to saying that the Divine Names or Qualities “exist” only so much as the world “exists”. From another angle we may say that all the Qualities of the world are logically reducible to the universal Qualities, or in other words to pure relationships.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 12:12:12 +0000
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