Surah 13
The Thunder
(al-Ra3d)
1. Alef Lam Meem Ra’ (A L M R), those are the verses of the Book; what was descended to you [the messenger] from your Lord is The Law, but most people do not believe.
2. God, Who raised the skies without pillars that you [can] see, then surmounted the Throne, He consecrated the Sun and the Moon, each going for an allotted term, He turns The Aim, He splits the Paragons, may you [the people], about encountering your Lord, become certain.
3. And it is He, Who flattened the earth and made anchoring [things] in it and rivers, and of all the fruit; He made in it a pair of two [Satan and his speaker Iblis], veils the day the night; in this are paragons to the people who reflect.
4. And in the land are pieces bordering one another, and gardens of grapevines and vegetation and trees, dicotyledonous and non-dicotyledonous, irrigated by the one water; and We elevate some of it over some in aliment, in this indeed are paragons for a people who discern.
5. And if you [the messenger] wonder: the wonder is their say: “so after we turn to dust, we are in a new incarnation?” Those are the ones who darkened to their Lord, the shackles are in their necks, they are the people of the fire, in it they are eternally.
6. And they hasten you about the vice before the good, and the examples of before have vacated [the earth], and your Lord has Forgiveness for the people about their wrong-doing, and your Lord has a severe punishment.
7. And those who have darkened say: “if only one miracle descended to him from his Lord”, that so, you are [only] a warner, and every people have a guide,
8. God knows what every omega (female) [soul, reflected in a body and set free] carries, and what the Compassionate ones withhold, and what they increase, everything He has is measured,
9. Knower of the Unseen and the Witness, The Mighty The Lofty.
10. It is equal: whether you [the people] whisper your say or you announce it, and whether you are stealth at night or traveller by day,
11. You have trackers between your hands and behind you recoding it by God’s Aim; God changes not a people’s situation until they have changed what is in their selves; and if God wants ill for people, no returner is there of Him, they have no one below Him of a patron or a supporter.
[Those who follow the lawlessness can only suppose the existence of supernatural beings as their god’s secret police,
Those see overlapping absolutenesses, and as though their god was sent to a world of prior existence, and they put him in charge of it.
And you are their enemy if you do not follow their tracks.
The beasts of the jungle who seem in constant fight are in harmony with the world and with one another, each knowing where they fit and their activity,
But mankind has been endowed with a thinking mind and an observing eye to see The Law, and many thus have failed.
And what this grand verse alludes to in reality is the Karmic Law of which all God’s messengers spoke, secretly and openly; but it seems too hard to discern, and you hear some asking: so is that a system of debit and credit?
That is because they have not freed themselves from the concept of reward and punishment, and the morality of the carrot and the stick,
And when the theory of natural selection came about, and the theory of the emergence of life from matter, those who promoted them thought that they had thus surpassed theological dogmata,
In reality, they affirmed the concept of reward and punishment, and the morality of the carrot and the stick, with a twist:
The theologians assume the existence of a supernatural administrator, while the materialists have appointed themselves as absolute rulers of the world of matter, randomness being their only rival.]
12. ‘T is He, Who shows you the lightening, [to evoke in you] fear and aspiration, and He constructs the massive clouds,
13. And the thunder transcends in His worship, and the angels [transcend] from His edging in [with them], and He sends the thunderbolts [of enlightenment], He strikes with it whomever He will, and they [darkened ones] argue about God? And He is of strong places [of the believers’ hearts and minds].
[As we read kheefatihi without a dot over, so it is 7eefatihi: nearness.
And it is of no surprise: what they read,
They pray to their god of fear of his punishment, while the believers pray of pure joy and love,
Those: they cannot pray in exhibition, and exhibition is the rituals of pagan gods,
And when those pray, they go with a shopping list, and as soon as they start reciting what they were taught, their minds switch to automatic mode, and their minds dwell completely on their worries, hates and wants,
Thus is brought out what is really in their hearts, we are well-informed of it, and they deceive no one but themselves, and their trade is not profitable, the Book has told them, if they read the Book.
So we say to those who believe: abandon all the rituals of the people of the Book and the pagans, they have driven humanity down to the abyss of irrationality; thousands of years practicing of rituals have benefitted humanity nil, and humanity is sinking deeper in her misery instead,
And if you are a believer, retreat in your self, wherever you are, and whether you recite known text or say your own simple words: if you are honest, it is The Lord who says them and it is The Lord who hears them,
And make no demand except His Countenance,
And rejoice to nothing, except to His Countenance, and when your eye looks you will,
Thus you connect what God commanded to be connected,
As for your plight and needs in the low world, The Lord knows it better than you, consult the Gospel, the Gospel said it,
Do help yourself and He is your helper in hard times, the believers despair not from His Compassion, and whatever He has judged they take happily, and one life is only too short and will go soon and later,
And physical activity is none but the stuff of the low world, it is it that severs your connections, and connects you with the low world, unless you dedicate it all to Him, The Lord of the two worlds.
And it has come to our attention that some believers are being driven to bodily gestures, verging on irrationality,
We say: those gestures were taught in the past to bring out the content of your hearts, they are an obligation only if your hearts and minds are incapable, so you may be helped by the symbolism in them,
They are a treacherous track, we warn the believers of all rituals, if they are believers.]
14. To Him is The Call of The Law, and those who call below Him, they [those who are called] return nothing to them, [they are] but like the one who spreads out his hands to the water, so it reaches up to his mouth, but it does not: the calls of the darkened ones are none but bewilderment.
15. To God bow all that is in the heavens and the earth, willingly and despitefully, and their shadows [physical projections in the low world] in the morns and the eves.
16. Say: “who is The Lord of the heavens and the earth?” say: “it is God”, say: “but you have taken lords below Him, they are incapable of benefit or harm for their own selves”, say: “does the blind equal the seeing, or does sombreness equal light?” Or have they made partners for God, who [the partners] created similar creation, so the creation was confused to them? Say: “it is God Who created everything, He is The One The Dominant.”
17. He dropped water from the sky, valleys were inundated according to their destiny, the flow bore floating froth; and what they use as fuel of fire, in pursuit of ornaments or leisure, is froth similar; thus God combines right with wrong; as for the froth, it dissipates; as for what benefits the people, it remains in the ground; thus God draws the models,
18. To those who responded to their Lord by radiance; and those who responded not to Him: if they had all that is in the earth, and like it has He, they would [attempt] to ransom themselves by it; those have the just (bad) trial, their shelter is the inferno, bad is such dwelling.
19. Is the one who knows that what was descended to you is The Law, like the one who is blind? Indeed, those who remember are those with a kernel,
20. Those who honour God’s Covenant, and they diminish not the Oath,
21. And who connect what God commanded to be connected; they venerate their Lord, and fear the bad judgement.
[Why do the interpreters of the Qur’an want to have us believe that the Covenant and the Oath are metaphorical? And there have always been groups of believers who took an Oath and covenanted their Lord, when they accepted His Call,
And this Book, and as we have read it to you, is not short of such a testimony,
And in this present time, the Druze of the Middle East are a people who, in the past, accepted their Lord’s Call and took an Oath at a time when no other people of the Book did,
When every group were happy with the interpretation of their Book that they had, and believing that the messenger they said they followed was the last;
Thus their belief was a seal of the prophets which came after, barring their message from their people, and indeed the whole world.
Yet all the descents of the Book delivered glad tidings to humanity, of the coming of Gabriel, the prayers be by him, the next time round,
And the people of the Book did know of his future comings, but every time Gabriel did come: they repudiated him and stuck with what they had chanced upon from their fathers, and the sins of the ancient ones were repeated:
The Jews repudiated Samuel and The Messiah the son of Mary, the Christians and the Jews repudiated Salman, and the Muslims repudiated Hamzah, and recently The Báb,
That is because their theologians and their institutes set the criteria for them for recognising his Grand Spirit of their limited understanding,
They know not, that God’s Spirit created all their criteria and their limited understanding,
And until they see The Spirit, God’s messengers will be unknown to them and they will be barred by the seal.
And the historians and theologians and the self-proclaimed experts, have written volumes and researched every ancient document, to come up with a theory about who the Druze of the Middle East are, and what it is exactly that they believe,
But they can only guess,
For the name of “Druze” is of no significance, and Bani Ma’roof is no less a fictitious tribe than the Israelites were before, and there have always been groups of believers of different names, since the rounding of the world and Eden, and there will always be,
But a long time has passed, and the world has been distracted by the causes of politics and the fight over land and its resources, and the people of the Book believe that it is those wars which will open the doors of heaven to them, and that The Creator takes sides in human feuds,
They have thus followed the footsteps of the heathens, and threw God’s Word behind their backs, and their passions of the low world entrench them deeper in the low world.
Many a country before bewildered themselves, they were destroyed by their own wrong, the earth and this Grand Book testify; and if there is a shimmer of light left in you, you would tremble of awe of The Lord’s Might, when His Aim comes, there is no turner back of Him, be warned.
And many Druze today have all but forgotten who they are, they too have been bogged down by the causes of the low world, except a very few,
And in the book of The Letters we shall address them directly and explicitly, may they remember, and may they re-embrace The Spirit,
It is them who are still closest, and those who believe, wherever they are, will glow again to its Glow, as they did before.
And although the two waters of humanity have been mingling, and as the Mus-haf warned them, it is still them who are meant to carry God’s Call to the world, and they are already ahead of the world,
And until they wake up from centuries of dormancy, and until they rekindle Virtue in their hearts and live by The Highest Standard (al-ma3roof), as they were commanded by this very Book and by The Sacred Philosophy, they cannot; but The Lord willing, and them responding: they will,
And the world is eager to see them guiding the world: ethically and philosophically: a world that is now bankrupt, and has only matter by which to measure the heavens and the earth.]
22. And those who have forborne, seeking their Lord’s Countenance, and they held up the prayers and expended of what We provided them, secretly and openly, and they deflect the evil by the good, those have the bottom of the Circumference,
23. The gardens of Eden, they enter it with those who were righteous, of their fathers and their spouses and their offspring, and the angels enter to them from every door,
24. The Peace be upon you, of what you forbore, good is the bottom of the Circumference.
[Those are all the people, of all creeds, religions, races and colours, who were honest: they were the meek in the earth: of compassion and of the fear of causing harm to God’s creation,
They were not shackled by physicality and its daughters: the ideologies which seal the essence of God’s message across place and time: said The Mus-haf,
They took the good of God’s message and were righteous, they forbore and were not greedy and arrogant,
They will inherit the earth and all that is on it, as they were promised in all the descents of the Book, many times over,
And the doors to the Chamber will be opened, and not many secrets will remain secret in a new world order by The Law,
And the believers will be able to go in and out of the Circumference, as testified this Grand Book: they sojourn in it wherever they will,
And the worlds inside and outside the earth will become known, and God’s Creation is a grand thing.
And the ideologies of monotheism and materialism will be refuted and have been proven fallacious,
And a new dawn of human civilisation will begin, and your Lord’s Messengers will rule The Republic of The World,
And it is not money or military might or technology that helps humanity progress and triumph, but indeed her self-knowledge and her ethics,
And humanity today: amassing money, building the machinery of death, and bowing to stones and the dust of the universe: is spiralling quickly down the abyss of suffering and self-destruction.]
25. And those who dishonour God’s Covenant after His Oath, they sever what God commanded to be connected, they despoil the earth, those have the damnation, they have the evil of the Circumference.
[Those will be remitted as lower beings, wearing a fox’s fur and a donkey’s tail, The Sacred Philosophy foretells, turning to apes, testifies this Grand Book,
And some will be remitted as lower human beings, to be servants for the good people and the angels.
And the signs of the biological demise of humanity can already be seen by those who can look, and by those who study the science and the arts of alternative medicine,
But they will say: it is the pollution and the bad food that the people have been consuming,
And the inter-family marriages between cousins, for many generations, accelerate the natural selection,
Arguments which are correct in their context, and a projection of higher truths,
And no female, human or animal, will deliver her pregnancy, and the minds of science and the authorities of religion will be stunned,
And Noah’s ark will be constructed for those who want to be salvaged from an immanent breakdown.]
26. God extends the Providence to whomever He will and He judges; they rejoice in the low lives, and the low lives are none but perishable.
27. And those who darkened say: “if one miracle descended to him from his Lord”, say: “God bewilders whomever He will and guides to Him whoever returns.”
28. Those who are amen (believers), and their hearts are content to the remembrance of God; hail, to the remembrance of God the hearts are content.
29. Those who believed and did good, joy to them and a radiant return.
30. We thus sent you [the messenger] in a nation, nations before it evacuated [the earth], to recite to them what We inspired to you, they darken to Compassion, say: “He is my Lord, there is no deity but He, on Him I rely, to Him is my repentance.”
31. And were it a Qur’an by which the mountains were removed, the earth broken up, the dead spoken to… but to God is the Aim entirely; so have those who have believed, not despaired, that will God, He would have guided all mankind, and those who disbelieve are struck by the strikes of their own action, or they [the strikes] settle close to their circles, until God’s Promise come, God breaks not a promise.
32. Messengers before you were derided, so I dictated to those who disbelieved, and then I took them: so how was My Punishment?
33. So who is He: the Overlooker on every self in what she earns? They made partners for God, say: “name them; or do you inform Him of what He knows not in the earth, or is it [just] a pretend say?” Nay, the intrigue of those who disbelieve has been embellished, and they have been barred from The Way, and those whom God has bewildered have no guide.
34. They have suffering in the low lives, and the suffering of the hereafter is harder, and they have no protector from God.
35. The model of the Garden of which the ones who take refuge are promised: the days stream underneath it, its aliment is perpetual, and so its shade; this is the consequence to those who took refuge; and the consequence of the darkened ones is the fire.
36. And those to whom We brought the Book, they rejoice by what was descended to you, and of the denominations are some who refute some of it; say: “all I am commanded is to abide in God and affix none to Him, to Him I call and to Him is my return.”
37. And thus We descended it an articulate (Arabic) Judgement, and if you [addressing the prophet] follow their passions after the knowledge that has come to you, you have no sponsor from God and not protector.
38. And We did send messengers before you, and We made pairs for them [the pair of Opposites who bring the lowest projection of the message to all the people] and offspring, and no messenger is to bring one verse except by God’s Leave, every time has a Book,
39. God erases whatever He will and He instates whatever He will, He has the Aim (the mother) of The Book.
[And God’ Mighty Word is timeless, and has a descent in every time and place,
And God descends His Word, when He witnesses that there is no god but He, and He erases his self.
But it is the people of the Book who want to erase God’s Book, because their book is of place and time,
Ask them, they will not be shy to confirm.]
40. What We show you [the messenger] is some of what We promised them, or We redeem you; that so, what is on you is the promulgation, and on Us is the Judgement.
41. Have they not seen that We come to the earth, We diminish it from its extremities, and God judgeth, there is no seconder to His Judgment, He has a swift trial.
[For when the Water rises, the earth is diminished from its extremities, and activity thus is limited to limited land, hung between the heaven and the earth, and you throw not when you throw, but it is God who throws.]
42. Those before them too have plotted, but to God are all the plots, He knows what very self earns, and the darkened ones will know who has the bottom of the House.
43. And those who have darkened say: “you are not sent [by anyone]”, say: “God is sufficient Witness between me and you, it is He Who has the Knowledge of The Book.”
Truthful is God’s Mighty Word.
