Surah 18
The Cave
1. The homage is to God who descended The Book to His servant and made to him [the messenger] no crookedness.
2. Ubiquitous, so he [the messenger] warns of Great Might from Him, and to give the glad tidings to the believers who do good, that they have a good reward.
3. Remaining therein forever.
4. And to warn those who said that God had taken children.
5. No knowledge they have of Him; and neither did their ancestors, infamous is such a word out of their mouths, they say but lies.
6. So you [the messenger] may be frustrated over their legacy, alas that they did not believe this discourse.
7. We made what is on the earth an ornament to it, to try them: which ones do better.
8. And We are lifting up what is on it, leaving it desolate.
9. Or did you think that the ones in the cave and The Numerator were wonders of Our Paragons?
10. For, the youths resorted to the cave, so they said: “our Lord, bestow on us Thy Compassion, and form guidance for us from our Aim”
11. So We blocked their knowledge in the cave for numerous years.
12. Then We remitted them, to find out which of the two parties had a better count of the length of their stay.
[So if you have ever wondered: how did the people of the Book kill the messengers of the past, here is a demonstration.
The story of human inquisition and philosophy was turned into a fairy tale, of people living for hundreds of years dormant in a cave, like bears.
The people of the Book have yet to be taught of man’s mortality, although they all say that they believe, while some are still waiting for an immortal man, some are waiting for another who has hidden for hundreds of years, and all believing that the dust of their bones will rise at the End of Days:
Why should God have to override God’s Law to prove God’s Law? Unless one is an affixer, one demands no counter-proof.
Far from being a fairy tale, this is the story of the Greek Philosophers: Pythagoras The Numerator, Parmenides The Eternal, Democritus The Equanimous, Socrates The Home of Time, Plato The Shade, Aristotle The Cause, Plotinus The Light and Iamblichus The Abundance, as their glorious names are cited and entitled in The Sacred Philosophy;
And in a future time, Isaac Newton will set the principles of Q-mathematics in the Far East, it will shed light on the number five and how it manifests as eight around the circle, and how two points can sometimes coincide; it will shed light on the structure of space, and throw the General Relativity of Albert Einstein’s in the trash bin of history.
They are the founders of the greatest school of philosophy, that school which has awakened and guided human thought for millennia, and still does today.
And although the teaching of the messengers before did approach man’s mind by occasional logical reasoning, yet what the Greek school of philosophy did was to apply logical reasoning to every aspect of life, and to approach it to all.
Spinoza’s Ethics, in our opinion, is the climax of the human intellect; in it, logical reasoning guides the mind in a journey of self-discovery and self-examination, to reach out to the existential reality,
Far Eastern religions reach this realm directly, mainly through the corridors of the mind, while Western religions reach it directly, mainly through the corridors of the heart.
Although “heart” and “mind” are two different words, which have in people’s hearts and minds, perhaps different, albeit, connected, locations, and although modern science acknowledges only the brain as the vehicle of human intellectual and emotional activity, yet when we say “heart and mind”, people generally seem to be happy with such nomenclature.
The Greek Philosophy is indeed the light of humanity’s mind and the love of its heart, and Plotinus’ Enneads are indeed the climax of this love.
And like The Book, the Greek Philosophy suffered misconception and misinterpretation, so much so, that the Greek Philosophers are seen to contradict one another, when they all belonged to the same Pythagorean School.
The seekers of the truth climb up the pyramid of knowledge, starting from its base, apart; they describe what they see along their journey and their descriptions differ; but as they gain height their scopes of vision widen and overlap, and if they persevere they will reach the one top, here the vision is one, and the orientations have settled on the circular horizon.
It is not coincidental that Plato drew the model of the cave, where the dwellers could see only shadows and silhouettes on the walls, and the knowledgeable ones could make their way out to witness the truth of the shadows and the silhouettes.
The Lord remits his messengers in the cave, to live your lives and err hour errors, to experience and learn, but they sin not and desire not, so they dig their way out of the cave with bare hands, to show you: God’s Light reaches infinite distances unobstructed, only in blindness is it unseen.
And from the pitch darkness of the deep cave, the rocks cracked, the sky showed, the clouds traversed, and the effulgent cones of existential light hushed, and a bright circular hole opened: The Truth triumphed.
This was a moment in Socrates’ life that humanity ought to be proud of, and must never forget.
In his earlier years, the world around him seemed all against him, so was he to join the crowd which was busy recycling concepts, words and organic matter, to get by... or was he to tread those tracks of the unchartered territories of his mind, to show his fellow humans that there is essence within the seeming absurdity? And his faith was rewarded at last, to blow away the glamour of the low life, and to place him on top of the world with the messengers who preceded him,
He travelled a long distance in rugged mountains, to meet the old and wise Parmenides in his last days, he was in awe of The Peace, and although he could not discern every word Parmenides said, due to a language barrier, Parmenides’ Spirit inspired him and guided him along his journey.
And later, young Plato witnessed his dialogues with the sophists, and both documented them, proof to humanity, that there is one reality in the world, it is man’s mind, it is The Logos of the cosmic manifest, it is the tracks of logic and mathematics, it is the abstract at the high horizons... all collapse in Mere Existence, this was a sure Call from The Lord.
But many people are still analysing the words of the Greek Philosophers, guided by the dictionaries that they wrote, and the information they gleaned by observation, to remain in the mazes of the intellect.
For many centuries, and up to the present, the linear movement of matter that Aristotle spoke of, for example, translated in their minds to physical rectilinear motion, an absurd concept which no illiterate adult, or even child, can accept: matter does move in all sorts of ways and directions in the physical world: let alone a philosopher of the calibre of Aristotle.
And as empirical science flourished, the concept was evidently rejected, and hence Aristotles’ entire teaching, in false conception and false counter-conception.
But the linearity was meant to be the continuous sequence of cause-and-effect, which is the laws of every physical phenomenon and every intellectual observation, linearity is the nature of the physical world.
And the Lunar Sphere did not refer to the physical moon and its orbit, but to the sphere of the Whole Self, below which the physical world is its dense self-expression.
The Hindu mythology offers a similar cosmic structure, but when only the physical world is thought to exist, everything is reduced to it; these are the silhouettes and shadows on the wall inside the cave which Plato alluded to.
And we call on the believers, who have The Sacred Philosophy in the Middle East, and in India and in China and in every part of the world, to make an effort to study the Greek Philosophy anew, for the purpose of teaching it to the world, in the light of The Sacred Philosophy and the sacred discourses, away from the interpretations of the scholars throughout place and time, and back in the original Greek texts where possible, this is a big task indeed, and will take many years and many people to complete, but the outcome would be of a great advantage to humanity, the Greek Philosophy is still very relevant to the modern mind, the issues it addressed are still here, the ethics that it teaches is eternal.
The Greek Philosophy can be the bridge between Far Eastern, particularly the Chinese, and Western cultures, when read in the realm of reality]
13. We recount to you their tidings by The Law, they are youths who believed in their Lord, and We increased their guidance.
14. And We surrounded their hearts as they arose, and they said: “our Lord, Lord of the heavens and the earth, we will invoke no god below Him, or our say is just a trespass,
15. “Here are our people, they have taken gods below Him, if only they come to them with a distinct authority, who is darker than the one who fretted falsehood on God?”.
16. And if you [the messengers in the cave] go in seclusion from them [the bewildered people], and what they worship, except from God, resign to the cave, your Lord will express His Compassion to you and will form a support for you from your Aim.
17. And you[the messengers in the cave] see The Sun circumventing their [the bewildered people’s] cave about the alpha [the bewildered people’s radius from the The Self, that is their original creation] when it sets, indebting them about the omega [their self in the earth in a physical body and its cycles of life and death], and they [the bewildered people] are in a gap from Him, this is of God’s paragons, he whom God has guided is guided indeed, and he whom He Bewilders, you will find for him no patron director.
18. And you [the messengers in the cave] reckon them [the bewildered people] awake and they are dormant, and We return them about the right [their good deeds] and about the left [their bad deeds], and their Dog extends his forelegs by the Threshold, if you looked over them you would turn and run away from them taken by panic.
19. And so We remitted (reincarnated) them [all], so they question one another, said one of them [the messengers]: “how long have you stayed?”, they[ the people ]said: “a day or a part of a day”, they [the messengers] said: “your Lord is The Knower of your stay, send one of you with this script [writings which the messengers gave them] of yours to the city, and look which is the purest aliment, so He bring to you Providence from Him and He clears, and lets no one know about you,
20. “For if they [darkened people] showed to you [the people who believed] they would stone you or return you to their creed, and thence you will never triumph.”
21. And so We uncovered them [the messengers], so they [the believers] know that God’s Promise is truth and that the Hour is unquestionable, while they [non-believers] dispute about their aim, so they [the believers] said: “construct a wall over them [the non-believers, distancing from them] their Lord is The Knower of them”, said those who prevailed over their Aim: “let us have worship by them [the messengers]”.
22. They [the believers] will say: “three, and their forth being their Dog”, they will say “five and their sixth being their Dog”; in desecration of the unseen, they [the non-believers], will say: “seven and their eighth being their Dog”; say: “my Lord is The Knower of their numeration, only a few know them, contradict not about them except as an apparent contradiction and take no one’s opinion of them [non-believers] about them [the messengers]”.
[And why should this story not be told symbolically? When the philosophy was an open book many repudiated it, darkened people prefer the fallacies over the facts, and the rituals over worship, the philosophy is a hefty say on their ears, said the Book, so they gravitate to their aim: the liar who deludes them by his rhetoric, exactly as he promised, that he would sit on the straight path, and come from all directions, he is the Dog which guards the threshold of the cave so no one comes out, except those whose light glares him and scares him away, the trials of the self are not easy.
And today, two millennia and more have passed, and Protagoras is still alive, so ask Bertrand Russel: is Mr Smith Mortal? He will say: probably; because man’s mortality is not provable by induction; and the dictionaries do not specify if man is mortal: sophism is still rife.
Then he goes to such lengths, believing he can re-invent the wheel, as if man’s mind is going to throw away man’s mind and replace it by Bertrand Russel’s verbosity;
And why should man’s mind feel guilty about its intuition and innate abstracts?
Is not the mind the product of the evolution of the universe in empiricists’ view? So they should welcome the idea that there are elementary abstract concepts in man’s mind, of which the physical phenomena are only a materialisation: the wheel cannot be re-invented, intuition dictates that it should be circular, regardless of the materials from which it is made, and the method of making it, and the physical laws are only happy to agree.
Should man prove that a wheel will work before putting it in operation? If we are to follow strict empiricist protocols, every newly made wheel should be tested for rolling.
It is those basic convictions which look deceptively innocent, that are the road signs of the mind; the sophists and the monotheists have put up huge road signs to veer your vision away from reality, because they are unable to be your tour guide in it: because it is too beautiful, too bright, too vast for their tunnel vision, they cannot venture in it, they are frightened from it.
They prefer to dwell in the ink on the paper; this is where they believe the words of any discourse are.]
23. And, do not say to a forerunner: “I am doer of this tomorrow”.
24. Until that God will, and remember your Lord if you forget and say : “may my Lord guide me to a closer direction than this”.
25. They [the messengers] stayed in their [the darkened people’s] cave three hundred years, and they increased by nine.
26. Say: God is The Knower of how long they stayed, He has the unseen of the heavens and the earth, fulfil your vision by Him, and your hearing, they have not a patron below Him He shares His Rule with no one.
27. And announce what has been inspired to you [the messenger] of your Lord’s Book, His Word can be altered by no one, and you will find so shelter below Him.
28. And control yourself together with those who invoke their Lord in the early morning and the evening, seeking His Countenance, let not your eyes by-pass them, or you will desire the low lives’ ornaments, obey not the one whose heart is made oblivious of Our remembrance by Us, he followed his passions, his aim fell apart.
29. Say: The Law is from your Lord, he who will may believe, and he who will may disbelieve, We have arranged for the darkened ones a hell, its fences surround them, when they are distressed they are relieved by ooze that grills their faces, low-down is such a beverage, bad is such an amenity.
30. And those who believed and did good deeds, We waste not the reward of those who did righteous deeds.
31. Those have The Gardens of Eden, the days stream underneath them, endowed in it by noble knights from a far a holy world, covered by an attire green of velvet silk, leaning on coaches, blessed is such a reward, radiant is such an amenity.
[If interpreters had read correctly, they would have noticed that the word which they translated to “thing” is not “shay’”, it is “shaa’”, in the Othmanic writing, which is consistent in all available publications of the Holy Book., and this is why our translation of “forerunner” (verse 23).
The forerunner on the way of God has reached a station not yet yours, people’s existential experiences are different, The Ghita teaches a constant focus on The Aim.
Verses 23 and 24 become thus coherent: remembrance occurs after forgetfulness, not conversely, people who have darkened cannot make a basic logical argument, they have driven themselves to a hell where nothing makes sense, and their life is death in survival, and the relief they pray for is the sustenance of their suffering.
God’s Book was not descended to teach self-evident morality, every clever man and woman can teach themselves and others, in their place and time.]
32. We draw a model to them, of two men, We made for one of them two gardens of vine trees (growing things), bordered by palm trees (the pick), We made vegetation (offspring) between them.
33. Both gardens produced their produce and did not hold up anything from it, and We sprang a river through them.
34. So there was fruit for him, and he said to his companion, in a conversation: “I am wealthier than you and more resourceful in men”.
35. And he entered his garden darkening himself, said he: “I suspect not this will perish ever;
36. “I suspect not The Hour is up, and if I am returned to my Lord I will find better than it, in return”.
37. Said his companion to him, in a conversation: “have you darkened about Him Who created you of Substance, then of a drop, then He sorted you as a man,
38. “But we are all to Him God My Lord, I affix none to my Lord;
39. “If only as you entered your garden, you said: ‘lo, God’s Will, Power in not but in God’, if you saw me less fortunate and of less offspring,
40. “Perhaps God bestow on me better than your garden, and send timing from heaven to yours, so it dawns a surface slippery and barren,
41. “Or that its irrigant sinks deep, so you are unable to call for it”.
42. So his fruit was surrounded, and he started wringing his hands about what he had invested in it, now that it is bare to its tops, and said regretfully: “I wish I affixed none to my Lord”.
43. He had no party below God to support him, and he was not triumphant.
44. There, The Patronage is God’s, The Law, He is The Good homecoming, He is The Good becoming.
[We have cited both the peripheral and the esoteric allusions of verse 32, for these are the gardens of human karma of two human existences, as God made a descendant in the earth, and set His Limits by His Angels and Summa.
The model drawn in this parable is that of a monotheist who invests his life in karmic activity, making the low life the purpose of his low life, and he says that he believes in God, he suspects that in the hereafter he will be rewarded by another low life, and he believes that inequality is an inarguable law of an arbitrary god.
Those who adopt such beliefs interpret those verses from their point of view, so how does a guilty man describe his own guilt: by failing to acknowledge the virtue which cleanses his sins.
While they do see this man drunk of pride of his material possessions, they do believe that inequality is ordained by their interpretation of The Qur’an and The Ghita, when it is damned by both.
It is not arbitrarily that this parable comes immediately after verse 31, to test the content of their hearts: they take verse 31 as a description of a holiday resort where golden bracelets are free; holy horizons are unreachable to them, even by the imagination, people’s stations are their earned existential awareness, this is accountability, people see what they qualify to see. ]
45. Draw to them a model, the low lives are like water that We dropped from the sky, earth’s vegetation mingled with it, so it turned rubbish, the wind scatters it, and God is Capable of all things.
46. Wealth and offspring are the ornaments of the low lives, and the perpetual ones are the correct ones, they are the good in your Lord homecoming, and a better hope.
47. And the day We carry the mountains, and you see the earth plane, and We gather them, We exclude no one of them.
48. And they are presented arrayed to your Lord, you have come to Us as We created you the first time, or did you claim that We would not make a time for you?
49. And The Book is opened, and you see the criminals anxious of what is in it, and they say: “woe to us, what is about this Book, it leaves not a minor or a major matter, until it has counted it”, and they find their deeds present, God wrongs no one.
50. And when We said to the angels: “bow to Adam”, and they bowed, except Iblis, he was of the Gone (jin) people, he severed from his Lord’s Aim, so do you take him and his seed as patrons below Me? And he is an enemy of you; low-down is such an exchange for the darkened ones.
51. I let them not witness the creation of the heavens and the earth, and neither the creation of their own selves; I take not the bewildered ones as arms.
52. And the Day He says: “ call on your affixes which you claimed”, so they called them and they responded not to them, and We made between them a muddle.
53. And the criminals saw the hell, and thought they would fall down to it, and they found no outlet from it.
54. And We have articulated in this Qur’an from every ideal, for the people, and man has been the most argumentative thing.
55. What has prevented the people from believing, as guidance came to them, so they ask for forgiveness from their Lord? Except that the course of the early ones became to them, or that the suffering becomes to them frontwards.
56. We sent no messengers except to deliver glad tidings and warning, those who disbelieved argue with falsehood to jar The Law, they took My verses and warning derisively.
57. Who is darker than him who was reminded of his Lord’s verses, so he turned them aside and forgot what His Hands had offered, We have made a concealment on their hearts that they discern it not, and clogs in their ears, if you call them to the Beacon, they are never guided ever.
58. And God is Forgiveness, and has The Compassion, if He were to reproach them for what they have earned He would hasten the suffering for them, but they have a time, they will find below him no shelter.
59. And those countries, We destroyed them for their wrong-doing, and We made a time for their destruction.
60. And when Moses said to his fellow: “I will not quit until I reach the sum of the two seas, or I will go on in cycles”.
61. Se when they reached the sum between them [the two waters] they left their dragon (fish) behind, so it took its course in the sea steadily.
62. So when they trespassed, said he to his fellow: “bring us our food, we have attained exhaustion from this travel of ours”
63. Said he: “have you seen? As we took refuge to the rock I left the dragon behind, and nothing made me leave it except Satan: that I may remember him, and he took his path in the water conceitedly.”
64. Said he: “this we did not desire”, so they reversed and followed their footsteps back.
[Far from being a fishing picnic, this is an attempt to tread the road of self-knowledge: the most arduous journey any man can make, but self-discipline and self-control proved too difficult.
The “dragon” is the passions of the low life. The Arabic word used translates in today’s Arabic to “whale”, but the usage in this instance, and in the instance of prophet Jones – who is dhu’Nnoon: the one of the Ennead: Plotinus, peace upon him, in another coming: points to our reading.
The two waters are the radiant and dark humanity, and their “sum” is The Sacred Philosophy, the Knowledge which binds all human knowledge of all humanity, in it is the freedom from the endless cycle of re-birth, and The Eternal Reference.
In contrast with Moses and Aaron, who called the dragon back after it was commanded by The Lord to abandon them: dhu’Nnoon was set free from the dragon - by his transcendence in his Lord: said the Qur’an.
God’s messengers love God’s creation, they have inquisitiveness to know it, He remits them and guides them to be guides, they are saddened by the misery of humanity’s, they get frustrated of their helplessness of their urge to help, some become angry, but they never deviate their vision away from their Lord’s Aim, so He demonstrates to them, His Compassion and Forgiveness encompasses the worlds, and His Peace overwhelms them once again.
And who can forget that ominous scene, of the godly eye turning into a horrifying, dead in life, blind in vision, monstrous pig’s eye? Those who love the Beauty and the Majesty of The Law cannot look, of shame, and shock, that a brother of theirs chose, knowingly and willingly to darken, defiantly and unashamedly, and those who were amused replenished their vision from ugliness, low-down was such a vision, low-down is their station.
O believers, pray to your Lord that you may be apiculated by the early blows, they come unexpectedly in hypno-vigilence, you hear them clearly, they blow away the dust, God’s records perish not, so those memories of the early hours of the verb to be can be witnessed again, and you know why you are here.]
65. So they [Moses and Aaron], found a servant of Ours, We had bestowed on him Compassion from Us, and We educated him of Our Knowledge.
66. Said Moses to him: “shall I follow you, on condition you educate me in what you have been educated in direction”.
67. Said he [God’s messenger]: “you will not be capable of forbearance with me,
68. “And how will you be forbearing over something in which you have not a full experience?”
69. Said he [Moses]: “you will find me, God willing, forbearing, and I will disobey no command of yours”
70. Said he [God’s messenger]: “if you follow me you will not ask me about anything, until I utter to you remembrance from Him”.
71. So they set out, and as they boarded the ship he [Moses] breached it, said he [God’s messenger]: “you have breached it to drown its community? You have come with something odd”
72. Said he [God’s messenger]: “did I not say to you that you would not be capable of forbearing with me?”
73. Said he [Moses]: “reproach me not about what I forgot, and burden me not with hindrance about my aim”.
74. So they set out until they came across a youth, and he [God’s messenger] killed him, said he [Moses]: “you have killed a pure selfless self? You have come with something canny”.
75. Said he [God’s messenger]: “did I not say to you that you would not be capable of forbearing with me?”
76. Said he [Moses]: “if I asked you about anything after this do break my company, I have exhausted your pardonableness.”
77. So they set out, until they came to the inhabitants of a town, they asked its inhabitants for food, they refused to host them, so they found in it a wall on the verge of collapse, so he [Moses] upheld it, said he [God’s messenger]: “had you willed, you could have earned a reward over this”.
78. Said he [God’s messenger]: “this is separation between you and me, I will announce to you the truths of the things for which you were not capable of forbearance.
79. “ As for the ship, it belonged to the poor who worked in the sea, I wanted to tarnish it, and there was a king behind them, taking every ship forcibly.
80. “As for the young man, his parents were believers; We feared he might burden them with tyranny and infidelity;
81. “So We wanted that their Lord changed him for them to someone purer and closer to Compassion;
82. “As for the wall, it was for two youths, who were orphans in the town, underneath it was a treasure of theirs, their father was righteous, your Lord wanted that they attained maturity and brought out their treasure, of Compassion of your Lord; what I did was my Aim, these are the truths of the things for which you were not capable of forbearance.”
[In the first instance, the ship was a community of believers, the breaching was of their rules of conduct; in the second, the killing was of the ego of the young man, in Moses’ mind he was too young to die in God’s way and must have time to enjoy the pleasures and passions of the low life; in the third, the wall was the wall which bars the self from knowledge, and by the same reasoning, as in the second instance, Moses wanted the two youths to enjoy their lives instead of helping them bring the wall down.
And the name of “Khidre” is correct, the name simply means “Green”, a name of God’s Messenger, the prayers to God are by him.
God’s Messenger is human, he eats food and walks the market, said the Qur’an.]
83. And they ask you about the Two-Horned one, say: “I will announce to you from Him a remembrance”.
84. We enabled him in the earth, and gave him, from everything a lead.
85. So he followed a lead.
86. Until the Sunset befell, he found it setting in an incinerated eye, and he found then a people, We said: “O Two-Horned one, either you punish or you demonstrate radiance in them”.
87. Said he : “ as for the one who darkened, We will punish him, then he will be returned to his Lord, so that He may punish him the most abhorred punishment”
88. As for the one who believed and did correct things, he has the radiant reward, and We will utter to him, from Our Aim, succour.
89. Then he followed a lead.
90. Until he arrived to the ascent of The Sun, he found it ascending over a people for whom We made below it no shutters,
91. And We encompassed what he had with knowledge.
92. Then he followed a lead.
93. Until he arrived between the two blockades, he found below them a people who could hardly comprehend a say.
94. The said: “O Two-Horned one, Yagog and Magog are despoilers in the earth, shall we make a cloud (resource) for you, so that you make between us and them a barrier?”
95. Said he: “what my Lord has enabled me is good, eye me by Power, I make between you and them a block.
96. “Bring me The Oracles of The Psalmist”, until he equalised between the pairs of opposites, said he [addressing his Lord]: “inspire”, until he set it [the fire of Existence] ablaze, said he [addressing his Lord]: “provide, so I pour drops over”.
97. But they could not manifest Him and they could not set en route to Him.
98. Said he: “this is Compassion from my Lord, when my Lord’s promise is due He flattens it (them) [the mountains of knowledge], and my Lord’s promise is Truth.”
99. And We left them thence in turmoil with one another, and it was blown in the apex, so We gathered them all in the gathering.
[The Two-Horned one features in ancient civilisations as the one with the bow and the arrow, he is India’s most beloved hero, Arjuna, and this time he was Alexander, peace upon him.
He uses the curvature of the bow to shoot straight arrows: symbolic of his promulgating of his Lord’s Teaching with the intermediation of the dark ones, so The Lord’s Message reaches all, each people take their share of it, so he tells them: eye me by Power.
But the two horns are a reference to two beams of light.
As a young man he had a dream, where he was riding a white horse, and had to travel a rugged road never travelled before; he overcame great difficulties, so he realised when he woke up that he was a man with a grand mission.
And this was a demonstration from his Lord of the paradox of time: for, every event in his dream eventuated in some other form in actuality, as though the past, present and future melted in one pot then spiralled out; this is how he followed a lead every time he took the next step.
He took lessons of philosophy from Aristotle, peace upon him; as a student of the Greatest Teacher, at an early age, he learned the realities of null and existence, and of absoluteness and incidentalness, lessons he never forgets, while humanity still struggles to discern reality, it falls down the breaches of nullity, that the Mighty Book calls hell.
His first encounter was in then pagan Persia, and as he reached the Subcontinent he met with believers, from whom the light of the Sun was not barred, then he met with a number of people, as he headed back westward, amongst which were the people known today as the Kurdish people, who were Zoroastrian before, but they became confused about their belief when they were exposed to monotheism, after Abraham.
We hence see that Al-Hadeed can refer either to Zarathustra or to Prophet David, peace be on them, both of whom enflamed the love of Existence by psalmodizing, and the word hadeed in Arabic, is from the etymon of hadaa, which means to sing, amongst other meanings.
So the existential journey he led them was written symbolically, and interpreted as a lesson of mining and civil engineering, it is them who failed to transcend to his fire, and fail to do so today.
And every time a messenger visions, it is expressed in his vision as a phenomenon: of fire hence the fire of the Zoroastrians; of a bright circular hole or a sun: hence the “cow” the Israelites had to “cut”; of water: the surface of which is being looked from deep in it, up to the sky: hence the lotus flower in Buddhism and Hinduism; a red thing, being cut in preparation for eating: hence the sacrifice at the Festival of the Light (al-dahyyah) for the Muslims; of water pure, being poured out of a jug as ancient as the verb to be, for washing one’s hands and face: hence the ablution in many religions...
And sometimes sound is associated with the vision: hence the adhaan (the call to prayer) for the Muslims; or jingling bells: hence the Christian and Buddhist tradition;
And of course: the aromas...
All of which are reminiscent of the early observation of The Lord’s Magnificent Creation, transcends He, and when He taught it to the Creation, transcends He, but man has been the most argumentative thing.
And the messenger would express his vision, for the purpose of dropping a moment of existence onto his fellow men, but in the minds which have forgotten that they exist, it translates to rituals, which are thought to provide, by some supernatural method: even the most obvious laws of nature which the animal knows have been forgotten, this is a sad destiny.
As for our choice of the word “incinerated eye” to translate the term “3ayn hami’ah”, although linguistically the translation does not seem accurate, we see it describes the experience best.
Alexander had in his company dark as well as good people, but those who documented his campaign were dark and envious, and their main aim was to slander him, they were not allowed in his private sittings with his disciples, where they meditated, watched the stars, and took lessons from him, and he often sang to them. One of them was his night time eyes: as he had astigmatism and was mildly short-sighted, and was hence unable to observe the movements of the stars and their constellations of the nightly skies.
So a lot of what they wrote about him was false and a reflection of their own base minds, and what people see is one thing, and how they interpret what they see is quite another.]
100. And We laid the low world (jahannam) thence bare to the darkened ones.
101. Those whose eyes were covered from remembering Me, and they were incapable of hearing.
102. Do the darkened ones reckon that they may take My servants as patron below Me? We have set up the low world for the darkened ones for their residence.
103. Say: shall We give you the tidings of those who have done the most futile deeds?
104. Those whose pursuit in the low lives was astray, while they were thinking that they were doing good.
105. Those who darkened to their Lord’s verses and His encounter, their deeds are vain, We make no weight for them the Day of the Uprise.
106. This is their reward: the low world, of what they darkened, and they took My paragons and My messengers derisively.
107. Those who believed and did correct things: the gardens of paradise is their residence.
108. Eternal in it, from it they want no diversion.
109. Say: if the seas were substance for my Lord’s Word, the seas would be spent before my Lord’s Word is said, even if We come with equal substance.
110. Say: that so, I am a human like you, it is inspired to me that your God is One God, so he who longs for his Lord’s encounter, that he do good deeds, and that he affix no one to his worship of his Lord.
Truthful is God’s Mighty Word.
