Perceiving the Divine

An atheist asked Imam Abu Abdullah (as), ‘How do you prove the truthfulness of the prophets and the messengers?’
“The Imam(as), said, ‘It is a fact that we have established with sufficient evidence, proof of the existence of our Creator, the Most Holy, the Most High and Exalted above all creatures. It is a fact that this Creator is All-wise and Most High. His creatures cannot see, touch, associate and directly communicate with Him. It proves that His deputies must be present among His creatures. It is His deputies and ambassadors who speak to people for Him and provide them guidance to protect their interests; to tell them what is beneficial to them and what are the best means of survival and what may cause their destruction. This proves the presence among people of those who convey the commandments of the Creator, Who is All-wise, All-knowing Allah, the Most Holy, the Most High, to them. Such people are the prophets, recipient of divine supreme covenant, the chosen ones from among His creatures. They are the people of wisdom, disciplined with wisdom and sent to people with the message of wisdom. They are different from other people - although like them in physical form and shape - in their conditions of discipline and their receiving direct support from Allah, the Most Holy, the Most High and All-wise." [Al-Kafi, Kitab-al-Hujjah,hadith#424]

The Imams (as) words in relation to the Divine Essence "and Exalted above all creatures" can be taken as the reason that incapacitates his creation, meaning Man, from direct perception [ادراك] or experience of such an August Reality, since it is by virtue of the intensification [شدت وجودى] of His Sublime Existence and the sheer brightness and blinding luminosity [شدت نورانية] of the Light of His Being [نور وجود] that He is far removed or Exalted above His subjects; therefore God by reason of being what He Is, namely Absolute-Existence [وجود مطلق] or Pure-Being [وجود محض] lies beyond the reach of man's faculties of perception [قوت ادراك], be they external [ظاهرى], such as his bodily senses, or internal [باطنى] such as his intellect [عقل]; and if God were to be perceivable by man through his senses or the intellect then He would not be Absolute-Existence or Pure-Being, but something corporeal and limited, being a composite [مركب] of existence and non-existence, perfection [كمال] and privation [عدم], actuality [فعليت] and potentiality [قوت], but not Pure-Existence.

Now a doubt may arise in one's mind concerning the doctrine of Divine Omnipotence [قدرت] that, if God is All-Powerful then why does He not render Himself visible to His creation? This and other similar doubts arise due to lacking an adequate and a proper comprehension of the notion of Divine Omnipotence, which does not lie in rendering that which is essentially-impossible [ممتنع بالذات], possible [ممكن] or in rendering necessary [واجب] the occurrence of that whose occurrence was essentially-impossible, and it is essentially-impossible that Pure-Being, in as much as it is Pure-Being, render's itself visible to Man's external senses of perception by becoming something material and corporeal, because being something material and corporeal it shall no longer remain Pure-Existence, as has already been elicited above. Similarly it is equally essentially-impossible that God, being the Simplest or non-composite Reality [بسيط الحقيقة] render's itself perceptible to human-intellect as a conceptual notion [مفهوم ظهنى] or an essence [ماهية], which would render Him an essence-existence composite because that which the intellect apprehends is not the reality or the existence of a thing but its essence or quiddity, and everything that possesses a quiddity is a composite and hence cannot simultaneously be the Simplest Reality. Moreover everything that has a quiddity or an essence distinct and separate from its existence is such that its existence is mixed with something alien or other, in other words it is such that its existence is mingled with that which is non-existence, meaning a quiddity or an essence, and therefore such an entity cannot be Pure-Being, unmixed and non-associated with anything alien.

However the impossibility or incapacity to have sense-perception of the divine reality is not attributed by the Imam (as) to the Divine Essence in the sense of not being able to show Himself to creation, but to creation itself, which is apparent from his statement "His creatures cannot see, touch, associate and directly communicate with Him", here the Imam (as) does not state "He cannot show Himself to the creatures" but instead states "His creatures cannot see, touch, associate and directly communicate with Him", which means that it is the creatures who lack the capacity to experience beatific-vision, for instance just as the inability to observe the Sun with the naked eye is attributed to the perceptive-weakness of the eye itself and not the Sun and hence no one says that "the Sun was not able to show itself to the naked-eye", but instead everyone states that "the eye could not see the Sun", similarly the evil or weakness [فقدان] in terms of the inability to see God or perceive the divine reality through the senses is to be ascribed to man alone. Man's incapacity to experience the Divine lies in the fact that his terrestrial abode lies at the farthest end of the chain of existence [زنجير وجود], being far removed from Absolute-Being and the more remote a thing is from the Fountain of Existence the more diminutive [ضعيف] is its existence, therefore the physical-world by reason of its remoteness from The One is existentially the most diminutive as compared to all the other levels of existence [مراتب وجود]; this incapacity to perceive the Divine is further exacerbated by the human-soul's [نفوس انسانى] being immersed in, and polluted by, dark-matter [مادة] which is the cause of it's becoming negligent and forgetful [غفلة] of its true luminous nature [فطرت] and original-abode; passions and desires [هواء نفسانى], which are a consequence of the soul's association with matter, also lure it away from the Divine.

Divine-Guides be they prophets or Imams are not of this sort, as is also mentioned by the Imam (as) in the following words "they are different from other people - although like them in physical form and shape - in their conditions of discipline and their receiving direct support from Allah, the Most Holy, the Most High and All-wise", it is apparent from the Imams (as) words that the souls of such divine-guides are existentially different from those of ordinary individuals because despite being in matter these guides are able to detach their souls from the world and prevent its immersion in the darkness of matter, thereby avoiding the state of negligence or forgetfulness that results from such immersion; through avoidance of the world, in its dark and evil aspect, and by focusing their inner faculties of perception towards the Divine-Realm [عالم نورانى], these pure-souls [نفس زكية] are able to receive what the Imam (as) calls "direct support from Allah" [تائيد الاهى], in the form of revelation [وحى] and thereby apprehend metaphysical truths [معارف حقة] inaccessible to others.