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One Without a Second by Karim
One Without a Second
by Karim
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Towards the One
There is only ‘One.’ In Islam the surah al-Ikhlas (112) says,
“God is One without a second”
The Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty
Nothing on this earth or in this whole universe lasts for more than a moment, but in that moment, and the next, is the fullest expression of this ‘love, harmony, and beauty that is possible now, and now, and now again, to infinity.
The Only Being
One (without a second, always, One without a second)
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Only in and through this divine essence manifesting again, and again, and again, do we find, come to know of these “Illuminated souls,” for – as has been said in a famous Hadith Qudsi (Divinely Inspired saying of the Prophet Muhammed) – “My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am the hearing with which he hears, the seeing with which he sees, the hand with which he [grasps] and the foot with which he walks. [Related by al-Bukhari].
It is they who leave these “Tracks in a Pathless Land,” for it is they who more perfectly translate the Forms found within the Names of God into living, moving, holding, seeing, hearing, and breathing, Form (manifestations of the One).
Only in this way does the “Hidden Jewel Who Wished to be Known” come closest to the “Knowledge of Himself to Himself.”
Once more a hadith (saying of the Prophet) comes to our aid:
I was a hidden treasure and I wished to be known, so I created a creation (human kind) in order to be known.
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“Truth,” the seer Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “Is a Pathless Land, no-one can take you there,” and he was right, however he makes clear also that there is a way that this Truth can be made known, approached, by anybody willing to climb the mountain to find It. He put it this way (in a famous speech he gave in Holland in 1929 made when he dissolved the “Order of the Star,” the movement within the Theosophical Society created to launch him as “the World Teacher”):
“Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley…”.
Clearly this idea of “Truth” belonging on the mountaintop is a metaphor which attempts to translate in yet another Form something which is ultimately indescribable , but it effectively tells us something very, very, important. For those willing to put in the required effort, to shut out the noise of this world as the only form they attend to in their lives, this ascent is possible if they have this burning desire to know, to reach beyond the wall, so-to-speak, and for those few – necessarily few because one must be willing to give this degree of effort, one’s whole life – the mountain can be climbed, these “paths” do manifest to them, and they can reach out and touch, know, hear, see, and walk with this “Truth”.
Thus we are brought back to Inayat’s “Invocation”
And then we may be said to begin to walk more closely into being (embodiment) this “One without a second.” The “Hidden Jewel Who wished to be known.”
Never, never, perfectly, for we are still yet human beings – not God – but drawing ever closer to this ideal.
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