Allah is singular in His essence with no partner, Unique with no equivalent, Absolute, no opposite has He, Alone without peer. He is beginningless without predecessor, perpetual of being without end, singularly sustaining everything without stop. He is not victim to termination or cessation, or to the elapsing of spans or the passing of interims. Rather He is the First and the Last; the Outward and the Inward – and He has knowledge of everything.
He is not a body with form, nor is He a confined or quantifiable substance. He does not resemble bodies in quantifiably or divisibility. Rather He resembles nothing existent, nor does anything existent resemble Him. There is absolutely nothing like Him, nor is He like anything. No measure confines Him, no space contains Him, no direction encompasses Him, nor do the heavens surround Him.
He is above everything until the farthest reaches of the stars – an above-ness that does not increase His nearness to the heavens; rather He is exalted in degree above the heavens to the same extent that He is exalted in degree above the depths of the earth. Notwithstanding, He is near to all existence, and He is nearer to the bondsman than his jugular vein. His nearness, however, no more resembles the nearness of bodies one to another than His essence resembles the essences of bodies.
He is too sublime that space should encompass Him, as He is too hallowed that time should restrict Him. Rather He was, before He created time and space, and He is now as He was always. He is separate from His creation by His attributes. He is transcendentally holier than to be subject to change and movement. Rather He remains in His qualities of absolute majesty, not subject to abating, and in His qualities of perfection with no need of increase.
He is Living, Almighty, Irresistible, Overpowering; deficiency does not affect Him nor does incapacity. “No slumber can seize Him nor sleep.”11 Extinction and death do not counteract Him. He is possessed of absolute dominion, sovereignty, and grandeur; to Him is creation and command.
He is matchless in creating and beginning, solitary in causing existence and originating. He creates all beings and their acts, decrees their sustenance and spans. Nothing possible is outside His grasp, and He is never detached from the absolute governing of all affairs. His abilities cannot be enumerated, and His knowledge is boundless.
He knows all things knowable, encompassing all that transpires between the depths of the earths to the ends of the universe. Nothing of an atom’s weight in the earth and the heavens escapes His Knowledge; rather He knows the creeping of a black ant across a soundless stone on a lightless night. He knows the movement of the particles on a windy day. He knows the hidden and what is beyond. He presides over the thoughts of the conscience, the movements of the cerebrations, and the recondite subtleties of the psyche, with a beginningless, eternal Knowledge that has been with Him forever.
He is the willer of all that exists, and He is the director of all that occurs. Nothing occurs in the seen or unseen world, be it minimal or abundant, small or large, good or evil, beneficial or harmful, of belief or disbelief, knowledge or ignorance, triumph or ruin, increase or decrease, obedience or defiance, except by His decree, foreordainment, command, and volition. What He wills is, and what He does not will is not.
A servant has no escape from disobeying Him except through His conferred success and mercy; he has no power to obey Him except through His assistance and will. If all of mankind united together to move or retard a single atom in the universe without His will and volition, they would be unable to do so.
He hears and He sees. No audible thing, however faint, escapes His hearing, and no visible thing, however minute, is hidden from His sight. Distance does not impede His hearing and darkness does not obstruct His seeing. His attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation to the same extent that His essence does not resemble the essences of creation.
Everything other than Him is an originated thing that He created by His power from nothingness, since He existed in eternity alone and there was nothing whatsoever with Him. He originated creation thereafter as a manifestation of His power and as a realization of His preceding Will, not because He had any need of it.
He is Magnanimous in creating and in imposing obligations upon His creation; He is not compelled to do it by necessity. He is Gracious in beneficence and reform, though not through any need. Munificence and Kindness, Beneficence and Grace are His. He rewards His believing worshipers for their acts of obedience according to generosity and encouragement rather than according to their merit and obligation, for there is no obligation upon Him in any deed towards anyone. Tyranny is inconceivable in Him, for there is no right upon Him towards anyone.
God is eternal. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. The theists (which would include Muslims) believe that these are but just some of the attributes of God.
This means God has no beginning and no end. God is not controlled by His power, but has complete control over it. God knows all things, which can be known, past, present, and future.
These are amongst the many attributes of God, which all theists whether they are Jews, Christians or Muslims agree on (who says that the Jews, Christians and Muslims can’t come to an agreement?).
Theists also believe that in the beginning God created the entire universe, with us humans in it. And theists believe that all this will come to an end one day — the end of time or akhirat (akhir meaning the end).
Going by this belief, that means God also created time. Time exists because God created the beginning and the end. If there were no beginning and no end then time would not exist.
Now, God is not subjected to His creations. In fact, the reverse is true. His creations are subject to God. God has absolute power and control over His creations. And this would, of course, mean time as well.
Going by this belief it would make sense since God is eternal. There is a beginning and an end for the entire universe. But there is no beginning and no end for God. We live and we die. God does not live and die. God is eternal.
Okay, so if God is eternal and there is no beginning and no end for God, and if God is not subjected to His creation, in this case time, where does God exist then? Does God exist within or outside time?
If God exists within time, which is His creation, then this means He is subjected to His creation, which is time. If God is not subjected to His creation, which is time, then God certainly has to exist outside time. That means time does not exist for God. It only exists for us. That is why we live and we die. We have a beginning and we have an end. There is no beginning and no end for God. God does not die. God is eternal.
In that case, since time does not really exist, where do we humans exist then? We existed in the past (yesterday). We exist in the present (today). And we may exist in the future if we do not die tonight (tomorrow). But God did not exist yesterday (because there is no time for God). God will not exist tomorrow (for the same reason). God only exists today (ever present).
This means that yesterday and tomorrow do not exist. What exists is only today. In fact, even today does not exist because today would be 24 hours and 24 hours is also time. So even today does not exist. What does exist is just one single point in time.
If there is no such thing as time but we feel we are living in time (we have a beginning and we have an end) that means what we feel is merely an illusion. Time does not exist so therefore we also do not exist in time. We exist in just one point in time, not throughout time.
What is Religion? What is different Religions then? What is True Education & Intelligence?
What is Religion?
True religions possess two important limbs, namely, its philosophy and its ritualistic injunctions. Mere ritualism, bereft of philosophy is only superstition, while bare philosophy without ritualistic practices tantamount to madness. Both the aspect should go hand in hand.
Philosophy reinforces the external practices of rituals and gives them a purpose and goal for realization.Together, they bring out the meaning, significance and purpose of religion.
Philosophy is the theoretical aspect of religion which, with scientific and rational analysis, elucidates the why and where for of life and universe and contains a coherent system of thought for interpreting the reality. Ritualistic injunctions deal with the practical aspect of the religion and lay down the spiritual practices to be followed for reaching the ultimate goal in life.
Religion, therefore, is a happy and intelligent blending of philosophy and ritualism. If the two aspects are not synchronized properly, there can be no religion.
Unfortunately, however, man commits the blunder of projecting one of these two aspects and calls it religion and attributes its decadence and failure to religion as such.
What is different Religions then?
Religions are like so-many paths leading to the same goal, i.e., God. Man reaches his religious goal when he attains his highest moral development. All religions are true. God can be reached by different religions. It can be explained like this. Many rivers flow by many ways but they fall into the sea and begins at the sea.. All are one in the sea (god). A truly religious man should think that other religions also are paths leading to truth. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions.
Why do relatives or parents get angry when I say that I want to follow another religion?
The main reason being they are attached to their own religion and they think it is the best in the world. Furthermore, they want you to adhere to their particular manner of thinking, to their group, their race, their class; and ALSO, if you follow another religion you would become a nuisance, a trouble to family.
What happens when you leave one organized religion to other? Have you not merely moved to another prison? As long as mind clings to a belief, it is held in prison. What is important to see is that when you take up another religion you have merely taken on a new set of dogmas in place of the old. You might be little more active, a little more this or that; you are still in the prison of belief and dogma. So, don’t exchange religion, which is merely a revolt within the prison, but break through prison walls and find out for your self what is god, what is truth. That has meaning. But merely going from one prison to another and quarrel about which prison is better – this is a child game. Only the man who is free of belief can discover that which lies beyond all belief, which is immeasurable.
“”Swami Vivekananda wrote: If you want to be religious, enter not the gate of any organized religion. They do a hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of each one's individual development. … Religion is only between you and your God, and no third person must come between you. Think what these organized religions have done!
What Napoleon was more terrible than those religious persecutions? If you and I organize, we begin to hate every person. It is better not to love, if loving only means hating others. That is no love. That is hell! If loving your own people means hating everybody else, it is the quintessence of selfishness and brutality, and the effect is that it will make you brutes. [The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume I,Topic 'The Gita III']
What is True Education & Intelligence?
Intelligence is the capacity to think freely, without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to think for yourself what is real, what is true; but if you are frightened you will never be intelligent. Where there is fear, there is no intelligence. Revolt against everything – against tradition, against organized religion, against the present rotten society. Find out for yourself what is true. Not to imitate but to discover – That is education.
We see the world is caught up in endless wars; it is guided by politicians who are always seeking power; it is a world of ambitious men and women all wanting position and all fighting each other to get it. There are also so-called saints, the religious gurus with their followers; they also want power, position, here or in next life. It is a mad world, completely confused. Everybody is against somebody struggling to arrive at a safe place, a position of power or comfort. The world is torn by conflicting beliefs, by caste and class distinctions, by separate nationalities by every form of stupidity and cruelty.
Don’t take it for granted that this is orderly society. If you see decay, you have a challenge: You are challenged to find a way of solving this urgent problem. And how you respond to the challenge is important.
Conclusion: God is everywhere but he is most manifest in Human. So serve Human as God. That is as good as worshiping God.
– Vineeth Menon