Chapter Qaf- Part 8

Qaf, part 8

Recap-

50:20 “And the trumpet is blown, that is the Promised day.”

“Soor” is traditionally understood as “trumpet”.  There are some great scholars who read this verse in a different way, it may seem a bit technical. These scholars read and understood this word to mean “forms,” i.e. the outward appearance of the things. The angel blows the life according to the command of the Creator into the “forms,” which are a physical matter.

Let’s try to understand what an outward appearance of something means.  When a human being is blown into a body, or life is given to the body, i.e., the spirit is breathed into the body, the body awakens.  In other words, the dead body becomes alive, and the spirit starts functioning and is blown into the body.

It is a symbolic meaning that when the angel breathes the Life Giving quality of the Creator into material, that is the angelic side of the body or matter.  In other words, each action of God has a conscious representative.  Example: I have red ink and a piece of paper.  I start writing.  As I write words consciously, the meaning is blown into this figure.  Let us apply it to updated technology.  I put my hand on the keyboard and the screen displays wordings that have meaning when I read.  We are communicating with the meaning, and I understand the meaning.  As a conscious being I am communicating with the meaning that is the life of the ink and the piece of paper.  

It is strange for the materialistic mind to see that the meaning has no material entity, but it exists.  Again, when I communicate with matter, it is as if a conscious being is speaking to me.  Although, in the example above, it is a dead dot/collection of dots/signs on the screen.  In the whole experience of texting someone, it is as if my conscious command is transferred into the screen, then it becomes a conscious meaning to me and others reading it.  In other words, it becomes as if a conscious being is speaking to me and I understand what it says, a conscious communication between me and the sentence on the screen is continuing.  This conscious thing/entity/being that is communicating with me is described in the vocabulary of all monotheistic religions as “angels”.  In Islamic literature, they are labelled as the angelic side of creation.  

When the form or material side of anything (or the screen from the example above) is blown meaning by angels (known as Israfeel in Islamic literature and Raphael in Hebrew tradition), it starts communicating with me.  That is, I am communicating with a living being.  My spirit understands what the angel says, and it is a conscious deliberate sentence displayed on the screen.   How can we reduce existence to a material being only?  

A person whose mind is open to the material world communicates with the meaning transferred by its Writer/Creator/Maker and we can easily understand that this communication is a mutual conscious communication between me and the conscious representative of the meaning of the matter’s qualities.  I become aware that I am communicating with the Angelic side of the creation.  This is a wonderful way of understanding the universe.

It becomes easy for anyone with no bias attitude to open the possibility that there may be an entity which is not material, but something else, and is a conscious means of communicating between me and that entity/creature.  Meaning is a created being.  In other words, an angel is a created being, employed to convey what is in my mind to be represented on a piece of paper/screen.  If I read a note on a paper or do not read it, the meaning is always there.  Whenever I turn to it and start communicating with it, it transfers the meaning again to me and I grasp it.  

That is why the Angel Israfeel blowing into the trumpet means that life and therefore conscious meaning is blown into matter/body, and it becomes alive as a conscious being/animal/plant or anything else.  According to their capacity, everything becomes alive and that is called “resurrection”.  

When Angel Israfeel blows the spirit into beings according to the will of the Creator, Angel Gabriel turns it into a meaningful communication, a conscious communication.  That is why all the meanings and messages are presented to us (human beings) through the actions of Israfeel and Gabriel, and all the meanings that are presented in the plants and animals are through the actions of Angel Michael.

These are the names of the representatives of different aspects of creation, how the creation takes place. Example: rain comes.  In Islamic tradition it is understood as the responsibility of the Angel Michael created by God.  The meaning is the manifestation and functioning of the Angel Gabriel employed by God.  When the spirit is blown into figures, that is through Angel Israfeel.  When death comes as per the will of God, that is the responsibility of the death Angel Azrail who executes the Command/will of God (amr).

According to the teachings of the Quran, a wonderful world appears, functioning of the different Angels is always taking place in the creation of the universe because my life yesterday is dead.  The Angel Israfeel took it away from me.  Today, I am given a new life and Israfeel blew the life into my body when I woke up in the morning.  There are beautiful descriptions of the Prophetic sayings here: “Every morning, the life that is blown into the body represents the resurrection in our lives.”  What a beautiful description of life where everything is meaningful and consciously performed and we can see that Israfeel has blown into the form of our body (blown into the Trumpet).  Waking up in the morning is a big event for me because my body becomes alive, representing and reminding me of Resurrection!  Every moment, life is given and taken.  In our living, there is consciousness and living.  I listen to you, and you listen to me, and we get the message between us, that is the function of Angel Gabriel to convey.

The Prophet gets the wording of the message and I get the actions of the Prophet including the meaning in it.  The meaning that I receive from the beings is carried and transferred to me by Gabriel.  The Angels are always at work.  All the inspirations that come in as meaning is also a communication with Angels which execute the Will of the Creator God.

In our daily experiences we know that I am continuously given death and life.  Angel Israfeel is always functioning, and Angel Gabriel is always communicating the meaning to me.  Angel Michael is always managing with the animal and plant life, always providing sustenance with the command of God for the plants, animals, and human life (plant side).  Our plant side is hair, nails, and body.  The animal life is the digestive system, nervous system, and heart system.  All the Angels are constantly busy with us.  Today is another life and existence.

You are always receiving the actions and messages from Gabriel within your capacity.  The Prophets received the function of Gabriel not for their own capacity but to be distributed to the whole of humanity.  That is a special kind of function of the Angel Gabriel.  

What are we doing in this world?  We are continuously being subject to the actions of Angels.  The whole universe is presenting the different functions of the Angelic activities and we are always living in a meaningful world.  That is how we should make our life alive, meaningful, and worth living.  However, we suffer from pain sometimes, i.e., the Angel Gabriel brings the news to us, always reminding us of our reality in this universe in various ways that we cannot be the source of existence of anything and we are only needy creatures.  

In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the concept of the Holy Spirit should be understood as the functions of the angels. If understood in this way it would be correct.  There is a Holy Spirit functioning in the world which is the function of the Angel Gabriel, continuously bringing us messages and the function of the Angel Israfeel continuously announcing the resurrection through life and death, change in our life.  We are all under the work of these Angels, with the constant motion going on in our bodies as well.  We are constantly being renewed in our lives, which is called “change”.  Who is changing us?  Is your yesterday’s body giving existence to your today’s body?  No, it receives the message from the Angel Israfeel at the will of God to go and disappear from the physical universe, and the Angel keeps a record of it.  The collection of these records is going to be presented to me in my life, and when we think about our past, we are reading our recordings.

• Misconception: Holy Spirit is not an aspect of God, rather a command of God.  We should not turn an Angelic aspect into a form of God.  Similarly, the Prophets are not an aspect of God, rather they are created receivers of God’s message.

• God is Absolute and we cannot give any form to God.
• God is Absolute and we cannot describe it with an appearance on Earth.

• These are the misinterpretations of the reality of this universe:

• Angels= Holy Spirit
• Prophets=  Jesus Christ
• God= Independent Being who is the Creator of the holy spirit and the Prophet Jesus.

• The Creator is an Absolute Being and everything comes from it and it is represented in this transient ever changing fleeting world by the functioning of Angels in order for us to communicate with the Creator of the universe through these meaningful actions.
• These meaningful actions are conscious actions, and we communicate through these conscious actions represented by Angels which are created beings and not an aspect of God at all.
• When we look at the screen of our laptop, they are consciously communicating Angels there in the created form, nothing to do with God’s appearance or another aspect.  We cannot give any Divine appearance to anything here.

When we conclude something to be Absolute, we cannot imagine it, but we can understand that such a being must exist.

Comment: Why are Angels necessary?

Suwar is plural of soorah which means form.  I am transferring knowledge to you that is in my mind and you are receiving it through your tools and transferring it to your consciousness as meaning.  In other words, what is in my mind is being installed in your mind.  That is a way of communication.  If I do not speak, can the air waves create meaning and transfer them to  you?  No. When I speak, some meaning is transferred to you and you receive as much as I reveal.  This transformation from Absolute Knowledge to a limited created form is transferred through something “a means of airwaves” to you.  That is how creation takes place and that is how God presents this type of creation as an example to the human mind to understand how the Absolute Being is revealing His Knowledge, Wisdom, Power and all qualities altogether manifested in created form through something.  This something is described in the Quran as “angels”.  These are created means to communicate with me, and that is how the Absolute communicates with me.

• The condescending of the Absolute Being to my capacity (tanazzul).

Comment: Angels are the filters through which the names/qualities of God are translated and transformed from their Absolute state into a form that we can grasp.  The filter is needed by us, not God.

Indeed.  For you to understand what is in my mind, airwaves are needed to communicate.  This is God’s order and form of creation.  Otherwise, I cannot communicate with Absolute.  

• Think: If God can communicate with us, why does He create the world and gives us the capacity to think about our existence?

Under the influence of global secular education, we deprived ourselves from seeing the world as a compilation of meaning.  Now we see matter, measure it, and come with conclusions that nature is in charge.  We lost the spirit of the universe.  We lost the Angelic side of matter.  We lost our friends Angels.  Some scholars called the universe their brothers.  You bring the message to me, and I receive the message through you.  You serve me, and that is how I respect you.  There is a respectful relationship between me and the universe if we follow the teaching of the Qur’an.

Now, in the secular mind, we exploit things, and we are not brothers anymore.  Example: Farmers cultivate the land to get products with the understanding that they are exploiting the land, not that the land is employed by the Creator to serve us as our created brothers.  Everyone is exploiting the resources of the universe and they say that this is for human enjoyment.  Example: we imprison the animals in our homes for our entertainment.  Human ego and caprices want to get more and more things to dominate over other people.  People are suffering from the lack of conscious communication with the created world, people are suffering from loneliness, and complaining that no one listens to them.  We have become dead of heart.  The universe is speaking at every moment, and I am not listening because I think that existence consists of matter only.  Example:  Our great grandmothers would enjoy communicating with plants and flowers in the garden.  

• The universe is a conscious being and the Creator of the universe speaks to us through the universe, and that is the message that revelation conveys to us that we are not dead beings, our consciousness and the consciousness of the universe is alive.  The angelic aspect of the universe represents the consciousness of the universe. In the eye of a secularist person, a mountain is dead.  In the eye of the messenger of God, a mountain is alive. The prophet is narrated to have said: “We love Mount Uhud, and Mount Uhud loves us.” Environment consciousness can only be meaningful for human beings when it is based on these prophetic teachings. Otherwise, it will be reduced only for the material benefit of human beings which satisfies only the bodily side of us.

We need to come to our senses and educate our spirit.  We need to follow the moral teachings that we know about, that is necessary but essentially, we need a living conscious universe, so we are communicating with the Angels all the time.  Hence, my world is a conscious world if I receive and thus apply the message of the Quran properly.

Every moment Angels are functioning, and God’s command is coming.  Every Angel is functioning at every moment.  The meaning side of the universe is represented by Angels, which are spiritual beings (ruh-ul-quddus) or Holy Spirit, represented by Angel Gabriel.  Essentially it is correct but describing it or giving it a form of an aspect of God is impossible because to attribute any created  being to the Absolute Being would be logically contradictory.  All the Prophets spoke the word of God and introduced the message to me.