ONE SEA ONE GOD - the whens, the wheres, the hows and the whys of our world...

The Universe Speaking

I am waiting for the Universe to speak,

And past me, a couple walked by,

The lady wearing bright red heels.

I am waiting for the Universe to speak,

And beneath me, a little kitty curled

Around my feet, looking hungry.

I am waiting for the Universe to speak,

And across the street I see

Two old pensioners talking,

I am waiting for the Universe to speak,

Until finally the Universe replied impatiently,

"Well... what are you waiting for?

Say something.

.

What you speak I speak."

............................

One Sea. We are all here together on the Ocean of God. Some call it the Mercy Ocean, others call it the Ocean of Knowledge. But to me it is the Sea. And you may be swimming close to me, or far on some distant horizon. 

One Lord. According to where we are in the Sea, our perception of the Universe is coloured by when, where, how and why we take knowledge from the Sea. So for some, they become scientists and teachers. Others become firemen, lawyers, doctors and street-cleaners. For the aesthetic gang, they become singers, dancers, writers and poets. The Sea of God is rich beyond count, varied beyond measure, to serve the many fancies and passions of humanity. So whether you become knowledgeable in mathematics and quantum mechanics, so whether you have found the perfect swing and motion to sweep with a broom. Whether you have learned the art of persuasion as a politician or a preacher... in all these knowledge and endeavour... it all comes from the Sea. Thus is His infinite generosity, the Lord of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the believers and the unbelievers... being the only One, being Allah (swt).

Set Adrift

Set adrift in the Sea of Mercy,

Some sail fast and smooth,

Others swim according to their own pace,

A few struggle, unconvinced by the Sea,

While others, give up the fight and surrender,

But regardless, here is all of humanity,

In all its beauty, wonder and infamy.

....................

One Sea. One God. We are all here. It is our choice that colours our world. So let us make this world beautiful, vivid and exciting. Something to remember, sunshine, on  this blessed Friday.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

THE ONE ABSOLUTE TRUTH : THE TRUE ABSOLUTE ONE, about God, the nature of energy and the laws of thermodynamics - The Ramadan Story, Part 17

The One Absolute Truth : The True Absolute One
As the wind blows, so it must dissipate,
As the sapling grows, so it must wither,
As the child is born, so begins his end,
As the Sun burns, so it must, one day, die.

As you throw a ball in the air,
So it will return to you,
For you are the center,
You are the originator,
You are the cause
Of its flight.

O' man, so is it any wonder,
That however far your journey,
However long or fleeting your time here,
You will return to Him?

He who is the Center of all centers!
The Originator of all originators!
The Cause of all causes!

And the longer you are in your mortal shell,
The faster is your journey back,
Gaining speed with each breath,
With each thought that temporarily
Occupies your mind,
Whether it is a distraction
Or musing of your inevitable return...

Until one day, just like the Sun,
You end at your homecoming,
To the One Absolute Truth,
To the True Absolute One,

To the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful,
Most Abiding in His Ministration for you;

"Verily, my servant, I have been thinking of you...
And I know, you have been thinking of Me..."
................................

Scientific Documentaries. When I watch BBC documentaries on the sciences, on nature and on the continuing opening of physical knowledge, I am compelled more and more into believing in God. And perhaps even more importantly, how God has created and continue to create and recreate each and every second that passes in our Universe with breath-taking colour, wonder and vigour. Manifesting His truly unimaginable Love and Wisdom in infinite layers.

What God? As I have said before, some scientists experience and explain God through their scientific discoveries. While other scientists, are convinced that the knowledge they have gained in fact explains away God. But perhaps such is destiny, and the existence of the karmic opposites is a necessary outline, a border by which we distinguish our knowledge, understanding and ultimately, faith.

You know he is smart when he can write and read squiggly mathematical equations.
My own mathematical ability is on par with the Great Apes - One, Two, Many...

Prof Jim. Professor Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey, UK, is a famed theoretical physicist. He is also a well-known broadcaster and writer and has hosted many BBC documentaries on Science. In one fascinating documentary, Jim opened up the important contribution of Muslim scholars during the times of the Baghdad and Spanish Umayad Caliphates, and how these brilliant Muslims affected the world of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and engineering even to this day. But for now, I am keen to share with you another of his documentaries, which is about the nature of energy in the Universe, and how through the natural flow of order to disorder, this world and everything here was enabled and created. You will be exposed to the Laws of Thermodynamics, the history of their discoveries by the great European minds. And at the end Jim even hints at what lay ahead for humanity, involving the creation of a mini-Sun, right here on Earth (Good luck with that). You can watch it by clicking Here.

The above prose 'The One Absolute Truth : The True Absolute One' was written after viewing the documentary. Perhaps after watching it, you will understand why, despite the good Professor not mentioning anything about God at all in this particular program, he still inspired me to think about God and His ordering (and disordering) of this Universe of ours. Fascinating stuff...

Have a lovely day, sunshine.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Jack of all trades, Master of none - knowledge and the path of servanthood

1.      The nature of knowledge

All knowledge is contained

In the Ocean of the Lord,

And if perchance, I appear

To name different types of knowledge,

Know that it is merely because

I have taken a cup from the Ocean,

And man, in their foolishness,

Keep asking me,

“What are you talking about?!”

......................

Universities have deigned to separate knowledge between faculties - the faculties of medicine, physics, biology, history, law, social sciences, astronomy... and the list goes on and on. And further out into society, we are wont to divide between the physical and the spiritual, the material and the metaphysical.

I suppose it is part of the continuing specialization of mankind's knowledge, and the accepted rule that we cannot be a jack of all trades and a master of none. We must be a master of something. We have to master something...

Right?

The answer is blowing in the wind, as an ancient friend tells me...

Servanthood

To be a master 

Is to be a servant

To acquire knowledge

Is to dispossess yourself of yourself

To understand something

Is to become nothing,

Not even a leaf

Blowing in the wind,

A story with no beginning

With no known ending.

.................

Hehehe. Life is full of irony sometimes. 

Have a lovely day, sunshine. May your path take you to the honour of servanthood, an award granted to you that is higher than the highest PHDs available in the divided faculties of our limited human knowledge. For that little prize comes from the treasure trove of the Divine Presence itself.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The Origin of Creation - Divine Sharing of Himself (God)

God the Treasure

A treasure is something which is so lovely to you

And fills you with so much joy

That you wish to share it and not hoard,

Thus, if you have not found such a treasure,

Nor a single thing which you wish to share,

Whether it is a golden coin or a friendly smile,

Then sadly, alas… you have not found God.

.................

Thus it was that the Prophet's saying, much publicised later by the writings of Ibn Arabi and Jelaludin Rumi which encompassed the reason of creation, wherein God said, "I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known..."

God found Himself to be pleasing and a joy unto Himself. But He desired to share Himself and to share the knowledge of His Love, Beauty, Mercy and Power. Thus He created creation, beginning first with the first of creation, the root from which all trunk, tree, branch, flower and fruit of creation blossomed - The Light of Muhammad, the NurMuhammad.

So to share one's joy. To share one's wealth, one's knowledge, one's time, one's food and water, hearth and home... is to mirror the Divine Sharing of God when from some utter state of absolute vacuum, our Lord manifested the infinite ocean of His Imagination, and the infinite ocean of His power.

Alas, does who do not think they own anything to share, when the Prophet himself once said that to cast a smile upon another, is a form of sharing (charity).

The Sun is up, and there is gladness in the air here. Thank you, sunshine, for sharing a little corner of your time today with me.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Patience & Your New Universe of Beautiful Meanings

16. Truth Shaken in the Vessel of Imperfect Reality

Tyranny in spite of liberty,

- because the majority can be tyrannous...

Death in spite of wealth,

- because no money will save you from death...

Pride in spite of poverty,

- because even the most beggarly hovel can house hubris...

Ugly in spite of beauty,

- because vanity spoils all beauty...

Envy in spite of piety.

- because you have gain knowledge but not wisdom...

...............

I must have been ticked off by some event when I recorded this prose many years ago. I really cannot imagine what it was, but if you would simply open your newspaper today, you can easily find at least one story (and probably many more) that, sadly, depicts the prose perfectly.

But no sooner was this poem recorded, an affirmative, hopeful one was written, probably the very next day...

17. Patience

Patience,

Unto me!

A new Universe!

...............

And it is true. For however the world may turn, if we have patience... it is always a brand new world. A new universe of meaning in every breath that we inhale and exhale. And with patience, it is always a good meaning...

As how my father was yesterday. Not even his most loyal friends shall say that Khalid is the most patient person that they know. But yesterday, I accompanied my father to the workshop. We drove there because Adam, his grandson and my nephew, had car problem and had to have the car towed, and so we promised to meet him at the workshop. Because it was rush hour, there was some delay. But there was my father quietly sitting on his walking-stick-cum-stool, as the sun began to set and twilight draws nearer in.

When Adam finally arrived almost an hour late (they got lost) he was distraught with worry and quick to apologise, but surprisingly, his grandfather only assured him, "Don't worry, don't worry. It is not your fault."

A new world

Whether you are an ordinary man, simply waiting for your grandson and the tow-truck, whether you are a stay-at-home mum, a busy businessman, a diskjockey, a Sufi Shaykh or the Caliph of Islam, it is patience that is always the key to peace and happiness. Don't you agree?

A new Caliph

Thank you for coming in, sunshine. Always happy to have you here.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Servanthood, the highest spiritual station

12. I am a servant

I am a servant,

I have no possessions,

And wealth and faith is nothing

But gentle streamlets that course

Between my fingers.

So what can I ever, ever lose?

If you do not wish to lose, if you desire the clear victory, then there is no better station that is offered in the Universe than the station of servanthood. Servanthood in its most complete sense of the word - a servant to God, a servant to Man and Djinn, a servant to the past, present and future, a servant to all created things, living and non-sentients.

The vacancies for servanthood are always open, and it is never fully filled. For many people are deceived by power, wealth and above all, pride. And there are those, like myself, who can understand the value of servanthood, but find it a difficult proposition. For it is a poison chalice to our ego, and we are often subservient to our ego, which makes it nigh impossible to attain servanthood.

The journey to servanthood is a life journey. For such is the challenge. Do not give up, sunshine. For if you would give up, what hope would there be for a sinner like me? Come, let us walk together. Servanthood is waiting. We just need to get there...

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

God is a Good Book Without End - Adam brought Heaven to Earth

I think I know a little bit about God, the Prophet Muhammad, about the prophets before him, about Angels and about Saints. What I don't know is just how little I know. And you know what it feels like? It feels like reading a book without an ending. And that is fine for me. For you know that feelin' when you are reading a great story, and you notice that you are almost coming to the end of the book? Then you start to purposely slow down, reading a page or two a day, trying to extract as much pleasure from the book as possible. Well this maximum-pleasure ceiling does not exist when we are learning God and really, about ourselves. 

I am informed that there is a little piece of heaven in you. For when Adam and Eve was exiled to Earth, he did not only return to the origin of the clay from which he was created. He also brought back the elements of water, fire and air in their secret heavenly forms. You cannnot but be changed if you have lived in heaven for as long as he did. And you cannot but be changed when God breathed His spirit into you, a Compelling Incomparable Love of God, as is recorded in the holy Quran -

When I fashioned him (in due proportion) and breathed into him of My spirit (Verse Sad 38:72)

And when Adam finally died, his soul ascended to the Divine Presence, but the endless heavenly blessings that he brought to Earth remained here. On the ground that we walk on, in the air that we breath, in the water and food that we consume. And perhaps most fundamentally, in ourselves.

Mankind began as clay, a thing of no worth. But God fashioned our ancestor as a potter may fashion clay, but with His immeasurable Love, Delicacy, Beauty and Power. Pretty impressive curriculum vitae for you, sunshine. So do not worry (too much).

Have a lovely day.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

How to change our children for the better - Mankind and Nature of the World

All parents want the best for their kids. It is a feeling common to all, regardless of the colour of our skin or the faith that we believe in. And in this spirit we often want to change our children, how they eat their food (too fast!), how they spend their time (too much video games and cartoons), their lack of interest in school (too easily distracted!) and their diet (too much fast food!). But parents forget that each human being is an individual universe unto him/her self...

21. Society And Time Are…

The cohabitation of individual universes,

Encircling the Sun in an ever diminishing orbit.

Our child is not just our child. He is a small microcosm of the world, just like us. I recall Michael Jackson singing in one of his most thoughtful songs...

"If You Wanna Make The World

A Better Place

Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change"

So if we are gonna ask junior to change, then much like changing the world, we must first be the one to change. After all, as the saying goes...The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Something for Mika

My son,

From the moment 

You came into the world,

You are changing me,

And by changing me

You changed the world.

People often say that

We should leave a better world

For our children.

But in my case,

I am certain to have

Left a better world

Simply because you

were born.

God bless all our children, sunshine.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

In the Temple of Godly Contemplation, we are all strangers

...To be lost amongst the many in worship of the One,...

I am a stranger here
I do not sing because it is my desire,
But the song impels me to sing it,
I do not write because it is my desire,
But the words impels me to write them,
I do not speak of love and beauty
As a foreign idea in the Universe,
For I am the foreign body,
While the Universe itself is
An embodiment of Love and Beauty...

We are the strangers here
In the Temple of Godly Contemplation,
For no created thing causes 
So much discordance as man.

So I write and sing to blend in,
To be lost amongst the many
In worship of the One,

Playing the darbuka,
Singing the salawat,
To end my exile from God,
And find peace in this world
As His guest, while waiting
For God to pluck me like a pearl
From the oceans of His Own Conception.

Glossary 
Darbuka is a drum.
Salawat are recitations and songs in praise of the Prophet Muhammad.

Have a musical day, sunshine.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

The Speed of Light & the Speed of God - Scientific Discoveries and the Holy Quran

31. Holy Scriptures & Scientific Discoveries

True revelation is not

The enemy of Science,

True revelation predates

And is the herald of all

Scientific discovery

In any given time.

While it may serve some purpose

That a scientific discovery

Is correlated to a scripture,

It is not the end of the story.

For the meaning of a scripture

Grows and is given more and more

In its infinite exactitude

With each passing second,

So long as the Lord of the scripture

Does not stop creating

And recreating according

To His Will.

SPEED OF LIGHT. The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. There it is. Who says you don't learn nothin' in the almanac. But this sacrosanct speed, for the very longest time thought to be the highest speed capable to be achieved (at least in this world) is now being questioned. To quote a recent Reuters bulletin -

Einstein

GENEVA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light -- a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.
Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.
"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."
If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.
That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

OH, WAIT A MINUTE. So it appears that these sub-atomic particles (known as neutrinos) were shot from Cern towards Gran Sasso, a distance of 500 miles. But they refused to keep under Einstein's speed limit of light, arriving at 60 billionth of a second quicker than a beam of light. Those damn neutrinos, why are they in such a hurry? So the scientific community is in a state of upheaval, but advising people not to jump to conclusions until the speed can be double (and probably triple) verified. But if proven true, this discovery shall have a great impact on Einstein's theory of special relativity and its application.

Little Einsteins

SCIENTIFIC VALIDATION OF RELIGIOUS TEXT. The al-Quran is known by many names, the Criterion and also the Book of the Universe. And it is in respect of the last epitaph that the above prose is concerned with. For it is historical and present fact that there have been many, many scientific discoveries that are reflected in the holy scriptures. So the "Gosh, How could anyone have known back then!" impact is there. And I guess for some people, such verification of the sanctity of the holy book with modern science is important. And I also mimicked them in my appreciation of the Quran as a genuine bona fide word of God.

GOD'S CONTINUING CREATION. But whatever scientific validation is important only at the point in time when it was discovered. For I believe that the Book, being a miraculous creation (just like us) continues to disclose its secrets through time, disassembling scientific truths and revealing new scientific truths as God wills according to His plan. The Universe doesn't stop changing, being created and recreated with the Love, Delicacy of Touch and Supreme Confidence of the Almighty. It is kinda like God going, "You think that is great? Wait till you see this!"

I wish I was a scientist. Or a mathematical progeny. Then maybe I would be able to string chemical formulas and mathematical equations to show the Unity of Design that is often the clue to the Divine origin of this Universe. But whatever IQ we possess, we cannot walk through this world without feeling humbled by the sheer diversity, beauty and wonder that is the natural world. Often I would turn to the night sky and ask God Himself, "O' Lord, where do I fit in this Divine Equation?"

I am still waiting for the answer. Have you found yours?

wa min Allah at-taufiq