Ep 17 — The Mission (Bi'that) in Prophethood

Session 15: The Mission (Bi'that) in Prophethood. Thursday, 11 Mehr 1353 / 16 Ramadan al-Mubarak 1394 Surat al-'Alaq (96:1-8). Read in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging clot. Read, and your Lord is the most generous — who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know. No indeed! Truly man transgresses when he sees himself self-sufficient. Truly, to your Lord is the return. Here is the subject of our talk today. The moment the burden of messengership (risalat) and prophethood (nubuwwat) is placed upon the prophet's shoulders, after he receives the message of God — what state, what condition, comes into being within him and in the world around him? We are not greatly concerned here with the prophet's own inner qualities and conditions. We raise the matter to draw a subtle, precise benefit from an ordinary, common word that is present in the Qur'an and in the usage of the religiously learned — a word that, incidentally, illuminates for us one dimension of the question of prophethood. You know that in the Qur'an, whenever there is talk of a prophet's coming, generally the talk is of his bi'that — his being commissioned and sent forth. As the verse says: We raised up a messenger in every nation. We commissioned Moses, Abraham, and the other prophets. Bi'that — what does this bi'that mean? And what is the relationship between bi'that and prophethood? Today's discussion is titled "The Bi'that in Prophethood." Within prophethood there is a bi'that. What does bi'that mean? What is this bi'that? If within prophethood there is a bi'that, to whom does this bi'that belong, what is it, what is its benefit, and so on? Bi'that means a being-roused, a being-stirred-up. What does being-roused mean? It means motion — movement after lethargy, slackness, and stagnation. Take a dead person who has lain for years in some graveyard, whose bodily parts have become dust: when by the power of the Lord he rises up on the Day of Resurrection, they say he has been raised up. As the verse says: This is the Day of the Raising-up. It is the day of being-roused. Picture a human being who had been asleep in his house, or who in the ordinary course of social life merely moved along — in whom there was no fervor, no striving, no activity, nothing contrary to the customary state of society. He was in reality like a plank of wood, like a lifeless plant, like a wisp of straw cast upon the ordinary flood of society, which carried him this way and that. Then he comes to himself. He emerges from this state of indifference. He senses that this path, this natural current, this ordinary stream, need not necessarily be one hundred percent reassuring and convincing to him — that perhaps another current can be sought out, one that will bring him to the destination of felicity. And when, as a result of these thoughts, he awakens, becomes alert, finds striving, finds movement — this human being, they say, has been raised up. In smaller, more particular examples: when you awaken from sleep and rise, you say "he was roused." When you come out of slackness, laziness, and lethargy and busy yourself with movement, they say "he was roused." This is the meaning of being-roused; ba'th means this. The Day of Resurrection, as you know, is called "Yawm al-Ba'th," the day of being-roused, or in another expression, the Day of Rising. The Rising — that day of standing up, that day of coming out of slackness and listlessness, that day of movement, the day on which human beings, from the moment they emerge from the grave until the moment their final destiny is determined, are continually in striving, in agitation, in movement: this is what they call Yawm al-Ba'th, the Rising. In prophethood there exists exactly such a state. I want your vision of prophethood to become a fundamentally new one. Some imagine prophethood like this: a preacher enters a city to expound for its people a few matters of religion or of something else; or a teacher of religious rulings rises up among a people to tell them a few subsidiary points of law; or some orator — a rabble-rouser — enters a gathering to stir up a bit of clamor and hold a rally. They usually imagine the prophet to be a person of this sort — a learned, clerical, well-bred man among a group of people. Except that these people, too, sometimes recognize his worth — these are the good folk, and they are called believers; and sometimes they do not — these become unbelievers, and they are called polytheists. This is the kind of thing we have imagined the prophet to be. But in prophethood there is a transformation, an upheaval — indeed two of them. The first is in the very being of the prophet himself. The bi'that — the rising, the revolution, the transformation — first comes into being within the inner depths and essence of the prophet, within his own inner self. First he is changed; first he emerges from the state of stagnation. A resurrection is set up within his spirit. A rising comes into being within the soul of the prophet. All the brimming reserves God deposited within him are awakened — like a spring from which, at every instant, billions of streams of water are drawn forth and pour out, though before this instant all those waters lay hidden within it. In short, the prophet himself becomes a Muslim; he himself comes under the influence of the transformation of divine revelation. Then this very spring, this very transformation, this very fervor, this very revolution, this very rising pours out from that overflowing, surging fountain that is the spirit and inner self of the prophet into society; it is transmitted into the very text of human society. After a transformation has come into being within him, a transformation comes into being in society. After a mighty rising has been set up within his inner self, a still mightier rising is set up within the text of society. After a revolution has come into being within his heart, by his hand a revolution comes into being in society, and the bi'that in its true sense is realized. So you see that in prophethood, whatever there is, is fervor and transformation and upheaval and rousing and being-roused. What is the prophet's condition before prophethood? Concerning the life of every prophet before prophethood, two points exist that seem to contradict each other. When I say "contradictory," I do not mean there is a real contradiction; it may merely appear so. The first is that the prophet, even before he is commissioned, possesses very strong and deep human reserves — more than the rest of the people. His capacity for understanding, for movement, for outburst is not comparable to that of others. And his capacity for the worship and servitude of God, his readiness to be God's servant, reaches a degree inconceivable for other people. All the reserves that draw a person out of the abasement of being mere dust and raise him to the summit of Truly we belong to God, and truly to Him we return — that is, of being a true servant of God, adorned with the character-traits of God — all these are present in the prophet more than in others. Now, why do they hold more than others do? Did God commit some injustice here, some act of discrimination? That is a separate matter, and to it we can offer a brief, summary reply: in the end, to bear the burden of prophethood, a heavier, stouter frame and a more powerful reserve was required. The burden of messengership is no penny-trifle of a task. To carry the burden of prophethood — to convey God's message to the people and transform a society from one of ignorance (jahili) into one of monotheism (tawhidi) — is a task of enormous magnitude, and in the end some group must bear it. Who will bear it? Ordinary people? Or someone who, by virtue of his environment, family, climate, and kin, possesses greater capacities and greater possibility? Because God sees the greater possibilities in this being, He helps him, grants him grace, bestows favor upon him, and places at his disposal every means of nurturing, so that two hundred maunds of burden may rest upon a hundred maunds of the prophet's bone — He makes of him a person ready for this work. In the end, had the Messenger of God not taken up this heavy burden, it would have stayed on the ground, because lifting it was not the work of you and me. It was not the work of Gandhi and Lumumba to lift; it was not the work of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. A frame more powerful than all these frames is necessary to lift this heavy burden — which is named messengership and prophethood and bi'that — and the detail of this, of course, runs very deep. The prophet lives among the people with reserves such as these. This was the summary of the first point: that the reserves in the prophet, in the messenger, are more brimming, richer, deeper, and more usable than the reserves of ordinary people. The second point is this: before the bi'that, before prophethood, the prophet is, in the ordinary course of life, a companion and partner of the people; they are moving along in one and the same current. From the beginning he is not preoccupied with thinking, "What shall I do to overturn this society?" He may well be discontented — and indeed he is. An intelligent person is, of course, discontented with the class division of his time, with the ignorance of his time, with the poverty, the oppression, the foolishness — and, to put it in Islamic terms, with the jahiliyya (state of ignorance) of his time; discontented he certainly is. But this discontent stays at the level of discontent. It does not rise to the level of bringing about a transformation, a revolution, of forging a path that runs counter to the ordinary social path. You see Moses son of 'Imran — peace and blessings upon him — living in Pharaoh's house. As one of the elders of years past put it, he was eating Pharaoh's pilaf and roast, even playing the young nobleman; and in the marketplace, out of zeal for the lineage of the Children of Israel and for those who believed in his idea, he even kills a man. Later, on his way back from Shu'ayb and Midian, he is commissioned there to prophethood and messengership — and about that killing he says: …and I was among those who go astray. What does "I was astray" mean? It means: I had not yet found this path that runs precisely counter to the ordinary path of the Pharaonic society of that age. It does not mean that killing one of the Pharaoh's men is a sin — no, not at all. He means: on the day I killed him, I was not a person pursuing a correct revolutionary orientation out of a definite idea. I was a man among other men; I was a walker among other walkers; I was striving, mixed in with the strivings of others; I was moving, alongside the movements of others. Today my path has changed; today I condemn that general movement and that collective course of society. Today I have become a person who sets up a rising in society. When? After the bi'that. Take the Noble Prophet himself — God's blessings be upon him and his Family. The verse of the Sura "By the Forenoon" makes the matter quite clear. (It is in the mimeographed handout; and I will explain it now.) The commentators have said various things here, and there are also narrations beneath the Sura, which I examined: the narrations are interpretation (ta'wil), not exegesis (tafsir). What the narration beneath the noble Sura "By the Forenoon" says — like ninety percent of the narrations beneath the verses of the Qur'an — is not exegesis of the apparent wording. The apparent wording gives its own meaning, which we will now explain and which we wrote there. The narration is ta'wil: it adds a point to the points of this verse; the verse itself is otherwise clear. The Imam — peace and blessings upon him — does not wish to construe the apparent wording of the verse against its plain sense. Rather, that plain sense stays preserved in its place, and he wishes to add something. What you and I miss in an ordinary glance at the verse, the Imam — peace be upon him — teaches us; this is what is called ta'wil. Part of this very discussion is that our recitation today is "By the Forenoon." By the forenoon. By the brightness of the mid-morning. Al-duha means before noon. Notice: this oath itself is meaningful; this very swearing by that time carries meaning. Perhaps there is an allusion in it. Since the discourse is about the bi'that and messengership of the Prophet, this "forenoon" alludes to that light which, through the bi'that of the Prophet of Islam and the prophethood of Islam, encompassed all the horizons of the world. By the forenoon, and by the night when it grows still. By the night, when its darkness covers all the horizons. Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He despise you. After revelation had begun and a period had passed, it was cut off. The Prophet had been roused within; fervor and excitement had risen in him; he had grown intimate with the bearer of God's revelation, Gabriel — and now, suddenly, he sees that the revelation has stopped. He was struck with grief. How long did the fatra, the interval, last? Some have said forty days, others up to two or three years. Then the Sura "By the Forenoon" comes — the first Sura of glad tidings addressed to the Noble Prophet: Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He despise you. Your Lord did not abandon you, did not cast you off, did not grow angry with you. And surely the Hereafter is better for you than the former [life\.] The future is better for you than the past; the end of your affair is better than its beginning. And surely your Lord will give to you, and you will be satisfied. Your Lord will give to you as much as will make you well-pleased. There is a narration beneath it that what is meant is intercession (shafa'at) — and that is correct, too. Intercession is one of the things given to the Prophet of God, and it is given to such a degree that he becomes well-pleased. But in this world too, so much was given to the Prophet of Islam that he became well-pleased: the guidance of human beings, the establishment of the virtuous city (madina fadila), victory over bloodthirsty, obstinate enemies, the conquest of lands, the setting of Islamic society onto its evolving course — these were all blessings of God to the Prophet of Islam. In sum: Did He not find you an orphan and give shelter? God Most High found you an orphan — without kin, without refuge — and gave you shelter. You had no father: before your birth he had departed this world; your mother followed a short while later; your grandfather too, after a few brief years, was gone. You remained alone, you and you alone, under the guardianship of your uncle Abu Talib. And we sheltered you, the orphan — who were an orphan from the very beginning — at every moment; we kept you in the embrace of our affection and love, O our Prophet. This is giving hope. It means: God's shelter is always with you. It was there from childhood, and it is here now, when a burden of messengership this heavy rests upon your shoulders and in your hands. Do not fear, do not be apprehensive, never imagine that God has abandoned you — never. God will not abandon you now, when on that day He gave you shelter. And He found you lost (astray), and guided you. And He found you lost and guided you. Several narrations bear on this — though some are weak — along with sayings of the commentators that have become mixed in with the narrations. They read it this way: "And He found you lost, and guided you." What is meant is not intellectual or spiritual lostness. Rather, once the Prophet, in his childhood, had become lost in the mountains of Mecca, and then God guided his grandfather, who was able to find him; or in another episode he had become lost, and a certain woman came and found him; or "you were unknown among the people of Mecca, no one recognized you, and God guided the people of Mecca to you." They construed it in these senses. We do not deny them — grasp the point here. These senses may indeed be the case; if a sound narration in accordance with any one of them should come, then with all respect, very well. The existing narrations may, at the root, be weak, or they may be sound. And if sound narrations should come for any one of these meanings, of course it is acceptable, and one can accept it. But even granting one of these meanings on the strength of a sound narration, the apparent meaning of the verse is still other than this. Accepting a narration that gives us this meaning does not conflict with accepting the apparent meaning of the verse. The apparent meaning of the verse is something else. Plain and explicit, in plain Persian, it is saying: "You were astray, you were lost; we guided you." What does "you were astray" mean? Does it mean you were an idolater? Never! A deviant person? Never! A sinner? Never! Then what? It means: this straight path that was presented to you through the bi'that and prophethood was not at your disposal. Is it not so? Those bodies of knowledge, those laws, those thoughts, those ideas, that became clear and manifest to his holy heart when revelation came upon the Prophet — did they exist for that great one before prophethood and before the bi'that? Certainly not. This is what "You were lost" means, and this is the apparent meaning of the verse. And there is no problem at all in construing the noble verse — whose apparent sense is this — from the standpoint of the ta'wil meaning, as referring to "having been lost among the people of Mecca," "getting lost in the mountains around Mecca," "getting lost while herding certain sheep along a path," for example — just as is found in some of the narrations and reports. Did you grasp it? Now: And He found you lost, and guided you. And He found you in want, with dependents, and made you free of need. He found you needy, with a family to support, and made you free of need. What, then, was the purpose of this verse and of laying out this Sura in this writing? It was this: that the Noble Prophet — just as the apparent purport of the verse says — was lost; he was moving among ordinary people, walking and journeying among society. He was distressed by the conditions. He suffered from the fact that the young nobles of Quraysh would seize the slave-girl of some destitute man and forcibly take possession of her — which is why he founded the Hilf al-Fudul, the pact of the chivalrous. He did not for an instant associate any partner with God, nor pay homage and humble himself before these idols. He did not for an instant make peace with the bullies and the men of brute force, and he lived in that society like a chivalrous human being. Yet with all these conditions, what the Prophet did stayed within the ordinary course of the life of that society. The Prophet lives along the ordinary course of that society's collective life — and suddenly the divine revelation arrives. A deep transformation comes into being within him. It is so strange, so intense, that it even affects the Prophet's body, even his nerves. When the Noble Prophet, on the Mountain of Light (Jabal al-Nur), was struck by the first flame of revelation upon his soul, he caught fire; he saw that the bearer of God's message was saying: Read! The Prophet, since he did not know how to read, said: "But I cannot read" — what shall I read? Or, I do not read, I cannot read — that is, "ma" being either negating "ma" or interrogative "ma" — "and what shall I read?": Read in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging clot. Read, and your Lord is the most generous — who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know. Fire is set to the Prophet's soul, and it brings about a transformation. Within this thinking, upright, ready man it suddenly produces a revolution, a rising. He is no longer the same person at all; he is not the man of a moment before. Muhammad was not the Muhammad of an instant before; he was not the person of an hour before; he was something else entirely, another element, another essence. First the bi'that came into being within him — the revolution and transformation within his inner self — and then that very revolution became the source by which he could draw a whole world into transformation. Had he not changed himself, he could not have changed the world. This is a lesson for the followers of the Prophet: until they themselves change, they cannot change the world. Let them know that: An essence that has not received from the Bestower of being — how can it become a bestower of being? You, who have carried away no share of being for yourself, who have taken no benefit from this divine fervor, from this glow of the Lord's grace and the blessing of His light — what do you wish to give to the people? First become fire yourself, become molten, become aflame, so that you may be able to kindle and set alight the coals, the cold ones, the black ones. The Prophet — first the fire was set to his own soul, first his own heart was transformed and overturned, first the fervor of resurrection came into being within his own inner self — and only then could he draw the world into that same fervor. He was able to fashion a human being who would give up his life but would not give up his thought. Is it a trifle? Is it a trifle that they would come and throw down dark-skinned Bilal the Abyssinian and beat him — not some trifling blow or two, but those beatings, and how they beat him! Then, right there beneath the lash, right there beneath the torture — not one minute later, not one hour later — he would cry out, "Ahad! Ahad! One! One!" Rendered into Persian, the sentence that carries the same force would be: "Death to you, death to you, death to you" — this is what Bilal's "Ahad! Ahad!" meant. The Prophet cannot fashion an Abu Dharr; he cannot, out of nothing, fashion a Bilal, or a Miqdad, or an 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, in the early days of Islam and the bi'that — first he himself was transformed. Now let us see what this melody of the first revelation did to the Prophet, and what it contains. Another portion is the Sura "Read." In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. Read in the name of your Lord who created. Read in the name of your Lord, the One who created. Notice how it begins an orderly sequence. For a God-worshipping human being like our Prophet — who even before the bi'that was a God-worshipper, not a polytheist — the first thing that can rouse his attention toward God and draw his heart to Him is the simplest subject of all: creation. "Read in the name of your Lord who created." Creation belongs to Him; all these vast manifestations of creation are from Him. Once this settles in the mind, it goes up one step and establishes something higher than creation: Created man from a clinging clot. He created man — and man, moreover, from a clinging clot. How great is the difference between man and the other creatures! At first a person does not notice it. As you walk down the street, a car passes by, a human being passes by; when you are riding in a car, ten people pass by your side, ten trees pass by the side of your car — through a kind of error in the way a person perceives. He pays no attention; when he looks closely at the difference between man and non-man, he does not give it much thought. Well, man too is a being — a more precious being, of course, a better, higher one; but those too are beings of a sort. The tyrants of the world do not, even to the very end, grasp the difference between man and non-man — because in their eyes thousands of human beings are not worth as much as thousands of ants. A person destroys thousands of ants with two pennies' worth of kerosene; these people destroy thousands of human beings with a single decree, a single order, a single bomb. Let us leave that aside. At first, then, man does not grasp the importance of man or the astounding difference between man and the other creatures; but when he looks closely, what happens? He sees it, and it astonishes him. The chasm between man and the other creatures is a very deep one. A chasm of what? What distinguishing mark, what differentiating feature, does man possess that sets him so far apart from the other creatures? The power of intellect, of reason, the cognition of universals, the deriving of conclusions from particulars. Something the tree does not do, nor the stone, nor the animal: innovation, novelty. For without innovation and novelty in man, he would always remain at one level, like the other creatures — as I gave the example of the honeybee yesterday. Then there is the power of will and decision, free choice — man does whatever he wishes, unlike the other creatures, which are compelled to follow their own instinct. Whatever its instinct dictates, the animal does; there is no question of willing. Man is able to act precisely against his own instinct. His instinct is to eat food; his instinct is to satisfy his sexual appetite — these are instinct, are they not? Yet you see a human being who, throughout his entire lifetime, does not satisfy his sexual instinct even once; this is against instinct, this is ascetic discipline. A human being lives for days on end on a single almond; only man is capable of this — man can act against his own instinct. In short, the power of thought, of free choice, of will, of innovation in man — these are what have set man apart from the rest of the creatures. Man is altogether something else compared with them. Even the materialist scholars have, in recent times, more or less arrived at this point: they call man an astounding species. They draw no distinction between him and the rest, yet still they concede — an astounding species. And all these distinctions in man come from the outpouring of God's spirit within him, the manifestation of God's spirit in man, as in the verse: And I breathed into him of My spirit. In sum, God suddenly draws the Prophet's attention to something higher than dry, bare creation: the creation of man, the creation of reason, the creation of the power of understanding and perception — and out of what? From a clinging clot. From clotted, congealed blood — think of the distance! "What is dust and what is the Lord of lords!" How is it that something with no soul, no power of movement, no power of understanding, is transformed into an Einstein! Into a great human being, into a Socrates, into a thinker, a philosopher, a prophet — how does this happen? Is it anything other than the mighty handiwork of the Lord in the world? Created man from a clinging clot. At the very beginning of revelation, they drew our Prophet's attention to this crucial point. Notice: it wills a transformation to come into being within him. It wills to put a shoe of steel upon his foot and a staff of steel in his hand, so that he may go on until fatigue no longer has any meaning for him. From the very start they fashion him with these words. Created man from a clinging clot — from clotted, congealed blood. Read… and your Lord is the most generous. Read; God is higher than even this. "And your Lord is the most generous" — He is greater and more noble and more bounteous than even this. "Read, and your Lord is the most generous" — read, and your Lord is the most generous of all. Who taught by the pen. The One who taught by means of the pen. Once again He raises for the Prophet the matter of teaching in man. And you know this: had there been no pen, no writing, mankind would never have progressed. What lays the advancement of one generation before the next — so the next generation may use it like a staircase, set its foot on the experience of those before it, and build yet another experience of its own — is nothing other than the pen. If the scientific discoveries and scholarly research of one generation were not placed at the disposal of the next, the next could add nothing to it. Had the book of Aristotle not been at the disposal of Avicenna (Bu 'Ali Sina), Avicenna — who stands higher than Aristotle — would never have become Avicenna. Had the jurisprudential book of Shaykh Tusi, or 'Allama Hilli, not been at the disposal of Shaykh Ansari and Mirza Shirazi — men more accomplished and more learned than those forebears, more learned than the scholars of a thousand years before them — then without their predecessors' books and the fruit of their research at hand, they too would never have reached that level. Take an example. The first person has five tomans; he gives it to the second person, who, with his own five, makes it ten; he gives that to the third person, who also has five, and it becomes fifteen. The third is now wealthier than the first — he has fifteen tomans. But where does that fifteen come from? Had the first person never existed, would he have it? Had the second never existed, would he still have fifteen? Never — he would have had even that five only by his own force. It is the product of man's past experiences and discoveries that reaches later generations — and by what means? By the pen, by writing and inscription. Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know. So, higher than the very principle of creation and bringing-into-being, there is something in God. Read, and your Lord is the most generous. Who taught by the pen — taught man what he did not know. He gave instruction by means of the pen; He taught man the things he did not know. These are God's blessings toward man. So man ought to give thanks for them. God has taught man, has shown him the way, has given him the pen, has made him rational and instructed him — so man ought to climb toward the loftiest summit, without a single instant of decline, without any more backsliding and misery. Is it so? The next verse answers, as though confronting an imagining of this kind: if God creates and nurtures humanity in this way, and gives it the pen, and shows it grace, and treats it with such generosity — then mankind ought to have no misery, no waywardness, no corruption, no error. Has it turned out so? No indeed! No, it is not as you suppose and as you say. What, then, is the state of mankind? No; rather: No indeed! Truly man transgresses when he sees himself self-sufficient. What made mankind wretched was the transgression of mankind — the rebellions and arrogance of feeble human beings and of the tyrants (taghuts) against the merciful ones, the battle-lines they drew up. These transgressions are what kept mankind from reaching guidance. They would not let mankind make the fullest use of the Lordly reserves, be nurtured and reared as God had wished, and become what God had willed. The transgressors would not allow it. When they saw themselves free of need, they transgressed, they rebelled, they left the path of God. Notice — once again the Prophet is being fashioned. He attends to the grace of God, to the nobility of God, to the teaching of God; to the fact that God is the Creator, the Teacher, the Most Generous; to the fact that humanity has not reached where it ought to reach — it has not reached, as "No indeed!" conveys — and to the fact that the fault is the transgressors'. And transgression arises from the sense of being free of need. Self-sufficiency, wealth, the amassing of riches, the heaping up of treasures — this raises up necks; and once the necks are raised, once un-divine powers come into being and take shape, mankind no longer reaches that destination. Notice — these are the inspirations of God at the outset of the rousing; this is that very flame which set the Prophet of God ablaze, set him afire. No indeed! No, it is not as you suppose. You imagine and expect that mankind has reached a state of being set in order? No! Truly man transgresses — man assuredly transgresses and grows arrogant. When he sees himself self-sufficient. — because he sees himself as free of need. Truly, to your Lord is the return. Will these transgressors triumph in the end? No! The return is to your Lord; the end belongs to God; the outcome falls to God and the divine front. Along that very path which the Lord of the world has appointed, mankind will in the end reach the destination — of this there is no doubt: Truly, to your Lord is the return. The noble Sura holds other matters too. In sum, notice with what truths these matters bring about, in our Prophet, the revolution and transformation — and it is this very transformation that is reflected in the very text of society. In the Sura "By the Star," from which we cited a portion of its verses, there is again an allusion to this same inner transformation of the Prophet. There are many other verses as well, which I saw no need to cite in full here. But this is a very precise, subtle, and sweet discussion, and in the studies I had worked through I had not myself come across this point being attended to with such precision. So I wanted to explain it a little more — for knowing it is useful for acting on it too. In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. By the star when it sets. By the star, at the moment it sets. Your companion has not gone astray nor erred. Your companion and comrade has not gone astray, nor inclined toward falsehood. This bears on the matter of the Mi'raj (the Ascension), as many of the commentaries record. Though it alludes to the inner transformation of the Prophet and to the state of receiving revelation, the occasion of the Sura "By the Star" is this: when the Prophet would recount the episodes of the night journey, the journey of the Ascension, these people would not listen. The verse speaks in that context. Nor does he speak from caprice. He does not speak out of whim. It is naught but a revelation revealed. It is nothing but a revelation that has reached him from the Lord. Taught to him by one mighty in power. He has been taught by that one of surpassing power, that one possessing great strength. "One mighty in power" (shadid al-quwa) means the one who is very powerful: that one of great might has taught him. "One mighty in power" means surpassingly powerful. Possessor of sagacity (dhu mirra). That sagacious, wise one — "mirra" meaning sagacity, wisdom, and judgment — which the commentators have said alludes to Gabriel: what the Prophet reports, he reports on the authority of Gabriel, and God taught him these things through Gabriel. …so he stood upright. This divine revelation came to him, and he stood erect upon his own feet. And he was on the highest horizon. And he was on the loftier, higher horizon. "Highest" means the most lofty; the horizon, too, is clear. The Prophet stands upon a loftier horizon. Then he drew near and came down. Perhaps it can be construed this way. "And he was on the highest horizon" means the Prophet stood on a higher level, one that let him become a prophet. As we said, the Prophet, before prophethood, lived among ordinary people with reserves more brimming than theirs. "Then he drew near" — he approached; "and came down" — he drew nearer still. On the supposition that the one meant is the Prophet, this reads: the Prophet drew near to God, and nearer — through acts of worship, through ascetic disciplines, through reflection, and through the special graces God had bestowed on him, his spirit drew near and nearer to God and became ready to receive revelation. Others have said that "he drew near" means Gabriel drew near to the Prophet, and "came down" means he hung over him — that is, he brought himself to the Prophet to convey the revelation. Either way it makes no difference; but the first meaning seems to us nearer and more apparent, and it is the one I myself prefer. Until he was at the distance of two bows' lengths, or nearer. The Prophet drew near to God, and so he reached the distance of two bows' lengths, or less. Do not ask, "What does 'two bows' lengths' mean — what special significance does it have?" As if it were two bows, each a meter long, at a distance of two meters from God. Where was God, that the Noble Prophet reached within two meters of Him? No — these are figurative expressions. He drew near to Him, but not in respect of place; "two bows' lengths" means he drew very near, very near. The holy spirit of the Prophet drew so near to God that nearer than that is inconceivable for any human being — the very nearest of the near. Then he drew near and came down, until he was at the distance of two bows' lengths or nearer, and He revealed to His servant what He revealed. So God revealed to His servant what He revealed. The heart did not lie about what it saw. Whatever the Prophet's heart observed, it did not lie to him about it: it saw correctly, it did not see in error. Will you then dispute with him about what he saw? These, in any case, are verses from the noble Sura "By the Star." In sum, it is after this inner, innermost rousing that the path of the prophet changes and his striving takes on another color, and he strives on with continual effort. And what is it he strives to bring about? That in society, in the very text of human beings' lives, a rising and a transformation should be brought into being from the foundation up. Having created a transformation within himself, he now endeavors to create one in society — and this is precisely the responsibility of messengership, the very work the Prophet exists for.