We exist in the midst of many different worlds. The world that we walk through every day and that we, for lack of a better, term say we live in the midst of, is this world of form. We see it, we touch it, we encounter it constantly. Within this world of form there are the walking, talking forms, humans, there are animal forms, there are animated forms. But we know because we’ve been told by the ones who have contact with reality that there is a temporary nature to this form. There are formless things that we are also a part of, that have tremendous impact. So, we have this world of form. We all know from science when we were younger that there’s a substrata to this world that we don’t see. Atoms and then recently quantum mechanics, even smaller and smaller particles that we don’t see that act in various ways, some of which we can’t predict.
We seem to be able to predict how things will act in this world of form. We call that physics. As the forms get smaller and smaller their actions are less predictable and we understand them less, of course, because we can’t contact them as easily and deal with them.
But in addition, because we’ve all studied Sufism, we know that there is a world of formlessness that also has great impact on existence. For instance, love doesn’t have form. Yet, love has tremendous impact on our existence. If we are in a state of love we are one way. If we are not in a state of love we are another way. This formless quality impacts the form tremendously.
We say “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim”, “In the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate”. Rahman is an essence that has no form, yet it has tremendous impact. Rahim, the same way. All of the names of Allah have tremendous impact even though they have no form. They can’t be measured, or weighed, or put up in front of a microscope. Yet they impact tremendously on our existence and in reality in haqq, without rahman and rahim, all of this wouldn’t exist. It was through rahman and rahim that Allah created all of this.
Now, we are this temporary manifestation. We are told by the prophets, and by the friends of Allah, by the qutbs, and by the wise men, that we have to make this temporary manifestation, this body, become pure. What do they mean by this body becoming pure?
