In the time of the beginning when Allah created all that was, He sent rays of light into the world. And these rays of light became the souls, and the world, over time, became occupied with these souls. And these souls were given coverings, they were given clothes, and we called these coverings bodies. And man and woman had souls and had bodies.
The souls were without form, and they came from Allah who has no form. And these souls have the ability to carry the qualities that are Allah. They can carry the Asma al-Husna. The 99 qualities of God are the birthright of these souls, Allah created them with these qualities.
But the soul is covered by the body and we don’t see the soul, we don’t see the light body. What we see is the external body, and the external body is made up of the elements that Allah created. There’s a combination of earth, air, fire, water and ether that make up the body, and there’s an agreement between the elements to be at peace for a period of time within the body. But as you will notice, just from watching the world, these elements are often in conflict.
Fire burns and destroys, water drowns things, air turns into hurricanes and has great destructive force, but all of these destructive forces within the elements are under control in this agreement that the body has between the elements. But over time this agreement begins to fall apart, and the treaty between earth, and air, and fire, and water to be at peace with each other disappears and they become at war with each other. And that’s when the body begins to disintegrate.
So built into our form is the inherent inability of these elements to stay at peace with each other and they begin to cause the body distress, and the body begins to fall into illness, and difficulty, and aging. Aging is a deterioration, and that deterioration is the inability of the elements to stay together in peace.
Now we all see the world, and we all see young people, and middle-aged people, and old people and very old people. And if we look we can see that there is a difference in the shells, the outer covering, of young people, of middle-aged people, of older people, and of very old people. We can actually see how the body is falling apart on these people.
There are industries that make hundreds of millions of dollars in America that sell products that try to stop the aging process. Of course it doesn’t work, but they will continue to tell you that it will do these things. It may do some external modifications, but internally the body falls apart.
The soul doesn’t fall apart, the soul is light, and our soul has the ability to stay eternal, to return to that which is reality. And in the Sufi understanding of the Kalimah, the acknowledgement of faith, “La ilaha illa Allah Muḥammadur rasul ul lah,” the “La ilaha” means “I do not exist.” “La ilaha”: “Only Allah exists.”
In truth this body is temporary and it doesn’t exist…
