We continue to analyze the story of Adam. After the Almighty had taught him all the names and commanded the angels to prostrate before him, He said, “O Adam, dwell, you and your wife, in Paradise and eat therefrom in ease and abundance from wherever you will. But do not approach this Tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers” (2: 35).
Where did all this take place? In Barzakh. Or, to put it another way, in the world of mithal, the world of “images.” The paradise of Adam was in Barzakh. It was not the paradise of the future world because whoever enters the paradise of the future world (akhira) will never leave it. That is, at first Adam was in the world of Zarr, then he descends in Barzakh, and after that comes to our earth, to this dunya. We have moved along the arc of descent, and after the earthly world, we will begin to return moving along the arc of ascent: “Just as He originated you, you will return” (7: 29).
We have already cited a hadith from the eleventh Imam Askari (A) about what this tree was. It was “the Tree of knowledge, the Tree of Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad, peace be upon them, through which, Allah singled them out from of all creations, and this tree is only for Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad, and no one eats from it at the command of Allah, except them. And Allah said, ʻBut come not near this Tree,ʼ trying to achieve the degree of Muhammad and the Household of Muhammad (S) and their greatness, for Allah marked only them with this Tree, and this Tree is such that the one who tasted it [with the permission of Allah] – the knowledge of the first and the last is instilled in him without any endeavor.”
That is, this story with the Tree is similar to how they say to the man in the house, “Come wherever you want and take what you want but do not touch this live electrical wire.” Why? Because there’s a power you can’t handle. This power is not for you. If you touch it, it will affect you and change you, which will mean your death and transition to another world.
Adam approached and touched the Tree of knowledge of all things, and the power of this Tree, one might say, “burned” him so that he found himself in this world, lower than the world where he was. Because he could not stand being in contact with this power. And we said that the “tree” is just a symbol. It was not a tree in the literal sense, like the trees we are used to, on which some kind of fruit grows.
In that world, everything is different in general, and our language cannot describe the realities of that world. Only symbolic language is appropriate here. A tree is a symbol for a branching structure because its knowledge applies to all things. Knowledge of everything. The fruits of this Tree are the reality of all things. Therefore, approaching it meant gaining access to the beginning and end of all, and eating the fruits from it meant the desire to get the position of the Wali of the universe. It was, conventionally speaking, “climbing up” the ladder of creation, the World Tree, the leaves for which are countless worlds.
Here one may ask, “Shouldn’t a person strive for knowledge? And was not Adam given an exceptional knowledge of names, which the angels did not have?” Yes, this is so, but he receives all this only through the medium of the true Wali of the universe, Ahl ul-Beit. If he strives for this Tree by himself and wants to achieve it without this medium, he gets the opposite result. Adam could not benefit from this Tree of knowledge because it was above his position and abilities. For example, to benefit from electricity, a person needs a “medium,” a device that converts this electricity into lamp light. But if he himself comes up and grabs the bare electrical wire with his hands, he will get harm, not benefit.
And here is the clue to what we see in all magical civilizations of humankind. The ultimate goal of contemplative pagan practices was mastery over the Tree of knowledge of all things and the position of Wali, the owner of the Tree. But instead of achieving this goal, they all received the opposite – they fell into the darkness of insanity, hallucinations, and schizophrenic delirium. Because if a man stretches out his hands to this knowledge and seeks to obtain it without the mediation of its true owners, he receives madness instead of knowledge.
The paradise of Adam was closer to the mabda, to the Source (and the source of every thing, as we said, is the Mashiyya of the Creator and the light of Muhammad’s Reality united with Mashiyya). Therefore there was more movement, life, knowledge, beauty, and goodness. We all now live in the regime of the earth; the roughest and inert element prevails over us. This mode is close to death because the traces of cosmic activity in this element are weak.
Therefore, in our world, it is possible to deny the Lord. The inhabitants of higher worlds see the magnificence of Allahʼs creation and the reflection of His created sifats in this creation, and they cannot deny Him because such a denial would be absurd. It’s as if a man standing near a fire denies the existence of fire – although he sees its action, such as heat, warmth, and radiance. But if he stands somewhere far away, where this heat and glow can barely reach, he can deny their source, that is, the fire itself. He can say that there is no fire, and all this is fiction and fairy tales. But when he comes closer, he will say that yes, the fire actually exists…
So, the world of Barzakh, where Adam was, stood closer to the Source, and there were other heavens and earth. But don’t imagine it in such a way that it was somewhere on the other side of our world, somewhere on top. These are the same heavens and earth like ours, only purified of extraneous gross substances, that is, of physical matter, arranged in a completely different way, with different geography and laws. Partly we can imagine this by what we see in a dream because, in a dream, we travel through those worlds. Imagine that the earth and the sky are not separated from each other; they are something one… And the jinn also lived there. When the hadiths say that before Adam jinn and nasnas lived on earth, they mean the earth of Barzakh, not this material earth of ours. And there, Iblis was the king of the earth.
The arrival of Adam into this world was not some kind of descent from top to bottom, as ignorant people think. It was putting on the costume of a coarse physical body, through the glasses of which Adam now sees all the reality around him. We have discussed this in detail in the first parts of this cycle… Imagine that you suddenly find yourself chained in a kind of diving suit, which becomes a part of yourself so that you cannot just throw it off. And now you see all things not with your real eyes, but through the glasses of this suit, you touch them not with your real hands, but with rubber hand substitutes… You haven’t gone down somewhere from top to bottom; it’s just that your reality has changed. And so it was with Adam. Therefore, he said in verses, as narrated in a hadith from Imam Ali (A),
“The earth has changed with its inhabitants,
and the face of the earth became dusty and filthy.”
And, as we have already said, death means throwing off this “suit” and coming into contact with the reality of things at the Barzakh level. When a person dies, he does not go anywhere and does not disappear. He does not pass into some “other world,” as is usually imagined. He remains in the same world, but a real one, with different laws. Death is actually a birth into another, broader life. “You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So return your vision; do you see any breaks?” (67: 3).
Therefore, this physical world did not exist for millions or billions of years, as the so-called “modern science” imagines. It began at the same moment as Adam put on the suit of his physical body and began to look at reality through its glasses. The physical world is ourselves; it is a human and nothing else. If there is no single man, this world will not exist either because no one would perceive it. If we all die at one moment, we will begin to see the things of this world in their real aspect, and there will no longer be any physical world. Because the physical world is just how we perceive reality through the filter of our physical body. Therefore, the hadith says that the one who dies – his heavens collapse, his earth replaces by another earth, and his Judgment Day comes.
And when Allah says that He created the heavens and the earth in six days, it means the days according to the time of Barzakh, formed by the rotation of its vault (and there is its own heavenly vault and its heavenly bodies). So creation in six days does not mean this physical heaven and earth, which we see here, but their reality – the heaven and the earth of Barzakh. As we have already said: our heaven and earth are the same heaven and earth of Barzakh, but there they appear in their reality, and here they appear in projection onto a gross earthly body.
And when the hadiths say, for example, that at the creation of Adam, Allah sent Jabrail for the water of Furat, we must keep in mind that this is not our Furat. That world has its own Furat, just as there is its own Kerbela, Mecca, and so on. And when Quran says that Zul-Qarnein went somewhere where the Sun was setting in a hot spring, and he built a wall there, you need to understand that these events took place at the level of expanded earth, not the narrow physical world we know now.
This world of ours in relation to Barzakh is like foam on the surface of a glass. Suppose you took a glass and started shaking it, so that foam formed on the surface of the water, because of which you can’t see the water itself. Then, if the water settles, the foam will disappear, and you’ll only see clear water. So likewise, our world will disappear in the Barzakh, and the Barzakh will disappear in the Akhira. “On that Day, the earth will be replaced by another earth, and the heavens” (14:48); “The Day when We will fold the heaven like the folding of a written sheet for the records. As We began the first creation, We will repeat it. That is a promise binding upon Us. Indeed, We will do it” (21: 104).
Now you understand what this “folding” is. It is like the “folding” of foam on water and the emergence of its basis and reality. So this earth and heaven will be replaced by other earth and heaven. Both the believer and the unbeliever will then go to their core, that is, to Paradise or Hell. “As We began the first creation, We will repeat it.”
That is why Heaven and Hell are not something “there”: they are the same pleasures and sufferings here on earth but incomparably more intensified. The paradise of the last life (Akhirat) correlates with the paradise of Barzakh as the original correlates with the shadow. And in the same relation is the paradise of Barzakh to the pleasures of earthly life. This means that the reality of Paradise is the same pleasures of earthly life, such as food, drink, marriage, and so on – after their strengthening and purification, and a person is present in Paradise in a bodily form – not in rough material, but in the form of a subtle body, the level of sensitivity and receptivity of which is much higher than that of the earthly body.
You can explain it like this. As you know, glass is produced from quartz sand by incandescence. From the coarse sand material, a transparent glass substance is born. This is an example of how the body of Barzakh separates from the earthly physical body (this is what we call “death”). Then, under the influence of specific chemical processes, even more transparent and pure crystal can be born from glass: this is an example for the body of the future world (Akhirat). Thus, the pure crystal was initially hidden in the coarse reality of the sand, and could be extracted from it. And just as crystal and glass are the same sand from which they are made, and something else, so is the body of Paradise: it is the same earthly body and something completely different.
Imam Baqir says (quoted in “Kafi”), “He created such a thing in which all other things are collected, and this is water. And He created other things out of it and put them in relation to water and did not give water any relation with which it would be connected.”
The throne of the Mashiyya of Allah was on the water, that is, the light or matter of all worlds, and then subtle water was created from it. And from Imam Baqir (A), it was also narrated, “Everything was water, and His Throne was on the water. And Allah commanded the water, and it burst into flames. And then He commanded the fire, and it went out. Smoke rose from its extinction, and Allah created the heavens out of this smoke. And He created the earth from ashes.”
We should understand that we are talking here about the creation of the heavens and the earth of Barzakh. The water that the Imam (A) speaks of is cosmogonic water, the gross projection of which is our water. Just like our heaven and earth are a rough projection of that heaven and earth.
These hadiths speak of the primary elements of the universe – fire, air, water, and earth. The degree of these elements’ coarseness increases as follows: first is fire, then air, then water, and the last is earth. In our world, where we now live, the earth element prevails in all things. We do not have direct access to real water, not to mention the higher elements.
But if we go a little higher along the ontological axis, we will find ourselves in a different mode, where the earth will recede into the background and water will prevail. Not the water from which Allah “created every living thing” and which is the first light – because there are many levels of water. For example, there is water as the first light or the first being, pouring out of the clouds of Allah’s Mashiyya onto the “waterless land” of opportunity; cosmogonic water as one of the elements; water in our world; the black water from which Sijjeen is created… Just as there are many levels of fire. There is the fire of the Creator’s Mashiyya, about which the sura “Light” says; there is fire as an element, there is the fire of Gehenna… These are entirely different things.
So, we are talking here about water as one of the four primary elements. The matter of the Barzakh world is like water. Therefore, the forms of things change easily there. Unlike our world, which resembles ice. If you draw some shapes on the water, they will immediately flow into something else or each other. Whereas the ice structure is tough… If you break off a piece of ice, it remains the same as you broke it. The matter of our earthly world is light that has become ice, and the matter of the Barzakh is light that has become water.
You can understand this by dreams. In a dream, all the images you see are blurred, and every thing easily takes on a different form. Because the dream is a wandering of the soul through the world of Barzakh. Each of us has a good idea of what a dream is. In a dream, we do not leave this world anywhere. We see the same objects of our world, familiar people, streets, houses, countries, and objects, but in a different, strange configuration. Because this is a different mode of existence of the same objects – the mode of water, as we said. You can see a person you have known for a long time, whose wings will suddenly grow, and he will fly somewhere. It is clear that in the earthly mode, this person is not able to fly anywhere. You can also see how the scene changes instantly. You can jump somewhere to the other end of the earth. These are the specific laws of that world, which are incomprehensible and unusual for us, and therefore, when we wake up, it seems to us that we have seen some kind of fantastic delirium.
The Quran says, “And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry but that it is in a clear record” (6: 59). What do “moist” and “dry” mean here? These are the very realities that we are talking about. The inside of every thing is what is symbolized by “moist,” “wet,” “flowing,” that is, water. And the outside of every thing is symbolized by “dry,” “dense,” “hard.” Therefore, the matter of every thing is moist, and its form is dry. The invisible world is moist, and the visible world is dry. The world of the soul is moist, and the world of the body is dry. Etc.
We have already said that every created thing consists of matter and form. The matter is being that has varying degrees of subtlety and radiance. And the forms are the things themselves: the door, the bed, the clock, the sky, the tree… So, the form is the boundaries in which the matter of light is chained. This is an innumerable number of veils that hide the light of pure existence, through which they exist, because if it were not for this order “be!” – then all these forms would fall away and become nothing.
Matter and form are inseparable because the form cannot exist without matter, and matter cannot be manifested except through form. And so, from the highest Mashiyya and Muhammad’s Light to Sijjeen, all created worlds consist of matter clothed in countless forms.
But the higher the level of being, the stronger the action of matter and the weaker the action of form. In the worlds of the Intellect (Aql) and the World Soul, the form is thin and weak. In our world, the form is strong; it fetters matter in its rings. If a tree has become a door (has taken the form of a door), it is no longer possible to turn it into a bed.
But in the world of Barzakh, which is a borderline between our world and the world of the Soul, the forms are more blurred; they easily flow into each other because the matter there is more subtle. Hence, there are many more possibilities in that world. There is more freedom. In the earthly world, we are locked in rigidly fixed forms like in a cage. A person cannot grow wings, roughly speaking. He is strictly determined from start to finish. The relation of the matter of the world of the Soul to the matter of our world is like the ratio of water to ice. The ice took on certain forms that cannot change. Therefore, our earthly life is so limited, uncomfortable, and generally boring… After death, everything is much more interesting – although it depends on where the person goes…
So, the creation in six days, about which the Quran speaks, has nothing to do with that scientific nonsense that supposedly the first day is the period when the world was in a state of gaseous accumulation, the second day is the period when gas accumulations separated from it, the third is the appearance of stars… How they are trying to fit this into the data of modern natural science… And it is clear that these modern hypotheses about some billions of years and all kinds of black holes and big bangs are also complete nonsense and have nothing to do with reality. All these hypotheses are based on the naive transfer of those laws that have been discovered by modern physics here on Earth into distant spaces and epochs. It is absolutely not proven that these laws are the same in those hypothetical epochs and those hypothetical spaces.
I want to say that all the conclusions of modern science are based on one unprovable naive hypothesis that the same laws operate throughout the universe and that these laws also do not change over time. That is, these particles, atoms, rays that they observe here on Earth will be exactly the same and will obey the same laws somewhere very far from the Earth, or sometimes very far in time, for example, several thousand or even millions of years ago. It is completely incomprehensible where this unprovable statement came from. It is clear that no evidence of experience can confirm this because we do not have access back in time and beyond the Earth. All experiments and observations deal exclusively with our Earth and its conditions. Where did the statement come from that these laws will be the same outside the Earth?
It is simply assumed to be a completely unfounded hypothesis. They begin to naively extrapolate these laws for many thousands or even millions of years ago without proving this hypothesis. But who said that these laws are eternal? Why not assume that there were other laws in our universe a thousand years ago?
In fact, this completely “unscientific” assumption is based not on some observations but on certain metaphysics, that is, the idea of an absolutely homogeneous space and time. These very metaphysics in Western Europe grew out of the Black Myth, which we will talk about later in this series.
So, we have understood what creation in six days means. And from here, the meaning of the hadith will become clear to us, which says that Adam was created on Friday afternoon and did not stay in Paradise a single night. This refers to the time of Barzakh, to the days of that world, not ours. We have said that there are also days there, and there are planets and a sun that rises and sets. “And indeed, a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of those which you count” (22: 47). Adam was created last, after six days of creation according to the time of Barzakh, on the eve of the night, and night here means the descent into this earthly world. He was created as the perfection of this world and the completion of heaven and earth. The perfect child and the quintessence of the world.
Now, the arrival of the Imam of time (A) will mean this world’s return movement along the arc of ascent in the direction of Barzakh. He is waiting for us at this limit, and when our world reaches it, the Imam will be manifested. Then the face of the earth will begin to modify, gaining transparency and purity again, and time will gradually change its laws. This is the meaning of the hadith, which states that with his arrival, the days and nights will become long, and “the earth will bring out its grace” – that is, its hidden dimension.
And when the hadith says that “the treasures of the earth” (kunuzu l-ard) will be brought out for Imam, then these are not some things like gold and silver, as they think. “Treasures” here are the inner dimensions of the earth. As Imam Baqir (A) says, “the earth will be stretched out for him, and its treasures will be brought out for him.” “Stretched out” means “expanded.” That is, this hidden dimension will be deployed.
And here it also becomes clear to us what is meant by another well-known hadith: before he comes out of occultation, the Sun will rise from the West. That is, the Sun of the hidden Imam will rise where this world will set. West is the sunset point. Imam’s Sun will rise where this world comes to sunset, and the reality of Barzakh begins to manifest itself. The Sun rising in the West is the disappearance of the foam of this world, just as the foam in a glass of water disappears, and its reality (i.e., pure water) manifests itself.
When the time of occultation came, the Imam, at the command of the Almighty, hid his earthly body so that it became invisible to our eyes. He is present among us, attends our meetings, performs the Hajj and Ziyarat of Hussein (A), walks around the markets, but we do not see him.
But when people’s eyes are opened to that world, they see the Imam there, standing in the dazzling radiance of his beauty and greatness. Like the Sun illuminating all the atoms of the universe. But in this world, we do not see him because our physical eyes are not capable of this. This is the meaning of the occultation. The Imam is present in our world; he is here and now, but we do not see him because our eyes are closed. The hadiths say he is like Yusuf (A): the brothers saw him but did not recognize him.
The first volume of Amin Ramin’s “Man in Islam” can be purchased on Amazon at this link.
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