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What or Who Is God?
O K N

[adapted from Murat Yagan] [3.]

God is the unknowable Ultimate Reality [1a./1b.] at the final, original end of every existing thing, object, matter and concept, and from which everything stems out, emanates and comes to life. In other words, the cause of life is called God. Just as simple as that.

Instead of using a long phrase such as "the Cause of Life", we coined a word for it, and this word is "God." When we trace down to the origin of any given thing, to find how it started, we end up in God.

Let us take a simple example as an exercise. Suppose that the given thing is me. We ask the question: "Who made me?" and suppose that we answer this question as "my mother," because the only tangible, concrete, material thing we know is that I came out from my mother. This, everybody has seen; this cannot be denied or unseen and there is nothing mysterious about it. It is a sure thing, that I came out from my mother. So the answer is: "My mother made me."

Now the next question will be: "Who made my mother?" The answer is: "Her mother made her."

The next question comes as: "Who made her mother?" The answer: "Her mother."

If we continue asking the questions in the same manner, for one thousand years, still we will have the same answer. Depending on our patience, perseverance and endurance, at some point we shall be tired and say: "I don't know."
That very thing that you call "I don't know," the Abkhasian [2.] wiseman calls God, the original source of life. Here, I would like to invite the reader to pay particular attention to what is said. By saying: "I don't know," we implicitly accept that there is something there, but we do not know it. By this, it becomes obvious that we don't deny God. We don't say there is nothing. We say there is something, but this thing we don't know. Now it becomes clear that our task is not to believe or not to believe in God: we already know that there is a God, but we don't know God.

So our task is not to believe in God, our task is to know God.
To say "I believe in God" is as absurd as to say "I believe in mathematics." There is no such thing as believing in mathematics. You either know or don't know mathematics. The Abkhasian wiseman does not preach believing in God. He does not say to believe in God; he says: "Let us find God, the eternal and ultimate spirit of engendering or creative power."

The only way to find God is through mystical experience - mystical meaning the thing defined above. Please refer to it and read it once more slowly until it becomes clear to you and you thoroughly grasp it.

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1a.
Although God's very essence is hidden from man, he can know God as He wishes to be known and as He manifests Himself:

According to the commentary of Ibn Abbas, a companion of the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) who saw the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) three times regarding the meaning of the Qur'an, the meaning of the word "worship" in sura 51:56 is synonymous with "know". [Concerning] about who God [is], our gnosis of Him is tied together with our worshipping of Him: in other words, we deepen our understanding of who God is, through the living experience of religious faith.
(Thanks to R. A. for this, with [ ] = our comment.)

1b.
On God:
- Among obligatory matters of religion are faith from the heart and profession from the tongue that:
Allāh is one God; there is no deity besides Him; there is none like Him and none equal to Him; He has no child nor parent nor woman companion nor associate.
There is no beginning to His being first, and no end to His being last. No one can describe what He is like in His inner-being, nor can intellectuals sound out what pertains to Him; they can only speak about His signs, and cannot think of what His Essence is; they grasp His Knowledge only in so far as He wishes.
www.diafrica.org - Abdallāh Ibn-abī-Zayd al-Qayrawānī, The Risāla - Treatise on Mālikī Law, Chapter 1, Dogmas, , x L 20120705

2.
Abkhasian: The people from the Caucasus Mountains, who are among the longest-lived and happiest people on earth.

3.
Yagan, Murat; The Caucasian Book of Longevity and Well-Being; Vermont USA, 1988;


See also related pages on *living islam* :

•  God is the Absolutely Real (al-Haqq)
•  Know Your Lord, by ʿAli bin Abi Tālib (kAw)
•  Allah's Names
•  Tahawi's "Doctrine" (al-ʿAqida )
•  Is Belief In God Enough?





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