Page 192 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

Do they make things into partner-gods which cannot create anything
and are themselves being created? (Surat al-A'raf: 191)

In other words, the reason for the permanent and unbroken nature of
the images we see, is not that they have a fixed existence, but that God
creates them at every moment. So the manifestation of God's continuous
creation can be seen at every moment, in everything a person sees or feels.
In consequence, this truth makes the manifestation of the attributes of

God in the universe even clearer. For example, someone who knows that when
he goes into a garden he has experience of only the images of all the fruit,
flowers and trees presented to him in his own mind will recall that it is God,
the Provider (al-Razzaq), Who gives him countless blessings and beauties, and
Who shows these images to him. Someone with a pleasant house who knows
the true nature of all the furniture, antiques, gold and silver in it, in other
words who realizes that he is only dealing with images of all these things in his
brain, can never brag about his possessions. Just like the Prophet Solomon
(pbuh), he identifies God, the Giver (al-Vahhab) as He Who shows the beauty

of these possessions to him and makes him wealthy by means of it. Or, when
someone convinces another of the existence and oneness of God, that He is the
only Absolute Being, together with the existence of heaven and hell, he thus
sees the manifestation of God's attribute of He Who reveals the true path, the
Guide (al-Hadi).
We must here recall that it is a scientific fact that everyone sees the images,
hears the sounds that accompany them, and feels their physical properties in
his brain. We can never know, by means of our perceptions, what lies outside
our brains. We can be sure, however, that there is a power as the result of which
we see these images and hear these sounds, and who creates them in a
relationship of cause and effect. That force is God. If He did not create these
images for us, there would be no life in this world. In this way, God's creation
and the manifestation of His attributes continue at every moment. For instance,
God continues to create this book and the words in it, together with the colors
in the pictures it contains, for whoever reads it.
This shows to us God's attribute of Creation (al-Khaliq), and the power of
His creation. At this very moment, God is showing the billions of people on
earth billions of separate images. Each of these images is created without
pause, in perfect harmony, and down to the finest detail. Every individual is
shown images without the tiniest error of detail. Thinking of this wonder will

190 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION