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The likeness of this worldly life is only as the water that We sent down from the sky. So then the vegetation of the earth commingled with it, and from it the people and the livestock ate. Then when the earth put on its ornaments and gained in loveliness, and those of it believed they were the masters of it, Our Command arrived by night or day, and then We mowed it down as if it had not flourished on the day before. That is the way We explicate Our signs for thinking folk. / And GOD is issuing a summons to the Home of Peace. He guides the one [who wills / He wills] upon the upright path. (Q10:24-25)
إِنَّمَا مَثَلُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا كَمَاءٍ أَنْزَلْنَاهُ مِنْ السَّمَاءِ فَاخْتَلَطَ بِهِ نَبَاتُ الأَرْضِ مِمَّا يَأْكُلُ النَّاسُ وَالأَنْعَامُ حَتَّى إِذَا أَخَذَتِ الأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا وَازَّيَّنَتْ وَظَنَّ أَهْلُهَا أَنَّهُمْ قَادِرُونَ عَلَيْهَا أَتَاهَا أَمْرُنَا لَيْلاً أَوْ نَهَارًا فَجَعَلْنَاهَا حَصِيدًا كَأَنْ لَمْ تَغْنَ بِالأَمْسِ كَذَلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ الآياتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
وَاللَّهُ يَدْعُو إِلَى دَارِ السَّلاَمِ وَيَهْدِي مَنْ يَشَاءُ إِلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِيمٍ
In Chapter 41, I referred to the many versions of reality in the universe. Each version, no matter how real or unreal, can be called a world. When GOD, therefore, begins by presenting the likeness of this worldly life, He is offering a conceptual handle on what all our worlds and lives have in common – a shared reality, as it were. He could have described their commonalities in more abstract terms, which is what I propose to do here now, but since most of mankind thinks pictorially, He is offering a set of images as Our signs for thinking folk. He is saying, in effect, ‘This is what unites the vastly disparate experiences of all living beings. No matter who or what you are, you will encounter these aspects of reality. To grasp what is true or real about your life, you need to see this.’
In the previous chapter, I listed 10 basic features of Reality according to the Qur’an. (There could be more, of course.) In the order I presented them, Reality is
1) Personal;
2) reciprocal;
3) elusive;
4) effusive;
5) meaningful;
6) affective and effective, in terms of Who GOD is; and
7) multidimensional;
8) primarily conceptual;
9) vertically gradated; and
10) valuable, in terms of what GOD does.
All of these features are noticeable in this two-verse passage; I will mention them in the order of their appearance.
8) AL-LAH begins by depicting our lives through a parable, or likeness. On the one hand, the experiences of sentient beings are far too multifarious for one human mind to take in their uniqueness and concreteness. On the other hand, Realityis too abstract to be grasped in any way except symbolically. AL-LAH, therefore, offers an intermediary verbal image, a conceptual bridge, that can serve to join the sensual diversity of the everyday to the spiritual heights of the Everafter. What we in English would call a metaphor, a vital arm in our armory of concepts, GOD refers to as a likeness, one example of Our signs. We could say that this conceptual aspect of reality is primary and essential in the way He communicates that to us.
The separate, individual reality of our personal experience is itself a sign, one that can be conceptualized to point to a greater reality, which is also a sign, which can be likewise conceptualized, on and on all the way up to GOD’s loftiest metaphor – as we will see when we come to feature 9. As infants, we experience things first, and only later, as we grow older, the concepts for them. In terms of their creation, however, AL-LAH begins with the concept, i.e., His name for it, followed by His Word – “Be!” – and only then does that thing come to be. Likewise, with this wording in verse 24, mention of the likeness precedes the thing itself, this worldly life.
7) What symbolizes this worldly life? Water. Water is perfect for representing the multifaceted and mutable nature of reality experienced in the form of things. I mentioned in Chapter 39 how the queen tried to avoid getting immersed in the world of things, symbolized by the pool beneath the invisible glass of the higher intellect. Here, however, we are looking at the reality of those things.
Like water, things have a vaporous origin in the verbal or conceptual realm where creation begins. They then, like water, become liquid – mobile, changeable, and productive. Water is absorbed into vegetation, acquiring a solid habitat and promoting its growth. Things, likewise, are consumed by our senses, as data to be interpreted, and by our watery bodies as material to be digested. Objective reality, in other words, is continuously being transformed by a yet unnamed Subject, and those transformations are preconditions for worldly life. Vegetation is another dimension of that truth; it represents the reality of water in terms of the growth it supports. But death and destruction, as when the vegetation and all that depends on it are mowed down, constitute essential elements in this greater picture of worldly life as well. The coherence and interchange of opposites in a larger scheme of existence are also evident in the temporal dimension – by night or day. Multiple and even conflicting worlds of experience do not negate the broad strokes of reality that dominate this scene of being in flux.
The GOD You Already Know 