4) In the animal kingdom, males demonstrate their potency and surplus strength by effusive displays – of growth (the elk), of colour (the bird of paradise), of sound (the nightingale), of size (the sea lion), and even proficiency in construction (the bower bird) – and some female species (the firefly) use bioluminescence to advertise their fertility. Effusiveness comes in other forms too, such as the prodigal amounts of eggs spawned by certain species of fish, or the tremendous quantities of maple keys and dandelion seeds cast upon the ground or on the wind, and almost all to no effect. This has been going on all the time, year after year, for eons. And when we cast our gaze, no longer limited by biology, upon the universe, we cannot fail to be astounded by the bewildering display of extravagant Reality that has been waiting all these billions of years for our unbounded amazement.
Human individuals and nations also enjoy extraordinary endowments of various kinds, as evinced by enormous disparities in wealth, power, beauty, artistic talent, intellectual ability, and spiritual strength. Of all of this we can say:
That is the favour of AL-LAH He gives to whom He wills. And GOD possesses overwhelming favour. (Q62:4)
ذَلِكَ فَضْلُ اللَّهِ يُؤْتِيهِ مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَاللَّهُ ذُو الْفَضْلِ الْعَظِيمِ
With these thoughts as background perspective, we read how the earth put on its ornaments and gained in loveliness and realize that all this is meaningfully directed at us – a supernatural display of GOD’s infinite surplus of Power and Knowledge that He is ready to share with mankind as soon as we are ready to receive it.
5) Grander even than the unspeakable grandeur of the material universe is its intrinsic meaning. Not only does every particle in it mean something, each particle has the potential to mean something different to every other particle in the universe. And then, moreover, every one of those explications is virtually unlimited in what it could mean at any number of higher levels of meaning and reality. In other words, the intelligible and communicative aspects of Reality so far outweigh its already mind-boggling material dimension that we literally have neither words nor numbers to even begin to conceive of what it all means. If thinking folk start pondering over this, they can only end up repeating over and over again, like reluctant mystics finally dazzled by His Infinite Light: AL-LAH! AL-LAH! AL-LAH!
We speak of information overload as an inescapable curse of today’s data-driven madness. The only cure I know for that is what I am doing now – attempting to construct a frame of meaning, like a trellis for morning glories, under which data are put down as soil for faith to flourish. But what is the cure for what I am discussing here – an overload of meaning? What do you do when absolutely everything is a sign that explicates everything else around it, and points all the way up to Ultimate Meaning, to GOD? A galaxy-spanning computer could only collapse and implode in the face of this colossal Reality, but the believing soul converts this cosmic koan into the simple, transcendent act of throwing oneself down like soil on the ground:
When the signs of the Most Gracious were recited unto them, they fell down in prostration and in tears. (19:58)
إِذَا تُتْلَى عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتُ الرَّحْمَنِ خَرُّوا سُجَّدًا وَبُكِيًّا
When faced with the reality of growth, life, death, and resurrection, an intelligent response is not to revert to meaningless, impersonal regurgitation of data, like a server, but to gratefully accept what Reality means for me, as a servant. As a person, I was created not only to process meaning, but to interact with it.
2) We imagine reality to be some sort of static, neutral object, or at best a Supreme Person on a remote celestial throne. I cannot relate to you like that, because such an attitude would dehumanize and distance you from any meaningful relationship. It would no longer be you, but a projection of my own stunted perceptions and prejudices.
Reality, likewise, is neither indifferent nor aloof . . . unless we insist on regarding Him as an uncommunicative, uncaring, and unreachable It. To dispel that unworthy thought, He declares that GOD is issuing a summons, and that He guides whoever truly intends to escape from that debilitating mindset. Guidance implies a willingness on our part to look, while a summons suggests a readiness to listen. Our relationship to GOD is not just passive and programmed, but a dynamic interplay involving all the same deeper faculties we use when dealing with our families, friends, and fellow travellers in life.
Of course, it takes attentiveness, imagination, and faith to embark on this path of prayer, and patient resolve to persist with it when the normal cues of interaction do not automatically appear as they do with the people around us. But that is probably because we are looking outside for visible signs, while our heart is busy whispering to no one but itself. When that aimless self-talk is stilled, however, He is felt to be right there beside us, then heard, and finally ‘seen’ in a way open to no one but angels.
When you, incomparable you, and the stories you’ve told yourself year after year, The illusions you’ve woven to ward off the weight and the glare and the fear, Those dark-spreading drugs and obsessions, the way they cohere In covering all that you claimed to be dear – Your thoughts on a stampeding spiral to hell, With nothing to say, and no one to tell – When your powers and plans disappear, Yourself no more than a tear, Only then am I near . . . no – here.
10) AL-LAH is calling us back to the Home of Peace, the spiritual ocean where all the absolutes I began to discuss in Chapter 1 shed the contradictions of this worldly life and become reconciled in His Transcendent Unity. This Unicity, however, is so incomprehensible to us here on earth that He spreads it out in our mental space like an orchard filled with fruits, and extends our harvest of it over time in the form of His upright path. The abstract entities we prize most highly – knowledge, beauty, love, justice, etcetera – blend and shade into one another like the colours of the visible spectrum. Facts appear in this continuum as fragments of the truth, miniature unities that can, however, be measured and broken down. Spirits in this world start out as ‘factual’ by conforming to this embodied discreteness of things, and either remain trapped in that state until death or remember that they were sent down from the sky and find the upright path that restores them to continuity, integrity, and wholeness.
Facts and values do not negate each other. Rather they are complementary terms for two ends on the same scale of basic experience. As I said before, facts are values with roots, and values are facts with wings. Moral values are not something that we work out rationally, but are irreducible aspects of the phenomenal world, like colour . . . a form of experience irreducible to any other kind, or accountable for on any other terms . . .2 While facts are normally judged as true or false, and thus can be manipulated to serve our present-day obsessions with masses of data, money, and digital versions of reality, values are in some sense post-factual. They represent a kind of preview of how the facts that we produced by our attitudes and behaviour will be judged. Your values, in other words, are what your future looks like, your imminent Reality, while facts, as if they had not flourished on the day before, become no more than a record of reference when He will tell you what you used to do. (Q9:105)
The values hidden in your heart are Divine signs for thinking folk. They are omens of the fate that awaits you in the Everafter – signs of trouble if your values follow the brutal facts of greed, rage, pride, and passion, or signs of a higher, happier Reality that awaits you in GOD’s Home of Peace.
2 McGilchrist, p. 86
The GOD You Already Know 