Deep Realization of God
Chapter 4 of the Quran has this to say: “Believers, believe in God and His Message and in the Scripture He sent down to His Messenger.” (4:136). Verse 14 of chapter 49 of the Quran offers a commentary on the authenticity of belief. “The Arabs of the desert say, ‘We have believed.’ Say to them, ‘You have not believed yet; say rather, We have submitted,’ for faith has not yet entered into your hearts.” (49:14).
From this we learn that belief does not come about by the mere mouthing of words, you have to invite belief to enter your heart and then enshrine it therein. Belief should become a part and parcel of your whole personality just as dye becomes totally mixed into water. This is graphically expressed in chapter 2: “Ours is the dye of God, and which dye can be better than God’s.” (2:138). In another sense, this can be expressed as turning your belief into belief plus. That is, simple faith should be developed into a faith based on deep realization of God. In the Quran this has been called “adding faith to your faith” (48:4). That is, intensifying your faith. There are two ways of doing so: accepting the revelation of the verses and acknowledging what the signs in the universe indicate. We learn from the Quran that, for a true believer, pondering upon the verses revealed by God becomes a means of realization of the truth (5:83). Furthermore, according to the Quran, by pondering or reflecting on the signs scattered throughout the universe, it becomes clear that what the Quran has to say is the truth and that “God encompasses all things.” (41: 53).
From the study of the Quran and Hadith, we learn that there are two categories of faith, or the realization of truth—initial realization and high or sublime realization. In this respect, Paradise is also separated into two broad divisions (55:62). For those who have achieved a high degree of realization, they are alluded to thus: “Those to the fore shall be the foremost.” (56:10), and for those who have a lower level of realization the words used are: “Those on the Right, how fortunate are those on the Right!” (56:27). These are the two categories of the realization of truth. There is no other such category.
