According to the Monotheistic Concept of reality, the Creator and the creature are completely separate from one another. God, according to this concept, has a real and eternal existence based on tawheed or monotheism. According to monotheism, God is One and has no partner. He created all things and has complete control over the universe. As the Creator of all things, He is distinct from all He has created. His creatures, in their seemingly independent existence, totally depend upon the will of God. The sole possessor of all power, God, has created man to live for a specific period of time, during which he is sent into the world to be tested.

It is this concept of the Creator as totally distinct from the creature, which sets the Semitic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – apart from the Aryan religions – Hindusim, Buddhism, Jainism – in which God is a symbol, not a reality. God in Islam is a real and independent personality.  According to the Monotheistic concept of God, although He cannot be seen, He is so close to man that He hears and answers him when he calls upon Him. He is alive and self-sustaining, self-perpetuating. He has knowledge and takes decisions, rewards and punishes. Man should serve Him and submit to Him alone and live a God-oriented life, based on His universal principles of life.

God-oriented life, therefore, begins with the discovery of God, based on the concept of Monotheism. When individuals, whether men or women, discover God, it means that they have found the truth. And this truth pervades their whole being. This feeling of having discovered the truth becomes such a thrilling experience that it fills them with an everlasting conviction. This everlasting conviction removes all frustrations from their lives. Therefore, losses are no longer such for in spite of them, they never lose the feeling that their greatest asset, i.e. God, is still with them.

Man experiences this realization by pondering upon God's creations. The truth is that the present universe is an expression of God's attributes. In this respect, the present universe is a complete introduction to God. God is visible in His creations, just as a human being sees his own reflection in the mirror, without having any doubts about it.

The vastness of space tells man that God, its Creator, is boundless. The observation of the sun and the stars shows us that God is all light. The heights of the mountains show us the greatness of God. The waves of the sea and the flow of the river tell us that God is a storehouse of boundless blessings. We see God's bounties in the greenery of the trees. Man's existence becomes a proof of God's existence. In the waft of air man experiences a Divine Touch. In the chirping of the birds, he hears God's songs.

God is a spiritual focus for man. One whose heart is attached to God undergoes spiritual experiences at every moment. Belief in God becomes a source of spiritual development for him. Filled with the love of God, he does not need anything further. God becomes a vast ocean for him to continue to swim in without ever experiencing any limit. In the form of spiritual awakening, he receives such great wealth that he does not feel any need for anything else.

For one who discovers God, the entire universe becomes an open book of God for him. Every leaf of a tree becomes a page of the Divine Book. When he sees the sun, he feels as if God is lighting His heavenly torch so that he may read His book clearly. The Universe becomes, as it were, a supernal university and he its student.

Finding God is to find his centre of love. Man by birth is a seeker of a Supreme Being Who is far above him, Who is free from all limitations and Who may form the centre of his feelings, in short, a Being after finding Whom the grown man becomes as satisfied as a child after being held in the embrace of his mother.

This discovery of God saves one from regarding something other than God as God and mistakenly and unrealistically thinking it to be the answer to the urge inherent in his nature. The discovery of God is to fulfill his or her real urge to find God. And the failure to discover God means failing to find that which is man's greatest need.

One who fails to find God is compelled by his natural urge to give the place of God to something other than God. This place is sometimes accorded to a certain human being, sometimes to a certain animal, sometimes to a phenomenon of nature, sometimes to a certain material power, sometimes to a certain supposed concept and sometimes just to the self.

Even if one fails to discover God, or he becomes a denier of God, it is not in his or her power to stifle the urge in his nature to find God. That is why those men and women who have not found God inevitably come to hold something other than God as God. And this supposed god is always some creature or the other of God.

By nature, it is possible for man not to accept the real God as God, but it is not possible for anyone to save himself or herself from granting the status of divinity to something other than God.

Making God one's object of worship raises man's position. On the contrary, regarding something other than God as God amounts to descending from the level of humanity.

God is therefore indispensable to man. His life is incomplete without God. A philosopher has aptly remarked that had there been no God, we would have had to invent one. Fortunately, God exists in reality. We can believe in God with conviction, not as a supposition, but as a fact. And we can accord Him the place He deserves in our lives.

God-oriented life for man thus starts by his remembering God. He begins to feel the presence of God. Everything serves to remind him of God. God's remembrance is never absent from his heart and mind. His mornings and evenings should be spent as if he is living in God's neighbourhood. Just as rain replenishes the crops, so does he remain ever immersed in the remembrance of God.

Living a God-oriented life means living a rabbani – to use the Islamic term – life. When man lives a rabbani life, the target of his spiritual quest is that the creature – man – has to discover and realize the Universal God – his Creator, to whom he is accountable, and make contact with Him through the process of contemplation or tafakkur or tadabbur or tawassum as mentioned in the Quran. That is to say that God is the treasure house of all virtues. And when man’s contact with God is established through contemplation, in the world of his feelings, at the psychological level, an unseen, inner revolution is brought about which is called rabbaniyat or spirituality. In this matter the relationship between God and man can be likened to an electric wire and the powerhouse. When the wire is connected to the powerhouse, electricity is produced, and the place is lit up. In this way, light is the result of the wire’s connection to the powerhouse of God.

Human nature is like an inflammable element. When an inflammable element like petrol comes near fire, it is ignited. Similarly, human nature is awakened when it comes in contact with God. This finds expression in the Quran in these words:
God is the light of the heavens and the earth. The metaphor of His light is that of a niche in which there is a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, the glass like a brilliant star, lit by a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would well-nigh glow forth even though fire did not touch it. Light upon light! God guides to His light whom He wills. And God sets forth parables to men, and God has knowledge of all things. (24:35)

This is a compound simile. ‘Light’ here means the guidance of Almighty, ‘niche’ means the human mind and ‘lamp’ denotes the capability to receive divine inspiration. Glass and oil elaborate upon this receptivity. ‘Glass’ shows that this receptivity has been lodged in the human mind; protected from outside influences, and clear oil indicates that this receptivity is very strong and is eagerly waiting to receive inspiration.
This verse makes it clear that, on the one hand, is God, the source of inspiration, and on the other, is the consciousness of spirituality (God-consciousness) with which man is born. In this way when these two things come together, Islamic spirituality or Rabbaniyat comes into existence. This is indeed another name for the awakening of God-consciousness. When it reaches its highest stage the believer’s realisation of God comes to that point where he begins to feel consciously in his worship that he is seeing God and that if he is not seeing God, God is seeing him. If the first type of experience is called direct spiritual experience, the second-type may be termed indirect spiritual experience.

As the Quran tells us, “Prostrate yourself and draw near.” (96:19) For God is always close to us—closer than the lifeblood in the jugular vein (50:16). By total surrender to God, the soul can realise nearness to God.

Similarly, according to this hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), ‘Worship God as if you are seeing him’ (Sahih Al-Bukhari). When man engages himself in true devotion, he is linked with God at a sensory or psychological level. He comes close to God. Through an invisible cord he comes in contact with God, God’s light passes through him. His entire existence comes to be pervaded by this indescribable feeling, which is called spiritual experience. This is called Rabbaniyat in the Quran (Be people of the Lord 3:79).

Rabbani means one whose thinking, and whose actions are God-oriented, who has placed God at the centre of his attention. When an individual attains spirituality, his state becomes like a lamp lit all of a sudden. He undergoes spiritual experiences. His mind becomes an ocean of spiritual waves. He appears to live in this world, but he has found another far superior world for himself.

These spiritual experiences cannot be explained in words. Everything in the universe seems to convey to him a divine message. To receive this divine message, man must undertake what Quran refers to as ‘Tawassum’. Tawassum is the ability to observe and contemplate (tafakkur or tadabbur) on the phenomena of the universe. This is done with the objective of drawing lessons and thereby receiving spiritual nourishment from them. In this way, the leaves of the tree become a thrilling experience for him. A waft of air gives him the message of truth. He can hear divine music in the waves of the river and the chirping of the birds. Thus the entire universe becomes a storehouse of spirituality.

One, therefore, does not have to go away from the world to receive spirituality. Through the process of tawassum, man can live in the world and continuously receive spiritual inspiration from it.

Due to his high state of receptivity, he reaches the stage where the wavelength of God and man becomes one. And he is enabled, in the words of the Prophet:” to see with God’s eye, to speak with God’s tongue, to walk with God’s foot, to hear with the ear of God.”

Then all limitations vanish and his day and night are spent in God’s neighbourhood. All this can be felt, not described in words. This can be explained with the example of a child who has limitless love for his mother. He knows it himself in the full sense but he cannot fully describe it in words. The same is true of spirituality.
When a person is linked with the source of spirituality – the Creator of the universe, he undergoes such spiritual experiences as he himself fully understands, but has difficulty in conveying to others. He may describe some external signs but he cannot describe inner reality.

Therefore, the philosophy of spirituality according to Islam is explicitly that of the duality of reality or monotheism and in it man’s quest is to discover God through the process of contemplation (tafakkur and tadabbur) and to make contact with Him to receive spirituality or rabbaniyat from Him so that he can live a God-oriented life.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has trained CPS members and their global partners to live God-oriented lives. CPS and its global partners are sharing this wisdom with others.