Chapter Seventeen: The Holy Quran

The Holy Quran, as the divine revelation and a repository of wisdom, embodies certainty and steadfastness in delineating the relationship between the Almighty and His creation, both in this world and the hereafter. It adheres to a balanced approach, consonant with the innate disposition of each individual. Through intimacy, affection, and the enlightened intellect of the heart, every person can attain an understanding of the Holy Quran. In Islamic theological studies, the Quran is recognized as the divine revelation and a primary source for spiritual and ethical guidance.

The Holy Quran is endowed with intrinsic truth, impervious to doubt, hesitation, frailty, or instability. One of its miraculous attributes is its challenge to humanity, as no one can produce a work comparable to it. This is evidenced by the verse: “Say, ‘If mankind and jinn gathered to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce its like, even if they supported one another.’” (Al-Isra, 88).

Through recitation, particularly by an individual’s heartfelt engagement, the Holy Quran can purify and cleanse tainted thoughts and poisoned minds, repelling negativity. Thus, it is not only permissible but imperative to seek refuge in the Quran, using its divine verses to dispel certain mental and emotional impurities that cannot be eradicated otherwise. This purification enables the soul to access authentic and reliable knowledge, scholarly and gnostic expositions, divine truths, and the manifestation of divine glory inherent in the Quran. Through heartfelt proximity, the soul gains certainty and consumes these truths as spiritual nourishment. Psychological studies on religion and health have demonstrated that Quranic recitation can reduce anxiety and enhance mental well-being, particularly among individuals with strong religious convictions.

By reciting and reflecting upon the Holy Quran, an individual can attain spiritual health, vitality, and an ecstatic vigor in the soul, which empowers and uplifts. The Quran serves as sustenance for the soul, providing nourishment far surpassing the fulfillment of physical dietary needs. Without daily engagement with the Quran, even briefly, one risks falling into emotional turbidity, mental confusion, and intellectual impurity.

The Holy Quran is the nourishment of the human heart, capable of both preserving and purifying it, elevating the soul to higher states. Wounds and fractures arising from internal heart disorders cannot be healed without recourse to the Quran. The pains of the heart and nervous frailties rooted in these existential wounds find no remedy outside the Quran. In positive psychology and religious studies, the Quran is acknowledged as a source of meaning-making and spiritual health, contributing to stress reduction and psychological well-being.

The Holy Quran is the wise physician of souls, guiding toward the path of justice, equity, expansiveness, and innate flourishing. It calls the worthy individual through the divine name of the Lord, resonating with a meaningful summons. Recitation of the Quran, with complete devotion to its essence, aids humanity in virtuous endeavors, broadening the mind, expanding the inner self, and attaining spiritual perfections. It is a divine alchemy, a miraculous revelation, unparalleled even by acts of worship such as prayer.

Spiritual Health of the Heart

The Holy Quran, along with remembrances and acts of worship, serves as nourishment for the human soul and a training ground for the inner self, liberating individuals from attachment to the material world and fostering spiritual health of the heart. Through this engagement, the inner self blossoms, enabling individuals to discover their true essence, apprehend divine decrees, innate predispositions, and divine graces bestowed upon them. This leads to divine knowledge and celestial sustenance granted by the Lord. Those unable to detach from the material realm remain bound to it even after death, lacking the spiritual provisions to navigate the trials and stations of the afterlife.

The Holy Quran is God’s manifest book, capable of serving as a mentor and teacher to those who approach it with intimacy, provided they possess the perceptive faculty of the heart and the vision of the soul. To grasp the Quran’s meaning and its existential reality as a guiding scripture, one must adopt an approach of freedom, expansiveness, receptivity, renunciation of greed, pure love, and heartfelt intimacy with this divine book. Such an approach, when integrated into scholarly instruction, becomes effective, mature, and capable of leading individuals to insight, openness, freedom, purity, luminosity, and spiritual health of the heart. The mystical understanding of the Quran as a path to divine proximity and heartfelt knowledge has been explored in religious psychology as a dimension of spiritual experiences.

The Holy Quran is a comprehensive book of scientific knowledge concerning all phenomena, accessible to the perceptive faculty of the heart through love and intimacy, proportionate to one’s capacity. The system of self-care recommends daily engagement with the Quran during the era of occultation as a guiding book, a source of meaningful content, spiritual and intellectual nourishment, and a pharmacy for holistic health.

Method of Intimacy with the Holy Quran

The path of intimacy and love transcends linguistic barriers, relying on the semantic engagement with the Quran. The recommended recitation of the Quran is not merely the articulation of its words but the comprehension of its meanings. Intimacy with the Quran is achieved through observing decorum during recitation, upholding its sanctity, maintaining consistent engagement, studying it diligently, placing it upon the heart, and expressing love for it. Intimacy with the Quran and the bearers of divine authority, and deriving meaning through the signals of the heart, requires inner purity. This purity creates harmony, affinity, and receptivity between the individual’s inner self and the Quran’s essence, aligning them to access the hidden meanings of the Quran.

When the Quran becomes the breath, love, purity, and essence of a person, its divine verses penetrate the heart. If heartfelt intimacy with the written Quran leads its existential reality to accept and cherish the individual, it grants access to its written content and existential meanings, enabling recognition of all targeted phenomena. A heart lightened through intimacy with the Quran signifies its existential acceptance of the individual.

Observing ritual purity and cleanliness when approaching this divine book, invoking its name with reverence and noble epithets, exemplifies the expression of love for its rational verses. This book of knowledge recognizes and embraces its lover, guiding them into the boundless expanse of its divine heart, becoming their refuge. Through intimacy and love, the Quran descends vibrantly into the heart, revealing its freshness and manifesting itself within the individual. The Quran assumes responsibility for teaching its meanings and content, particularly in the realms of realized monotheism and divine guardianship, through love and heartfelt descent, continually presenting new meanings and insights from its divine verses. The Quran’s guidance operates through such an inner system and the perceptive faculty of the heart, self-sufficient without reliance on external exegesis, though its authority is validated by the fourteen infallible figures and their tradition of referring to this divine book of light.

One must cultivate such intimacy with the Quran that it unveils itself to the individual, rather than merely seeking to uncover it through intellectual exegesis while neglecting the heart’s perceptive faculty. The Quran can alleviate psychological distress, anxiety, and other disorders, provided one engages intimately with it. For instance, intimacy with the verses of Surah Al-Baqarah, with its elongated, rhythmic, and melodious syllables, effectively addresses nervous frailty, psychological tremors, anxiety, impatience, lack of forbearance, palpitations, rapid pulse, and atrial contractions. Detailed discussions of the Quran and its gnostic content are provided in the book The Quran and Divine Revelation.

Divination with the Holy Quran

Divination (istikhara) seeks to uncover the hidden aspects of matters unknown to humanity, particularly during the era of occultation when divine authority is absent. However, this does not entail closing the gates of reason in all matters, as evident truths in life must be discerned through rational analysis, clear signs, and available evidence. One of life’s pitfalls is the addiction of some to divination due to a misunderstanding of its complex and divinely bestowed nature. In religious and mystical studies, divination is examined as a method for receiving divine guidance.

Knowledge of Divination with the Holy Quran

Among the sciences of the Quran, divination is primarily a divinely bestowed knowledge, though partially attainable through learning and instruction. Like the interpretation of dreams and the science of divine names, it is a gifted science connected to the unseen world, and faith in it reflects belief in the unseen and the inner reality of existence. This knowledge is a matter of divine grace, not rational deduction. The process of divination is shaped by the Almighty’s grace, not human intellect or acumen, though reason recognizes its legitimacy, truth, and value. Faith in divination signifies trust in divine grace and attention.

As stated in Awareness and the Divine Human, the gift of true and guiding or cautionary dreams, their oral and untainted interpretation, and divination—one of the most rudimentary yet precise means of connecting with the unseen realms—serve as guides in the era of occultation through divine grace. They lead humanity to the divine force of attraction within the cosmos, enabling the discovery of true realities and access to the presence of the divine human.

When based on the heart rather than conceptual or scientific knowledge, which may degrade into superstition, divination equates to consulting an infallible imam or divine authority. It is a divine favor and refuge for guiding believers in the era of occultation, bridging the unseen and material worlds. Just as Prophet Moses regarded a wooden staff as a prophetic miracle, nullifying the terrifying sorcery of magicians, or a cow’s breath resolved a dispute by revealing a hidden murderer, in this era, scholars and saints perform divinations that function like Moses’ staff or the cow of the Israelites in unveiling truth. This is not implausible, especially as it is empirically verifiable in life’s vicissitudes for those described as “and those who repented with you” (Quran).

Meaning and Divine Nature of Divination

Divination means seeking goodness from God, reliant on divine grace rather than human choice or discretion, which are functions of reason. The distinction between divination and choice lies in this point. One who chooses an action through reason exercises discretion, a rational faculty, whereas divination seeks divine goodness, pertaining to God’s action, grace, and inner focus, not rational deduction or human mental effort. When truly present in an individual, this science is creative and generative, never derived from memory or reports.

Creative Nature of Divination and the Need for a Sacred Faculty

Divination, like other bestowed sciences, requires the practitioner to possess a sacred faculty by divine gift to deduce its meanings and content. In spiritual sciences, beyond the requirements of manifest knowledge, one must consult a pure, clear, and joyful inner self, not others’ writings. True scholars of dream interpretation or divination rely solely on their inner book, aiding themselves and others through its reading.

Divination operates on a creative system with unique extraction and deduction methods. Mastery of its rules and secrets alone does not yield the most precise divinations. The most accurate divinations belong to those with a broader, more detailed, and precise inner book, enabling them to draw upon inspirations. Thus, seekers of this knowledge are advised to refine their inner selves and cultivate intimacy with the Quran, alongside mastering its principles, to grasp the logic of divination and its deductive power. Structuring this knowledge academically serves as a foundational step, effective only to the extent of preliminaries for non-experts. These preliminaries are critical, often intertwined with human felicity or misery, as ignorance of divination’s nature leads to misapplication, causing harm to oneself and others.

Divination is an inspired science, only partially codifiable, with much of it requiring inner experience and intimacy with the Quran, shaped by inner purity and spirituality. When performed by qualified individuals, Quranic divination can manifest its miraculous potential in significant matters, not trivial issues of those with weak wills, who lack the capacity for even minor decisions and must address their frailty.

Revealing the Hidden and Unseen

Divination can diagnose the seeker’s situation, revealing the hidden aspects beyond human reason’s grasp. It enables access to blessings or benefits and protection from harms or evils, not merely resolving mental confusion or doubt. Divination transcends the apparent world accessible to human reason, connecting to the unseen and inner reality through the Quran’s guidance, surpassing formal reason that has not attained strong intuition or insight.

Principles and Rules of Divination

Divination is an inspired, divinely bestowed science, bestowed upon a pure and sincere inner self. It requires mastery of its rules, intimacy with the Quran, and a sacred faculty. The role of inner purity in spiritual practices like divination is affirmed in religious psychology and Islamic mysticism. Without knowledge of its principles, divination risks leading oneself or others astray in critical life matters, incurring accountability and punishment in the hereafter. Only those with divine legitimacy, inner purity, and knowledge of divination’s foundations should undertake it. Divination for obligatory acts or sinful deeds is invalid, as one must fulfill divinely mandated duties.

Key Terms and the Pivotal Word of the Verse

Every verse contains a key word that, when identified, enables swift and precise access to the divination’s meaning. Through intimacy with the Quran, one can not only discern the key word but also deduce the content of other words in the verse, akin to a skilled physiognomist reconstructing a body from a face. Other phrases and words merely elaborate on the derived meaning. Identifying this semantic center of gravity is crucial for immediate access to the divination’s meaning.

Semantics of the Verse’s Words

All words in a verse carry meaning in divination. Attention must be paid to every attribute mentioned and the words’ contextual relevance to the action. Below, key divination terms are elucidated in a responsive table:

Length and Structure of the Divination Verse

Two factors indicate complexity: the length of the divination verse (distinct from Quranic verses) and the presence of multiple, interwoven segments. The end of the divination verse, not the numbered Quranic verse, determines the outcome. Long verses suggest delayed results, while short ones indicate quick outcomes. Lengthy Quranic verses with varied segments warn of high risks, while short verses emphasize their meaning, doubling the impact of good or bad outcomes.

Beginning and End of Divination Verses

In divination verses, which may span multiple Quranic verses, the beginning and end must be analyzed to assess the action’s start and conclusion. Sometimes, only the beginning and end matter, ignoring intermediate parts. Certain middle segments may override this, such as verses addressing the good or evil intentions of individuals, where outcomes depend on the seeker’s nature. The alignment of a verse’s beginning and end is critical; a positive end may justify proceeding despite a challenging start, and vice versa.