Our world, the ‘alam-i mulk or ‘alam-i shahadat (the held-world or seen-world), is the lowest sphere, for it is held but cannot hold. It forms the hierarchy’s base, whereas the first and most perfect and comprehensive entity is its summit. This base contains no actual or creative thing, but is endowed with unlimited potential and ability to receive, and so forms the background of its upward and spiritually evolutionary movement.

In its upward course, therefore, matter begins with the simplest subatomic particles and proceeds to form atoms into nebulae and the solar system. These are then populated with such inanimate and animate things as plants, animals, humanity, and other conscious and intellectual beings, the nature and number of whom only the Creator knows. So far as Earth is concerned, the Creator causes inanimate elements to develop into plants, thus elevating them to the simplest degree of life. Life, being the result of God’s direct manifestation of His Attribute of Life and of His Name the Giver of Life without any cause, evolves through plants and animals until it reaches perfection with humanity, the most complicated and highest intellectual entity into which matter has developed. With humanity, creation’s hierarchy returns to its starting point.

We have been endowed with the power of discovery and invention, and have been taught “the names” (the keys to the knowledge of all things). We have been given the power to receive whatever is manifested by God’s Will, whether in the terrestrial, celestial, or supercelestial spheres, through our external and internal senses, and to reflect and reproduce whatever we receive. Although our celestial origin places us at the summit of creation’s hierarchy, we have to live upon Earth because of the vegetable and animal aspects of our existence. In other words, these contradictory features of our being—the angelic nature and the terrestrial crust hiding the spiritual core—cause us to live in this world and yet seek to transcend it.

The Qur’an defines our situation in a way that is at once perennial and universal: We created humanity of the fairest creature, and then reduced it to the lowest of the low (95:4-5). Created in the fairest stature, we nevertheless fell into separation and withdrawal from our celestial prototype—a condition the Qur’an calls the “lowest of the low.” Concerning this, a Sufi commentator writes that God created us as the most complete and perfect theophany, the most universal and all-embracing theater of Divine Names and Attributes, so that we might bear the Divine Trust and become the source of an unlimited effusion of light. He identifies the “lowest of the low” with the World of Natural Passion and Heedlessness. The grandeur of the human state, its great possibilities and perils, and the permanent nature of our quest after the Divine therefore lie at the very root of human existence.

Ibn Sina, a famous eleventh-century Muslim philosopher, expresses the idea that the human soul feels constrained to leave this world and to return to the angelic world from where it came:

... Now why from its perch on high was it cast like this
To the lowest Nadir’s gloomy and dear abyss?
Was it God who cast it forth for some purpose wise,
Concealed from the keenest seeker’s inquiring eyes?
Then is its descent a discipline wise but stern,
That the things that it has not heard it thus may learn.
So ‘tis she whom Fate does plunder, while the star
Sets at length in a place from its rising far,
Like a gleam of lightning which over the meadows shone,
And, as though it never had been, in a moment is gone.
— (E.G. Brown’s translation)

The cosmos continually reveals the eternal message of the Truth, and its finite forms reveal the traces of the Infinite. As ‘Ali ibn Ali Talib said: “I wonder about the person who observes the universe created by God and doubts His Existence.” The Qur’an says:

To God belongs the Kingdom of the heavens and of Earth, and God is powerful over everything. In the creation of the heavens and Earth, and in the alternation of night and day, are signs for people with minds who remember God standing and sitting and lying on their sides, and reflect upon the creation of the heavens and Earth: “Our Lord, You have not created this for vanity. Glory be to You! Guard us against the Fire’s chastisement. Our Lord, whomsoever You admit to the Fire You will have abased; and the evildoers shall have no helpers. Our Lord, we have heard a caller calling us to belief, saying: ‘Believe in your Lord!’ And so we believe. Our Lord, forgive our sins and acquit us for our evil deeds, and take us to You with the pious. Our Lord, give us what You have promised us through Your Messengers, and abase us not on the Day of Resurrection. You will not fail the tryst.” And their Lord answers them: ‘I do not waste the labor of any that labors among you, be you male or female—the one of you is as the other.’ (3:189-95)

Humanity needs revelation, which, like the cosmos itself, comes from the Infinite and the Absolute. Hence, revelation serves as the key for unfolding the mysteries of our being and of the universe. It is a gift from Divine Mercy that enables us to pass beyond the finite to the Infinite, and enables the human soul to move from the outward to the inward, from the periphery to the center, and from form to meaning.

This journey is none other than the mystical quest itself. Due to the soul’s intimate relation with the cosmos, this journey is at once a penetration to the soul’s center and a migration to the abode beyond the cosmos. The Divine Presence resides in both places. By following Islam’s outer form, we migrate to the inner and, by His Grace, transcend the finite world to regain our primordial angelic state and thereby complete creation’s circle. The spiritual path of Islam calls people to defeat their carnal souls so that they can be reborn as their angelic selves. 

Those who find the Truth find Him in their souls;
Those detained halfway are hindered by conjectures.
Whoever truly seeks will truly find Him,
while the indolent can do neither;
For His servants on their spiritual journey,
He is the final destination.
Souls who do not recognize Him as a friend,
who do not die to themselves to be raised again in Him,
and who do not die for His sake
are utterly bereft and destitute.
Come, friends, let’s set out to reach
the realm of the Beloved; 
And let us see the rose of His beauty
for a moment in light.
The world is pitiless and cruel,
all covered in fog and cloud.
It is but a loss and waste of time
to stay here even for a short while.
We are travelers, and our homecoming is with Him alone.
What an honor then to reach Him.
Faith is the only way to attain this aim
by His leave and grace.

Islam is the religion of unity, and all aspects of its doctrine and practice reflect this central and cardinal principle. The Shari‘a is a vast network of injunctions and regulations that inwardly relate the world of multiplicity to a single center and, conversely, is reflected in the multiplicity of the circumference. Islamic art seeks to relate the multiplicity of forms, shapes, and color to the One, to the center and Origin, and thereby reflect tawhid in its own way in the world of forms with which it is concerned.