AYAT AL KURSI - ART AND PERCEPTION – LIMITS AND DEGREES OF OUR LEVELED MIND

When I was little I remember my uncle playing a game with me called “got your nose”. Maybe you remember it too. Pretending to grab my nose off my face and using his covered thumb knuckle to show me he had really “got my nose”. Then as I became older we learned a rhyme called “here is the church” where I could manipulate my own hand into the image of a church, steeple and inside all the people. Check out this YouTube channel if you don't know what I mean. ;) As I got older, I looked to art and design to understand different ways to perceive the world.

David Spriggs is a Canadian installation artist. His 2008 sculptural exhibit called Emergence of Perception tells a story of the seen and the unseen. The structures are almost smoky in effect being composed of white acrylic, transparent film, metal springs, eyelets and light. His art is meant to be appreciated from all sides. And when you walk around the object, you feel your perception change. From the front,you perceive an empty space with rays emanating from it, then you perceive a human eye. As you get closer the rays appear like feathers. While examining the side of the sculpture, your perception collapses into a different reality when the sharp image of what you thought to be an eye becomes several flat slides running parallel to the encasement and somehow suspended within. We are transported from a 3D world into a 2D world and back again as we view the back of the sculpture. Our intentional movements propel objects into appearance.

Like fine art, literature also has it's ways of explaining different realities and exploring our perception. Post modernist fiction like the novel Foe by Coetze and especially English Music by Peter Ackroyd explored different perceptions by having the book in your hands explain to you how your fingers felt on it's pages. The first time I read Ayat al-Kursi, I was never more astounded by what those 9 sentences were describing:

Allah! La ilaha illa Huwa (none has the right to be worshipped but He), the Ever Living, the One Who sustains and protects all that exists. Neither slumber, nor sleep overtake Him. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him except with His Permission? He knows what happens to them (His creatures) in this world, and what will happen to them in the Hereafter. And they will never compass anything of His Knowledge except that which He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.

Ayat al-Kursi is one of the most important ayat in the Qur'an. Our Prophet (pbuh) states that there is great benefit in reciting it and that it is equal to 1/4 of the Qur'an. Since it is equal to such an amount, understanding the underpinnings and layers of meaning in this verse should have significant impact on our iman. The Muslims of the first 2 generations and the companions must have grasped the concepts immediately, however in our time and culture we have to work to understand in the way that they could. So we begin by asking primary questions: Why is it so important? What is the impact? On how many levels can I understand this ayat?

The Prophet Mohammad tells us that reciting it in the morning will give protection until evening, and reciting at night will protect us and our families and even the houses that surround us from shaytan until morning. From this we can understand 3 things: Firstly, the words hold a lot of meaning, being 1/4 of the Qur'an. Secondly, they are very powerful like a perfect shield, and thirdly, the protection is lasting from day into night and throughout the night into day. This would be the first layer of understanding.

On another level, there is a grand image projected to us. Allah is describing his qualities from which we can gradually carve our perception. Allah's vision is 360 degrees and he never closes his eyes. He perpetually guards and preserves his creatures. Always keeping an eye on us. His view can be both expanded and contracted. He is close to us as a caretaker, as one who listens to our sallat. We perceive him as a Father figure. He is extremely far away on the Arsh of his Kursi and he is our Lord. The imagery in the lines “His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth” gives us the impression of expansiveness and immenseness. How much space does Allah take up if his throne extends over the earth and the heavens? Conversely, how small are we?

Along with the perception of size is the perception of time. Allah never gets tired nor does he sleep. We could only understand this quality, because it is impossible for us, if we think about the quality of time. The bible mentions this also: “For a thousand years in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4) and also “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8)

The fact is we live in a 3D world with the fourth dimension being time which we do not experience as directly as we do the first three. Quantum physicists describe 10 dimensions in Superstring theory. Length, width, depth, time, possible worlds slightly different from our own for comparison, a plane of different worlds that were created from the same beginnings (clay), possible worlds that were created from other possible beginnings (fire), branches of possible universes that were created from different possible beginnings, all the possible universe histories starting with all the different possible laws of physics and initial conditions, and finally the point in which everything possible and imaginable is covered. Beyond this, nothing can be imagined by us lowly mortals, which makes it the natural limitation of what we can conceive in terms of dimensions.

When we examine the poetic structure of ayat al-Kursi, we find 9 lines. The lines contain parallel meaning when we consider them from first and last, second and second last etc. Ayat al-Kursi symmetrically folds in on itself like a mobius strip

 

2^nd line :La ilaha illa Huwa (none has the right to be worshipped but He.)

9^th line: And He is the Most High, the Most Great.

^3rd line: the Ever Living, the One Who sustains and protects all that exists

8^th line: He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them.

We can understand the parallel structure of ayat al-kursi as we understand the folding described in superstring theory that would allow us to perceive other dimensions. The verse before ayat al-kursi talks about spending out of what we have been given and the verse after the ayat talks about there being no compulsion in religion. What I understand from this is linked to Qismat. Do as you are permitted to do and use what you have been granted, these are my attributes, you have been given free will for a reason make your choices wisely.