Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim All praise and glory be bestowed upon the One who created, who nurtures,

and who cherishes all Creation. And may the peace and blessings of that One be bestowed upon His beloved, the Best of Creation, our Prophet, Muhammad.

Tawhid: God is One How do we know how to know? Knowledge comes easily to a human being; a consequence of being. Should knowledge be good, true, proper, useful, sound, common, necessary, important or relevant? How many of these characteristics should knowledge have? Can knowledge be inherently contradictory? How do we manage to negotiate between the different sets of knowledge amongst people and even within ourselves from time to time? We do not need to resort to the sociological study of knowledge or rehash the philosophical traverse through epistemology in order to recognize that different people will only agree on knowledge if they already hold the necessary prerequisites as valid so that the agreed knowledge is an a priori outcome of what they used to arrive at their conclusion. This is one of the reasons for the dominance of scientific knowledge in our contemporary environment as it assures a greater convergence upon knowledge by establishing the proper protocol for knowing. Consequently a fragmentation of religious belief is seen. That is from the struggle people undergo to reconcile their knowledge of their environment with their beliefs in the unseen and the reasons and causes for existence delivered to them through their religious training. This work is not an attempt to harmonize between science and religion. Rather, the proper basis for knowing the criteria of true and false shall be established (not for someone to believe in, but by necessity as the sufficient basis for a self-consistent language of realism). The challenge is to build a complete theory of knowledge shall allow us to seek answers to the questions of: What am I? Who am I? Why am I? In order to account for the God-concept in such a way as to unite across various traditions, we must deconstruct the notion of God and remove all previous frames of reference from our mind. The progress of deconstructionism through the 19th and 20th century religious traditions was incredibly problematic for people who held on to certain notions of faith and reason. It is all too reasonable to see religion as purely the product of social environments and cultural frameworks, and to miss out on the transcendent truth values of one notion of the Absolute or Other. However,

it is also the case that not every conception of the Absolute is compatible within the set of all concepts of Absolute reality; value; truth; existence. We will not accept as valid the idea that the fundamental basis of knowledge and realism is both A and not-A. Nothing can be validly known by combining contradictions, instead a contradiction, paradox, or fallacy is an indication that our ontology is not proper. Self-consistency shall be the only valid method for continued pursuit of knowledge from our ontological roots. So we begin by addressing the question of our absolute reference frame for truth and reality. By tradition this has been given the name God. This word will be emptied of all meaning. It is now an empty symbol. Any conception of knowledge and reality must have an ontological signifier for the absolute. No knowledge is possible without it. This signifier does not have to be some idea of Creator of the Universe, rather it can be simply me. The purpose is the function performed by what is signified. What is the basis for knowledge of God (l following: 1) Intellect 2) Experience 3) Revelation, tradition, or convention (each has superficial differences but categorically are used in the same way) Any possible approach to l by the intellect alone will only be aware of itself and almost entirely ignorant of its ignorance. The expanse of knowledge from intellect is limited, and functions as an absolute only within its own reference frame. In some cases it can be useful for universal categories, but the limitation of knowledge means that the possibility of a reference frame for truth and reality may also come from beyond the intellect alone. The intellect is primarily useful for categorization and logical distinction; this is like that; this must be like that. Everything that can be thought of is therefore equivalent to the mental. The reality of a tree is more than my idea of a tree, but the idea of a tree is entirely mental and inseparable from my own existence. Something else is required in order to achieve a meaningful definition of l that is entirely distinct from human mind. If we only use our intellect in our approach to l, the identity of l will necessarily overlap with the identity of something that already has a name. In that case, l is not unique but is reducible to those other names. We know nothing about l from this point until such time as we can justify that we have come to knowledge of something that cannot also be called by another name. This is the requirement for a possible approach to absolute knowledge that is distinct from my own mind. If nothing can ALLAH)? Our choices are the

satisfy this requirement then we are justified in ascribing the absolute reference frame for truth and reality strictly to my own self. 1. l is necessarily unique Nothing else can ever occupy the position of knowledge which l satisfies. We

dont yet know if anything can satisfy this criteria. So our approach to l begins by using our intellect to determine if it is possible for anything else to fit the definitions we attempt to apply to l. This is the proper kind of intellect to have in order to determine what is not l or rather, what has already come to our knowledge by another name. We dont want our exercise of coming to knowledge of l to be an act of self-deception whereby we just re-name something else that already has a place in our knowledge. For this new word, we want unique knowledge. 2. There is no god (la illaha) This isnt knowledge to be grasped, but an opening to knowledge by which we will come to our first knowledge of l. In order to parse away reality as we our selves encompass, we must use logical negations to search for everything which is not me. Thus for now, we need to depart for a brief tour through the sensory existence of man to understand what I am. The experience of being human is essentially qualitative. There are certain qualia that constitute what we feel when we think of the experience given the name life. The abstraction and dissection of this experience through the cognitive functions is what we refer to as the intellect, which we just addressed. This world of ideas also comes with its own subset of qualia, which are distinct from the ideas themselves. The ideas of the mind are abstractions of these qualia; a process of classification; assimilation and distinction. The reality of l must primarily be an experience before we make sense of it, but to know the reality of l as something distinct in the river of consciousness we are bathing in we are required to think about it. This is the paradoxical nature of self-reference in conscious thought: I have to use myself, in order to make sense of myself. Each observation of my self differentiates myself and what is other than myself, while also incorporating this entire set of experiences back into myself. This notion of realization entails an aspect of consciousness that cannot be said to be equivalent to intellect, nor limited to qualia. It is the ability to express desire about being. At the basic level, to be a conscious self to perceive our own perception we have to have a coherence of desire to be. I know that I am observing me by my experience of my self and persistence of this desire to be is incorporated with the knowledge of self and other, and experience of self and

other; a persistent state of self-reference, accrual, adjustment, and incorporation back into the self-reference. What I am calling the persistent attribute of this process of self-reference is desire to be. The boundaries of my domain of knowledge and experience over which I can exert desire and affect an outcome have traditionally been rooted in the flesh-body which has led to difficult problems of mind/body dualism. The notion of a body can become utterly incoherent in traditional terms. The one constant is the I that expresses desire about its being. The ontology of being takes the form of I and the other. Ones body is best understood not as the traditional sense of the flesh puppet that motivates us, but instead as all that we perceive and exert our desire upon. Sometimes we share our body with others and sometimes it is exclusively ours. When I perceive a tree it is part of my body and my consciousness inhabits it in a particular way. Our bodies are the domain that the I inhabits. As I inhabit this Earth in a particular way, it assumes the context of my body. This ontological shift will be paramount in our approach to l. Our scientific knowledge has dislocated the traditional understanding of the self and also detached the language of Creation, which was the product of a Creator. Redressing this dislocation comes by recognizing the implicit observer in all scientific phenomenon. Nothing in our scientific language of knowledge ever sees fit to account for the self-entity in which observation occurs and knowledge accrues. A proper ontology of reality must be able to reincorporate the self and this shift will open up the possibility to identify something distinct from our selves. This is what is required if we are going to identify something necessarily unique from our selves, which was the first requirement for our identification of l. If we do not address the implicit self in our observations of reality, we are rooting our ontology in our selves. All knowledge will then necessarily be limited to what can be contained within the self and limited by our ignorance. We lose the phenomenon of being and reduce everything to observation; to intellect. This ontology necessarily eliminates anything other than what can be incorporated into our self, and therefore it is impossible to refer to anything meeting the definition of l that we are attempting to approach. The question remains if it is possible to have an ontology based in other than ourselves, since our intellect is always referencing our self. The solution is to establish an ontology in that which must be true from all possible perspectives. By appealing to that which necessarily and sufficiently is the case about reality, we can say to have established a meta-truth. These axioms are the basis from which we will try to approach l (something unique from self-reflection): 3. l will be established by what is possible 4. l will be established by what is necessary

5. l will be established by what is sufficient to satisfy the requirement of uniqueness The fundamental statement of necessity and sufficiency for all possible perspectives is: i. Existence is meaningful

Without this we cannot claim that we understand anything and thus even our private notion of truth is undermined. The next axioms are ii. iii. iv. I exist I desire to exist What I desire is what I am

I may change as a result of my desire and thus the old self is destroyed. So these axioms are not the expression of material existence, but are an account of the persistence of self-identity. At this point I introduce the next definition of l and then justify my choice. 6. l is what our existence is completely dependent upon and what we desire above all else Previously I have arbitrarily made other defining statements, one of which is that l had to be self-consistent and another was that l was unique. The arbitrary nature of these choices may seem to undermine the ability to affirm the reality of anything that may result from this approach. This is not so. We will introduce the most critical axiom of truth. Without this axiom we may sufficiently communicate about truth with others, but it is impossible to establish the truth of something other than a pragmatic accommodation of perspectives (i.e. It just happens to be that we agree on the description of this matter). This is the normal domain of affairs for humanity. But the following axiom is necessary to sufficiently establish our ontology of being in such a way as to able to approach l as something unique from all other things that may be named. We can navigate our psyche and establish a meaningful existence for ourselves without this axiom, but to account for our existence it is necessary to establish: 7. Either existence is dependent upon something else, or else it is not We are necessarily limited to operating with an epistemology that regards the origins of existence as complete arbitrary in terms of its means of being (the existence and persistence of being). Either something is responsible for existence in its entirety or else existence has no source other than its own existence. That

awkward statement implies two completely different forms of epistemology, but the choice of one or the other is completely arbitrary. There is no such thing as evidence that compels the truth of the matter towards one means of existence or the other. Rather this is the fundamental choice to characterize the meaning of existence; our basic axiom is that existence is meaningful. A choice on the attribution of the meaning to something other than ourselves is what is necessary to allow us to approach l; a contrary choice necessarily eliminates any approach to l . Nothing can logically or rationally persuade us one way or the other because all knowledge is completely dependent upon this choice as the basic ontological distinction of all subsequent knowledge. The choice has real consequences on the ontology of being and our epistemology will be one of two mutually exclusive sets of axioms. Because a world that is created was done for a purpose but a world that exists as a matter of fact has no ultimate or universally applicable purpose for being. The ontology of the latter scenario truncates reality with the limits of human knowledge, and reifies the Creator as the non-possible. Not the Impossible, but rather there is nothing which can sufficiently attain the attributes that are necessary in order to name a Creator. Thus it is not possible for there to be a Creator as an a priori consequence of exclusion by way of choice that there is nothing more required to account for existence than the fact of existence. This is the bifurcation of the Depth of Being. For Being to have depth means existence has meaning beyond a human mind to perceive it; while shallow Being has no depth beyond what I ascribe to my own existence, and pragmatic accommodations with others are the only means for sharing meaning) Therefore the idea of a Creator occupies a curious place in the ontology of being because it fundamentally alters the possibility of a notion of truth based on whether or not it is reified (comes into existence or necessarily remains non-existent) by way of our choice to pursue it or not. If we choose not to pursuit it, there will never be any form of evidence that may contradict our choice. If we choose to pursue it, then it is possible for every single aspect and attribute of existence to be an affirmation of our choice. So what can sway us one way or the other? The proposition is completely arbitrary and the results are mutually exclusive, so it is nothing more or less than your desire to live in a created or un-created world. Therefore it is necessary for us to explore the attributes of either world and to follow our heart, that is, what we find more desirable. We have to do so with the full knowledge that we have complete rational warrant to follow our desires. Whatever we want the outcome to be (at any point in the process of reflection upon the two different worlds) is the correct outcome. Recall now what I said I would justify about my definition of l :

l is what we desire above all else and what our existence is completely dependent upon So we have justified the possibility of l and also identified that the reality of l comes by pursuing that desire and can only be realized as the outcome of that desire; so realize that the statement is a self-referential description in the mode of our being. This is not some magic trick, or solipsism. I am not just playing word games. The choice to pursue l and the realization of our Being happen in the same arbitrary choice, to pursue a Creator or to not pursue one. The reification of our selves is no more or less than what we encounter when reifying l. What our desires amount to is what will be in regards to identity and meaning. Every aspect of our reality has the qualities of being and of meaning. If the ontology of being is truncated at the fact of being without attribution to a meaning of ultimate purpose due to the act of Creation, then there is nothing unique that can be identified as l, since every aspect of reality can be truncated to its identity as an aspect of reality. Everything in the un-created world is by definition a matter-of-fact and can be accounted for in the set of all things that may be reasoned about (identified by observation). Therefore the desire for l not only resolves the possibility of l but also the necessity of l because there is a category for something that cannot be conceived of and identified by observation through a procedure of reasoning. There is a necessary category in the ontology of being in the Created world for attribution of the Creation to a Creator. This isnt proof that there is a Creator, we are only identifying the necessary attributes of the ontologies of the created and un-created world; exploring the consequences that hinge upon our desire to resolve the arbitrary distinction of attributing ourselves to something other than another thing, or not. What remains to be established is that we have sufficiently defined a reality for that category of Creator that what we have realized is truly distinct from ourselves and not merely another subset of our imagination, albeit with curious properties of self-reference. Presently we only have an ontological placeholder that is possible and necessary, but depending upon what is sufficient to describe that l we may or may not find the desire to pursue it. So if resolving l means to pursue l and hinges upon our desire for l who do we desire? This is the difference between ontology of being with l or without l. And all that we will come to know about ourselves will be characterized by the presence or lack of what we find l is and what this means for our being. Can we realize sufficient attributes of a Creator that are distinct from our

own intellectual games of logic? To approach the reality of l we have to return to the sensory realm. Consider beauty, which is certainly incorporating elements of the senses, but cannot be reduced to them. The perception of beauty is a meta-sensory event in our consciousness, which is reified not because something is inherently beautiful but because it appears as beautiful. The quality (qualia) of an event cannot be reduced to physical parameters. Something feels hot because that is what we sense. It may or may not correlate with a certain average of the kinetic energy of particles (not all hot things are hot). Our senses are strictly the events in our consciousness triggered by the interaction of our sensory extremities with what lies beyond them; and with our sensory extremities and our self-awareness. It is not possible to do more than establish a correlation between consciousness and matter, because they have mutually exclusive elements. Also, we can reconfigure our sensory extremities into various technological states that extrapolate our bodies into new realms from what has traditionally been identified through our meat puppets. Remember that our bodies have been identified as the realm in which our selves interact, and can be vast domains that are occupied by other bodies and animate subjects we might feel alien about calling our bodies but that ontologically are indistinguishable from our hands and feet. Were we not to do this, however, we would find paradoxes about defining what matter is and then searching for the cause of the parallax between conscious and unconscious matter. All of reality is subsumed with consciousness and matter. Matter has no extrinsic reality except what we can realize consciously. So the ontology of being is of a conscious reality and must be limited to the qualia of events. Matter itself is an experience, even if it is experienced as something with familiar behaviours, predictable positions, and likely outcomes. We can never resolve the ultimate nature of matter because all observations are self-observations. Without this move to re-defining the body and the self, we also struggle to approach l and find more pathways that imply a non-Created world. The familiar struggle between science and religion has caused these pathways to become enflamed in arguments, but the combatants are talking past themselves, for they have conceived of mutually exclusive domains of meaning and will never resolve one way or the other. This is futile. The struggle is meaningless. We must remain within the established pathways of knowledge and move forward in the somewhat alien yet entirely possible and shown-to-be necessary world where our bodies have dimensions beyond our skin and inroads to our self that are entirely non-material and completely meaning-based (semiotic). We cannot say that matter causes consciousness because matter is void of meaning and consciousness is necessarily meaningful. Matter does not have to have meaning it is not necessary therefore they are mutually exclusive in the ontology of being and must be treated differently in our epistemology. Correlation

between matter and its perceived meaning is sufficient for something to be real. We may wish to integrate with other peoples realities in order to bring about an expected outcome based on an algorithm of conciliation and confirmation; in that case science and the scientific view of reality has some use. Other uses have no need for science and are completely alien to her mode of reification. This means that no amount of observation can ever prove that something is real, while a single confirmation of a negative observation (something that did not meet our expectations of reality) is sufficient to terminate the perceived reality (though it is not necessary that such a termination must occur). The negation of a reality also goes through a process of reification, by means of repeated observation and affirmation of correlation. Our desires shift and our awareness incorporates something new. So we change our selves by incorporating more and more structures of inference, reference and meaning in to our knowledge of what is real. l is real if you perceive l as real. Someone who lacks this perception may choose to reify the negation (l is not real), or reify the absence (l is not present in my awareness). Rationally we would expect to visualize something of the absence of a person before we believe that the person no longer exists, except as a memory. A lost pet may be potentially a real object and thus remain reified in our mind until the expected lifetime of the animal has lapsed without our reencountering it, or some other information reaches us to collapse the potentially real (and reified) into the negation (the pet does not exist) or even given rebirth in the virtual. It is not inconceivable to find a means of reanimating our pets or any aspect from our reality that has lapsed into non-existence by absence or destruction. Our very desire for this state of affairs is sufficient to say that we will find a means to reify that which we longed for. So flexible is our imagination and so encompassing is our ability to shape our bodies (the domain of our interaction) that this very possibility of reanimation of what we desire is sufficient for it to be a reality though one presently waiting for the means of expression. That means may be material or virtual, there isnt any ontological difference in the way that we have understood ourselves throughout this treatise. The purpose of this science fiction is to focus on the meaning of reality. Having the capacity to imagine something makes that thing real. The only path of pursuit is what modes that reality may take. There is no way to ontologically distinguish between states of being for that which is in the domain of our bodies. You cant tell a person that their memory of their loved one is un-real, only that it occupies a different state of being for them. That distinction has meaning, but its mode of being is exactly the same: it is something I have awareness of and attach desire to. If we confuse ourselves by trying to distinguish what is real by what something is physically constituted by we become hopelessly entangled in paradoxes that cannot resolve a consistent ontology. The ontology that we have established is so-far completely self-consistent and exhaustively descriptive of all possible reference

frames for reality. This was a requirement established early on for qualifying truth statements, and the reader is advised to review this if they find themselves falling back into thinking about: if all the particles of my body are replaced, am I still the same person? This question has no meaning in our ontology because particles are not identified in any way with a persons self it only has meaning in terms of attributes of perception, and these are tertiary and are just as significant as asking if I am the same person if I have gotten somewhat fatter than I was last week. The answer depends upon what you desire yourself to be, but the identity of I is whatever you are in that present moment. The continuity of self is not located in physical terms but in terms of what we desire of self-continuity. Its always selfreferencing and self-justifying. So coming to belief in l is a critical distinction between states of human existence. True belief cannot be proven, but can be justified and reified and thence maintained (even through doubt and contradiction) by the continuity of identity. So we know some of the necessary characteristics of belief. It is important to define the domain of belief and its correlation with reality and the process of reification because we are pursuing that which we have established is unlike and distinct from everything in Creation, therefore our perception of l will not be the same as observation of something. What we establish as necessary and consistent about l, and reality, is sufficient for reifying l according to the attributes and qualities thus established. This is completely justified because we have established only what can be perceived as true from all possible perspectives that are consistent within themselves. And we have carefully established an ontology of being that can describe all of our perceptions of physical reality, describe all of our inner states, account for the self and self-development, and ascribe all of this to that which brought it into being and sustains its existence. Nothing has been inconsistent; nothing can be dismissed as unreal. It is all firmly established as knowledge; consistent and necessary; possible and sufficient for reification. What we have not done is establish sufficient grounds to justify that l is necessarily distinct from our intellect. What have established, however, is sufficient grounds to justify that l necessarily will either be absent or present as the cause for our selves and all that we realize. The reality of l is to be found by approaching Him from this foundation and is sustained by our desiring Him above all else. The light of belief enters into our hearts not by our effort but by the acceptance of our sincere effort to approach l upon truth and humility. Our ontology does not establish ourselves as anything more than being entirely in need of l for all things and our epistemology reveals our desires as problematic within the domain of our bodies; confrontational and unconstrained; needing the guidance

of the One who created us for a purpose, to guide us in truth to all goodness and right action. We cannot transcend ourselves to have the perspective of objective knowledge of the reality of l, nor can we ever establish that l is unreal; we have only the choice to pursue l or not, and anyone who is upon truth and is consistent with that choice must fit within the ontologies as established here, and grow in knowledge within the parameters allowed by the two ontologies of the created and un-created worlds. We established the following about what is necessary for the reality of l . He is: 1) Unique 2) Consistent 3) That which we desire above all else 4) The Creator and Sustainer of all things 5) Ever Living (purposeful and possessing will and action and cannot cease to be) This is sufficient to establish the reality of l, but is not a complete description. Our knowledge of what is true about l must be necessary and consistent, but cannot be complete. However, that also implies that we can establish further knowledge of l as long as it is consistent with what we have established as sufficient up to the present. We should look at the fifth attribute from above. Previously this hasnt been made explicit, so where did it come from? It is consistent with the attribute of Creator and Sustainer, because we established that the basic axiom of the ontology of being is that life is meaningful. Creation, being meaningful, must establish the ground of meaning and purpose for life. This means the Creator is necessarily The Living (having the attributes of existence, meaning and purpose). And Creation being necessarily meaningful, it cannot be the case that this meaning ceases to be. Thus the Creator cannot cease to be. If l can be reified as an experience of something possessing of Life and not just a logical abstraction, then He is also: 6) Aware without limitation (All Knowing, Hearing, Seeing, Sensing, etc.) 7) Responsive without limitation (All Powerful, All encompassing, All capable, etc.) 8) Communicative without limitation (through speech, action, and signs of any nature, etc.)

This isnt mere wordplay or games, only pursing l to know what is necessary and consistent out of what is possible, given that we chose to pursue the created rather than un-created worlds. The reality of l opens itself up to all of our senses and approaches us upon every available avenue of knowledge. To know l is therefore to know how to pursue the source of our being, be aware of our purpose for being, and desire to come to the source of Life - for it cannot be ignored that the persistence of the self always comes to a natural end and the only hope for life after death is if there is a source of life that may persist beyond what we can sustain by desiring to be. We realized that a meta-property of l is apparent as qualities and attributes expand and fill our imagination, that all of these are consistent within themselves, so it has been said that: l is One And furthermore there is a meta-property of l that is apparent by this selfconsistency; since nothing else can be likened unto l , and l is the One possessing of all these majestic and transcendent qualities, that the one upon which all is dependent cannot be dependent upon anything for its own existence: l is Self-Subsistent, the one that all things depend upon for their subsistence He is l , the One; the eternal sustainer of all, in need of none. He does not beget, nor is He begotten And there is none that can be likened unto Him The Fount of Being, l , the Unique, and all that we have established as necessary and consistent, brings the sufficient knowledge to come to experience the reality of l . Reality is illuminated by awareness that all things have purpose, all things are intended, all things exists because of the power and will of the One with All Power and possessing endless Will, which brings all things into being and nothing will be deficient in its being, nor any death nor harm will occur except by the Power and Will of the Ultimate and necessary Being. Is this l distinct from my imagination? We required that l be unique. We realized that there is an arbitrary proposition of attributing my being with dependency or independency upon a Cause for all being. Nothing can logically resolve the issue except the choice to pursue one way or the other. So the realization of either world is not an intellectual exercise. The reality of a Creator is not reducible to my

imagination, since my imagination did not have the capacity to resolve the existence of a Creator or not. What we did was choose one reality and observe the necessary and sufficient properties for a Created World. If that world is what you desire above all else, there is nothing in your mind that can encompass the reality of that Being which brought about the inception of existence. The Creator is necessarily unique from human intellect because nothing can encompass the reality or non-reality of the Creator. We simply had to make a choice. What we were able to encompass with our intellect were attributes of reality based on that choice, but we cannot say that we encompass knowledge of that qualia of being the Creator. We cannot know omnipotence, but we can infer its necessity. What we are pursuing in our approach to l is whether or not our desire to resolve the proposition of a created or un-created world can sustain our desire to be in that mode of being. If we can realize our selves as the Creation and therefore realize a Creator, we have not magically made l pop out of thin air. We have resolved the necessary and sufficient attributes of our reality given our arbitrary initial choice. By realizing ourselves as Created we can open up avenues of knowledge to the Creator. These avenues are entirely justified because we demonstrated that our bodies and our consciousness are unable to decipher what is truly real, from what is imaginary. Indeed, what is truly is real is the imaginary. We can only be consistent in our ways of knowing and we can encompass nothing of the ultimate nature of reality. But knowledge of l by our approach is not the same as selfobservation by the intellect. Our knowledge of l is like appreciation of beauty. Our personal taste will resolve what that beauty is characterized by and our perception of beauty has its object of desire within our selves. The Creator remains necessarily distinct from our selves, yet presents attributes by which our intellect can assess as necessary for a Created world. What we realize of the Creator is an object of desire within ourselves, but the truth of a real Creator is arbitrarily resolved depending on what we desire the outcome to be. We cannot realize whether or not this l is anything other than our perception of a necessary and unique set of attributes, but alternatively we cannot realize if this l is anything less than the true and properly Almighty LORD of Creation. We have to see this l as being in that completely arbitrary position of the inception of realizing our selves. This is how we account for ourself and what is not ourself in our observation. We can never observe anything other than ourselves, but we can always be aware that something could be beyond our selves (remember, our selves have been redefined as anything which our consciousness impinges upon). This is a constantly recursive question with no resolution other than to arbitrarily follow one path or the other. The two paths do not cross. One is no more justified in following non-Created than the Created world. So realizing l as the Creator in the manner in

which we have done is necessarily unique, but also essentially observable. Yet the observed is necessarily not the l that we pursued. We only know what is necessary for that l but not what the observation of that l would be like. Not while we are limited by ourselves with the consciousness that we possess and our mode of being as we have explored. This is the paradox of the approach to l that we seek to understand what is beyond our selves, by reference to our selves. We can only approach the boundary of our selves and say that either this is where it all ends, or else say that if it were to continue, we know it must begin with these attributes and what it progresses to beyond the horizon of ourselves is unknowable. But we have justified that we can know l by approaching Him. It is not illogical or inconsistent to describe reality in this way. If there is a reality to l we can approach Him by eliminating anything that is necessarily self-absorbed, and purify l to what is necessarily unique and sufficient to attribute existence to something other than ourselves. Purify the name of l as The One, and if there is any reality to l it may be that He approaches you. But insist on placing a barrier of your self between you and l and you can only see yourself. This is subtle and l is Sublime. Nevertheless, it is the necessary approach to l for nothing else will resolve other than our own selves; lost in the paradox of self reference, we can be freed by the paradox of reference beyond the self. Either way knowledge has its limits. Neither is more proper. It is resolved only by what you desire. By exaggerating ourselves, by over expressing our will, and by ill-conceiving of our material nature and the extent of ourselves, our purpose for being, and our means by which we come into existence and stay in existence we will necessarily eliminate an ontology that can express l. The problematic nature of modern knowledge is that it continues to pursue an observational domain to certainty and over expresses the boundaries of science and misattributes some of the observations carried out under that banner. People attempting to harmonize l with what they know of reality encounter all manner of paradoxes and contradictions. A polarization of knowledge is often the last resort as an accommodation: for some things we need science and for other things we need religion. This inconsistency with the allencompassing nature of l often leads to a psychological revolt against that which cannot be affirmed as real by the tangible tools at our disposal. So we see that people believe in l either despite themselves (affirming the absence) or else they affirm the negation (there is no l ). This isnt for any deficiency in l, but rather because they have established their ontology of being in such a manner that they

necessary are pursuing a path of non-creation and a lack of l. They unwittingly desired other than l, and were deceived by the perception of power and purpose that our technological environment projects upon mankind. In truth we possess no power and have no purpose other than to pursue l. This can be done through exploration of our created environment, but only by firmly establishing our knowledge upon the ontology that was constructed in this work. Only by properly locating ourselves within our awareness of reality can we approach l. If we instead magnify other than l we will find our approach to be of the greatest difficulty, or perhaps even turning away from l entirely. Our technology is the expression of our desire to be the means by which we sustain ourselves. This is the implied worldview and why it continues to pose such a powerful illusion against the reality of l. It isnt just that we can do marvelous things, but that the kind of knowledge and awareness that has been used to construct the techniques and abilities to establish means by which to sustain our selves has been completely antithetical to the ontology of being that allows the expression of l. To have other than this as our fundamental understanding of reality is to be unable to properly express l with all the necessary, sufficient and consistent meanings that revealed themselves when we oriented our pursuit upon the proper approach. What then can we really say about the one who encompasses all creation, who encompasses all power, knowledge and who establishes all purpose and suffuses all life with ability and will, other than this Lord is totally encompassing of Mercy? For it is the embodiment of Mercy that we were given life, and then given the means to know l, and then given all clemency for turning from l, and that He brings us to awareness of Him and opens up pathways to Him, and that all beauty and truth and hope and goodness is found in Him? And that He is the One possessing of all authority and might and that He is the one who causes us to die, and that to Him we must all return for our life and our desire to be fulfilled we are completely dependent upon Him. Our hope is for His Mercy. Our desire is for His Mercy. Our need is completely for Him to be Merciful. And that brings us back to the question we began this journey with. I cannot reify a different l other than the one described by the names and attributes we have established as necessary and consistent in our approach to l. What we have been able to establish so far has been the result of our first choices for how to establish knowledge of l: uniqueness and that life is meaningful. Implicit in this is that our

knowledge of l has come from an essential act of negation: l is NOT LIKE other things, and life is NOT UNMEANINGFUL. More was established, but this was the basis of our ontology of being. This establishment was as a result of reflecting upon our own nature and exploring different ways to express reality. We have every hope, now, that if there is a reality to l apart from our desire for an ultimately meaningful existence brought into being by a unique and totally encompassing Being, that this Being will show us mercy and reveal Himself to us by affirmation of what we have established as necessarily true of reality (given the ontology we chose and the epistemological constraints and categories it implied). So we need a path to knowledge by affirmation, or else we might be stuck at this point of hoping for l to be Merciful and seeing signs of Mercy, but nothing has been established that required us to affirm that Mercy MUST BE an attribute of l. It isnt a necessary extension of what we have established so far but neither is it inconsistent or impossible to ascribe mercy as an attribute of the l that we have described so far. So let me say this: I desire l to be Good, Benevolent, Merciful, Loving and Kind; and if I were to hear that story in the right way, I might be convinced. Since l is Communicative I am justified in my hope that He would communicate with me, so that I might know more of who He is and what He has made me for and what I ought to do about that. To establish that l is the One who Guides I must be open to His guidance. Always our desire to approach l is required, but all the means and power and pathways are His, just as they have been to this point, so they must consistently be from here on. Thus our opening question of how to know God has exhausted the depths of our intellect and our experience of life. This leaves us with revelation as the only direct means of acquiring knowledge of God tradition and convention represent the same kind of knowledge, but are not attributable to l. They are important, though, for it is from tradition and convention that we can look for revelation. The necessity to have begun with our intellect and experience in the pursuit to l is that we have a very robust framework: an ontology and epistemology encompassing a great deal of knowledge and establishing the basis for the ground of our being and the necessary and consistent attributes of l. We first needed to direct our intellect appropriately and constrain our desire sufficiently. So by this we

will have the necessary knowledge to receive the direct communication from l. This is the consistent pathway of knowledge, if what we have desired of l is true. If l is other than what we have desired, or if we desire other than this from l, what do we expect to find? If we cannot find Revelation from l, then perhaps our hope was in vain, or perhaps our hope awaits fulfillment. Turning back from l is always within our freedom. But our hope is in a Living God, who brought us into being, and is possessing of all abilities to guide us. We can desire this guidance, and shouldnt expect our hopes to be in vain. For l possesses all means to guide us; since we had to desire Him to know Him and all power was His to reveal Himself, our hope for His guidance follows the same consistent paradigm. Were we to find this guidance, we have received the direct encounter with l that reveals Himself to us and that shifts all awareness of the reality of l from a potential reality, to the affirmed reality and object of my desire who responded to my need and fulfilled all that I needed to know Him. A communicative l leaves nothing out of our pathways to knowledge of Him, and nothing can be said to remain wanting in our knowledge. So revelation is necessary for affirmative knowledge of l that communicates back to us and has an existence apart from our desire. By all previous means of approach to l we were able to establish a To definition and affirm knowledge of l that was sufficient to be a possibility.

affirm the reality of l as that which has a truly independent reality apart from my desire for Him, we need affirmative knowledge. Many have spoken in the name of l, or have spoken of reality and purported transcendent knowledge. How do we know if anyone speaks for l in truth? Or how do we know if l speaks to us in truth? What is the criterion for true speech of l? When my LORD speaks, will I know it is Him? If we have inculcated the necessary and sufficient attributes (Names) of l, then purity of knowledge of l is based on that which emanates from those Names. Whatever is supposed to be the revelation from l must be consistent with the attributes of l. So the speech of l cannot be conceived of separately from His Oneness, His Absoluteness, His Living, Sustaining, Complete Knowledge and Ability, Creativity and Permanence. The criterion for knowledge of the true revelation from l, is l.

But there is also an interesting departure we have to make at this point. Until now, we have been insisting that our truth be what is consistent with all possible perspectives that is, what is necessary about reality. That necessity has established the possible attributes of l, but stopped short of sufficient grounds for the reality of l as something apart from our imagination. However, no single person has access to another persons interior state. All possible perspectives of the personal knowledge of l are one your own. What is necessary is that l speaks to you and all that is unique about you. This doesnt lessen to any degree the affirmations to this point. There is still the absolute and necessary Ground of Being to which our truth is compared with. But no one can compel another person with their own inner state. The same criterion for truth that allowed us to explore the expanse of Creation and the various pathways between the I and the body that established absolutes of knowledge have absolutely no ability to penetrate into another I to establish the criteria for accepting the Word of l . There are very clear criteria for the objective truth of l with respect to Creation. But there are no ways to impose an objective truth of the Word of l with respect to a persons heart. The very requirement for a personal encounter with l eliminates that encounter from occurring to another person. And it is l who guides us all unto Him. The uniqueness of the Quran and the prophethood of Muhammad, the Prophet of l , may l bless him and grant him peace, who was instructed by l to give to us our way of life, and through whom l revealed all that was pleasing to Him, and gave us all means of approach to Him, is the most compelling example of revelation from l that I have ever encountered. I am clearly not unique in that experience has been shared by many. The Messenger of l, our beloved and the beloved to l, was sent as a mercy to all of mankind, to show us the path of freedom from selfdeception and to open up the doors of Mercy from l; who in His glorious book has called Himself the Most Merciful, the Forgiving, and the Intimately Aware. The depths of knowledge of l revealed in the Quran and through His Prophet are beyond measure and the eloquence, beauty and self-consistency of the message proclaim themselves to be the objective measure for each of us to inspect our hearts and come to the desire for l to open up the light of faith in us, so that He may begin the life within us that He created us to experience: worshiping Him, with knowledge from Him and experiences affirmed to be uniquely Him. The consistency of the Quran's methodology is that it patterns itself off the selfreferential experience of being human, but ascribes to that pattern the knowledge

and awareness that claims itself to be directly from l. The experience of the Quran is a direct encounter with the human being by l, who knows us better than we know ourselves. The Quran is the speech of l, claims to be so, offers the criteria of establishing the truth of the matter, and resolves this in the encounter with l through His Majestic Names. Its uniqueness as speech and as a book has filled thousands of volumes of dissertations. The Quran is intimate with humanity, but compellingly majestic and frequently calls the listener to approach l along the paths that he establishes through His Word. Were this to have descended from the sky it would have been unrivaled in all the Earth. But this book descended through the events of history, in the life of a man chosen and set apart by l who was supported by those who witnessed all that he brought and instructed; and they carried this message to us. So not only does one encounter l through his Word, but also through every attribute of our bodies and every nuance of Creation. This is what the saints of all religion have aspired to this radical transcendence of humanity to another plane of existence but the religion of Islam is so powerful as an argument for its authenticity in that it offers so many vehicles for transcendence through the Word and through enacting the power of submission to the Will of l, that was embodied in the Messenger of l , may l bless him and grant him peace. I have seen other religions where there are fragments of this methodology, but only Islam has so completely and potently packaged it all and established itself with such majesty in constantly referring the follower back to the beautiful and powerful Names of l; and the pragmatic gestures and examples of a transcendent human being, who perfectly enacted Islam for us all to pattern ourselves from. Thus we are freed from the tyranny of establishing anything but l as the ultimate object of our desire and truth; and we are freed from the tyranny of those who would ignorantly or willfully prey upon our desires for encountering l through our rituals and daily lives. The religion of Islam has come complete and perfect for us to uniquely and personally encounter l, and to cohesively enact this encounter in a social setting. The power of Islam is in her Book the Quran and its power is in the Names of l . Were a person to reflect upon them, they would find the complete criterion for truth and righteousness. Awareness of this direct encounter with l, acceptance of its authenticity, and the desire it brings to a person to live in accordance with the One who spoke those words points us to the one who was chosen to be the messenger for those words. And the Quran were we to have any doubt of this directly

establishes this for us and tells us that in the Messenger of l, may l Bless Him and grant Him Peace, we have the best of examples to follow to please l. This is so remarkably consistent with the approach to l that established His necessary attributes that it offers a very compelling argument to be taken seriously as the fulfillment for our desire to be guided to affirmative knowledge of l. The Mercy to Mankind was delivered to us so that we would know l directly and would be given the message of Hope for the life to come after death, when we will be resurrected before l who created us the first time and is completely competent to recreate us. And also a warning for those who venture with deviated hearts along paths of injustice and iniquity for l is the Best of Judges and will bring us to account for all that we used to do. There is none worthy of worship but l and Muhammad is the Messenger of l .

Conclusion

May l send His Peace and Blessings upon His Beloved, The Mercy to Mankind, The Prophet of l , whose name is Muhammad; and upon his family, his companions, and all those who follow him in the path of l until the Day of Judgment. All Praise is for l, who Creates us, who Sustains us, and who is all encompassing in His Mercy and Forgiving of all who turn to Him. May He guide us all to His glorious presence and shade us from His anger and enter us into His paradise.