[This is] a parable regarding His existence, His manifestation, the completion of His call, and the conveyance of His word. The Almighty said:
{Have you not considered your Lord - how He extends the shadow, and if He willed, He would have made it stationary? Then We made the sun for it an indication }1.
So the Shadow is the Light connected to existence in its entirety from the light of the Sun. Thus, the Shadow was a Light of a Light 2, not like the shadows of our dark, dense bodies. So He made the Sun a principle for the appearance of the Shadow and the Light, as He said:
Footnotes
1"Extension of the Shadow": From the Ha to the Ayn. It is the Divine Motion for the sake of human need."And if He willed, He would have made it stationary": The Station of Stillness (Sukun), the Point about which the speaker has no speech."Then We made the sun for it an indication":"Then" (Thumma): A conjunction implying order with a delay in time.The Sun: In the Paths (Tara'iq), it is the Master "Meem" who indicated his Meaning by His command and satisfaction.In the Realities (Haqa'iq): It is the Sun of Suns.Al-Makzun said:"And other than You—from what is not You—has an indicator, But there is no one other than You to indicate You."
2The Shadow (The Human Manifestation): Is the Real, Independent Light whose existence is fixed in all things through Knowledge, Power, Will, and Volition, not by Incarnation (Hulul). (So wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah). And the "Face" means the Fixed Reality.The Luminous Connection to existence in its entirety is from the Light of the Sun of Suns (The Abstract Anza'iyya Form).So the Shadow (The Human Manifestation) was "Light of a Light": Here we use the saying of the Allama: "The Essence has the right of precedence over the Attributes."Therefore, the Shadow is a Light that does not resemble the shadows of our compound, dark bodies.Al-Sadiq (Exalted be His Might) said: "As for the believers, they do not see us as a form, but they see us as Light and Power." The vision here is of the heart, because the heart erases what the eye sees.Abu Shu'ayb (Peace be upon him) said: "He appeared to the materialists as a human body, but the Gnostics see Him in His inner-depths as a radiant Light and a Universal Meaning."So He made the Sun (The Sun of Suns) a principle for the appearance of the Meaning to humans as a human, and a principle for the appearance of the Spiritual Light in the form of Subtlety (Lutf) and Beauty.The Almighty said: "Light upon Light." I quote what came in Tadhkirat al-Afkar by Sheikh Hussein Ahmad regarding the First Issue: "Light upon Light: One of the two lights is the Radiance, and the other is the Absolute, Original, Unitary Light. For this reason, He completed it saying: (Allah guides to His Light whom He wills); meaning, He guides by His Manifest Light—witnessed in the manifestations and flowing within them—to His Absolute, Original, Unitary Light.