Al-Ahad
The One
Exalted and Glorious
Say: “He is Allah, the One,” (112:1)
This name is a name of Allah, synonymous to the previous name Wahid, with slight difference and more emphasis on the unity; hence it is more specific and reserved for Allah only.
He who repeats this name 1000 times, the secret of the universe will be opened to him. By reciting this sacred name of Allah, there is peace and contentment as well as divine blessings.
Al-Wahid, Al-Ahad. He is One. He is the Singing of the Singer in His essence, in His purity, and in His actions. He is the Determiner of Death in His dominion which no one can take away. He has no partner, glory be to Him. So stand up in the unity of Allah, and in the perfecting of His Oneness, and be blameless in praising and thanking Him, and of fleeing from reproof.
From: The Meanings of the Names of Our Lord by Shaykh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i Head of the Higher Sufi Council in Jerusalem and the Holy Land Teacher at the Dome of the Rock (al-Aqsa)
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He is the unity in which all Names, all attributes, and all their relations to anything are united. In this Name they disappear and become nonexistent in themselves.
This Unity is devoid of having been created, of existence and nonexistence, of being and nonbeing. It is the manifestation of the essence of Allah. This Unity is the highest form of the expression of Allah’s essence, manifest when He descended as the all-pervasive first burst of light from the dark void in which Allah found Himself before the creation. Within that Unity, the essence is free from all attributes, names, signs, and relativity, yet all is hidden within it.
A wall is made out of stone, brick, pebbles, sand, and mortar, and covered with stucco. When you see the wall, you see it as a whole, not its materials one by one. The wall is the sum total of the ingredients from which it is made; but the wall is not the stone, the brick, the mortar. In the concept of the wall, the materials lose their identity.
In a way, you are like that. You identify yourself as “I”, yet within that “I” there are many “I’s.” You contain many values, qualities, attributes, thoughts, judgments, some true, some imaginary, and you relate to others at one moment with this “I” and the next with another “I.” The identity of everything in creation is constructed the same way.
All this seemingly infinite multiplicity is within one Unity – nonexistent within it, like the images in one great mirror. The images shift and change and disappear: the mirror of Unity stays.
The manifestation of Unity, the expression of the essence of Allah in humanity, the created, is impossible. But, if you are able to immerse yourself in that one “I” which is your essence, forgetting the qualities which you attribute to yourself or are attributed to you by others, forgetting your considerations and your thoughts; if you can see yourself within that single identity, being the “you” within you, incomparable, not related to anything else within or without you then you will be one in whom unity is manifested to the extent that it is possible in a created being.
If one sat alone in a quiet place and recited this Name 1000 times, contemplating its meaning and trying to feel unity in one’s being, some matters concerning the inner self might be manifested.
From: The Name & the Named by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti
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