The Honour of Prophets — Page 5
5 3 َ لَهٗ سٰجِدِيْن سَوَّيْتُهٗ وَ نَفَخْتُ فِيْهِ مِنْ رُّوْحِيْ فَقَعُوْا فَاِذَا Meaning, when I have perfected Adam and have breathed into him My spirit, fall down ye angels in prostration at once. 4 3 al-Hijr , 15:30 4 This verse reveals a profound secret—a sign of the highest excellence. That is to say, in the beginning man is only human in form but lifeless from within, devoid of spirituality. The angels do not serve him in this state because he is simply a shell—empty of substance. Then gradually a time comes when he who is blessed attains immense nearness to God and the soul comes face to face with the light of the Glorious God and there is no veil left to obstruct this light. It is then that the divine light, which in other words may be referred to as the spirit of God, enters such a person. It is this very special state about which it is said in the Divine Word that God breathed His spirit into Adam. Then, the angels are commanded to fall before him in prostration, i. e. to obey him completely as though they were prostrating before him. But this does not require any effort on their part and nor is this divine command like the orders given to men to follow a religious law. In fact, this command is inherent in the very nature of angels and not something new. This means that the angels themselves naturally feel that they ought to fall in service before such a one who takes on the image of God. Such parables related in the Word of God are not mere tales, rather the divine practice in the Holy Quran is such that there is always some intellectual truth underlying such stories. In this context, the underlying scholarly truth is that God Almighty has sought to expound by way of this parable the hall mark of a perfect man! So God states that the sign of the perfect man is that he must not be deficient in any aspect of his human nature, and his spiritual and physical faculties must be perfect in