Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 40
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 40 mind? This was a period of great anxiety for him. In the middle of this struggle in which his mind and soul were involved, he was one day walking from Hira to his home when he suddenly heard a voice, as if someone was speaking to him. He looked around him in all directions, but observed no one. He raised his eyes towards heaven and he beheld a grand chair suspended between heaven and earth on which was seated the same presence whom he had seen in the cave. He was greatly upset and hurried home, and arrived there he asked Khadija to cover him up, which she did. As soon as he lay down, he heard a majestic voice addressing him in the following words: ‘O thou standing ready, wearing thy mantle, up and warn; and magnify thy Lord; and purify those around thee; and stamp out idolatry’ (74:2 - 6). Thereafter he began to receive revelation continuously. He had now been comforted, and he realized that he had been commissioned by God to call people to his Lord. Accordingly, he began to call people to the Unity of God and to condemn idol - worship. But he did not, at that stage, make any public announcement. He worked silently and confined his message only to those who were his close associates. Did these two experiences of Muhammad constitute in truth his being commissioned by God, or were they in the nature of hallucinations, or the result of his imagination, or his invention? They could not possibly have been his invention, deliberate or uncons cious, for if that had been so, he would not have behaved as he did immediately after his first experience in the cave and during the period of six weeks when there was a cessation of all revelation. He would have determined in his own mind what