95:4 Surely We created man in the most beautiful stature.
Man is Adam. In other words: "I created Adam in the most beautiful form and chose him out from among all the creatures. I wrote the inscription of love on him and made him worthy of My carpet. I made apparent in his frame the elements of sense perception, the pearls of holiness, and the sources of intimacy. Then I gave this command to the proximate angels of the Presence and the beings of the realm of creativity: 'Put your foreheads on the ground before his throne and prostrate yourselves before him like servants, for he is the chief and you are the serving-boys. He is a friend, and you are servants.'"
Dust be on the heads of those who do not know the exaltedness of their father Adam, who do not recognize his eminence, status, and rank! In this dust-dwelling frame they find their way only to a name, a body, a trace. They are not aware that Adam himself is another world.
The worlds are two. One is the world of the horizons, the other the world of the souls. This is in His words, "We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in their souls" [41:53].
The world of the souls is Adam and those born of Adam. Just as the world of the horizons has earth and heaven, sun, moon, and stars, light and darkness, thunder and lightning, and so on, so also does the world of the souls. Its earth is belief, its heaven recognition, its stars thoughts, its moon reflective thought, its sun perspicacity, its light obedience, its darkness disobedience, its thunder fear and fright, its lightning hope and wishing, its clouds aspiration, its rain mercy, its trees worship, its fruit wisdom. Who is the king of this world? The heart. Who is this king's vizier? The intellect. His army is the senses, his serving-boys hands and feet, his spies ears, his watchers eyes, his translator tongue, his summoner thought, his messenger inspiration, his envoy knowledge, his sultan the Real. Pure and great is the Lord who brought such an artifact into appearance from a handful of dust and made manifest His power by creating it!
Even more marvelous is that He created a cosmos from a pearl, He created Jesus son of Mary from a wind, He created the camel of Ṣāliḥ from a stone, He created a serpent from Moses' staff, He created heaven from a smoke, He created the angels from a light, fragrant musk from a deer's navel, pure ambergris from the sea-cow, the basis of silk from a worm, limpid honey from a fly, red roses from thorns, healing halva from a plant. The Real is showing that, "The creator without cause am I, the enactor without tool am I, the all-subjugating without artifice am I, the all-forgiving without delay am I, the all-curtaining of every slip am I."
"Surely We created man in the most beautiful stature." He made Adam's creation in stages. One time He says, "I created him from dust: as the likeness of Adam-He created him from dust" [3:59]. Another place He says He created him from clay: "I am creating a mortal from clay" [39:71]. In another place He says He created him from an extraction: "We created man from an extraction" [23:12]. In another place He says "of fetid mud" [15:26]. In other place He says, "from dried clay, like pottery" [55:14].
The meaning is that first he was dust, then became clay, and then He turned that into an extraction. He was an extraction that He turned into fetid mud. He was fetid mud that He turned into dried clay. He was dried clay that He turned into an animate thing. He was a dead thing that He turned into a living thing. He was pottery, and He turned him into flesh, skin, fat, and bone. He was an ignorant thing that He made knowing. When He conveyed him to the state of perfection, He praised Himself: "Surely We created man in the most beautiful stature."
In the same way Adam's child was a sperm-drop that He turned into a clot, a clot that He turned into a tissue, a tissue that He turned into bones and flesh. He was a dead thing that He turned into a living thing, an ignorant thing that He made knowing. Then He praised Himself: "So blessed is God, the most beautiful of creators!" [23:14].
He makes dust and sperm drop pass from state to state until there occurs for them what He ruled and decreed in the Beginningless. In the same way He makes the felicitous and the wretched pass from state to state-sometimes in obedience, sometimes in disobedience; sometimes in sessions of learning, sometimes in sessions of wine-drinking; sometimes happy and sometimes weeping-until the end of their lifetimes when the numbered lifespan is completed and the beginningless decree arrives-either to the Garden or to the Fire. If he is a hell-dweller,