2:284 To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Whether you show what is in your souls or you hide it, God will bring you to account for it.
To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth as ownership, innovation, creation, and devising. He gave them existence from nonexistence, so He owns them with the ownership of exaltedness and powerfulness, not the ownership of gaining and earning. He does in them what He wills [3:40] and He decrees what He desires [5:1].
He is saying that everything in the heavens and the earths is owned by God, an ownership of existence-giving and exaltedness, not an ownership of earning and inheritance. It is the ownership of the Adamites that is gained by the ruling property of commerce and gift, or acquisition and inheritance. Hence the ruling property that establishes ownership makes the rightful due of what is owned necessary them. As for God's ownership, it comes by way of bringing nonbeing into being, by creation after nonbeing, and by making new from the outset. Thus His ownership is not like anyone else's ownership, nor does anyone have any ruling property over Him in that. What He does with what He Himself created He does by reason of His own lordhood. From Him it is justice, not injustice. Injustice is when someone does something that is not his to do. But it is God's to do whatever He does because He is creator, enactor, and king. Majestic is His ruling power, tremendous His rank, exalted His magnificence, realized His word, and high His reality beyond the perception of intellects!
To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. He did not say this so that you would attach your heart to it and occupy yourself with it, but so that you would attach your heart to its creator and see its artisan. This is the same as He said: "Do not prostrate yourselves to the sun and the moon, but prostrate yourselves to God, who created them" [41:37]. When He created heaven and earth, He created them as the gazing place of the common people, so that they would look at the artisanry and from it reach the artisan. Say: "Gaze at that which is in the heavens and the earth" [10:101].
He gave the elect a higher rank. He invited them away from the gaze of taking heed to the gaze of reflective thought. He turned them away from artisanry to reflective thought. He said, "What, do they not ponder the Qur'an?" [4:82].
Then He made Muṣ?afā pass through the degree of the elect, gave him access to the reality of solitariness, and set him down in the center point of togetherness, so that his gaze would go beyond the artisanry and the attributes. He said to him, "Dost thou not see thy Lord?" [25:45].
First is the way station of the aware, second the level of the familiar, and third the degree of the friends and the near ones. When at first lightning flashed from the heaven of exaltedness, the servant came to awareness. Then a breeze blew from the garden of gentleness, and the servant found familiarity. Then he found a drink from the cup of friendship and became selfless of selfhood-everything came to be his.
Awareness is the state of the wage-earner, familiarity the attribute of the guest, and friendship the mark of the near ones. The wage-earners have wages, the guests have feasts, and the near ones have mysteries. The wage of the wage-earner befits the wage-earner, the feast of the guest befits the host, and the one who is near is drowned in face-to-face vision.
Whether you show what is in your souls or you hide it, God will bring you to account for it. Great is the work of someone who has business with Him! Majestic is the rebuke of him whose rebuker is He! One must buy reckoning with one's spirit when the reckoner is He! The measure of this declaration was known by that chevalier of the Path, Shiblī, who said, "O God, what would it matter if You placed all the sins of the world's folk on Shiblī's neck? Then, tomorrow in that place of seclusion, You would count out each sin for me, and my talk with You would be drawn out."
I consider it unlawful to talk with others-
whenever I talk with You, I draw out my words.
His words "place of seclusion" alludes to the hadith of Muṣ?afā in which he said, "There is none of you to whom your Lord will not speak, without any spokesman between Him and you, nor any veil veiling Him."
A nomad came and asked Muṣ?afā, "Who will take care of my account tomorrow?"
The Messenger said, "God will take care of the servants' accounts."
The nomad went back in happiness and joy and kept on saying, "So I am saved! When a generous man decides, he forgives."
God will bring you to account for it. It has been said that this sentence is a tremendous admonishment for him who has brightness in his heart and familiarity in his secret core. Since he knows that tomorrow he will be called to account and interrogated about the why and the wherefore of his words and deeds, today he undertakes his own accounting of himself. He watches over his own movements and rests, words and deeds. This is why Muṣ?afā said, "Take an accounting of yourselves before you are brought to account, and prepare for the Greatest Exposure."