Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem, Assalamu Alaikum.
When you think about Allah you make subtle connections with Him, with who He is, with what He created so He is known, with everything in the universe.
This occurs at a level you can never perceive and His particles facilitate this, it is in physics and because of it Allah said in the Quran “Allah is the light (particles) of the heavens and earth” (24:35) when you sense Him you sense them.
So, when you think about Allah that increases your awareness of everything around you and that is how man comes to know the universe, everyone according to His capacity to take in what Allah has created which is why Allah says to each prophet when He grants him prophethood, we expanded your breast, the vessel that is filling with our light.
This is why people who are aware of Allah are marked by understanding, wisdom, breadth of knowledge, acceptance and forbearance, while those who turn away from Allah, Allah turns away from them (Quran) and so they are marked by ignorance, lack of awareness, understanding or comprehension and breadth, for all but a few things in life that involve them.
The human body can only know what is created, what is inside the universe, so the human body’s ability to make these connections with everything is what we call seeing Allah, Allah says He IS something a handful of times, once regarding the particles of the universe and the other is Time, “I am Time”, “in my Hand is the night and day”, Allah is the light of the universe, the passing of time and His hand is the forces of the Universe that move things, “and if I willed, I could seize them both”.
To see Allah you have to know all these things be connected to all of it, that is, first seeing His signs in the universe, then seeing His hand in things, then finally seeing Him, His light, all of this occurs as Allah expands your breast.
Allah explains this in the hadith Qudsi where He says:
ما وسعني أرضي ولا سمائي، ووسعني قلب عبدي المؤمن…
“Neither My Earth nor My Heavens could contain Me, whilst the heart of My believing servant does contain Me (know me)…”
For the heart to be able to encompass Allah it has to be able to encompass the entire universe in its senses (another word for making spiritual connections), this hadith shows Allah created the physics for the heart to achieve this, achieve seeing Him.
The responsibility of the soul is to grab whatever it can of understanding from the universe, with its light, the heart is the window to the soul hence this is described as a function of the heart while it is the soul doing all of this.
It makes no difference if this hadith is complete or not, if you remember my explanation about the heart and the nature of fear…or my statement about surpassing the Dajjal and being able to describe him as a consequence…the heart cannot know anything properly until it is able to encompass it, and certainly prophets and Awliyah saw Allah in this life.
This is the job of the Arsh, the deepest subatomic layer created from the smallest particles in the universe, which is the boundary of space.
It has been related on the authority of Wahb ibn Munabba that “Allah created the Throne from His light, and the Footstool was affixed to the Throne. The Primordial Water was within the Footstool upon the back of strong wind (a simile for sub atomic layer’s the prophet (saws) mentions often in ahadith). The Throne has tongues (another simile) equal to the number of all created things, with which It glorifies Allah and remembers Him.”
Each created thing is connected to Allah by the Arsh’s glorification of Him, while the Arsh itself is the thing Allah istawa upon, established His reality upon, after which Allah connected all things to it so it can know Him.
The Arsh is Allah’s reality in the universe and just like Allah is aware of all things at the same time, so is the Arsh its purpose is to make those “physical” connections, as a person travels on the path of Wilaya and lowers his esteem of himself, loses his nafs and ego, his heart is raised in worth until it reaches the Arsh and begins taking from it directly, begins taking from the reality of Allah directly.
At the end of this Journey this occurs and the wali is able to use what Allah has in His hand, the universe: Allah Most High says: “He who is hostile to a friend of Mine I declare war against. My slave approaches Me (His heart approaches the Arsh) with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears (He hears what Allah hears), his sight with which he sees (He sees what Allah sees), his hand with which he seizes (He uses the forces of the universe), and his foot with which he walks (He walks the paths of Allah). If he asks me, I will surely give to him (All things are open to Him), and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him” (Fath al-Bari, 11.34041, hadith 6502); (Imam Bukhari, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bayhaqi, and others with multiple chains of transmission, and is sahih.)
Shaykh Rami Al Rifai.