The Quran also suggests that this light can withdraw. For those who
pretend to believe but lack faith:
God is mocking them, and allowing them more slack to wander blindly in their
insolence...They are like people who [labor to] kindle afire: when it lights up
everything around them, God takes away all their light, leaving them in utter
darkness, unable to see–deaf, dumb, and blind: they will never return. Or [like
people who, under] a cloudburst from the sky, with its darkness, thunder, and
lightning, put theirfingers into their ears to keep out the thunderclaps for fear of
death–God surrounds the disbelievers. The lightning almost snatches away their
sight: whenever itflashes on them they walk on and when darkness falls around
them they stand still. (Q 2:15–20)^41
The withdrawal of light causes the blindness against which the fact of sight
becomes perceptible–like theflash, even, of a photograph. For this light-
ning is neither simply a negative force in its blinding, nor the lack of light
indicated for disbelievers:
But the deeds of disbelievers are like a mirage in a desert: the thirsty person thinks
there will be water but, when he gets there, hefinds it is nothing. There hefinds
only God, who pays him his account in full–God is swift in reckoning. Or like
shadows in a deep sea covered by waves upon waves, with clouds above–layer
upon layer of darkness–if he holds out his hand, he is scarcely able to see it. The
one to whom God gives no light has no light at all. (Q 24:39–40)^42
Lightning provides an ambivalent moment of grace between enlighten-
ment and destructive darkness. The type of physical light on which visual
perception depends also can potentially blind and/or burn, and vice versa.
Although only an indicator of the divine Real, this world depends on
physicality, and sight becomes the dominant metaphor for comprehension
of the divine signs implicit through all creation.
Suhrawardi uses the Quranic discourse of lightning to plead against the
domination of rationalism in the discourse of truth. He relates a parable about a
group of Sufis, one of whom asks for proof of the creator’s existence. One says,
“Morning renders the lamp unnecessary,”while another says,“One who seeks
God through logical proof is like someone searching for the sun with a lamp.”
Building on these insights, Suhrawardi underscores the relative value of experi-
mental knowledge in comparison with the vision of the heart.
The masters of epistemological methodology hold as an accepted truth and are
unanimously agreed that in the next world God may create for his servants a power(^41) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 :6–7. (^42) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 : 223.
116 Seeing with the Heart