The attributes with which Allah identifies Himself are seven. He is Living, Knowing, Willing, Doing, Seeing, Hearing, and Speaking. The Creator of Reality has placed in His creations the secrets of these seven divine qualities. Thus every existence, from a grain of sand to the human being, is “living.” Each knows in its own way that it is alive, and that it is the Ever-Living who gave it life. Thus also, each existence is given an ability of “knowing,” minute in comparison to the All-Knowing, as is said in the Qur’an:  “And of knowledge you are given but a little. (Surah Bani Isra`il 17: 85)

            All existences have “will.” There is none which is not at least “willing” to praise its Lord. And each created being is capable of “doing” something—the least being, doing what it was created for.  

            Every existence must have been given the ability of “hearing,” for nothing could exist if it had not heard Allah’s order Kun – “Be”– and it became. Also each being is capable of “seeing” reality, as much as it is meant to see. And everything is “speaking” in its own tongue, saying “there is none but Allah.” Some hear them and some do not. Some understand their language, and some do not.

            “Speaking” is a sign of the “living.” But “hearing” is conditional. One hears the sound of the one who is close. The one who is close to His beloved, hears the voice of the beloved. The one who seeks the truth and comes close to it, hears the truth. The word of Allah is in His Book. Whoever believes in it and lives according to it comes close to Allah, and like Moses, hears His Voice.

            The Messenger of Allah has no self. His essence is with the Essence of his Lord. He has no attributes. The attributes of his Lord are manifest in him. He does not do by himself. His Lord does through him. Whoever loves Him and does as he did, hears His voice in what he said in the hadiths.

            “Speaking,” for us human beings, is the breath which is exhaled through our throats, producing certain sounds from our lips which communicate our thoughts in words to the ones who wish and can hear and understand. But the Divine Speech is a manifestation of the Divine Knowledge from the Sacred Tablet in the realms of the unknown, upon the Holy Breath of Mercy and Beneficence. This Breath, from which Allah has blown our souls unto us, is the cause of all and everything. It is that Divine Breath which said Kun, “Be,” and everything became.

If the blown breath of Man did not touch the throat and was not shaped into words by our lips, there would not be names for things and verbs for actions. If the Divine Breath did not touch the forms and shapes of things, nothing would exist. Thus as things exist in our minds because the human breath has given them names, the true existence of things, the Real Reality, depends on Allah’s words produced by the Divine Breath of Mercy. If that Breath did not touch them, all would die.

            The dead neither breathe nor speak. All things exist and are kept alive thanks to the Divine Breath, and because they are “living,” they speak. The mountains, the skies, the seas, and the trees, these are the “covered” living things, like the dumb and the deaf, so we cannot hear them. Maybe the animals whose speech we can hear, hear the voices of the mountains and the trees. But they cannot tell us what they hear.

            So you too take a lesson: do not speak of the things you have heard to the ones who are not ready to hear.