Reverse Manifestation and Release Towards the Essence of the Code

The laws of Abstraction in this school rest on what I call Reverse Manifestation. Through it we look at the concretised human being — Jesus, for example — and by means of Abstraction we decode his structure again until we reach the abstract station: the Messiah. That station represents the algorithm of bringing to life that lies hidden in the spirit of the Vicegerent just as it lies in the spirit of the Messiah; the difference is only in the speed of manifestation. This backward path from the image to the origin is what reveals to us the laws that move existence, far from the density of matter. Here the essential difference between the two paths comes into view. Concretion divides us into sects and factions, because each party clings to a visual or mental picture of its own. Abstraction unites us in the unity of the Source, because abstract truths such as mercy, power and independence are values whose origin does not change with languages, races or ages. Abstraction is the universal language of the rabbānī human being, who passes beyond the limits of clay to soar in the space of light. A saying often attributed to the mystic Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī calls us beyond the husks in the same spirit: Shed your skin, and step out of the human form to become pure spirit. The world is forms; the truth is meaning. It is this going-beyond that keeps thought from freezing in the narrow corridors of Concretion. Many fear Abstraction because it topples the mental idols they have grown used to over centuries. It does away with the idea of a concretised God who shares human passions, and it ends a religiosity coloured by outward formalities. The truth is that Abstraction is the height of transcendence: the more consciousness strips itself of material images, the nearer it comes to witnessing God’s eternal self-sufficiency in its purest form. Release towards the origin means ceasing to read about God as one who is absent, and beginning to live with Him, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, through His laws sown throughout existence. Abstraction is the filter that removes the impurities of the concretised ego and leaves consciousness face to face with the one truth. Within this method, science becomes a lofty and independent form of worship. When a physicist abstracts matter to reach the essence of energy, he is in fact performing an act of Abstraction that brings him closer to understanding the code of the Source. From this point of view we are freed from the authority of forms and become faithful to meanings. Every being becomes, in our eyes, a word from God, and every event a sign from the Source, and life is transformed from a chain of material accidents into a symphony of abstract self-disclosures that raise human beings along the stairways of perfection. Hashem Nassar All rights reserved