What is maarifah or realization of God? It is, in fact, a discovery of one’s helplessness in relation to God. We must learn that God is Almighty and man exists in the state of total helplessness. When this discovery becomes a part of human thinking, penetrating to the innermost recesses of one’s psyche is genuine realization. Once a devoted father wrote a letter to his dear son addressing him thus: “O Moon, brightening the deepest recesses of my heart.”
When such sentiment is engendered in relation to the Lord of the World, this is true realization of God. When you study the Quran and reach this verse: “If all the trees on earth were pens, and the sea [were] ink, with seven [more] seas added to it, the words of God would not be exhausted.” (31:27). While studying this in the Quran, your heart trembles with tempestuous feeling.
You think that if God in His Omnipotence is at one extreme, man in his helplessness is at another extreme. At that time you exclaim with tears in your eyes: “O God, just as Your attributes will never come to an end, so also will the words of God never be exhausted. In the same vein, my helplessness with respect to You is of an extreme degree.”
This is the ultimate extent of the discovery. It is on reaching this point that a person forms a picture of the final extent of his helplessness as compared to the omnipotence of God. This is the acme of human consciousness, the experience of which no creature other than a human being can ever experience. This is the point at which all the stars, planets, mountains and seas begin to envy man.
This experience for any believer is like a very great and noble discovery. And another name for this superior discovery is maarifah. This superior form of realization can come to no one other than a human being in this vast universe.