As for the revealed law, Moses, the Messiah, and the other prophets all informed mankind that no one can see God in this world.

From the standpoint of reason, when someone beholds one of God’s angels—or even one of the jinn—there appear to him such a multitude of signs and conditions that describing them would take pages. How, then, could it be were a person to see God Himself?

Those who saw the Messiah experienced nothing different from anyone who has seen another messenger: among them were unbelievers who denied him and believers who affirmed him. Indeed, they recount indignities inflicted upon his human nature that are unknown in the cases of other messengers—striking him, spitting in his face, placing thorns on his head, crucifying him, and the like.

Moreover, it is obvious that whoever sees God either recognizes that he is seeing God or does not. If he does recognize it, then those who saw the Messiah would have known that he was God; and had they known that, they would have been plunged into a bewilderment beyond the reach of words. If, on the other hand, they did not recognize Him, that is utterly impossible, for it would mean that the Lord of the worlds could not be distinguished from His own creatures—He would be as one of them—so that even the beholder would fail to realize that what he saw was God.

The corrupt entailments of such a claim are countless.

Should they object, “God was not seen when He united with the Messiah; what was seen was only the Messiah’s body, the body behind which God was concealed,” then their subsequent assertion—“Know that nothing among the subtle creatures is seen except within something dense, and that what is subtle cannot be seen except…”