what benefits and what harms in matters of knowledge, intention, and action. It also strengthens his faith, his resolve and love for the truth, and his hatred and aversion to falsehood. His awareness, discernment, and support for the truth are proportionate to his share of this life. Likewise, a living body perceives and senses what benefits it and what causes it pain more fully, and its attraction to what benefits it and aversion to what causes it pain are stronger. These depend on the life of the body, while the former depend on the life of the heart. When the heart loses its life, it loses its discernment; even if some discernment remains, it lacks the strength to prefer what benefits it over what harms it.
Just as a human being has no life until the angel, who is Allah’s messenger, breathes the spirit into him—whereupon he becomes alive, having previously been among the dead—so too his spirit and heart have no life until the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, breathes into him something of the spirit that Allah conveyed to him. Allah Most High says:
“He sends down the angels with the spirit of revelation, by His command, upon whom He wills of His servants.” (16:2)
And He says:
“He conveys the spirit of revelation, by His command, to whom He wills of His servants.” (40:15)
And He says:
“And thus We have revealed to you a spirit by Our command. You did not know what the Book was, nor faith, but We have made it a light by which We guide whom We will of Our servants.” (42:52)
He thus declares that His revelation is a spirit and a light. Life and illumination depend upon the breathing of the angelic messenger. Whoever receives both the breathing of the angelic messenger and that of the human Messenger acquires both kinds of life. Whoever receives the angel’s breathing but not the Messenger’s acquires one kind of life and misses the other.
Allah Most High says:
“Is someone who was dead, then We gave him life and made for him a light by which he walks among people, like someone in darkness from which he can never emerge?” (6:122)
Thus He grants him both light and life, just as He describes whoever turns away from His Book as having both death and darkness. Ibn ‘Abbās and all the Quran commentators said: “He was a disbeliever, astray, then We guided him.”
His words, “and made for him a light by which he walks among people,” encompass several meanings.
First, he walks among people with light while they are in darkness. He and they are like people overtaken by the darkness of night, who lose their way and cannot find the path, while another has a light