up to His words:

“Say, ‘Glory be to my Lord! Am I anything but a human messenger?’”

At other times, they fault him for having human needs, as in His words:

“They say, ‘What sort of messenger is this, who eats food and walks through the marketplaces? Why has no angel been sent down to him to be a warner alongside him? Or why has no treasure been bestowed upon him, or a garden provided for him to eat from?’”

Allah therefore commanded him to declare that he does not know the unseen, does not possess Allah’s treasures, and is not an angel with no need of food or wealth. He merely follows what is revealed to him. Following what is revealed to him is religion itself: obeying and worshipping Allah in knowledge and action, inwardly and outwardly.

He receives of those three only as much as Allah Most High grants him: he knows what Allah teaches him, can do what Allah enables him to do, and can dispense with whatever Allah frees him from needing, in matters that depart from the regular course of things or from what most people ordinarily experience.

Extraordinary occurrences belonging to the category of knowledge sometimes take the form of Allah enabling a servant to hear what others cannot hear. At other times, the servant sees what others cannot see, whether awake or asleep. At still other times, he knows what others do not know, through revelation and inspiration, or through the imparting of immediate knowledge or accurate discernment.

These experiences are termed unveiling, witnessing, disclosures, and communications: hearing involves communications, seeing involves witnessing, and knowledge involves disclosure. All of this is called “unveiling” and “disclosure,” meaning that the matter has been unveiled to him.