him than his jugular vein,”(50:16) on the other. God’s Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) made the Ascension and traversed a vast distance, yet he returned in a single instant. The Ascension was his spiritual journeying, an expression of his sainthood. For through their spiritual journeying from forty days to forty years, the saints advance to the degree of “absolute certainty” among the degrees of faith.
Similarly, God’s Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the lord of all the saints, opened up a mighty highway with his Ascension, which lasting forty minutes rather than forty years, was the supreme wonder of sainthood, and which he made not only with his heart and spirit, but also with his body and his senses and his subtle faculties. He rose to the ultimate degrees of the truths of faith. He mounted by the steps of the Ascension to the divine throne, and at the station of “the distance of two bow-lengths” witnessed with his own eyes with the vision of certainty belief in God and belief in the hereafter, the principal truths of faith; he entered Paradise and saw eternal happiness. Then he left open the highway he had disclosed through the door of the Ascension, and all the saints of his community travel on their spiritual journeyings under its shadow, with the spirit and heart, in accordance with their degrees.
Fifth Point
The recitation of the Prophet’s (UWBP) Mevlid and its section about his Ascension is a fine, beneficial custom and admirable Islamic practice. It strengthens in a pleasant, shining, and agreeable way the fellowship of Islamic social life; it is gratifying and pleasurable instruction in the truths of faith; and is an effective and stimulating way of depicting and encouraging the lights of belief, and love of God, and love for the Prophet (UWBP). May Almighty God cause this custom to continue to eternity, and may He grant mercy to the writers of Mevlids like Süleyman Efendi, and a place in Paradise. Amen.
Conclusion
Since the Creator of the universe created in every species an outstanding individual, including in it all the species’ perfections and making it the pride of the species, He would surely create – through the manifestation of His Greatest Name – an individual who within the universe would be exceptional and perfect. Just as among His names there is a Greatest Name, so among His creatures there should be a pre-eminent individual in whom He would bring together all the perfections dispersed through the universe, and through whom He would draw gazes upon Himself.