Sam Shamoun "Allah’s Mutability and Imperfection Revisited" (3)

Sam Shamoun "Allah’s Mutability and Imperfection Revisited" (3)

In the Quran, there are physical and spiritual senses. One can have for instance the physical eye to see the material world without the spiritual eye which is necessary to see the spiritul world 

7:179,10:42-3,22:46"For surely it is not the eyes that are blind, but blind are the hearts which are in the breasts". 

One can have the mind/aql to process material information while being totally unable to deduct the spiritual implications inherent in all material things, because of a hardenned QALB/heart 2:73-4. The Hebrew Bible too is repleat with such references 

Ezek12:2,Jer5:13"they have eyes yet they see not, they have ears yet they hear not".

A more striking metaphore for spiritual perception used by the Quran is the phrase "possessors of hands and vision" when speaking of some of the most eminent prophets who mastered their selves outwardly with great power (hands) and internally (vision, ie insight) 38:45. These verses speak of spiritual insight, not the material or wordly hearing, vision and deductions. The more one trains his spiritual receptivity the more it becomes aware of spiritual matters and the more God increases its capacity to perceive 

91:7-10"And (by) a soul and He Who proportioned it. And inspired it with its wickedness and its virtue. One has succeeded whoever purified it. And one has failed whoever corrupted it". 

With the prophet Muhammad, that capacity reached such a high peak that the spiritual vision could perceive the powerful angel of revelation, an entity invisible to the physical eye. The Quran precisely states in 53:12 that it was the heart, not the eye, that "saw". This is how intricately and flawlessly the Quran connects its ideas throughout its passages. As a side note, this is also how the scholars have understood the prophet Muhammad's vision of the Creator during his Ascent/Miraj to the 7th heaven. Some reports attributed to ibn Abbas describe the encounter. The prophet would thereafter say, when asked if he saw the Creator with his physical eyes 

"He is veiled by Light, how could I see Him".