The Theory of Everything

They’ve been chasing it for decades. The Theory of Everything. A single equation that would unite the cosmos, binding together gravity and quantum fields, particles and planets, the seen and unseen. Physicists believe it exists. Logicians insist it must. But every time they close in, it slips away because something keeps; breaking the pattern, disturbing the harmony, bending the logic, resisting the formula, disrupting the design, because something refuses to fit the model. Something unmeasurable, undeniable, and yet, unspoken. What if the Theory of Everything has always been in front of us, not buried in numbers, but revealed in Light?

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What is time? Is it merely the ticking of seconds, the turning of calendars? Or is it something deeper, a measure, as Aristotle once claimed, of motion? Time, he proposed, is the numbering of movement from before to after. But what if nothing moved, would time exist? And if everything moved but no one witnessed it, would time still pass? We have long treated time as the measure of change, but we rarely ask: who is measuring?

Einstein shattered that illusion. When he said time is relative, did he not mean that time bends under motion, that it slows under gravity? If you traveled fast enough—near the speed of light—your experience of time would change. A second for you might be a year for someone else. Time is not the same for every observer. It has no universal tick. If light bends, and time bends with it, then is there any fixed reality at all? Or are we all carrying private clocks, stitched to our own speed and perception? And if that is so, what is constant?

Then comes the quantum world, where certainty dies. Where particles exist in multiple places at once, until we look. Where nothing is real until observed. Where the future is a cloud of probabilities, and our attention crystallizes one path into reality. What happens to time at that scale? Why does it disappear in the equations of quantum gravity? Why do we speak of daughter universes, entire realities born from a single alternative decision? If you had chosen differently this morning, could another universe be blossoming as a result?

But then, we look within. Why do some moments feel like eternity, while others vanish in a breath? Why does grief stretch time and joy collapse it? If time were objective, why would our experiences of it differ so deeply? Perhaps time is not just an external metric, it is a mirror, reflecting our own inner state. What if you are not passing through time, but time is passing through you?

Ibn ʿArabī asks just that. What if there are not one but three kinds of time? Zamān, the time of changing things. Dahr, the deeper time that underlies it. And Sarmad, the eternal stillness, timeless time. In Zamān, you change. In Dahr, you are observed. In Sarmad, you simply are. When the Qur’an says, “Has there not come upon man a moment from Dahr when he was nothing worth mentioning?”, what is it asking? If you were not yet remembered, then upon whom did the moment pass? Who stood in that moment from Dahr, before your body, your name, your mention?

Science asks, “What is the Theory of Everything?”but it keeps failing. Why can’t gravity and quantum physics be reconciled? Why does consciousness, our perception, keep sneaking into the equation? Why can’t the cosmos be described without you? And why is the observer now inseparable from the observed? What is this mystery called awareness? What is this mystery called being?

What then is Miʿrāj—the Prophet’s ﷺ ascension—if not the bending of time and space? If time stops at the speed of light, what happened that night? Was it travel? Or was it that time itself bowed before him? The Qur’an says, “He drew near and came close…” and in that moment, time unraveled. Not allegory. Ontological reality. A different reference frame. An entry into Dahr.

So now let us ask: in a universe where time bends, where space curves, where light is both particle and wave, where alternate realities branch from a single act, where everything is uncertain until you look, what is constant? Is it light? But even light bends. Is it matter? But matter is mostly empty space. Is it laws? But even they evolve. Is it consciousness? But whose?

The Qur’an answers: Allāhu nūru as-samāwāti wa al-arḍ. God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. He is not merely the giver of light, He is Light itself. Not just the flame but the very condition of visibility. The Constant that underlies every change. The Witness before any witnessing. The One through whom space exists, and time flows.

So here, the physicist quiets. The logician trembles. The skeptic breathes differently. Because the Final Equation is not found in numbers. It is found in awe. Just as the Quraysh once did when Sūrat an-Najm was recited, and they bowed without meaning to. Just as Pharaoh stood still before the sea. Just as every soul does when, stripped of pride, it is made to face the unbearable clarity of Truth.

Allah is the Constant Light. The final axiom. The Singular Reality beneath the multiplicity of all things. And time? Time is simply how we walk toward Him.

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This essay continues a thread first kindled in the fictional spiritual series I write under the name Bulleh Shah, inspired by the teachings and presence of my Shaykh, whose discourses often reveal more than the intellect can contain. You can read the post that sparked this reflection here:

I am from Ḥusayn

And if you’d like to keep walking these paths, across time, meaning, and remembrance, you can follow the publications:

📜 Bulleh Shah – A fictional, mystical reflection journal

May your heart always remain turned toward the Light that does not flicker.

عبداللہ