Living The Quran
From Issue: 1019 [Read full issue]
Known Station
Al-Saffat (Those Ranged in Ranks) - Chapter 37: Verse 164
"There is none among us, but that he has a known station."
These are understood to be the words of the angels, each of whom is assigned a station that is never left; some remain bowing, never straightening their spines; others remain prostrating, never lifting their heads. In the immediate context, this verse is a declaration that they, like the jinn, know that any worship of them is misplaced. More broadly speaking, that all angels have a known station indicates that they have, like all created things other than human beings and jinn, no freedom to move from one station or level of being to another.
In contrast, human beings and jinn have unknown stations and only reach their final known stations at the moment of death. As Ibn Arabi writes of human beings and jinn, "[Their] stations are designated and ordained within God's Knowledge and unseen by them. Each of them reaches his station at the end of his breaths. Thus his last breath is in his known station upon which he dies. That is why they have been called to travel. Hence they travel, either upwardly by answering the summons or the revealed Law (Shariah) or downwardly by answering the command of desire whence they know not, until after the object of desire has been attained. Hence each individual among man and jinn reaches in his travelling the known station for which he was created".
Compiled From:
"The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary" - Seyyed Hossein Nasr