He established a sacred brotherhood and taught about nobility, dignity and self-respect, the scholar said.

Director of the London-based Centre for Shia and Cultural Studies, Dr. Rebecca Masterton, reflected on the mission of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in an exclusive article written for IQNA, describing revelation as a gateway to a transcendent reality beyond the material world and emphasizing the Prophet’s role in transforming human consciousness through truth, inspiration, and love.

The full text of the article is as follows:

In remembering the Sanctified Prophet (s), I would like to reflect upon the revelation as a door to a certain reality; and how, fundamentally, this message and path and way of life is about this reality standing amidst many other, false realities.  So essentially, the message is about a true reality versus fake reality.  It is about a certain perception. This is what the Holy Qur'an talks about: about those who see and those who do not see; those who know and those who do not know. ‘Say: Is the blind man equal to the seer, or is darkness equal to light?’ (Qur’ān, 13:16). Humanity has always created secular societies, secular worlds, secular realities. Atheists have always existed; but with the explosion of the human population to over six billion, the spread of industrialisation and above all, capitalism, the tacit consensus among the majority of humanity that dedicating oneself solely to the pursuit of worldly gains is something good and acceptable, has engendered a particular false reality that many take for granted as being real.

The Sanctified Prophet (s), in uttering the revelation, was himself the gateway to the worlds from which it descended.  This revelation speaks of the existence of a reality so transcendent that it cannot be conceived; it is so fine and so subtle that it cannot be seen, yet it is the force and the power that creates the very phenomenon of life itself; the movement and unfolding of life; the streams that run through it shaping each person’s destiny. 

The revelation also speaks of immaterial worlds above this one through which the light of Truth must be communicated to the human heart; and it speaks of the occupants of those worlds: the angels, the souls of prophets and of imams, acting as guides towards and within the revelation. The Sanctified Prophet (s) was thus a sign that history does not just consist of linear time, moments passing one after another. The human being is not, contrary to what is commonly believed, only living within the history that unfolds at this level of time and space, but simultaneously at higher levels of time and space. Revelation, nubūwwah and walāyah, culminating with the living Imam of our Time (ajfs), all speak of a level of time and space that goes beyond this one, where spiritual events take place which sometimes make themselves known at this level. This is what he came to bring and to tell us.

There arise in every generation souls that know within their fitrah that the apparent reality in which they find themselves is neither the limit of all reality, nor the ultimate reality, nor the reality to which they must surrender themselves, devote themselves, or pursue. They see this material reality as if looking at it from the outside, while they see and know a reality that is different from this one. As Imam Ali (as) has said, ‘Hearts recognise Allah (swt) without picturing or encompassing Him.’

As well as the laws that govern society and the ethics that train the soul, therefore, the Sanctified Prophet (s) instigated a transformation of consciousness in society; but as we can see, those who were blinded by desiring the gains of the lowest level of reality, unable fully to apprehend the message, and perhaps even not really caring about what it was, have acted together to derail it and to muddy the waters. If the Sanctified Prophet (s) was able to get the support that he did, it was because of the transformative capacity of his own that had an alchemical affect upon those around him; but over the centuries, even Muslims have been affected by the secularisation of time, space and history. If Muslims are to perceive the realities indicated by the revelation and to return back to being muwaḥḥidūn, testifying to the oneness of Allah (swt), then there needs to be a return back to the mode of being by which the Muslim can perceive these realities.

The Sanctified Prophet succeeded with his message through inspiration and love. He established a sacred brotherhood and taught about nobility, dignity and self-respect.