In the commentary on his Magnum Opus translation of the Quran, A. Yusuf 'Ali relays Imam Gazali's cosmography of divine Light: > Among the beauties of the Qur’an, not the least is that which sends its mystic interpreters into ecstasies of spiritual delight. While its plain meaning contains noble precepts of ordinary conduct, its mystic passages reveal spiritual mysteries which can only be expressed by the phrase "Light upon Light!" (24. 35). It is an endless chain of illumination in which ordinary knowledge dissolves as if it were ignorance . . . Jibril says: "Kana baini wa bainahu sab'una alfa hijabin min nurin: Between me and Him are seventy thousand veils of Light." > > The highest place among the mystic interpreters should be assigned to Imam Gazali, whose Mishkat-ul-Anwar deals with the verse of Light (24. 35), the contrasted verse of Darkness (24. 40), and the saying of the holy Prophet quoted by him from the Hadith: "God has Seventy Thousand Veils of Light and Darkness: were He to withdraw their curtain, then would the splendours of His Aspect (or Countenance, or Face, Wajh) surely consume everyone who apprehended Him with his sight." The Prophet ﷺ is described as: > وَدَاعِيًا إِلَى ٱللَّهِ بِإِذْنِهِۦ وَسِرَاجًۭا مُّنِيرًۭا **a Beacon Light a caller to ˹the Way of˺ Allah by His command, an illuminating Lamp:** >[T]he Eye has many defects. It is only the perceiving faculty or Intelligence which is properly entitled to the name of Light considered as a source of enlightenment. > >The verses of the Qur’an, in relation to Intelligence, have the value of sunlight in relation to eyesight. The Qur’an is therefore spoken of as the Light: "For We have sent unto you a light (that is) manifest": 4. 174. > >Thus, the physical eye sees by the sun; the spiritual eye sees by Revelation (the Qur’an). There is a world invisible, with a Light of its own, quite different from the world visible, with its own physical light. The former, the spiritual world, is far above the physical world: not in space, for there is no question of space, but in grade. Yet the World of Sense is a type of the World of the Realm Celestial. All the Prophets are Lamps, and so are the Learned: but the difference between them is incalculable. If the Prophet of God is a Lamp Illuminant, that from which the Lamp is itself lit may fitly be symbolized by Fire. It is the Spirits Celestial, the angels, considered as the kindling-source of the Lamps Terrestrial, that can be compared alone with Fire:🔥 . These Lamps Celestial have their own grades and orders, and the highest is the one nearest to the Ultimate Light. > > That Ultimate Light is the final Fountainhead, Who is Light in and by Himself, not a light kindled from other lights. The term 'light' as applied to any other than this primary Light is purely metaphorical. But these metaphorical lights have various gradations. So are there gradations in their opposites. There is no darkness so intense as the darkness of Not-being. A dark thing is called "dark" simply because it cannot appear to anyone's vision; it never comes to exist for sight, though it may exist in itself. But that which has no existence for others nor for itself is assuredly the very extreme of darkness. In contrast with it is Being, which is therefore Light. Thus God Most High is the only Reality, as He is the only Light. This ascending and descending Light of lights housed in ascending and descending realms sounds like a nested virtualization of photonics. Has anyone described an isomorphism from virtual photonics which makes clear the true nature of Light?