A Brief Reflection on Forgetfulness and Death & Remembrance and Resurrection in the Surh Ta Ha

In the surah Ta Ha, the story of Moses continues and the recurring theme of ‘remembering’ God.  I am entrenched in the needs of body and desires, being able to see them as low when I take a distance and master them, being overwhelmed when they master me—meanwhile I forget God, and remembrance washes away the fogs of desire and clears the horizon.  Not strange that "detachment" and "attachment", "discernment" and "dependent origination" in Being and God, prayer/meditation and following pleasures of body have been resonated in the course of human spiritual evolution.  

In the surah Ta Ha, our memory of exodus is being refreshed.  God speaks with Moses and gives him two signs to encounter pharaoh: his staff can turn into a snake and his hand become white when he puts it under his armpit.  Then God tells him how he was reared under God’s supervision:

“God said, ‘Moses, your request is granted.  Indeed, We showed you favor before.  We inspired your mother, saying, “Put your child into the chest, then place him in the river. Let the river wash him on to its bank, and he will be taken in by an enemy of Mine and his.” I showered you with My love and planned that you should be reared under My watchful eye.  Your sister went out, saying, “I will tell you someone who will nurse him,” then We returned you to your mother so that she could rejoice and not grieve. Later you killed a man, but We saved you from distress and tried you with other tests. You stayed among the people of Midian for years, then you came here as I ordained.  I have chosen you for Myself.  Go, you and your brother, with My signs, and make sure that you remember Me.  Go, both of you, to Pharaoh, for he has exceeded all bounds.  Speak to him gently so that he may take heed, or show respect.’” (20:36-44)

In a quick reading, I used to pass by the exhortation: “make sure that you remember Me”, but now that I know how forgetfulness has harmed me, even if in a cursory way again it passed by, I made sure to remember it.  Why does God insist on this remembrance?  How could Moses forget?  He just talked to God and God gave him miracles and asked him to encounter pharaoh.  God reared him and tested him in different trials and distresses and chose him.  How can Moses forget again?  But this emphasis is just a reminder to me: Remember God always, because no matter how much you think you reflect on God or you were awakened by God, your constitution of body and soul, your desires, vulnerability, and fears incite you to evil and forgetfulness, and the only remedy is remembering God.  God doesn’t need our prayer, we need it.  Now, let’s listen to a dialogue between Moses and pharaoh.  As God narrating this story for Muhammad, God emphasizes the points again and again so that we don’t forget:

“[Pharaoh] said, ‘Moses, who is this Lord of yours?’  Moses said, ‘Our Lord is He who gave everything its form, then gave it guidance.’  He said, ‘What about former generations?’  Moses said, ‘My Lord alone has knowledge of them, all in a record; my Lord does not err or forget.’  It was He who spread out the earth for you and traced routes in it. He sent down water from the sky.  With that water We bring forth every kind of plant, so eat, and graze your cattle. There are truly signs in all this for people of understanding.  From the earth We created you, into it We shall return you, and from it We shall raise you a second time.” (20:49-55)

It starts with answering a question: “who is this Lord?”  And Moses answers: God gave form to everything and then gave them guidance.  Obviously, God through Moses is emphasizing the process oriented aspect of creation.  First, God created the worlds and then set them in time to evolve.  The direction of evolution is granted to the world by God’s guidance.  We can see God’s creative power sets the world to evolve following divine guidance by creating “discernment” of the freedom of the will between good and evil, remembering or forgetting God.  Then pharaoh asks a question that we all have: what about previous generations in the process of evolution?  Would they also be punished and rewarded for their choices, even if they hadn’t arrived yet at the maturity of Moses in understanding and praising God?  The answer is again the difference between humans and the divine: God never forgets or errs.  Can we digest and put all our trust in this fact?  God never forgets or errs, we do.  God is eternal and outside time and space of becoming.  God never evolves nor is static, our understanding of God evolves.  And so far, we have learned to digest that God is beyond being and becoming.  Then the Quran alternatively shifts from the conversation with pharaoh to the third-person “He” and the first-person plural “We”, extending the arguments of Moses to a conversation with Muhammad.

Our heartbeat is set to becoming and it will stop one day, our body will be scattered into dust, like plants, animals, and water from which it is made, though our deeds will remain in their effect on the world—and in God’s record.  Then our heartbeat and the record of our deeds in our body/soul will be created again.  We will remember then again that we lived for a short while on the earth, whether following our own desires or remembering God.  From each path a different course of action and different body/soul will be constructed.  First, God formed and matured us to freedom of the will in discernment of good and evil, following our own desires or remembering God.  Then, we became responsible for the changes of our body and soul through our deeds.  Finally, we will be judged based on our practices of remembering the guidance or following our own whims.  Hence, we choose our hell, in oblivion of God’s guidance, and with divine grace, we choose and carve our heaven by recalling God.

If God wanted to create a perfect world, God would do it and wouldn’t set the worlds in time, in the process of becoming.  The universe is emanated by God in imperfection to perfect itself, never to the status of God but always always under God’s supervision: nothing is and will be equal to God.  “Everyone on earth perishes; all that remains is the Face of your Lord, full of majesty, bestowing honor.” (55:26-7)