A Way Out of the Fragile Straitjacket of My Body by Reflecting on the Scroll of Skies

“On that Day, We shall roll up the skies as a writer rolls up [his] scrolls. We shall reproduce creation just as We produced it the first time: this is Our binding promise. We shall certainly do all these things.” (21:104)

These verses from the surah The Prophets (21) and this expression “as a writer rolls up scrolls…” have occupied my mind for a while.  When I remembered it again and again in different occasions, I noticed I have been feeling a kind of awe and awareness about something I had never thought before, and a sense of clarity was dawning upon me.  I can’t put my finger on it, so I go with the flow of my thoughts and write this reflection to make it clear to myself. 

Yesterday, I visited my ailing friend and mentor in philosophy who is now struggling with old age and a kind of sickness that somehow freezes him to the extent that he can’t coordinate his legs and walk easily.  I had to remind him to lift his right and left legs.  He jokingly told me “like in military”.  I took for granted the coordination of the members of my body.  Observing his struggle to take a few steps with exhausting concentration reminded me how fragile we are.  He was a good caring teacher.  When I was tying his shoes, I reminded him that when I was broken in spirit he sat close to me and like a father gave me hope and energy, read my sloppy papers in the only way that loving teachers do, not breaking me for my mistakes but showing me how good I could write and highlighted the nice parts and encouraged me to write about Fanon in addition to Sartre, Heidegger, and Foucault for my MA, but all gently, lovingly, inconspicuously.  It is heartbreaking to see him in this situation, entrapped into his body.  However, while ambling very slowly on the streets, we remembered that how lucky he was and what a wonderful life he had, a lifelong teaching carrier, a good wife, daughter, and friends, and a decent life.  With his usual optimistic smile, he agreed.     

Now I remember the movie “Awakenings” which touched me so deeply.  It is about catatonic patients who could momentarily “wake up” from catatonia by the drug L-Dopa.  But it didn’t last and they fell back into their catatonia after a while.

Encephalitis Lethargica: Awakenings Oliver Sacks with text

Encephalitis Lethargica or Sleepy Sickness crisscrossed the world starting around 1917 leaving almost 5 million dead in its wake. In 1927, it essentially disappeared. 

Sometimes, I felt spiritually blind or trapped in my body like in the movie Awakenings.  Similar to the dreams in which one finds oneself in a straitjacket and can’t move.  I noticed and remember it now closely: it was a state-of-being-and-mind, not an ideological, but spiritual loss.  It doesn’t matter whether we are rich or poor, despite the fact that most of us can see and use our reasons, we are blind to the universe and can't see the spiritual path without revelations and guidance.  I constantly remember and feel that I am blind for my limitedness and ignorance of the unseen and the mystery of universe and God, and without God's mercy and guidance, I will fall.

I remember the homeless old woman who years ago begged me and my friend and his family to take her to their home for Christmas, as she cried, "I have no future".  It hurt to hear that.  I remember when I was 16 years old and working in a building as a laborer, just for a change, and I asked the old janitor sitting by the fire to give me an advice summing up his life experience.  His answer broke my young heart: if you don’t flatter, you won’t succeed in life.  I was looking at his wrinkled face beside the woodfire.  I remember he was almost close to death and what a pity to think like this: defeated, seeing oneself as a loser, and identifying life—in the advice of lifetime—as financial gain and loss.  I was young and worried “what if I die like this old man in pity for my life and in yearning for the money and good life that I couldn’t make for lack of flattery?!”

Now I am old and, God willing, I will finish my philosophical reflection on my life before dying.  And I have a lot to say.  But its kernel would be these: one can die in agony and loss, faithless and in the prison of one’s desires, like that old woman who begged us to take her home or like that old man broken in desire for success, or like a man or woman gaining a fortune and keeping face in the face of death and trying to die in a fallacious proud.  I learned most people want to look courageous and value their life-experiences and belief-system at the time of death, no matter how misguided and lost they are at the time of death.  Psychologically, it seems we can’t hold ourselves together and will fall apart if we face the truth of our life: greedy, or in lust, constantly fashioning oneself in different idolatrous belief-systems, following a false religion, image, or living in disbelief and cynicism, to be the slave of one’s desires or to follow fictitious dreams. 

It doesn’t matter how much money or wealth we have, or how poor we are—anyone who has lived in terms of loss and gain in this material world, identifying one’s success or failure with worldly measures is at loss.  Whoever follows one’s desires for merely bodily pleasures, the arts, or sciences, or socio-economico- political dreams, as the only guidepost, even if it is Marx, Chomsky, Hayek, Friedman, or Foucault, he or she is a loser.  Only those who cultivate their soul and receive Socrates and religions in their purest message, which is a call for cultivating spiritual growth and virtues in connection to God will die in a genuine content, the rest are shallow desires, identifying with one’s whims and pleasures or with a sense of community and scientific or political success. 

In my philosophical memoir, I will document that it is possible to experience God and the divine mystery, and with the grace of God, to transform spiritually to a different plane of existence, as all authentic religious and spiritual people experienced and were transformed by that experience and left their stories for us from the time immemorial.  Those who don’t heed this message and don’t step in the path of cultivation of the self and self-discovery will die in a sense of loss and misery, seeing oneself either as a bubble, insignificant, and finding consolation in their “fact” that they will not be remembered in 100 years, or in the transient pleasures of wealth, honor, name, and in their “fact” that they will leave an immortal fame or  “legacy” for thousand years in this world.  No matter how brave they face their death, they are losers.  How pitiful and stupid human being can be!

As well, I will show that the destiny resides in the process.  Of course, we choose our priorities to achieve a goal but the goal doesn’t justify the means.  I can’t step over others, my family and strangers, to arrive at Mystery.  The mystery is the nearest, the style is the substance, the form makes the content tangible.  What I do to an ant, a worm, a chicken, a tree, my wife, son or daughter, to my father and mother, to my sojourners in my own country or to people in the world determine my destination.  The Way is the Destination.  I can’t kill people indiscriminately in the name of patriotism, nationalism, capitalism, or communism and for any other “ism” and say I am seeking liberation.  I can’t hate others and see evil all around me and kill people indiscriminately in the name of God and step over others and rush to salvation.  Whatever I do at this very moment to this very ant shapes my destiny.  And my good thoughts, words, and deeds can repel my past evil deeds.

As well, if I worship and identify myself with this moment, to lose myself to this ant, this worm, this tree, my wife or husband, son or daughter, to my father and mother, to my sojourners, to my country or to people of the world, or in one word to the nearest, I am lost.  I ought to constantly remember the unseen to the point of becoming one with the remembrance so that in losing myself in the moment and my everyday tasks, I drop the mask and become completely absorbed in God.  Hence, internalized at the unconscious level, I never forget that this transient world is not self-sufficient and it happens because of that horizon, that referential totality, the universe, and God.  The superimposition of these two, the seemingly the nearest (particular) and the seemingly the farthest (universal) is the spirit that holds us closest to God.  Prayer is for this remembrance and closeness.  Seeing the Way as the Destiny and seeing the Destiny in every moment of the Way doesn’t reduce one to the other; Destiny and the Way orbit around each other and God.

And I remembered all the above while asking myself why these verses touch me so deeply:

“On that Day, We shall roll up the skies as a writer rolls up [his] scrolls. We shall reproduce creation just as We produced it the first time: this is Our binding promise. We shall certainly do all these things.” (21:104)

“We shall roll up the skies as a writer rolls up scrolls”…the Day of Judgment is not just about the end of the earth as we know it, it is about the whole universe.  The whole universe is the scroll of God.  In it a truth is written and we are the vessel of this Truth. That Truth comes to obliterate falsehood.  And the Day of Judgement reveals what and who we have become in our lives, through our deeds and the remembrance or forgetfulness of God, in indulging in pleasures and honors or seeing the unseen and God as the nearest.

“We wrote in the Psalms, as We did in [earlier] Scripture: ‘My righteous servants will inherit the earth.’  There truly is a message in this for the servants of God!  It was only as a mercy that We sent you [Prophet] to all people.  Say, ‘What is revealed to me is that your God is one God– will you submit to Him?’  But if they turn away, say, ‘I have proclaimed the message fairly to you all. I do not know whether the judgement you are promised is near or far, but He knows what you reveal and conceal.  I do not know: this [time] may well be a test for you, and enjoyment for a while.’  He said, ‘My Lord, pass the true judgement.’ And, ‘Our Lord is the Lord of Mercy. We seek His assistance against what you [disbelievers] say.’” (21:105-112)

The Quran reveals to us that this universe has a story to say and the way we partake in it defines our destiny.  This universe is transient.  It is not the only way to be and it won't last forever.  The universe will be rolled up and a new creation will happen.  In my short life, I ought to seek and see the author and the source in this scroll, whose seed and signs are already within my longing and agony and in these very worlds.  In tapping in that source and removing the fogs of nihilism, hedonism, nominalism, contingency, absurdity, and despair, I will realize that, with the grace of God, I am eternal and God will recreate me and the whole creation just as God created me and the whole universe for the first time.  Then the Truth will be in the open and heartfeltly I will understand why my love of my family, people, animal, trees, and the earth are essentially a shadow of the love of God.  Only those who realized this relation and in the process of their lives remembered and internalized God as the nearest can experience the joy of being close to God in the world to come.  In the Day of Judgment, we will truly experience God as Love, either in its loss or attainment.