Did Rumi Say: “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing// and Rightdoing There Is a Field. // I'll Meet You There”?

In this reflection, I will examine Coleman Barks’ translation of one of Rumi’s poems:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing// and rightdoing there is a field. // I'll meet you there”, and will show the translation is completely misleading.   

The Bigoted Nafs

Ah, my measure of distinguishing right from wrong, how much I need you and how much I suffered from you!  Without blurring the line between good and evil, historically we have learned how evil can manipulate this line in two distinct ways: 1) excessive righteous indignation and losing oneself in the prison of identity ("my" ideology and religion); 2) To rise an iniquitous system of exclusion, corruption, and oppression hypocritically in the name of good and piety.

Pay attention to our time, which in reaction to intolerance of moral absolutism, blurs the line between “right” and “wrong”.  We are living in the age of ethical relativism coming to its end.  We are inclined to level off good and evil and ascribe this poem to Rumi, without understanding:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

Now this poem is loved by so many in the West, I am afraid for wrong reasons and indeed for indulging in the desires of body and soul, giving in to one’s whims.  [Brad Pitt, the famous actor, tattooed the above words on his arm recently.]  But whoever knows Rumi, knows well that Rumi was a devote Muslim and Sufi whose body of poetry “Mathnawi” is a guidance for discerning the right from the wrong, overcoming bane and vile desires and incontinent ego (nafs), and purifying the self to attend unity with God—the goal of all Sufis.

Coleman Barks words are indeed loose translation of the rubai (quatrain) 157 by Rumi:

از کفر و ز اسلام برون صحرائیست

ما را به میان آن فضا سودائیست

عارف چو بدان رسید سر را بنهد

نه کفر و نه اسلام و نه آنجا جائیست

A rough translation is something like this (though as you know we re-interpret poems as we translate them):

Out beyond infidelity and Islam is a desert,

We enter into a melancholic trance amid that liminal space[2].

This is the Sufi’s resting place:

It is neither infidelity nor Islam; there is no there in that nowhere.

To translate this poem in a way as if there is no difference between “good” and “evil” is a complete misreading of the poem, because in two rubaiyat before (155), Rumi says:

از دیدن اغیار چو ما را مدد است

پس فرد نه‌ایم و کار ما در عدد است

از نیک و بد آگهیم و این نیک و بد است

هردل که نه بی‌خود است زیر لگد است

Again, a rough translation would be:

Essentially, we need the Other for help,

So, we are not an isolated individual and our working principle is in numbers.

We are aware of good and bad and this is good and bad: 

A heart that is not relieved from the self (ego) is trampled.

It is obvious that Rumi doesn’t mean there is a place in which rightdoing and wrongdoing are the same, but why does he say outside Islam and infidelity there is a nowhere which is the resting place of Sufis? 

This ensnarement within ego (nafs) is the point of the previous rubai: good is overcoming the vile desires of nafs (ego) and if one doesn’t overcome this evil, it doesn’t matter if one calls oneself Muslim or disbeliever.  Rumi doesn’t promote beyond good and evil, but he wants to show that evil of ego can hide itself under the banner of religion.  The Quran holds that “nafs” (carnal self) can turn any good thing into its opposite:

Nafs (نَفْس) is an Arabic word occurring in the Qur'an and means self, psyche, ego or soul. In the Quran, the word is used in both the individualistic (e.g. verse 2:48) and collective sense (verse 4:1), indicating that although humanity is united in possessing the qualities of "soul/nafs/consciousness" they are individually responsible for exercising the agencies of their "free will" that it provides them. Much of the popular literature on nafs, however, is focused on the Sufi conceptions of the term. According to the Sufi philosophies, the nafs in its unrefined state is "the ego", which they consider to be the lowest dimension of a person's inward existence - his animal and satanic nature.  The inciting nafs (an-nafs al-ʾammārah):

In its primitive stage the nafs incites us to commit evil: this is the nafs as the lower self, the base instincts.  In the eponymous Sura of the Qur'an, Yusuf says "Yet I claim not that my nafs was innocent: Verily the nafs incites to evil."[Quran 12:53] Islam emphasizes the importance of fighting the inciting nafs in Quran as well as in hadith. 

The Qur'an enjoins the faithful "to hinder the nafs from lust", [Quran 79:40] and another traditional narration warns that "the worst enemy you have is [the nafs] between your sides." Rumi warns of the nafs in its guise of religious hypocrisy, saying "the nafs has a rosary and a Quran in its right hand, and a scimitar and dagger in the sleeve."

Animal imagery is often used to describe the nafs. A popular image is a donkey or unruly horse that must be trained and broken so that eventually it will bear its rider to goal.  Rumi compares the nafs to a camel that the hero Majnun, representing the intellect ('Aql), strains to turn in the direction of the dwelling-place of his beloved.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafs

Indeed, Sufism is a reaction to the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of “zahed” (the one who hypocritically claims, ‘I am too pure’).  In Mathnawi, Rumi extensively criticizes religious hypocrisy and bigotry and the verse above: "the nafs has a rosary and a Quran in its right hand, and a scimitar and dagger in the sleeve,” is from Nicholson’s translation of one of the pieces taken from the book III of Mathnawi:

مدعی گاو نفس آمد فصیح     

صد هزاران حجت آرد ناصحیح

شهر را بفریبد الا شاه را

ره نتاند زد شه آگاه را

نفس را تسبیح و مصحف در یمین

خنجر و شمشیر اندر آستین

مصحف و سالوس او باور مکن

خویش با او هم‌سر و هم‌سر مکن

سوی حوضت آورد بهر وضو

واندر اندازد ترا در قعر او

And Nicholson accurately translates the above verses this way:

The claimant for the cow, the fleshly soul [nafs], is eloquent and brings forward hundreds of thousands of unsound pleas.
He deceives (all in) the city except the king: he cannot waylay the sagacious king.

The fleshly soul [nafs] has glorification of God (on its tongue), and the Quran in its right hand; (but) in its sleeve (it has) dagger and sword.

Do not believe its Quran and hypocritical ostentation, do not make yourself its confident and comrade;

(For) it will take you to the tank to perform the ritual ablution, and will cast you to the bottom thereof.

If we reflect on the above poems and the Rumi’s rubai: “out beyond infidelity and Islam is a desert// We enter into a melancholy trance amid that liminal space”, then we will understand Rumi’s point better.  It is not that Rumi intends to say infidelity is permissible or equal to Islam.  On the contrary, he wants to show that in bowing down to one’s carnal desires infidel and Muslim hypocrites (zahed: those who pretend to be pure but are not) are the same.  Hence, for Sufi the task is to overcome the prison of false thoughts and identities.  If I am entangled in my self-image and identity, as Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist, Materialist, Atheist, whatsoever, and see myself better than others and wish to dominate others, if I hide my dagger under my “glorification of God” and while pretending to do ritual ablution, my carnal ego wants to overcome others, then I ought to let go of the mask and move to the “nowhere” place, where my nafs-ego doesn’t rule or is nullified.  Rumi never says “rightdoing” and “wrongdoing” are the same or one ought to go beyond both of them.

In the Prison of Nafs in the Name of “My Salvation”

Now, I need to go back to this: “Ah, my measure of distinguishing right from wrong, how much I need you and how much I suffered from you!”

In the course of human history, there is no good idea that is not turned into bad by abuse and excess.  The internal mechanism of turning the discernment between good and evil into evil is where one forgets to empathize with people and forcefully wishes to rectify wrongdoings.  As Hegel puts it: Evil resides in the very gaze that perceives evil all around itself. 

If it was the case that God wanted to forcefully convert or set straight the wrongdoers with sword, so why did God give Adam and all human beings the respite up to the Day of Judgement?  Why did God send the prophets and scriptures to guide us?  Is it not the case that we were all lost and the Merciful sent “words” of conduct to help us to find our way?  Surely, in the time of aggression, oppression, and persecution armed resistance is justified in the Quran; however, unlike fanatic’s interpretation, the body of the holy Quran forbids indiscriminately killing people or trying to forcefully convert others to Islam.

The Quran holds that “there is no compulsion in religion: true guidance has become distinct from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believe in God has grasped the firmest hand-hold, one that will never break” (2:256).  Does it say whoever doesn’t believe in Islam should be banned, excluded, or killed?   The Quran states: “Truly those who keep the faith, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabaeans — whoever believes in God and the Last Day and performs virtuous deeds — surely their reward is with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve” (2:62).

If the meaning of the words, “there is no compulsion in religion” is clear, it means we cannot force anyone to convert.  If you look at the passages after rejecting compulsion in religion, you will see that the Quran talks about a man who disputed with Abraham about the power of God, and Abraham didn’t kill him for disagreement but argued how God is powerful by challenging him to bring the sun from the west out instead of the east.  Next, the text brings the example of another dispute about the possibility of the Day of Judgment and again God didn’t kill or punish the man who questioned the Day of Judgement, but instead put him to sleep for a hundred years to see for himself how the resurrection after death is possible, and the man agreed with God after awakening and said: “Now I know that God has power over everything” (2:259).  Third, Abraham argued with and asked God “show me how You give life to the dead.”  And again, God didn’t punish him for disbelief and instead showed him how four trained birds on different hill tops, similar to souls, come back to Abraham (2:260).  These and more verses show that in the Quran dispute and disagreement are not sins and people can express their views openly, though respectfully. 

The psychological mechanism of turning the discernment of good and evil into evil is where the mask of self-righteousness and enmity permeates into one’s flesh [this reminds me of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander].  One can see this mechanism at work in the condescending, degrading, and accusatory language that some of believers use in persuading others to their views.  One doesn’t see empathy and care in them, but harsh judgment, as if they themselves are perfect.  They forget or don’t fathom what Jesus meant against dry legalism by saying: “"Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7).  As well, some Muslims forget that God asks the Prophet to repel evil with good:

"Good and bad deeds are not equal. Repel evil by that which is better, and then the one who is hostile to you will become as a devoted friend. But none is granted it except those who are patient and none is granted it except one having a great fortune." (41:34-35)

Or:

“Far better and more lasting is what God will give to those who believe and trust in their Lord; who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry; respond to their Lord; keep up the prayer; conduct their affairs by mutual consultation; give to others out of what We have provided for them; and defend themselves when they are oppressed. Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself—He does not like those who do wrong. There is no cause to act against anyone who defends himself after being wronged, but there is cause to act against those who oppress people and transgress in the land against all justice—they will have an agonizing torment—though if a person is patient and forgives, this is one of the greatest things. (42: 36-43)

We see that God insists that good and evil are not the same and we shouldn’t blur the boundaries.  However, it is as well good to be forgiving and repel evil with good.  Tenderness, gentleness, kindness, empathy, these are Islamic values in dealing with adversary.  The question is: how does Satan turn the measure of good and evil against itself?  What happens?  Satan can abuse fear of God and turn it into extreme egotistic desire for salvation in a way that we forget that salvation happens at the micro level and at the level of state of mind-body-being-psyche-emotions-soul.  I remember, when in fear and trembling, I experienced the presence of God and realized I have been one of disbelievers for long and lived amongst them, my first reaction was reptilian flight or fight. 

If you google it, you will know our reptilian brain controls the body's vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance.  Humans and all other vertebrates have two instinctive ways to defend themselves when threatened or injured. Their reptilian coping brain instincts are either attack to protect one's life, or we can hide. Since we are born with these response options, humans may act like lizards or alligators when threatened or wounded, if they didn’t have the other Coping Brain functions, limbic and neocortex, to help control reptilian brain instinctive impulses.

Fear of God and damnation is one the foundations of faith; however, one has to digest this faith-love-awe connection in a proper way, because in excess it can distance us from God, by reptilian alienation and reactive hostility to disbelievers, even with believers who don’t think like us.  For example, if I am Jew, Christian, or Muslim, I might think everyone else is damned but me and my religion, and in fear of damnation, Satan can push me to forget that the Destiny is in the Way and fall into reptilian anger and assault on whoever is doing wrong according to my measure of good and evil.  In one word, I may forget love, compassion, empathy, and care.  However, this is not what the Quran says: as long as other authentic religions acknowledge that Islam is a divine religion, disagreement is a dispute about basic spiritual-conceptual effect of variations of idolatry and worshiping the nearest—God as Krishna? Shiva? Christ? Buddha? — within perennial family of religions.

If we ponder the kernel of religions as Golden Rule, we will realize that religions seek to distance us from the reptilian brain: to be just, compassionate, empathic, caring, understanding, open, and giving.  But why does it turn into its opposite?  In another reflection, I wrote:

The raw rapture of faith without proper reflective initiations and ethical growth, for strange reasons, can potentially turn into its opposite. It is like a nuclear fission within soul which can be productive or destructive, if it is not harnessed and trained properly. The experience of faith creates a sense of oneness which defies definition. It is usually the result of a long deep longing and prayers. It is a psychosomatic transformation which starts from a need, a desire, a calling inside (immanent) and then moves to outside (transcendence), to the transcendental, to the divine, God, Nameless, Merciful, Ineffable Awareness. And it roams for life in spiral spheres inside-outside, which constitutes one’s codes of behavior and ethical projection. What is important about this experience is that one is relieved from duality. When we were child, we used to act to please our parents, siblings, then friends and classmates, then spouse, colleagues, and co-workers. We mutually pleased each other, but if we had Plato’s “Ring of Gyges” to be invisible, probably or certainly we would act differently, because no one could see us. But the experience of faith, if it doesn’t get placid and pale due to lack of practice or focus, is this intense feeling that God can see us. This is another stage in which one experiences the constant presence of God from without.

But this ethical behavior is still immature and deficient. It doesn’t come fully from a source within. In the course of time, the intense awareness of God, through practice and prayers, gradually becomes a constant: an internal predisposition in which God is constantly present. In this stage, one can connect to God from within and so one becomes who one is. One becomes one’s ethical comport, not only because of fear of God, but because in oneness with God (as present, not identity), one overcomes all duality. One doesn’t need punishment and reward, fear and encourage, I and You, the duality will be over. One is one’s judge, and then judgement is also over. It is sheer psychosomatic oneness with the universe, the Merciful, aware and alive, ethical, dense, intense, compassionate and empathic, and without any shadow of doubt, while one is constantly open to act uniquely, contextually, and authentically, sui generis, not always based on a kind of situation, or a generic formula.

The resoluteness here is not to get closed off or see oneself as infallible or dogmatic, though it is the very place that danger, the seduction, the schismatic, and the falling lurks. Faith is to be resolute and open to observing oneself, to see one’s mistakes without and beyond the veil of vanity, in constant resort to God, and making amends without time lapse. And if experience of faith turns out to close oneself off to the world, rather than opening up, to see evil all around oneself rather than loving people, then it is very likely that we have a touch of Mara and Iblis on this seeming faith.

Heidegger hyphenates the term “ent-schlossenheit” (resoluteness) in German to show two sides of the same coin of resoluteness: to be close and open. Etymologically entschlosseneheit drives from the word schliessen (to close, shut, fasten) and the prefix ent indicates opposition or separation. So entschlossenheit means to open, unlock, or to be unclosed and opened up. It is interesting that within the phenomenology of Heidegger, “resoluteness” (entscholossenheit) is related to dis-closedness (erschlossenheit), and this dis-closedness is related to Truth, alethia.

In this interconnectedness of an authentic comportment in the world to “resoluteness” and “truth” and “opening up”, one can see that “resoluteness of faith” doesn’t require to be closed off or dogmatic. In resoluteness of faith one is acting in truth and openness. And to be open resolutely is not a one-time act of will but requires constant vigilance and self-observation. This is the same about resolute faith in God and overcoming duality from within and without.

It is interesting that this overcoming of “duality” is not to become “dogmatic” but to be true to oneself, to drop the veil of conceit and mask of pretentiousness. In most original cases of emergence of faith, such as Axial Age sages (Socrates, Upanishad mystics, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and then in Jesus and Muhammad), we won’t see that sectarian zeal and excessive self-righteousness. Why? To my estimation, it is so because of two reasons: first, they are predisposed to be affected directly and originally by the divine, and in the divine there is no sense of hostility, insecurity, bigotry, schism, and narrow-mindedness. Second, these sages have overcome the duality within and without. Ethically and spiritually, they have arrived at the level of righteousness in which they can defy the evil with good, to love the enemy, to be patient and forgive wrongdoers.

Conclusion

My thesis is that the major point of the Quran and consequently for Rumi as a Muslim and Sufi is discernment between good and evil.  This is an intricate point and I will come back to it again and again: Evil is not the dialectical counterpart of Good; they do not coincide (coincidentia oppositorum); they are not complementary; God has not created evil to measure us: We did it.  And God created freedom of the will.  

It is difficult for us to digest the relation between God’s omniscience, omnipotence, prescience and predestination, to the rise of evil.  We assume, as I used to, that if God has mastery over everything, then also God created evil for a purpose: to teach us.  This way of thinking gives a function to evil and devils and is inclined to redeem them in the Day of Judgement, as they just performed their task.  The Sufi Mansur Hallaj[1] and variations of Kabbalah mysticism fell into this trap.  This way of thinking makes the same mistake as all reductionism: it levels off all meaningful differences into the “same”.  It homologizes choice and choicelessness and ignores the fact that I become what I do; whatever we do, we do to our own body and soul. 

It is false to say devils are doing what God asked them to do and they have a function for God.  We don’t understand that God is not toying with us: we are not choiceless and clueless beings.  Devils choose to be devil, and we are harmed by them and as well learn from them.  But whoever chooses the path of deception and wrongdoing will corrupt its nature and divine essence and will end up in Hell.  I wish to highlight that if God gives respite to evil, wrongdoing, and corruption up to the Day of Judgement, even if God sees and brings about the outcome clearly, it doesn’t mean good and evil are the same or only serve pedagogical purposes.  God gave some creatures such as us and jinns the freedom to do good and evil, it is up to us to choose one or the other.  We, individually and as a species, will be trained and cultivated in this choosing and the Day of Judgement is the ultimate fruition of this cultivating process, but we individually are responsible for our choices and will pay the price for it: if I choose the path of hedonism and following my lowest desires (nafs=carnal soul) in the long run I have corrupted my soul.  Of course, for God anything is possible, but if God takes away my freedom to choose between rightdoing and wrongdoing, then I will lose all tinctures of individuation and will be turned into an object or robot.  Good and evil are separate and the point of creation of universe is to obliterate evil with good:

“We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them playfully. If We had wished for a pastime, We could have found it within Us– if We had wished for any such thing.  No! We hurl the truth against falsehood, and truth obliterates it– see how falsehood vanishes away! Woe to you [people] for the way you describe God!  Everyone in the heavens and earth belongs to Him, and those that are with Him are never too proud to worship Him, nor do they grow weary; they glorify Him tirelessly night and day.” (21:16-20)

In this spirit, God sent the prophets to remind us of the Day of Judgment and to help us to choose rightdoing and reject, resist, and fight wrongdoing:

“We gave Moses and Aaron [the Scripture] that distinguishes right from wrong, a light and a reminder for those who are mindful of God, those who stand in awe of their Lord, though He is unseen, and who fear the Hour.  This [Quran] too is a blessed message We have sent down– are you [people] going to deny it?” (21:48-50)

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[1]

http://www.muslimsforjesus.org/Taqiyya/Hallaj,%20The%20Devil%20and%20The%20Proximity%20of%20Distance.htm

[2] I had difficulty translating the poem 157, especially the second line, because in the first line Rumi says: Out beyond infidelity and Islam, there is a place. And in the second verse ما را به میان آن فضا سودائیست, he intentionally makes an ambiguous play on the word "soda", which has so many meanings, but most likely here he might want to combine "melancholy", "fantasy", "thought", "inclination", "yearning". One might interpret it as "beyond infidelity and Islam is a place and the place itself is a melancholic inclination, a thought, a desire". Or "in this place we enter into a melancholic trip or trance". Through this double meaning, in the last line, he concludes that it is "nowhere", it is a zone of non-identity. So, maybe a better translation would be: We enter into a melancholic trance amid that liminal space.

A Brief Reflection on the Creative Force of God's Words in the Surah The Prophets

In the surah, The Prophets, we have a brief story and conceptual reference to prophets.  I wish to elaborate on two notions in this reflection: 1) the creative process; 2) the concept of two short passages.  And in the next reflection, God willing, I will discuss these two aspects in the role and effect of the prophets mentioned in the surah.

Consider this fact: God created these verses in the Quran and inspired the prophet Muhmmad to recite them.  Through these very created words, God cultivated the prophet and through him and his creative actions, God sought and seeks to guide Arabs and other nations.  The Quran was sent in the course of twenty-three years and established a religion which has now (as of 2010) 1.6 billion followers and according to Pew’s report up to 2050 it will increase to 2.8 billion[1].  I would like to reflect on God’s creativity in reciting the Quran to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in the parts that I haven’t discussed before in the surah The Prophets.  After expressing signs of God’s creation: all living beings were created from water and the sun and the moon each floats in its orbits by God’s command, God speaks directly to Muhammad:

“We have not granted everlasting life to any other human being before you either [Muhammad]– if you die, will [the disbelievers] live forever?  Every soul is certain to taste death: We test you all through the bad and the good, and to Us you will all return.  When the disbelievers see you, they laugh at you: ‘Is this the one who talks about your gods?’ They reject any talk of the Lord of Mercy.” (21:34-36)

Imagine the prophet burning in faith in God and in dark moments of doubt in Mecca before his later migration to Yathrib, which was and is called Medina (the City [of Muhammad]) afterward, and before his final victory against the polytheists of Mecca.  God makes things clear to him with authority and Truth.  This “authority” is not based on whim and self-deception.  We are all able to discern a writing or piece of art whose “authority” comes from “oneness” of thoughts-words-action, on one hand, and body-heart-soul, on the other, in the transparency and honesty of absorption in the work of art.  The creative force of God’s words come from the fact that God doesn’t need to fashion God for anyone or to hide the truth.  You wonder your life and existence here on this planet.  God says, “I am telling you the Truth.  I created you and we test you with the good and the bad, while you are alive on the earth and then you will die and come back to us.”  We can’ fathom this:  If I die and turn into dust, how can I “return” to God?  We try to explain it by the terms “soul” or “spirit”—they might convey some truths; nonetheless, I am not establishing any truth on them but on a simple fact, about which I was ignorant before: for God, anything is possible.  God showed it to me: nature bends to and abides with God’s will; God’s angels and spirit are present in each moment of life on the earth and they literally guide the course of events, not on whims, but as teachers guide students through their inquisitive nature and unique capacities to learn.  Moreover, it is intelligible that in our little worldly affairs, we can register the whole lifelong on a little chip, and my life story can be replayed again and again after I am gone, as well God can register everything I do, good and bad, and bring my self-soul-body into existence again after I am dead.  (Pay attention the Quran affirms bodily resurrection without denying that we may have a soul too—these are not incompatible).  God is not hiding anything from us, nor “exploiting” us—these are tendencies of limited abusive beings like us.  God doesn’t need us.  God has created us and in worshiping God we sustain our existence here and in the world to come, as fire sustains itself in its fuel.  The fire that escapes its fuel to achieve complete “autonomy” or to lose itself to “will-to-power”—will die.      

The Truth is said clearly in its creative force, to calm the prophet’s heart with Truth, not lie, and to show the path to all humanity, who are unable to see the unseen, the noumenon, nor can they infer everything unseen by the seen and phenomenal.  This is the creative power of Truth, where the style and substance, the form and content, merge into each other.  An honest and skilled work of art has its own unique language inseparable from its truth. 

But I couldn’t hear this truth.  It was heavy to my ears.  I didn’t believe in unseen and the possibility that our bodies after death and turning into dust can come back to life again.  Now I believe, after God guided me and showed me to me in agony of who I had become and how I lost my way.  And in mercy, God showed me God’s power and control of all events.  It was startling to me and I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe that God gently but explicitly told me “you are falling.” I was still deluded and in my self-complacency. It took ten years to go through gestalt switch gradually, encountered with my own vices and to examine it translucently to see how I have been falling—I can never ever show my gratitude to God enough.  This mercy changed my perspective completely about life and God, as well as philosophy.  I was an atheist who was following my research project in philosophy on Nietzsche and Foucault.  But I was not atheist in soul and completely corrupted with disbelief.  I was yearning and asking God to guide me, in my innermost conscience.  There ought to be an inclination in one’s soul seeded by God to heed and thus to “hear” the message, because, as Heidegger puts it, “our hearing itself is a responding”.  If one completely buries this inclination and yearning, there is no possibility for him or her to hear the message.  Even if God calls and shows God’s signs to one who has killed in oneself the yearning for the divine, he or she would ignore and call those signs as delusional and will reject them, because, again, hearing the message itself is a responding.  I couldn’t hear before, but I can hear now that “every soul is certain to taste death: We test you all through the bad and the good, and to Us you will all return.  When the disbelievers see you [the prophet], they laugh at you: ‘Is this the one who talks about your gods?’ They reject any talk of the Lord of Mercy.”  Now, it makes sense to me that we will all return to God.  I am sure that it will happen because I had a brief glance from the tip of phenomenal iceberg to its vast unseen and hidden body, and philosophically it makes sense too as we are gradually waking up from the arrogance of autonomy and the metaphysical futility of materialism and physicalism. 

Getting back to the creativity of words, imagine Muhammad is being told the message above.  Imagine the act of creation: in one stroke, God creates words, verses, reveals the future, shows how things work in Truth, teaches Muhammad and strengthens his faith to step in the difficult path of establishing the religion.  The act of creation unfolds faith and is unfolded within faith.  And God knows the best how to weigh words in their profound meaningful authority, because God has created everything and knows us the best:

“Man was created hasty: I will show you My signs soon, so do not ask Me to hasten them.  They say, ‘When will this promise be fulfilled, if what you say is true?’  If the disbelievers only knew, the time will arrive when they will not be able to ward off the Fire from their faces or their backs, and they will get no help.  It will come upon them suddenly and stupefy them; they will be powerless to push it away; they will not be reprieved.  Messengers before you [Muhammad] were also ridiculed, but those who mocked them were overwhelmed in the end by the very thing they had mocked.  Say, ‘Who could protect you night and day from the Lord of Mercy?’ Yet they turn away when their Lord is mentioned.  Do they have gods who can defend them against Us? Their gods have no power to help themselves, nor can they be protected from Us.  We have allowed these sinners and their forefathers to enjoy life for a long time. But do they not see how We are shrinking their borders? Is it they who will prevail?  Say, ‘I warn you only through the Revelation.’ The deaf will not hear the warning call, yet if a mere breath of your Lord’s punishment touches them, they will be sure to cry, ‘Woe to us! We were wrong!’  We will set up scales of justice for the Day of Resurrection so that no one can be wronged in the least, and if there should be even the weight of a mustard seed, We shall bring it out– We take excellent account.” (21:37-47)

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[1] http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

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.

A Brief Reflection on Egalitarianism and Deceptive Leveling Off through Reading the Surah The Prophets in the Quran

"People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God's eyes, the most honored of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13)

This empty rhetoric of equality of everything with everything is the language of Satan to be equal to God or when God asked it to  bow down to Adam, it refrained, not because Satan respects democratic and egalitarian values but because it sees itself higher than all God’s creatures and wants to be even equal to God, so disobeys God.  We are fascinated with the egalitarian values and rebellion, but we confound human equality with leveling off virtue and vice, good and evil, the how, with whom, and for what cause of rebellion?  When I could disabuse myself from this empty pretension of reductive and atomistic equality between all beings and even with God, I wondered how and why was I entangled in this trap in the first place?  It is obvious now to me that I and anything else in the universe suffers from poverty of existence and only God and prayers to God can sustain and help us.

“Have they chosen any gods from the earth who can give life to the dead?  If there had been in the heavens or earth any gods but Him, both heavens and earth would be in ruins: God, Lord of the Throne, is far above the things they say: He cannot be called to account for anything He does, whereas they will be called to account.” (21:21-23)

Earth worship and the reification of gods and goddesses or animal forces and totems, admitting there are some wild forces in nature, none of them guide and save us.  None of them is the One who created us, the earth, and the whole universe.  Just think about it: since a few thousand years ago, before we understand that the earth is not flat but a sphere suspended in the universe, God sent us God’s prophets and messages to beware us that we shouldn’t worship the “nearest”—the earth and the moon, the sun and the sky, the humans or animals, or the universe.  Is this not strange?  If this inspiration was just human conjecture and an arbitrary belief system, how could we form such an idea?  Given our historical limitedness, we couldn’t imagine the limits of the earth and the sky and celestial bodies within it.  Our historical-natural inclination was to worship idols and what is the nearest, or our ancestors.  It is God’s constant message and reminder to transcend our perspective towards the Truth.  Our minds had to go through real transformations to let go of the most tangible and ponder the invisible God, the seemingly the farthest.  The reaction to this “unverifiable” God, asking for phenomenal evidence, is denial of God’s existence, or falling back to worshiping the nearest, shamanism and earth worship.  Nonetheless, longing for God, strikes the deepest note within our very soul through the consistent messages of scriptures--a phenomenal evidence.  However, we are inclined to reject hierarchies categorically and leveling off everything to atoms.  As always, our excess can't discern false and through hierarchies and the fact that methodologically reductionism has a limited explanatory power.  So, we want to become God or to bring God down to our level.  But God says:

“If there had been in the heavens or earth any gods but Him, both heavens and earth would be in ruins: God, Lord of the Throne, is far above the things they say: He cannot be called to account for anything He does, whereas they will be called to account.”   If there were other gods and goddesses instead of God, the heavens or earth would be in ruins, because 1) they don’t exist and even if they exist, they lack knowledge, power, and goodness to sustain the universe.  As well: 2) there is no proof or consistent scripture from these false gods.  The sort of things that are ascribed to those gods and goddesses are usually self-destructive and ends up to following one’s whims and desires:

“Have they chosen to worship other gods instead of Him? Say, ‘Bring your proof. This is the Scripture for those who are with me and the Scripture for those who went before me.’ But most of them do not recognize the truth, so they pay no heed. We never sent any messenger before you [Muhammad] without revealing to him: ‘There is no god but Me, so serve Me.’ And they say, ‘The Lord of Mercy has taken offspring for Himself.’ [The Meccan polytheists claimed the angels were God’s daughters.] May He be exalted! No! They are only His honored servants: they do not speak before He speaks and they act by His command. He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they cannot intercede without His permission ––indeed they themselves stand in awe of Him. If any of them were to claim, ‘I am a god beside Him,’ We would reward them with Hell: this is how We reward evildoers.” (21:24-29)

We ought to reflect on the ontological difference between God and everything else that is created by God.  The verses above make it clear that to say “there is no god but God” means the created is fundamentally different from creator.  We have the problem of all or nothing thinking.  For example, we might say, “well, if it is fundamentally different, then we share nothing with God.”  How do we get to this conclusion?  If I paint a picture on a canvas, the picture is fundamentally different from me, but still it shares something with me, with my hand, thoughts, and aesthetic sense.  Imagine I make a robot.  A robot can never be equal to me or you, unless it is a biological cloning, as it won’t have a world and soul like me, and hence it won’t have the capacity— and it is dangerous to give it power— to rule the world.  However, the robot and all my creations, including this very written text, share something with me and my world.  If the created (jinns, angels, or humans, or other forces) declare equality with the creator and share godliness with God, then the ontological difference between God and what is created by God will be obliterated and that which has no knowledge or goodness as God, will ruin the heavens and earth.  This fundamental difference indicates nothing has organic relation to God, i.e., God begot no one nor was God begotten.  Again, it is like our artifacts and robots want to share power with us.  Not that anything is wrong with “sharing”—these egalitarian terms are deceptive and conceal rather than reveal—the fact is that robots and our artifacts, even animals, don’t have the discretion to preserve life on this planet.  The analogy between God and human beings is however fallacious through and through, because one might argue human beings are also potentially capable of destroying life on this planet as the present age of Anthropocene shows it.  So, it seems animals are somehow sometimes better than humans.  But this again disregards the fact that humans also carry the spirit of God and are God’s viceregent on this planet and they are also the ones who with God’s mercy and grace will overcome the destructive greed of the powerful and at the end the earth belongs to the faithful and those who care and do good.

One of the barriers that hindered me from connecting to the Quran was this fictitious egalitarian and seemingly democratic sentiment; it looks like we want everything to be equal to everything.  To the extent that it is equality between human beings, regardless of race, gender, class, but in their taqwa (God-consciousness), the Quran clearly states:

"People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God's eyes, the most honored of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13)

Animals also are to be revered and respected in the Quran:

“All the creatures that crawl on the earth and those that fly with their wings are communities like yourselves. We have missed nothing out of the Record— in the end they will be gathered to their Lord.” (6:38)

This is a reason in killing animals, the divine ritual is to bring the name of God.  But are animals equal to us?  Can they take care of your business and the world?  This “egalitarian” veneer in the age of Anthropocene cruelty and animal factories just hides another fact: everything is equal means I want “I” or “my tribe or group” to be in power.

This empty rhetoric of equality of everything with everything is the language of Satan to be equal to God or when God asked it to  bow down to Adam, it refrained, not because Satan respects democratic and egalitarian values but because it sees itself higher than all God’s creatures and wants to be even equal to God, so disobeys God.  We are fascinated with the egalitarian values and rebellion, but we confound human equality with leveling off virtue and vice, good and evil, the how, with whom, and for what cause of rebellion? When I could disabuse myself from this empty pretension of reductive and atomistic equality between all beings and even with God, I wondered how and why I was entangled in this trap in the first place?  It is obvious now to me that I and anything else in the universe suffers from poverty of existence and only God and prayers to God can sustain and help us.

For this very reason, in the next verses in the surah The Prophets, God reminds us of the creation of the universe and all living beings from water—to the surprise of evolutionary theorists:

“Are the disbelievers not aware that the heavens and the earth used to be joined together and that We ripped them apart, that We made every living thing from water? Will they not believe?  And We put firm mountains on the earth, lest it should sway under them, and set broad paths on it, so that they might follow the right direction, and We made the sky a well-secured canopy– yet from its wonders they turn away.  It is He who created night and day, the sun and the moon, each floating in its orbit.  We have not granted everlasting life to any other human being before you either [Muhammad]– if you die, will [the disbelievers] live forever?  Every soul is certain to taste death: We test you all through the bad and the good, and to Us you will all return. When the disbelievers see you, they laugh at you: ‘Is this the one who talks about your gods?’ They reject any talk of the Lord of Mercy.” (21:30-36)