A Brief Reflection on the Interrelation Between Forgetfulness, Consistency, Temperateness, Ignorance, and Falling Astray 

I have been tracking the theme of “forgetfulness” and “remembering” in the surah Ta Ha (20) up to now.  We see the same theme in the next passage:

“[Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete [Muhammad, when repeating to Gabriel each revelation, after the angel delivered it, sometimes in his eagerness started repeating even before Gabriel had finished revealing.  See also 75: 16–19.] but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’  We also commanded Adam before you, but he forgot and We found him lacking in constancy.  When We said to the angels, ‘Bow down before Adam,’ they did. But Iblis refused, so We said, ‘Adam, this is your enemy, yours and your wife’s: do not let him drive you out of the garden and make you miserable.  In the garden you will never go hungry, feel naked, be thirsty, or suffer the heat of the sun.’  But Satan whispered to Adam, saying, ‘Adam, shall I show you the tree of immortality and power that never decays?’ and they both ate from it. They became conscious of their nakedness and began to cover themselves with leaves from the garden. Adam disobeyed his Lord and was led astray– later his Lord brought him close, accepted his repentance, and guided him– God said, ‘Get out of the garden as each other’s enemy.’” (20:114-122)

Gabriel asks Muhammad “don’t rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete, but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’”  What does this “but” mean here?  Repetition and recitation the message of God is utterly pivotal, but increasing “knowledge”, not blind repetition and imitation, but understanding the message is more important.  So, Gabriel advises Muhammad to seek knowledge and depth rather than simple repetition. 

This point becomes clearer, when after inviting the prophet to supplicate God to increase his knowledge, God narrates the story of Adam and Iblis: “We also commanded Adam before you, but he forgot and We found him lacking in constancy.”  There ought to be a relation between increasing knowledge, not being forgetful, and having and showing constancy.  What is this relation?  What God-given knowledge did Adam forget?  As we saw before, God taught all the names to Adam and demonstrated his knowledge before Angels and jinns (and according to the Quran Iblis is a jinn).  God asked Adam to tell them the names of all things, and afterward God asked them to bow down to Adam, with revering God’s command with understanding.  I can imagine this fragile mortal being made of clay, Adam, in front of agile creatures made of light and fire, and possibly immortal, couldn’t fathom why they should have bowed down to Adam.  But God gave them a clue: knowledge.  This knowledge is not only a book knowledge: it is understanding Being and God-consciousness.  Adam knows the name of all things, which means God can increase Adam’s knowledge.  Angels and jinns don’t have that knowledge.  So, the omnipotent God teaches us that greatness is not in power and immortality but in having God-consciousness (taqwa), increasing one’s knowledge, to understand and abide by God’s commands.  Adam’s lack of constancy implies two things: first, his knowledge was not deep enough to abide by God’s commands with understanding; second, this lack of knowledge caused him to forget the commands of God.  There is a relation between “forgetfulness” and “lack of knowledge”.  So, Gabriel advises the prophet not to rush to repeat the revelations from God, but asks God to increase his knowledge so that he doesn’t forget the message, as Adam did.  And this chain cycle of lack of knowledge and God-consciousness, forgetfulness, and not abiding by God’s command, manifests itself again in what comes next:    

“When We said to the angels, ‘Bow down before Adam,’ they did. But Iblis refused, so We said, ‘Adam, this is your enemy, yours and your wife’s: do not let him drive you out of the garden and make you miserable.  In the garden you will never go hungry, feel naked, be thirsty, or suffer the heat of the sun.’  But Satan whispered to Adam, saying, ‘Adam, shall I show you the tree of immortality and power that never decays?’ and they both ate from it. They became conscious of their nakedness and began to cover themselves with leaves from the garden. Adam disobeyed his Lord and was led astray– later his Lord brought him close, accepted his repentance, and guided him– God said, ‘Get out of the garden as each other’s enemy.’”

Iblis disobeys God out of desire for power and self-complacency, which is a manifestation of lack of knowledge: lack of God-consciousness and understanding the poverty of our existence.  And Iblis deceives Adam by craving for power and immortality as well.  Indeed, the tree is not the tree of knowledge, but death, shame, and desire for power.  God exhorts Adam and Eve that if you eat from this tree you will die, live miserably, and feel naked.  There ought to be a relation between “desire for power and immortality”, “death”, “living miserably”, and “being conscious of their nakedness”.  What is this relationship?  After eating from the tree, indeed Adam and Eve died on the earth, and Caine killed his brother Abel.  As well human beings experienced will to power, pleasure, and shame, especially from sexual nakedness, which indicates excess of desire and transgressing boundaries.  In “A Brief Reflection on the Story of the Fall and Ascent in the Quran”, I elaborated on the notion of “garment” in the Quran and how now Satan tries to take our cloth off our bodies and to push us to follow our own shallow desires by shamelessness.  So, the primordial shame, according to the Quran, ought to be healed not by shamelessness and nudity, but by the garment of God-consciousness: “Children of Adam, We have given you garments to cover your nakedness and as adornment for you; the garment of God-consciousness is the best of all garments– this is one of God’s signs, so that people may take heed.” (7:26)

http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-brief-reflection-on-story-of-fall-and.html

Thus, the common thread between thirst for power and shame of nakedness is excess in desire.  By eating from the tree, Adam and Eve introduced evil of excess of desire for power and pleasure into their soul.  And this all happened for “lack of knowledge” in understanding the wisdom of God’s commands.      

In the above verses, one may summarize, Gabriel admonishes: look the Prophet, I am conveying God’s command and wisdom to you, don’t rush to repeat the verses but supplicate to God to increase-your knowledge-so-that-you-don’t-follow-your-own-desires-and-forget-God-and-God’s commands-and-go-astray.  Because God taught all the names to Adam too and he lacked constancy and deep understanding and knowledge, forgot the message, disobeyed God, and fell astray. 

A Brief Reflection on The Calf of Samaria

I continue my reflection on the theme of forgetfulness in the surah Ta Ha.  After telling the story of exodus, we have another scenery of forgetfulness and the necessity of remembrance: the story of Samaria’s golden calf:

"[God said], ‘Moses, what has made you come ahead of your people in such haste?’ [Moses had left his people in the charge of Aaron to contemplate on Mount Sinai.] and he said, ‘They are following in my footsteps. I rushed to You, Lord, to please You,’ but God said, ‘We have tested your people in your absence: the Samiri has led them astray.’ Moses returned to his people, angry and aggrieved. He said, ‘My people, did your Lord not make you a gracious promise? Was my absence too long for you? Did you want anger to fall on you from your Lord and so broke your word to me?’ They said, ‘We did not break our word to you deliberately. We were burdened with the weight of people’s jewelry, so we threw it [into the fire], and the Samiri did the same,’ but he [used the molten jewelry to] produce an image of a calf which made a lowing sound, and they said, ‘This is your god and Moses’ god, but he has forgotten.’ Did they not see that [the calf] gave them no answer, that it had no power to harm or benefit them? Aaron did say to them, ‘My people, this calf is a test for you. Your true Lord is the Lord of Mercy, so follow me and obey my orders,’ but they replied, ‘We shall not give up our devotion to it until Moses returns to us.’” (20:83-91)

It is strange that we can’t hold onto the imageless God.  And we constantly forget.  Not strange that through scriptures—words, not idols—God constantly reminds us to remember the ineffable and invisible God.  The horizon of human understanding is bound to what appears to senses.  The history of monotheism is the unbending insistence, advice, prohibition, persuasion, premonition, and warning not to pray the sun, the moon, the earth, and the sky, to what appears to senses, not worship the phenomenal world.  Repeatedly and unflinchingly, religions of the Book remind us to worship the ineffable and invisible God.  It is difficult for human beings, and they constantly fashion something tangible, an image, a statue, their own self and thinking power or one of their own creations such as Golden Calf of scientism, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, genes, artificial intelligence, or technology as their God. 

It seems obvious that we are inclined to worship something visual like a statue or image.  Some justify this image-worshiping as the place in which the divine is present.  But the whole point is that this attachment to the near is also the source of our falling astray.  Historical training of our soul by God through scriptures is to teach us to see the farthest as the nearest, and the invisible and seemingly imperceptible as the most real and true source of worship.  The reason is that epistemically (in terms of knowledge) and ontologically (in terms of being) and ethically (in terms of how to conduct our lives) this liberation from “image”, and seeing gods and goddesses as a trap or delusion, is both true and essential.

We all know now that to take what is the nearest, for example seeming autonomy of the self, or to take our sense data as the most real in a reductive sense is fallacious.  We know now that we are wired into the biosphere of the earth suspended in the universe.  We know that our own self is only understandable within concentric relations with others, environment, and indeed with universe.  We have learned to see the farthest horizon of existence, the universe and Being, as real as the earth, and in terms of priority and sustainability in time, the universe precedes our existence here.  And that which gives, as Being and God, while they themselves are not a being, not a thing in the world, give rise to the world.  We and our earth are a drop of water in the ocean of existence.  Religiously speaking the self is constituted by the divine.  This is a non-reductive approach in which the self is not reducible to environment, nor is the environment-universe-God reducible to the self.

Ethically, to worship any idol or image ensnares us into sense data.  The point is to release ourselves form parochial centrality of the self.  In discussing Confucianism, Huston Smith states: "As for the increase of this heart-mind that is hsin (empathy-sympathy), it expands in concentric circles that begin with oneself and spread from there to include successively one's family, one's face to face community, one's nation, and finally all humanity. In shifting the center of one's empathic concern from oneself to one's family one transcends selfishness. The move from family to community transcends nepotism. The move from community to nation overcomes parochialism, and the move to all humanity counters chauvinistic nationalism."

["It has never been clearer that the country's best self is a global inheritance, its worse a parochial self-certainty." Jedediah Purdy, New Your Times Book Review, 22 Feb. 2009.

Nepotism: "The term comes from Italian word nepotismo, which is based on Latin root nepos meaning nephew. Since the Middle Ages and until the late 17th century, some Catholic popes and bishops, who had taken vows of chastity, and therefore usually had no legitimate offspring of their own, gave their nephews such positions of preference as were often accorded by fathers to son. Several popes elevated nephews and other relatives to the cardinalate. Often, such appointments were a means of continuing a papal "dynasty". For instance, Pope Callixtus III, head of the Borgia family, made two of his nephews cardinals; one of them, Rodrigo, later used his position as a cardinal as a stepping stone to the papacy, becoming Pope Alexander VI. Alexander then elevated Alessandro Farnese, his mistress's brother, to cardinal; Farnese would later go on to become Pope Paul III. Paul also engaged in nepotism, appointing, for instance, two nephews, aged 14 and 16, as cardinals. The practice was finally ended when Pope Innocent XII issued the bull Romanum decet Pontificem, in 1692. The papal bull prohibited popes in all times from bestowing estates, offices, or revenues on any relative, with the exception that one qualified relative (at most) could be made a cardinal." (Widepedia)

"Chauvinism, in its original meaning, is an exaggerated patriotism and a belligerent belief in national superiority and glory. According to legend, French soldier Nicolas Chauvin was badly wounded in the Napoleonic wars. He received a pension for his injuries but it was not enough to live on. After Napoleon abdicated, Chauvin was a fanatical Bonapartist despite the unpopularity of this view in Bourbon Restoration France. His single-minded blind devotion to his cause, despite neglect by his faction and harassment by its enemies, started the use of the term. By extension, it has come to include an extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of any group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards rival groups. Jingoism is the British parallel form of this French word, but its meaning has not expanded beyond nationalism in the same way that the word chauvinism has. A contemporary use of the term in English is in the phrase male chauvinism." (Wikepedia)]

Now in the age of Trump’s nepotism, parochialism, chauvinism, and Breitbart’s Steven Bannon’s religious bigotry and hatred, disregard for environment, and white nationalism against people of color, it has become more and more clear to us that worshiping our own nation, race, or even religion excessively is dangerous and a sign of idolatry.  If I disconnect from others and call my own immediate family, race, and nation better than others, ethically I am falling.  Not only it is shortsighted, but practically it is dangerous and self-destructive.  If I see my religion-Islam—as the best in the sense that forcefully I wish to convert others to it, I am falling.  Because Islam first and foremost is based on discussion and entering the hearts of people—if we understand what is the point of sending a scripture, the Quran, to us as a warning and guidance.  We are learning more and more to create a community of religions based on their common perennial ground, when we love and listen to others, others will listen to us.  Self-defense is different from cruelty and authoritarianism. 

As well, when I prioritize profit and self-interest of my country or multinational corporations, my regard and care about other species and environments will diminish because they will be seen as externalities.  I will be entrapped into the nearest, my immediate interest.  Ironically, we know now this self-centeredness is self-destructive.  Our excess is self-destructive, our disconnect from other nations is self-destructive, our disconnect from other races is self-destructive, our alienation from our own labor and nature is self-destructive, disregard for women is self-destructive, and being irreverent towards other perennial religions is ruinous to our own religion.  Satan enters through the door of excess.

Historically, we have been learning to move from the self—to the steep path of liberating slaves, overcoming racism and misogyny, reconciliation with nature, to long for our source in the universe and to arrive squarely to the message of Abrahamic religions that we should not worship what is the nearest and closest to our senses but seemingly the farthest and invisible God—who is in fact the nearest and the most real.  Now we understand better the anti-idolatry message of religions of the Book as a conceptual-ontological leap in remembering God and refraining from worshiping different variations of the golden calves in oblivion.

“In this way We relate to you [Prophet] stories of what happened before. We have given you a Quran from Us.  Whoever turns away from it will bear on the Day of Resurrection a heavy burden and will remain under it. What a terrible burden to carry on that Day!  When the trumpet is sounded and We gather the sinful, sightless, they will murmur to one another, ‘You stayed only ten days [on earth]’–We know best what they say– but the more perceptive of them will say, ‘Your stay [on earth] was only a single day.’

They ask you [Prophet] about the mountains: say, ‘[On that Day] my Lord will blast them into dust and leave a flat plain, with no peak or trough to be seen.  On that Day, people will follow the summoner from whom there is no escape; every voice will be hushed for the Lord of Mercy; only whispers will be heard.  On that Day, intercession will be useless except from those to whom the Lord of Mercy has granted permission and whose words He approves– He knows what is before and behind them, though they do not comprehend Him– and [all] faces will be humbled before the Living, Ever Watchful One. Those burdened with evil deeds will despair, but whoever has done righteous deeds and believed need have no fear of injustice or deprivation.’  We have sent the Quran down in the Arabic tongue and given all kinds of warnings in it, so that they may beware or take heed– exalted be God, the one who is truly in control.” (20:99-114)

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)

A Brief Reflection on Going Astray

For those who don’t believe, I argued before: there is such a thing as holding God in awe.  It is closest to us, to our heart and reason.  We forgot it.  This is our pain, we are forgetful.  However, we know well that we can’t ground ourselves—and we are inclined to forget this too or seek to ground it in some metaphysical, nature-worship, or scientific assumption.  We don’t know why we are here.  All our theories are guess-works and the best of them guide us to God.  God is the horizon which is the most real, as the biosphere that sustains a singing bird is more real than the singing.  But we are shortsighted and like a baby in the womb take the nearest—amniotic sac, as the most real, not seeing the mother, the father, the environment around mother that are even more real and don’t see that what is seemingly the farthest is the nearest—Being and God.  The surah Ta Ha continues with the story of Moses:

“Has the story of Moses come to you [Prophet]?  He saw a fire and said to his people, ‘Stay here––I can see a fire. Maybe I can bring you a flaming brand from it or find some guidance there.’  When he came to the fire, he was summoned, ‘Moses!  I am your Lord. Take off your shoes: you are in the sacred valley of Tuwa.  I have chosen you, so listen to what is being revealed.  I am God; there is no god but Me. So worship Me and keep up the prayer so that you remember Me.  The Hour is coming––though I choose to keep it hidden––for each soul to be rewarded for its labor.  Do not let anyone who does not believe in it and follows his own desires distract you from it, and so bring you to ruin.’” (20:9-16)    

Moses meets God in the sacred valley of Tuwa and God asks him to keep up the prayer so that he remembers God.  God warns him of the “Hour of Judgement” when our soul will be responsive to what we did.  We have again here the theme of forgetfulness.  What is this?!  Given that our ancestral Adam met God and prophets encountered God (for example, in the case of Moses) or God’s angels (most prophets of religions of the Book), why do we forget God?  In contradistinction to faith in God, that God exists and created us, whose seed is within us, and in the second creation we will come back to life and be judged based on our actions, the surah sharply posits only one option: following one’s own desires.  God exhorts Moses “do not let anyone who does not believe in it and follows his own desires distract you from it, and so bring you to ruin.”  

Why did I forget God?  The memory of God is within us.  “[Prophet], remember your Lord inwardly, in all humility and awe, without raising your voice, in the mornings and in the evenings– do not be one of the heedless.” (7:205)  We can’t help it.  If there is any sense of goodness or conscience is us, we experience God within us.  But we forget and follow our own desires and get lost.  “Being lost” is a general theme in the Quran and in each prayer, we ask God to "guide us to the straight path, those who incur no anger, and who have not gone astray".  

When I walked away from God, I found no one to help and guide me.  I lost guidance.  Then I resorted to worldly guidelines, to scientific understanding of the world.  But this was a faith, not investigation and observation of the world and nature, not rational criticism that in a healthy religion ought to be revered and promulgated.  We know now even seemingly disinterested scientific verification and theorization can go astray in what Heidegger calls “framing”—where only the quantifiable is real.  In another refection, I will discuss the falling state of natural sciences and technological advance and how while they are so powerful and can be used for life, have become destructive to life. 

I followed a metaphysical doctrine wrapped up in scientific jargons: materialism.  The delusion of scientific materialism is that only the causal interaction of dead atoms and particles can explain the world and our existence here.  Consequently, social relations have to be strictly grounded on economic exchanges of material and calculable parameters.  But I realized soon that reducing all ideas and social interaction to economy is one dimensional and fallacious. So, I looked for other “grounding” elements such as social function of superstructure, religions and ideologies, or relations of power in addition to economic factors.  I was enchanted by the partial heuristic explanatory power—not their quantifiability—of these theories and totalize them into a faith, as if economy, culture, relations of power, etc. have complete existential explanatory power.  So, in my reaction to religious excess, I throw the baby out with the bathwater, and brought faith in my disbelief in God and turned a blind eye to thousands of years of scriptures.  

Western Enlightenment is a double-edged sword.  “Release yourself from the tutelage of authorities: Think for yourself and decide for yourself”—can be a valuable guidepost in socio-legal-political decision making.  It can be a guidepost for spiritual investigation too, as the Buddha said “Be a lamp to yourself”, and as Sufism and all mystical traditions encourage believers to seek and desire God so deeply that instead of blind imitation (taqlid), they arrive at the experience of God through investigation (tahqiq, ejtehad), under the guidance of scriptures. 

But when Western Enlightenment became a faith in the metaphysical assumption of “autonomous subject”, it turned into what the Quran says: following one’s desires.  In reaction to religious bigotry and excess, Western Enlightenment gave rise to a new religion: scientism.  This new religion has faith in atheistic and secularized reason.  You can find the same faith in secularized reason in postmodernism despite their declaration of “the death of autonomous subject”.  There is no scientific ground for this faith, as Popper, Kuhn, and others rightfully acknowledged.  This is another “fiction” as Foucault said about his own philosophy.  All these emergent ideologies of displacement of faith from God to a worship of self, from Marx, Nietzsche, Dawkins, Wilson, Pinker, Harris, to even Chomsky and Foucault, are based on an impassioned disbelief in God and worshipping “humanism”.  In modernism, this faith in human in its random and arbitrary existence is disguised under faith in what is quantifiable and calculable, while this very faith can’t be grounded in any rational calculation.  And in postmodernism, it is dissolved into a wild and veiled relativism.  Now, we all can see that faith in “humans” rather than God ended up to the rise of empires, destruction of nature, and to nihilism and hedonism.  In this way, we came to a full circle and back to see clearly what would be the consequence of disbelief in God and lack of prayers: following our own desires.

Beginning to Reflect on the Surh Ta Ha

Abdel Haleem’s summary at the beginning of the surah Ta Ha:

“A Meccan sura that both begins and ends with mention of the Quran: it was not sent to the Prophet to cause him grief but is a clear proof from his Lord. The example of Moses is given as a lengthy account in order to encourage the Prophet and show the end of the disbelievers. The destruction of earlier generations is cited as a lesson from which the disbelievers should learn. The Prophet is ordered to be patient and to persevere with his worship.”

The surah’s name comes from the letters it starts with: Ta Ha two letters of alphabet.  Some of the Quran’ surah’s start with some letters.  Abdel Haleem explains:

“Twenty-nine suras of the Quran begin with separate alphabetical letters like these, from one individual letter up to five. Various interpretations have been offered. It is sufficient to mention two here: (1) these letters indicated to the Arabs who first heard the Quran that the Quran consists of letters and words of their own language, although it was superior to any speech of their own, being of divine origin; (2) they are an exclamatory device intended to arrest the listeners’ attention, similar to the custom of starting poems with an emphatic ‘No!’ or ‘Indeed!’ Exegetes normally added, after expounding their theories, ‘God knows best.’”

Believe me, depending on one’s state of mind and trust or distrust, we see things differently and read texts and understands them differently.  When I was a disbeliever, I couldn’t connect with the text.  It seemed to me redundant and I browsed them perfunctorily.  This morning I read this text again (after numerous times before), and I couldn’t stop tears rolling on my face.  This is not an empty gesture of piety.  The message speaks to those who trust and see them as coming from God.  And I could see my own downfall and following my lowest desires when I ignored the message and was enchanted with my own limited understanding and the illusion that human sciences and arts can justify life and save us.  I don’t mean that I disregard or demean sciences and the arts.  On the contrary, I see them as well a gift of God and in this light science and the arts can guide us and cultivate our imagination and aesthetic with a meaningful and productive connection to God, or can ruin and lead us astray.  

So, I will quote a passage of this surah each time and stay with it in meditation.  The theme of “remembering”, “reminiscence”, “reminding”—is what holds me in awe, as I know well what it is to be in oblivion and forgetfulness.

“In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

Ta Ha.  It was not to distress you [Prophet] that We sent down the Quran to you, but as a reminder for those who hold God in awe, a revelation from the One who created the earth and the high heaven, the Lord of Mercy, established on the throne. Everything in the heavens and on earth, everything between them, everything beneath the soil, belongs to Him. Whatever you may say aloud, He knows what you keep secret and what is even more hidden. God––there is no god but Him––the most excellent names belong to Him.” (20:1-7)

For those who don’t believe: there is such a thing as holding God in awe.  It is closest to us, to our chest and heart.  We forgot it.  This is our pain, we are forgetful.  However, we know well that we can’t ground ourselves—and we are inclined to forget this too or seek to ground it in some metaphysical or scientific assumption.  We don’t know why we are here.  All our theories are guess-works and the best of them guide us to God.  God is the horizon which is the most real, as the biosphere that sustains a bird singing is more real that the singing.  But we are shortsighted and like a baby in the womb take the nearest—amniotic sac, as the most real, not seeing the mother, the father, the environment around mother that are even more real and don’t see that what is seemingly the furthest is the nearest—Being and God.   And what are the most excellent names and who gave them to us?      

A Brief Reflection on Identity & Difference

We can talk about the same thing in different ways, like the planet Venus was described both as the morning and evening star.  Or we can say two “sets” are identical if they have the same “members”.  All these definitions are circular, because “identity” is a fundamental concept.  We can’t define it, because it is the condition of possibility of any definition.  This is a reason that “identity” is considered to be the fundamental law of logic embedded in our understanding.  But is it real too?  Subjectivism of the modern time, seeing half of the truth, rightfully sees “identity” as a property of mind or logic.  This subjectivism from Cartesian moment up to now has entrapped us into the self and alienated us from the world.  The pinnacle of this subjectivism after going through Descartes and empiricism reaches Kant’s noumena, the thing-in-itself, and Hegel’s absolute Idea, “the real is rational and the rational is real”, Fichte’s I=I, and modern subjectivism to see identity and difference as categories of mind.  Accordingly, it happens that we see the world from “inside” the self to “outside”—we become disenchanted about ourselves and ontologically (in terms of Being) disconnected from the world, while paradoxically we become the center of the world.  We can find the stretch of this subjectivism in Chomsky’s understanding of language as computational recursion and the “psychic continuity” of the self.  I can imagine myself here or there, in this life or the other, to become a frog or lion, as in fairy tales, all along I am the “same” person or identity, due not to God’s imposition of soul in us, but because I regenerated my psychic continuity through mechanisms of Turing general theory of computability.

We can’t fully grasp what “completely the Other” means.  We understand the concepts “identity”, “unity”, “individual”, “singular”, and “difference” as belonging together.  We also know that things can be considered in time (diachronic) or without time (synchronic).  But we can’t understand any of these concepts without discernment, which means without “identity”.  For this reason, we take “identity” as a primitive logical property of thought.

As I am writing these words, we discern each word and identify them as separate and belonging to the rest of words, and all belong to language.  Indeed, not only identity as discernment is a logical property of thought but it is a condition of possibility of application of words and sentences in language and signification--with a moment of reflection it becomes obvious to us that we can't identify words discretely to make sentences if we don't understand what language is, and we won't be able to understand what language and using words and sentences are if we don't have a pre-theoretical understanding of Being.  This happens non-reductively and equiprimordially, i.e., coextensive and simultaneously.  So, identity and Being belong together.

As well, every living being from cells and amebae to human beings can discern itself from its environment as the source of sustenance and possible destruction.  So, “identity” as discernment is not only a logical and linguistic property, but ontological (being) condition of existence, and it is given by the diversity of life--but a moment reflection makes it clear to us that prima facie the order of identity is from the living unit to "outside" or environment, but indeed, environment and biosphere circumvent the living being and identity of living beings non-reductively and equiprimordially, i.e., coextensive and simultaneously.  Thus, identity of living beings and holistic horizon of Being belong together.

It is obvious that with “identity”, we also understand “difference”, and discernment is the foundation of understanding “universal concepts” (a set), “individual” (one of the members of a set), “singular” (a set with only one member), and “unity” (the relation between parts and the whole).  All living beings can intuitively perceive “identity” and “difference” ontologically, not logically or linguistically.  Human beings have the capacity to think logically and linguistically coextensive with and through understanding Being as being-there, and this is a gift-event (Ereignis) given to us by God. 

Even if we live the relations of identity and difference ontologically, as being-in-the-world, human capacity for discernment is different from all living beings, because in language we understand Being as such, the horizon of all events, that which is not given to sense date, nor is it pure abstraction.  Let’s reflect on this for a moment: the fact that we are is cleared to us through understanding, not only for the fact that we are a biological being, but also because Being as the horizon of all events, not as this or that being, shines forth only in us through language.  This is what Heidegger means by “language is the house of Being”.  This doesn’t mean the world exists because we can speak!  It means the ontological difference between every existent being: this rock, that chair, this worm, or that human, and intangible and invisible ontological-universal Being as the holistic horizon of everything existing is only given to us by God.  Having this capacity makes it possible that I show the moon to a two years old girl and she discerns herself and the world from the moon, attending the moon against the background horizon of this discernment.  A cat or a wolf doesn’t have a holistic understanding of Being.  They don’t have a universe.  Being is the background “identity-discernment” against which and through which we as human beings can have a “universe” and reflect upon the position of our existence in the universe.  Being is the condition of reflection and language both, not the reverse, but we are destined to perceive it uniquely and give expression to it in language.  The perception of Being as discernment-identity coextensively (not reductively) is given to us through language.  So, language is the house of Being.

A line, a word, divides and connects.  This doesn’t happen only in our mind.  For human beings, it coextensively (not-reduceable) happens in existence, in pre-theoretical understanding of Being, as identity (discernment), and as the word (language).  The miracle of human existence appears at the level of word-ontology (vs. abstract or theoretical wordings).  This is what Heidegger calls “the event” (Ereignis: etymologically: er- similar to re- in English and Auge, eye: coming into view).  In 1936-8, in Contributions to Philosophy, he defined it as "beyng [Being] essentially occurs as the event of grounding the 'there' or, in short, as the event" (CP2, 195, cf. 144).  And in Identity and Difference, he clarifies:

“We must experience simply this owning in which man and Being are delivered over to each other, that is, we must enter into what we call Ereignis (some translate it as “the event of appropriation”). The word[s] Ereignis (event of appropriation), thought of in terms of the matter indicated, should now speak as a key term in the service of thinking. As such a key term, it can no more be translated than the Greek Logos or the Chinese Tao.  The term Ereignis (event of appropriation) here no longer means what we would otherwise call a happening, an occurrence. It now is used as a singulare tantum (uncountable noun or mass word like water, dust, wind). What it indicates happens only in the singular, no, not in any number, but uniquely.”

It is extremely important to reflect (meditate) on this concept: Ereignis is not a number but the unique event that gives rise coextensively and simultaneously (gleichursprünglich: equiprimordially) to our understanding of Being, not as an abstraction, but as discernment and belonging together (identity) of the self and the there (the world) through the word.

Traditional metaphysics takes Being as substance or essence as the ground of existent beings.  Heidegger replaces this rigidification and reification of a static Being as the ground with the abyss of “the event”, something active which transcends Being and Becoming and lets things manifest to human beings as “discernment-belonging”.  In this sense, I add, the ground of human soul is the event of teaching names to us by God to discern, at one stroke the self, the world, the horizon of all beings (Being), the word, and to become aware.   

In analytic philosophy, meticulous attention and effort is devoted to formalize and conceptually elucidate the concepts “identity” and “unity”.  This attempt is a theoretical endeavor to show how these concepts are applicable in ontological discussions.  The ontology [the theory of Being] of this tradition is based on logical elucidation[1].  As I discussed before, identity, unity, and difference are not merely logical or linguistic items, they have an ontological ground in our existence. 

Heidegger ontologizes the origin of identity in a primordial sense as the relation of belonging together of A=A.  So, in a peculiar sense, identity and unity are interrelated for Heidegger.  When we say, A is identical with A, for Heidegger it means A is A.  In order A to have a discernable identity, it has to establish a relation with Being first--even if it doesn't exist but is intelligible, like unicorn.  This is an intricate point that somehow throws us into an abyss and meanwhile transforms us.  The point to reflect on and to digest is that this relationship is not one of grounding as substratum.  Being doesn’t ground A to be and hence to become discernable.  In a primordial sense, the first stroke of discerning oneself as being-in-the-world occurs as an event in which universals came to view for human beings.  The awareness of oneself in the world, coextensively happens as seeing a universal tree, animal, or person as this particular animal, tree, or person and through words simultaneously.  This discernment as an identity relationship brings the identity of A and Being (the horizon of all events) into light at one stroke, what Heidegger calls “clearing or lighting” (Lichtung with two meanings “clearing”, an open space in a forest, and “lighting”, the light of sun).  In another word, A belongs to its Being as discernable from B, because A and Ereignis-Event of discerning belong together:

“The law [of identity] appears at first in the form of a fundamental principle which presupposes identity as a characteristic of Being, that is, of the ground of beings. This principle in the sense of a statement has in the meantime become a principle bearing the characteristics of a spring that departs from Being as the ground of beings, and thus springs into the abyss. But this abyss is neither empty nothingness nor murky confusion, but rather: Ereignis (the event of appropriation). In 'the event of appropriation’ vibrates the active nature of what speaks as language, which at one time was called the house of Being. "Principle of identity" means now: a spring demanded by the essence of identity because it needs that spring if the belonging together of man and Being is to attain the essential light of the appropriation.

On its way from the principle as a statement about identity to the principle as a spring into the essential origin of identity, thinking has undergone a transformation. Thus looking toward the present, beyond the situation of man, thinking sees the constellation of Being and man in terms of that which joins the two-by virtue of the event of appropriation.”[2] (Identity and Difference)

We need to keep in mind that in this sense, understanding of Being, objects and living beings, truth as un-concealment, and disclosure all occur in one awaking lightening of the Event as “discernment-identity”.

Revelation and Ereignis

I would argue that the miracle of Being and Event (Ereignis) belongs to God.  However, God stands outside all relations of human understanding while bestowing us with the miracle of God’s spirit and Word, Logos, Tao, and Ereignis within the illumination which belongs to God as God’s word.  “God is far above that: when God decrees something, God says only, ‘Be,’ and it is.” (19:35)[all the verses quoted are from the Quran].  And what is strange and thought provoking in the Quran is that we as individuals will be called and judged in the Day of Judgement.  We are given the sense of individuation and discernment, the freedom of the will to choose between good and evil, and we will be judged individually for our choices:    

“Man says, ‘What? Once I am dead, will I be brought back to life?’ but does man not remember that We created him when he was nothing before? By your Lord [Prophet] We shall gather them and the devils together and set them on their knees around Hell; We shall seize out of each group those who were most disobedient towards the Lord of Mercy– We know best who most deserves to burn in Hell– but every single one of you will approach it, a decree from your Lord which must be fulfilled. We shall save the devout and leave the evildoers there on their knees. When Our revelations are recited to them in all their clarity, [all that] the disbelievers say to the believers [is], ‘Which side is better situated? Which side has the better following?’ We have destroyed many a generation before them who surpassed them in riches and outward glitter! Say [Prophet], ‘The Lord of Mercy lengthens [the lives] of the misguided, until, when they are confronted with what they have been warned about– either the punishment [in this life] or the Hour [of Judgement]– they realize who is worse situated and who has the weakest forces.’ But God gives more guidance to those who are guided, and good deeds of lasting merit are best and most rewarding in your Lord’s sight. Have you considered the man who rejects Our revelation, who says, ‘I will certainly be given wealth and children’? Has he penetrated the unknown or received a pledge to that effect from the Lord of Mercy? No! We shall certainly record what he says and prolong his punishment: We shall inherit from him all that he speaks of and he will come to Us all alone.” (19:66-80) 

Let’s reflect on these verses:

“In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy.  Say, ‘He is God the One, God the eternal. [other commonly held interpretations include ‘self-sufficient’ and ‘sought by all’ (Razi)].  He begot no one nor was He begotten. No one is comparable to Him.’” (112:1-4)

“[Gabriel said], ‘We only descend [with revelation] at your Lord’s command––everything before us, everything behind us, everything in between, all belongs to Him––your Lord is never forgetful. God is Lord of the heavens and earth and everything in between so worship Him: be steadfast in worshipping God. Do you know of anyone equal to God?’” (19:64-65)

God is completely Other and nothing is equal to God--we understand, feel, love, fear God in awe because God's seed and spirit is within us.  God is eternal…  Just lets’ think about it: eternal.  God has no beginning and no end.  God doesn’t come to being and doesn’t change, as we understand these concepts.  God created everything.  And then God created the weakest creatures on the earth, mortals from the dust.  And God breathed God’s soul into human being and asked all angels and jinns bow down to this weak and fragile being:

“[Prophet], when your Lord told the angels, ‘I am putting a successor on earth,’ they said, ‘How can You put someone there who will cause damage and bloodshed, when we celebrate Your praise and proclaim Your holiness?’ but He said, ‘I know things you do not.’  He taught Adam all the names, then He showed them to the angels and said, ‘Tell me the names of these if you truly [think you can].’  They said, ‘May You be glorified! We have knowledge only of what You have taught us. You are the All Knowing and All Wise.’  Then He said, ‘Adam, tell them the names of these.’ When he told them their names, God said, ‘Did I not tell you that I know what is hidden in the heavens and the earth, and that I know what you reveal and what you conceal?’” (2:30-33)

I wish to imagine that moment, the Event (Ereignis): a line was drawn and discernment came into being.  The name sparked and a tunnel of light engulfed me.  At one stroke and blink of eye, I became aware of my “identity” [from Latin idem (neuter) “the same”] and discerned myself from the place and time, within place and time.

[in Farsi and Arabic هویتidentity هویه , its root is “he/she/it” (neutral in Farsi).  This is the same word as pronoun “He” for God in the Quran.  So, the root of the word “identity” in Farsi and Arabic goes back to our common essence with “Him” (or in Farsi “Him, Her, It”) or God].

In the lightening of the word, I become aware of God and myself and “there”, the place and time.  I found myself simultaneously in the concentric awareness of God at the center, the holistic horizon of events as Being, and perceived universal angels, humans, animals, trees in every particular angel, human, animal, and tree, and in the name.  This is the Event (Ereignis: coming into view) that Heidegger talks about.

Nothing, however, is equal to God.  God is the giver of Event, which can’t be circumvented in human terms.  The Event is a verb-word: Be.  Thus, I became aware of my being and the being of everything.  Nonetheless, God taught us how to discern—first and foremost between good and evil.

“God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fueled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it– light upon light– God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything.” (24:35)       

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[1] “Strictly speaking, identity is related to the problem of distinguishing a specific instance of a certain class from other instances by means of a characteristic property, which is unique for it (that whole instance). Unity, on the other hand, is related to the problem of distinguishing the parts of an instance from the rest of the world by means of a unifying relation that binds them together (not involving anything else).  For example, asking “Is that my dog?” would be a problem of identity, whereas asking “is the collar part of my dog?” would be a problem of unity. As we shall see, the two notions are complementary: when something can be both recognized as a whole and kept distinct from other wholes then we say that it is an individual, and can be counted as one.” (Identity, Unity, and Individuality: Towards a Formal Toolkit for Ontological Analysis) https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/16fe/72e840c6c6558af92d22c53a75d31140a750.pdf

[2] “Where are we now? At the entry of our thinking into that simplicity which we call in the strict sense of the term the event of appropriation. It seems as if we were now in danger of directing our thinking, all too carelessly, toward something that is remote and general; while in fact what the term event of appropriation wishes to indicate really speaks to us directly from the very nearness of that neighborhood in which we already reside. For what could be closer to us than what brings us nearer to where we belong,

to where we are belongers, to the event of appropriation?

The event of appropriation is that realm, vibrating within itself, through which man and Being reach each other in their nature, achieve their active nature by losing those qualities with which metaphysics has endowed them. To think of appropriating as the event of appropriation means to contribute to this self-vibrating realm. Thinking receives the tools for this self-suspended structure from language. For language is the most delicate and thus the most susceptible vibration holding everything within the suspended structure of the appropriation. We dwell in the appropriation inasmuch as our active nature is given over to language.

We have now reached a point on our path where we must ask the crude but inevitable question: What does appropriation have to do with identity? Answer: Nothing. Identity, on the other hand, has much, perhaps everything, to' do with appropriation. How so? We can answer this question by retracing our path in a few steps.

The appropriation appropriates man and Being to their essential togetherness. In the [technological] frame, we glimpse a first, oppressing flash of the appropriation. The frame constitutes the active nature of the modern world of technology. In the frame, we witness a belonging together of man and Being in which the letting belong first determines the manner of the "together" and its unity. We let Parmenides' fragment "For the Same are thinking as well as Being" introduce us to the question of a belonging together in which belonging has precedence over "together." The question of the meaning of this Same is the question of the active nature of identity. The doctrine of metaphysics represents identity as a fundamental characteristic of Being. Now it becomes clear that Being belongs with thinking to an identity whose active essence stems from that letting belong together which we call the appropriation.

The essence of identity is a property of the event of appropriation. If the attempt to guide our thinking to the abode of the essential origin of identity is to some extent tenable, what would have become of the title of our lecture? The meaning of the title "The principle of identity" would have undergone a transformation.

The law appears at first in the form of a fundamental principle which presupposes identity as a characteristic of Being, that is, of the ground of beings. This principle in the sense of a statement has in the meantime become a principle bearing the characteristics of a spring that departs from Being as the ground of beings, and thus springs into the abyss. But this abyss is neither empty nothingness nor murky confusion, but rather: the event of appropriation. In 'the event of appropriation vibrates the active nature of what speaks as language, which at one time was called the house of Being. "Principle of identity" means now: a spring demanded by the essence of identity because it needs that spring if the belonging together of man and Being is to attain the essential light of the appropriation.

On its way from the principle as a statement about identity to the principle as a spring into the essential origin of identity, thinking has undergone a transformation. Thus looking toward the present, beyond the situation of man, thinking sees the constellation of Being and man in terms of that which joins the two-by virtue of the event of appropriation.” (Heidegger, Identity and Difference)