"They All Return to Me in The End": A Brief Reflection on Some Verses in The Surah Pilgrimage (22)

The following verses touch my heart, and after reflection and divine grace, I can feel their truth.  It is God speaking, so let’s listen carefully and only those who can respond can hear, because hearing is a kind of responding:

“If they reject you [Prophet], so did the people of Noah before them, and those of Ad, Thamud, Abraham, Lot, Midian. Moses too was called a liar. I gave the disbelievers time, but in the end I punished them. How I condemned them!  How many towns steeped in wrongdoing We have destroyed and left in total ruin; how many deserted wells; how many lofty palaces!  Have these people not travelled through the land with hearts to understand and ears to hear? It is not people’s eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts.” (22:42-46)

How many?  How much evidence?  Can I feel the passage of time?  Can I imagine the cycle of coming into being and leaving the world?  Can I see the recycling of towns, wells, and lofty palaces?  Do I read history?  Do I watch historical movies?  Haven’t I seen the impermanence in the hands of God?  Do I not see the presence of God in the cycle of events and in my self?  Do I not have the heart, is my heart deaf and blind, to seek God, pray to God, prostate to God?

“They will challenge you [Prophet] to hasten the punishment.  God will not fail in His promise– a Day with your Lord is like a thousand years by your reckoning.  To many a town steeped in wrongdoing I gave more time and then struck them down: they all return to Me in the end.” (22:47-48)

Can I doubt that this life is transient, a mote in the historical whirlwind?  Can I reckon what does it mean that “a Day with your Lord is like a thousand years by your reckoning”?   Can I digest the spiral cycle of returning, the returning to the center, as dependent origination which returns to its abode, the self-sufficient God?  Can I imagine it?  Is God not everywhere, as the center is present in all periphery?  In the spiral of galaxies and flowers, in the golden spiral and ratio[1]?  An allusion and sign to “they all return to Me in the end.”?

“Say [Prophet], ‘People, I am sent only to give you clear warning.’  Those who believe and do good deeds will be forgiven and have a generous reward, but those who strive to oppose Our messages and try in vain to defeat Us are destined for the Blaze.”

How many centuries of warning do I need to heed?  Do I not see that God speaks to us in a nonapologetic and straightforward language?  Whom are we deceiving, but ourselves by our empty sentimentalism which always intensifies suffering by depriving the world from its soul?  Have I not seen that there is no other way?  Am I blind to the fact that my best wishes ended up and ends up to nihilism and hedonism at the end?  Can I not understand that it is in vain to escape from ‘returning’ to the center of spiral—the farther I escape the further I wither away into annihilation?  Am I blind?  Is my heart hardened?     

“We have never sent any messenger or prophet before you [Muhammad] into whose wishes Satan did not insinuate something, but God removes [The basic meaning of nasakha is ‘removed’ rather than ‘abrogated’ (al-Mu_jam al-Wasit)] what Satan insinuates and then God affirms His message. God is all knowing and wise: He makes Satan’s insinuations a temptation only for the sick at heart and those whose hearts are hardened– the evildoers are profoundly opposed [to the Truth]– and He causes those given knowledge to realize that this Revelation is your Lord’s Truth, so that they may believe in it and humble their hearts to Him: God guides the faithful to the straight path.”

How can I know the insinuations of Satan?  How can I discern Satanic verses?  Can I listen to my heart guided by God?  Did God not give me a measure for discretion inside my heart?  Can my heart harden and go astray?  How can I keep my heart young and pliable to God’s message?  How can I stay vigilant?  How can I keep my ears, eyes, heart fresh?  Is the Satanic voice not vain, a noise, and does it not perish easily in an iota of divine of light?  Should I not surrender to God and the experience of God which is light through and through surging within and erasing fogs of friction and conflict?  Can I be seduced by legalism and empty following formality of the words rather than letting them enter my heart?  Does my heart not testify that the words of God have a healing effect and connect me to the center and the words of Satan give rise to empty emotions of ambitions and revenge, to alienation and the illusion of power and absolute autonomy?  Do the Satanic insinuations not disconnect me from the light embedded in my heart and attach me to empty desires and whims?  Is my discernment not the experience of spiritual elevation and transcendence—that which feels and transcends words of God in the surging bliss of the light within, and to experience friction and separation by the Satanic seduction of empty sounds and noises?  Does God not guide me, when I turn away from delusion towards God?  Is it not obvious to the heart that can hear that to say any person or thing is God is an aberration and idolatry?  Is it difficult to see that Satan enters through rigidity and excessive righteous indignation as well as sins?  Can’t we see that Satan enters through exaggerations and imbalance?  Can I not feel it?  Did the Quran not come to rectify Satanic insinuations?  And is it not a clear guidepost to always remember that only God and only God will guide me to see diversions and it is not the subject of my own autonomous logos only?  Has God not been so close, closer than my jugular vein, and I have been blind to it for so long?  Am I not thirsty to experience constant presence (not identity) of God within me?  Is this nearness not a measure?  Am I not a mask over this nearness?                 

“The disbelievers will remain in doubt about it until the Hour suddenly overpowers them or until torment descends on them on a Day devoid of all hope. On that Day control will belong to God: He will judge between them. Those who believe and do good deeds will be admitted to Gardens of Delight, while those who disbelieve and reject Our revelations will receive a humiliating torment.” (22:49-57)

Can I be grateful enough to God who gave me the insight to understand the message of revelation, as clear as understanding that a flower will wither away without its soil and water?  Is this difficult to digest?  Is not the rejection of God, the rejection of air and sunshine?  Can I not see that the delusion of independence and power will destroy me?  Can I not become aware and fully conscious of my poverty of existence in love with God?  Can I not see that I can write these words by God’s subsistence?  Can I not see that I can’t escape God, I have nowhere to go but destruction?  Has God not been so close, closer than my jugular vein, and I have been blind to it for so long?  Am I not thirsty to experience constant presence (not identity) of God within me?  Is this nearness not a measure?  Am I not a mask over this nearness?                 

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[1] In geometry, a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is φ, the golden ratio. That is, a golden spiral gets wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of φ for every quarter turn it makes.  Φ is 1.6180339887
http://nation.lk/online/2015/08/08/nietzsche-on-buddhist-philosophy.html

Golden ratio: In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0,

          A + B = A

             A        B

A golden rectangle with longer side a and shorter side b, when placed adjacent to a square with sides of length a, will produce a similar golden rectangle with longer side a + b and shorter side a.
http://nation.lk/online/2015/08/08/nietzsche-on-buddhist-philosophy.html

Domination Over Animals and Self-Defense in The Surah Pilgrimage

In continuing reading surah Pilgrimage (22), two more controversial points are highlighted. First, our dominance over animals, and second, defending oneself when one is persecuted or attacked. In the first case, God says:

“Livestock have been made lawful to you, except for what has been explicitly forbidden. Shun the filth of idolatrous beliefs and practices and shun false utterances. [Dedicating animals to idols.] Devote yourselves to God and assign Him no partners, for the person who does so is like someone who has been hurled down from the skies and snatched up by the birds or flung to a distant place by the wind. All this [is ordained by God]: those who honor God’s rites show the piety of their hearts. Livestock are useful to you until the set time. Then their place of sacrifice is near the Ancient House: We appointed acts of devotion for every community, for them to celebrate God’s name over the livestock He provided for them: your God is One, so devote yourselves to Him. [Prophet], give good news to the humble whose hearts fill with awe whenever God is mentioned, who endure whatever happens to them with patience, who keep up the prayer, who give to others out of Our provision to them.” (22:30-35)

“We have made camels [The term budn can refer to either camels or cows.] part of God’s sacred rites for you. There is much good in them for you, so invoke God’s name over them as they are lined up for sacrifice, then, when they have fallen down dead, feed yourselves and those who do not ask, as well as those who do. We have subjected them to you in this way so that you may be thankful. It is neither their meat nor their blood that reaches God but your piety. He has subjected them to you in this way so that you may glorify God for having guided you.” (22:35-37)

I am a vegetarian and have a strong feeling for animals and even insects and every living being in the organic world, and every living being in the inorganic world, which is not evil. Every dawn, birds sing in front of my window, I can feel their peaceful contentment and intuitive connection to the Source. As God said, “Do you not realize that everything in the heavens and earth submits [literally prostate] to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals?” (22:18) However, it is obvious we have subjected animals. We have power over them, intellectually and spiritually. This is God’s gift of awareness of our existence in a unique way from animals and trees. So, in the verses above, God acknowledges this power and asks us to bring the name of God when we slaughter them for eating. This is obviously against animal factories which lack any reverence for animals. I assume in conditions that we don’t need really to eat animals to survive or feed the unfortunate and hungry, God as well would be satisfied with vegetarianism. I think the rite holds as long as the meat of sacrificed animals goes to the needy, and unless God changes it, we ought to abide with revelation’s sacrificial rites: “those who honor God’s rites show the piety of their hearts.”

In the next passage, God allows those who are persecuted or attacked to take arm:

“Give good news to those who do good: God will defend the believers; God does not love the unfaithful or the ungrateful. Those who have been attacked are permitted to take up arms because they have been wronged– God has the power to help them– those who have been driven unjustly from their homes only for saying, ‘Our Lord is God.’ If God did not repel some people by means of others, many monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where God’s name is much invoked, would have been destroyed. God is sure to help those who help His cause– God is strong and mighty– those who, when We establish them in the land, keep up the prayer, pay the prescribed alms, command what is right, and forbid what is wrong: God controls the outcome of all events.” (22: 38-41)

I can’t deny this truth: “If God did not repel some people by means of others, many monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where God’s name is much invoked, would have been destroyed.” God makes the logic of self-defense, not indiscriminately killing people, clear here. This is the way things happen. We might wishfully take absolute pacific stance in the world. But when it comes to the destruction of churches and monasteries, our houses and cities, if in terms of balances of power we are capable of defending ourselves, Christians, as well as Jews, and in the final analysis even Buddhists, would defend themselves.

A Reflection on Humility as the Key in the Quran, Beatitudes, and Socrates' Apology.

 حادثه
The Event
                                           

گفتم تو چرا دور تر از خواب و سرابی                                                                                               I asked, “Why are you farther than dream and mirage?”
گفتی که منم با تو ولیکن تو نقابی                                                                                                    You said, “I am with you but you are the mask.”
فریاد کشیدم تو کجایی تو کجایی                                                                                                         I cried, “Where are you?  Where are you?”
گفتی که طلب کن تو مرا تا که بیابی                                                                                              You said, “Yearn and call me to find me.”
چون همسفر عشق شدی مرد سفر باش                                                                                              When you are the sojourner of love, be the man of journey.
هم منتظر حادثه هم فکر خطر باش                                                                                                   Be prepared for both the event and danger.
هر منزل این راه بیابان هلاک است                                                                                            Every station of this path is a fatal desert.
هر چشمه سرابیست که بر سینه خاک است                                                                                          Every spring is a mirage in the chest of soil.
در سایه هر سنگ اگر گل به زمین است                                                                                             If there is a flower in the shade of a rock,
نقش تن ماریست که در خواب کمین است                                                                                           It is the pattern of a snake coiled up to bite.
در هر قدمت خار هر شاخه سر دار                                                                                                  In each step there is thorn and every branch is a hanging noose.
در هر نفس آزار هر ثانیه صد بار                                                                                                      Agony in each breath, hundreds in each second.
گفتم که عطش می کشدم در تب صحرا                                                                                                I said, “thirst is killing me in the fever of desert.”
گفتی که مجوی آب و عطش باش سراپا                                                                                              You said, “Don’t seek water and be all thirst.”
گفتم که نشانم بده گر چمشه ای انجا ست                                                                                              I said, “Show me, if there is a spring over there.”
گفتی چو شدی تشنه ترین قلب تو دریاست                                                                                     You said, “When you become the thirstiest, your heart is the ocean.”
گفتم که در این راه کو نقطه ی آغاز                                                                                                    I asked, “Where is the starting point in this path?”
گفتی که تویی تو خود پاسخ این راز                                                                                               You said, “You yourself are the answer to this mystery.”

(The Event, by Ardalan Sarfaraz)

Everything Will Perish But the Face of God

When I was blind to God, when I was an atheist—my attention was directed at the void as I assumed there was nothing permanent within me and without me but atoms and the law of conservation of energy.   I was in agony, I was in darkness, because this picture didn’t and doesn’t quell anyone’s existential angst—why am I here and why do I die?  I compensated for this loss with the principle of pleasure.  Thus, I fell and hurt myself and my family.  Years of studying philosophy couldn’t satisfy me either, as I got lost into the nihilism of atheism, moral relativism, and contingency of existence.  So, I turned to God and asked for help and received help and guidance.  I can’t be more grateful to God for coming to guide a broken nothing.  This is pure divine Mercy and nothing else. We can’t fathom it but its seed is already within us.  

“Do not call out to any other god beside God, for there is no god but Him.  Everything will perish except His Face. His is the Judgement and to Him you shall all be brought back.” (28:88) The most real and permanent is God.  When I was blind to God, this notion was alien to me.  I couldn’t connect with or understand those who believed in God, to me an illusory and human made notion.  The illusory turned into the most real for me, in my pleadings and receiving—when I turned my face to God.   When I turned to God, everything around me turned and the only real things—atoms, conservation of energy, electromagnetic fields, quantum vibrations, and dark energy -  became a shadow, signs of the most Real and Lasting.  After years of inquiry and being careful not to deceive myself, I found my way.  The void within me was not fully removed but shattered.  Now it was time to step on the path.  The seed of faith grows and the shattered void will gradually be removed.  God entered my heart, whose longing was set by God, and God will occupy the whole space of my being—this is my wish.  And if God so wills, my wish will come true.  Am I ready now to enter the Room of Wishes?

The Room of Wishes is here and now and always inside my heart.  I ought to be able to see, endure, and integrate all my pain and weaknesses within my strength and faith.  Seeing myself as is, rather than fashioning myself to my delusion and vanity, will teach me love.  When I become capable to meet myself and see the depth of my depravity and flaws and introduce them to my strength and faith, then the satanic ghost of Dionysian despair and pride will depart in the name of God.   

This humbles me.  The key seems so clear and accessible to me now.  I woke up from my narcissistic slumber and the delusion of absolute autonomy, which oxymoronically drowns itself in the wine and weed of contingency of existence.  I woke up from sleeping all my life with the snake of pride and sad pleasure.  And the light is too strong to let me fall back asleep into the darkness of ego. 

The key seems so clear and accessible to me now: it is to exorcise the evil spirit of will-to-power, the venom of separation and desperate pride in my vices and devices, in my sciences and technology or my self-made spirituality.  This pride is desperate as this all-knowing groundlessness is a manifestation of despair and will end in the same.  The venom is not only a mode of understanding but also a state of being, a ghostly presence with the glassy eyes of vanity.  When I come down from the delusional dizzy heights of ‘as if I am somebody’, the evil spirit departs.  When I prostate myself with understanding, the door will open.  Then I will understand what God means by “Do you not realize [Prophet] that everything in the heavens and earth submits [literally prostate] to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals?” (22:18) and the fact that "[t]he seven heavens and the earth and everyone in them glorify God. There is not a single thing that does not celebrate His praise, though you do not understand their praise: God is most forbearing, most forgiving." (17:44).  Then I am attuned to understand the simplicity and clarity of God’s words that: “[Prophet], give good news to the humble whose hearts fill with awe whenever God is mentioned, who endure whatever happens to them with patience, who keep up the prayer, who give to others out of Our provision to them.” (22:34-35)

Socrates' Apology

It is an absolute awareness of the poverty of my existence that opens my eyes to God.  However, this understanding is also a venue to understanding my essential connection to God.  So, this “poverty” does not imply “contingency and nihilism”.  I won’t be lost and blind in seeing my life as an accidental conglomeration of atoms and particles.  In this state of humility in front of God, my philosophy, sciences, and technology can find their footings on firm ground and will reveal the divine ground more clearly.  Spiritual striving and pleading to God, with knowledge and understanding, bring me back to what Socrates said in his Apology (defense in the court before taking the hemlock in 399BC):

“[T]he truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle [God inspired the Delphi Temple oracle to say, “Socrates is the wisest man in Athens.”] he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the God, and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the God.”

And again these words of Socrates, after his death verdict was issued, are consistent with that knowledge of poverty of our existence:

“Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?  And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.  And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private.”

And Socrates ends his defense this way:

"Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign [Socrates’ daemon (spirit) used to give him signs of what not to do]. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. 

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”

Beatitudes

And now the eight Beatitudes of Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount make sense to me:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

(Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10)

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“There are also some who serve God with unsteady faith: if something good comes their way, they are satisfied, but if they are tested, they revert to their old ways, losing both this world and the next– that is the clearest loss.  Instead of God, they call upon what can neither harm nor help them– that is straying far away– or invoke one whose harm is closer than his help: an evil master and an evil companion.  But God will admit those who believe and do good deeds to Gardens graced with flowing streams. God does whatever He wishes.  Anyone who thinks that God will not support him in this world and the next should stretch a rope up to the sky, climb all the way up it, and see whether this strategy removes the cause of his anger.  In this way, We send the Quran down as clear messages, and God guides whoever He will.” (22:11-15)

“As for the believers, those who follow the Jewish faith, the Sabians, the Christians, the Magians [Zoroastrians], and the idolaters, God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection; God witnesses all things.  Do you not realize [Prophet] that everything in the heavens and earth submits [prostate] to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals? So do many human beings, though for many others punishment is well deserved. Anyone disgraced by God will have no one to honor him: God does whatever He will.” (22:17-18)

“We showed Abraham the site of the House, saying, ‘Do not assign partners to Me. Purify My House for those who circle around it, those who stand to pray, and those who bow and prostrate themselves.  Proclaim the Pilgrimage to all people. They will come to you on foot and on every kind of swift mount, emerging from every deep mountain pass to attain benefits and celebrate God’s name, on specified days, over the livestock He has provided for them– feed yourselves and the poor and unfortunate– so let the pilgrims perform their acts of cleansing, fulfill their vows, and circle around the Ancient House.’  All this [is ordained by God]: anyone who honors the sacred ordinances of God will have good rewards from his Lord.” (22:26-30)

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گفتم تو چرا دور تر از خواب و سرابی                                                                                               I asked, “Why are you farther than dream and mirage?”
گفتی که منم با تو ولیکن تو نقابی اما تو نقابی                                                                                   You said, “I am with you but you are the mask.”
فریاد کشیدم تو کجایی تو کجایی                                                                                                         I cried, “Where are you?  Where are you?”
گفتی که طلب کن تو مرا تا که بیابی                                                                                              You said, “Yearn and call me to find me.”
چون همسفر عشق شدی مرد سفر باش                                                                                              When you are the sojourner of love be the man of journey.
هم منتظر حادثه هم فکر خطر باش                                                                                                   Be prepared for both the event and danger.
هر منزل این راه بیابان هلاک است                                                                                            Every station of this path is a fatal desert.
هر چشمه سرابیست که بر سینه خاک است                                                                                          Every spring is a mirage in the chest of soil.
در سایه هر سنگ اگر گل به زمین است                                                                                             If there is a flower in the shade of a rock,
نقش تن ماریست که در خواب کمین است                                                                                           It is the pattern of a snake coiled up to bite.
در هر قدمت خار هر شاخه سر دار                                                                                                  In each step there is thorn and every branch is a hanging noose.
در هر نفس آزار هر ثانیه صد بار                                                                                                      Agony in each breath, hundreds in each second.
گفتم که عطش می کشدم در تب صحرا                                                                                                I said, “thirst is killing me in the fever of desert.”
گفتی که مجوی آب و عطش باش سراپا                                                                                              You said, “Don’t seek water and be all thirst.”
گفتم که نشانم بده گر چمشه ای انجا ست                                                                                              I said, “Show me, if there is a spring over there.”
گفتی چو شدی تشنه ترین قلب تو دریاست                                                                                      You said, “When you become the thirstiest, your heart is the ocean.”
گفتم که در این راه کو نقطه ی آغاز                                                                                                    I said, “Where is the starting point in this path?”
گفتی که تویی تو خود پاسخ این راز                                                                                               You said, “You yourself are the answer to this mystery.”

(The Event, by Ardalan Sarfaraz. Singer: Dariush)

Our Hearing Is in Itself a Responding: A Reflection on God's Will and Justice in the Quran

A heart that is calm in its ground, God-still, as he will,

Would gladly be touched by him: it is his lute-play.

                                                                       Angelus Silesius

Were not the eye a thing of sun,

  How could we ever glimpse the light?

If in us God’s own power’d not run

Could we in the divine delight?

                                                 Goethe

God’s wisdom is expressed in scriptures and in the Quran.  However, it doesn’t fit into our linear way of thinking and our self-serving and self-centered interpretations.  We ask ourselves ‘if God can guide anyone, why does God leave some to astray?’  ‘If God can will anything, why does God not bring a sign from the sky right now or reveal the Divine to all, so they know and bring faith?’  So, some ask, ‘why should God punish the evildoers in the Day of Judgement?’  These questions show we are lost in the labyrinth of this line of thinking.  What is wrong with it?  One thing: I forget the gift given to me for the cultivation of the self: freedom of the will to heed the light within and without, or to ignore it and thus follow my low desires (nafs) for success and pleasures, which is also within my own very soul.  I can choose.  God knows the outcome of all events, but I am in a quest to grow and love God knowingly, not mechanically, or to lose my soul.  The problem is that we have a deterministic and mechanical view of how things happen in us and in the world.  Let’s read these verses from surah Pilgrimage (22):

“There is no doubt that the Last Hour is bound to come, nor that God will raise the dead from their graves, yet still there are some who, with no knowledge or guidance or any book of enlightenment, argue about God, turning scornfully aside to lead others away from God’s path. Disgrace in this world awaits such a person and, on the Day of Resurrection, We shall make him taste the suffering of the Fire. [It will be said], ‘This is for what you have stored up with your own hands: God is never unjust to His creatures.’” (22:7-10)

God gave life and consciousness to me and paths to choose.  If I did not have the possibility of choice, then God would be unjust to punish me for spending all my life following my desires for beauty and pleasure, not caring about cultivation of my soul.  God has given every creature, not only me, a longing to heed, love, and praise God.  "The seven heavens and the earth and everyone in them glorify God. There is not a single thing that does not celebrate His praise, though you do not understand their praise: God is most forbearing, most forgiving." (17:44).

This internal and essential sense of praising God holds and sustains me and is the kernel of my longing and existence.   However, I can distance myself from this inner call and fall astray.  I have a self and an awareness responsible for my deeds.  So, God says:

“Do you not realize [Prophet] that everything in the heavens and earth submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals? So do many human beings, though for many others punishment is well deserved. Anyone disgraced by God will have no one to honor him: God does whatever He wills.” (22:18)

Then one might ask, is this not “contradictory” to say we deserve ramifications of our actions and then “God does whatever He wills”?   This puzzlement shows a mechanical understanding and fragmentary reading of the Quran. 

It is mechanical and fragmentary, because one may think God’s omnipotence is arbitrary or can take any course, good or evil.  We are puzzled by the idea of “omnipotence” to the extent that some believe that if we say God’s will is good and cannot be evil, this bounds God to an inevitable direction and then God can’t be omnipotent!  It is obvious this question comes from the lack of imagination of a limited creature who is NOT omnipotent. 

These skeptical questions take “God does whatever God wills” devoid of “God’s justice”.  What is the problem with this kind of thinking?  Does God’s omnipotence mean that God also can become unjust if God wills?  The question is, does God have a choice to be unjust and do evil? 

But what do “choice” and “being unjust” mean?  We should remember “choice” and “being unjust” belong to our limited created existent.  Every choice for a limited being means to take a route and to lose the other.  A limited being can’t have it all.  A limited being ought to choose between better and worse, now it can be better and worse for survival, for ethical-spiritual growth, or for exertion of power.  In our everyday understanding, to be unjust means to disturb the balance of things, to be domineering, to exert power over others without rhyme and reason, to make some suffer or favor others just for whims or exploitation, to be cruel, to be selfish, or to surrender to the will-to-power.  But all these characteristics are applicable to beings who have a choice, otherwise we can’t say they can be just or unjust, or good or evil.  What about God?  Can God whimsically harm anyone? 

The point is that God is beyond choice and being determined.  We can’t gauge God’s “choice” with our understanding of human “choice”.  Because that which can choose to attend God or not attend God, to hold to the center or fall apart, can’t imagine what is to be the center.   However, the Quran says God will not be unjust to the creatures to whom God has given the gift of choosing to attend and abide with God or to accelerate away and eventually decelerate and wither away far from the center by their own choice for will-to-power: "Devote yourselves to God and assign Him no partners, for the person who does so is like someone who has been hurled down from the skies and snatched up by the birds or flung to a distant place by the wind." (22:31)  

 Islamic Pattern

The picture is like this: “everything in the heavens and earth submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals? So do many human beings, though for many others punishment is well deserved.” (22:18).  In another word, nothing has absolute autonomy but God-Center.  Everything praises, loves, and exists in this rotation-love around the God-Center.  In the final analysis, every choice of each and every being who enjoys “choice” is to stay in the orbit of God or to depart to separation and a fallacious and destructive sense of absolute autonomy and will-to-power, analogous to a cancer cell, or a tree, an animal, or human being to escape from the vitalizing light of sun or water to their detriment.  One who has choice and chooses will-to-power rather than submitting to the sun, to the God-Center deserves destruction and suffering.  

"We showed Abraham the site of the House, saying, ‘Do not assign partners to Me. Purify My House for those who circle around it, those who stand to pray, and those who bow and prostrate themselves.  Proclaim the Pilgrimage to all people. They will come to you on foot and on every kind of swift mount, emerging from every deep mountain pass to attain benefits and celebrate God’s name, on specified days, over the livestock He has provided for them– feed yourselves and the poor and unfortunate– so let the pilgrims perform their acts of cleansing, fulfill their vows, and circle around the Ancient House.’  All this [is ordained by God]: anyone who honors the sacred ordinances of God will have good rewards from his Lord." (22:26-30) 


And this is the picture of ethical-spiritual death by Yeats:  

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi*
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

*: 'Spiritus Mundi' was a term used by W.B. Yeats to describe the collective soul of the universe containing the memories of all time. From 'Spiritus Mundi,' Yeats believed, came all poets' inspiration. Spiritus Mundi is a Latin term that literally means, 'world spirit'.

God’s Will Is Always Just

In the above surah, God states that “God is never unjust to His creatures.”  What happens that one becomes unjust?  Is the kernel of injustice not will-to-power?  Will-to-power for what purpose?  To declare absolute autonomy and indeed to become like Creator, omnipotent?  But the desire to become absolutely powerful comes from the fact that one is NOT all powerful and so one desires to become omnipotent.  It comes from a lack and indulgence in a self-destructive desire to take over and give in to pride, greed, lust, envy, and wrath--characteristics of limited dependent created beings.  Whimsical exertion of power comes from a lack.  What about the Creator who is indeed all-powerful and doesn’t lack anything, but every existing thing in the world belongs to and is governed by the Creator?  Can this Creator be unjust or desire will-to-power?  Here the question is not arbitrariness of God’s omnipotence, but the fact that ontologically and conceptually, to be unjust or to do evil are categorically excluded from God’s conception of omnipotence.  In another word, God’s omnipotence means that which renders justice and good possible, and injustice and evil belong only to creatures who are creatures and not omnipotent.   However, as that which grounds justice and good, God is beyond justice and good too.  Hence, we enter into the ineffable zone of “absolute purity”, where our concepts of “good” and “evil” or “choice” and “determinism” are not applicable. 

Thus, in the Day of Judgement, I will receive what I chose.  If I chose hedonism and ethical decay, if I chose materialism and worshipped this transient life in seeing it accidental and nihilistic, if I disregarded my existential longing for the Source and took the path of pleasure, then I have configured my body-psyche-soul by my own action and distanced myself from my divine source and lost the capacity of “hearing” and “seeing” my ontological connection to God.  In this respect, Hell is what I deserve: “This is for what you have stored up with your own hands: God is never unjust to His creatures.’” (22:10)

"Have these people not traveled through the land with hearts to understand and ears to hear? It is not people’s eyes that are blind, but their hearts within their breasts." (22:46)

When the prophet is impatient and in agony about disbelievers, God reminds him:

“If you find rejection by the disbelievers so hard to bear, then seek a tunnel into the ground or a ladder into the sky, if you can, and bring them a sign: God could bring them all to guidance if it were His will, so do not join the ignorant. Only those who can hear will respond; as for the dead, God will raise them up, and to Him they will all be returned. They also say, ‘Why has no sign been sent down to him from his Lord?’ Say, ‘God certainly has the power to send down a sign,’ though most of them do not know: 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. Those who reject Our signs are deaf, dumb, and in total darkness. God leaves whoever He will to stray, and sets whoever He will on a straight path.” (6:35-39)

“Only those who can hear will respond”, “Those who reject Our signs are deaf, dumb, and in total darkness,” –these two statements point to two sides of a coin, or the double edge of a sword: destiny and a choice.  The one who chooses not to hear cannot be guided by God.  “God could bring them all to guidance if it were His will, so do not join the ignorant,” but God’s will is justice as such and those who chose to decenter themselves from God, have already chosen being deaf and blind and live in total darkness and hence can’t hear.  God’s will-justice treats us as autonomous choosers, and to the extent that we heed God, we will receive guidance. 

The capacity to “hear” God is already embedded in our fitrat (ruh, divine essence).  As well the capacity not to hear God or hear Satan predominantly also resides in our nafs (lower soul).  If we corrupt our “hearing” through lust and empty ambitions, at certain point our likeness to God will be reduced and our likeness to evil will increase to the extent that one loses the capacity to hear God and gives an ear to Satan.  This is the Hellish state.

As Heidegger puts it:

"There was a thought familiar to the old Greek thinkers, a thought that one all too crudely portrays thus: like is only known through like.  What is meant is that what speaks to us only becomes perceivable through our response.  Our hearing is in itself a responding.  In the introduction to his Theory of Colors, Goethe refers to that Greek thought and sought to express it in German rhyme in the following manner:

Were not the eye a thing of sun,

How could we ever glimpse the light?

If in us God’s own power’d not run

Could we in the divine delight?

It seems that up till today we have not yet sufficiently pondered what the sunliness of the eye consists of and where in us God’s own power is to be found, to what extent both belong together and give the directive to a more profoundly thought human being, to humans who are the thinking creatures.” (The Principle of Reason, p.48)