A Brief Reflection on the Last Verses of the Surah Pilgrimage (22) and our Falling State in Overlooking the Immanence and Power of God in the World

"People, here is an illustration, so listen carefully: those you call on beside God could not, even if they combined all their forces, create a fly, and if a fly took something away from them, they would not be able to retrieve it. How feeble are the petitioners and how feeble are those they petition! They have no grasp of God’s true measure: God is truly most strong and mighty.” (22:74)

This example speaks to our time and all times.  What we praise as the highest has no power to create even a fly or to retrieve something that a fly takes from us.  We are now seduced by our own power, paradoxically, to think we are just robots who can create conscious robots who have reason and heart, who care and ponder their existence, who have a world and perceive their existence in the world, and have an existential longing for their Source.  We are seduced by our God given knowledge, but even if we put all our forces together we can’t create (not cloning) a fly, leave alone a human body/soul who understands Being and Love.   

I ask my students in class to tell me how they understand a room in a building.  After some reflections and discussion, they admit that they understand the building before the room and the campus before buildings and the city before the campus and the district before the city and …. the earth and heavens before this very room, pre-reflectively and pre-ontologically.  They understand the world before the objects in the world.  They understand Being before the world.  And for those whose heart is not hard and blind, we understand God before Being.   

But as soon as robotically we saw ourselves as subjects against the world of objects, as soon as we saw the world as the sum of parts, as soon as we reduced our existence to ONLY receiving sense data from external world and then processing the information inside us and then acting [which indeed happens in theoretical moments or breakdown cases]…as soon as we perceived our existence as “only the quantifiable is the real” and drew a rigid wall between sensible and nonsensible, we turned into robots.  We saw each other as labor and resources to utilize.  We created slavery and wage slavery. We created consumerism and objectification of the world.  We looked at the world as only ‘resources’.  We deforest our forests and tropical into papers and furniture.  We tortured our animals in animal factories and destroyed ourselves in obesity.  We brought the planet to the brink of sixth mass extinction and the domination of Anthropocene, and indeed to our self-destruction, as soon as we turned a blind eye to scriptures.  

In my reading of the Quran, in many places I am not inclined or have knowledge to unravel hermeneutical knots.  In reading the ending of surah Pilgrimage (22), I let my imagination and experience of verses, and God’s inspiration and my philosophical bent speak. So, the following are my thoughts on the last verses of the surah Pilgrimage (22):

“He will give a generous provision to those who migrated in God’s way and were killed or died. He is the Best Provider.  He will admit them to a place that will please them: God is all knowing and most forbearing.  So it will be. God will help those who retaliate against an aggressive act merely with its like and are then wronged again: God is pardoning and most forgiving.  So it will be, because God makes night pass into day, and day into night, and He is all hearing and all seeing.  So it will be, because it is God alone who is the Truth, and whatever else they invoke is sheer falsehood: it is God who is the Most High, the Most Great.” (22:58-62)

I was about to skip the above verses because our ears are not inclined to hear the truth about war and peace.  I have come to the conclusion that whoever rejects God [Tien, Tao, Nirvana, Brahman, Heavens, etc.] eventually falls into nihilism and hedonism and eventually will become unjust and imbalance in one’s soul and to others[1].  So, to stand for God is to stand for meaning, value, and truth.  It is a fact that God, Truth, and Justice are the same and any other lost or corrupted being who defy Truth and Justice is against God as well.  And the way it happens is not always clear and open, as Satan doesn’t appear as Satan but will put on the robe of Gospel of Prosperity and Saudi Arabia Sheikhs and Imams.  So, the name of God like any other value term can be used for covering up corruption and deceit.  One ought to be vigilant and careful, to constantly discern the wheat from the chaff.   

Let’s pay attention to the premises and conclusion of above verses:

Premise 1:  God makes night pass into day, and day into night, and He is all hearing and all seeing. 

Premise 2: it is God alone who is the Truth, and whatever else they invoke is sheer falsehood: it is God who is the Most High, the Most Great.”

Conclusion: “God will give a generous provision to those who migrated in God’s way and were killed or died. He is the Best Provider.  He will admit them to a place that will please them: God is all knowing and most forbearing.  So it will be. God will help those who retaliate against an aggressive act merely with its like and are then wronged again: God is pardoning and most forgiving.”

Do the premises support this conclusion?  God is the Truth and God holds the order of things, passing night to day, the rotation of earth around itself and the sun.  In the verses that follow, God elaborates on this notion:

“Have you [Prophet] not considered how God sends water down from the sky and the next morning the earth becomes green? God is truly most subtle, all aware; everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him; God alone is self-sufficient, worthy of all praise.  Have you not considered how God has made everything on the earth of service to you? That ships sail the sea at His command? That He keeps the heavens from falling down on the earth without His permission? God is most compassionate and most merciful to mankind– it is He who gave you [people] life, will cause you to die, then will give you life again– but man is ungrateful.” (22:63-66)

The premises of the above argument allude to a fact that comes heavy to our ‘secular’ ears, because we assume laws of nature are ‘self-sufficient’ and work independent of God.  But God is the subtlest, and only God is ‘self-sufficient’.  Everything in the heaven and on the earth depends on God.  God can stop ships from moving on the sea; God keeps the heavens from falling down on the earth.  God has created life and death and will bring us back to life again in the second act of creation.  When I ponder that my breathing and speaking, my consciousness and feelings, my hopes and fears, my life and death, all and all are given to me by God, then I ask myself, what is that I seek to escape from?  It is like a pigeon tries to escape the pressure of air under its wings, which makes its flying possible.  It is like a flower wants to escape from soil and sunshine and becomes completely independent.  We have a name for it: a self-destructive cancer.

The so called “laws” of nature or universe are held by God.  Hume was insightful to realize that “causal relationship” in nature can’t be explained as “necessary” by empirical facts.  Kant was incomplete to see that “causal relationship” is one of synthetic a priori categories of reason embedded in us as the condition of understanding[2], because Kant couldn’t imagine that we are more than “reason” and can move into a domain (e.g., the domain of “heart”) to perceive causality in a different light—where everything beyond our imagination is possible in the ineffability of God’s love.  And calling God as the cause doesn’t suffice too, because everything plunges in God: don't forget God invented 'causality' and before causality comes being and before being comes God and our imagination or intuition enters a domain like moving from two dimensional to three dimensional or multidimensional space in which “before” and “after” or “past” or “future”, or “space and time” don’t make sense.  This is not the end of “experience” as Kant assumed but the end of what is sayable in factual or philosophical discourse.  However, it is said, shown, and experienced through scriptures, mythos, poetry, and the arts.

And from the fact that God is Truth and everything is in God’s hands, the conclusion follows that “God will give a generous provision to those who migrated in God’s way and were killed or died. He is the Best Provider.  He will admit them to a place that will please them: God is all knowing and most forbearing.  So it will be. God will help those who retaliate against an aggressive act merely with its like and are then wronged again: God is pardoning and most forgiving.”

Here the emphasis is on devotion to God and God’s cause.  This devotion encompasses all domains: philosophy, sciences, and self-defense.  The measure of this self-defense is “merely with its like”, not more and in other places God contends forgiveness is better than retaliation.  For example, in these verses:

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

So, from the premises that God is Truth and holds everything on the earth and heaven, it follows that we devote ourselves to God.  God delineates some aspects of this devotion in the next verses:

“We have appointed acts of devotion for every community to observe, so do not let them argue with you [Prophet] about this matter. Call them to your Lord– you are on the right path– and if they argue with you, say, ‘God is well aware of what you are doing.’  On the Day of Resurrection, God will judge between you regarding your differences.  Are you [Prophet] not aware that God knows all that is in the heavens and earth? All this is written in a Record; this is easy for God.” (22:67-70)

The Record is immanent.  This is the presence of God in the world.  God’s will is written in the nexus of events and in the nucleus of cells and in the particles of atoms and in the invisible immanent flow in which we and everything else float.  We can see and perceive just a small portion of reality with our eyes and senses.  However, we have the most precious gifts given to us by God: our reason and heart, both at work, one is obvious as it is the source of rational inference and the other is subtle and invisible as it is the divine love and essence (fitrat) in us.  As God has written the scroll of existence and life in the unfolding kernel of events, the outcome is obvious and easy for God to see.  This is not against our freedom of the will and for determinism.  God knows the outcome of our freedom of the will and the way particles act and will act, but in the process, in the Way, life flourishes and we get cultivated.  We are not lifeless not-conscious objects.  God is the greatest Teacher for those who can understand.

“Yet beside God they serve that for which He has sent no authority and of which they have no knowledge: the evildoers will have no one to help them.  [Prophet], you can see the hostility on the faces of the disbelievers when Our messages are recited clearly to them: it is almost as if they are going to attack those who recite Our messages to them. Say, ‘Shall I tell you what is far worse than what you feel now? The Fire that God has promised the disbelievers! What a dismal end!’  People, here is an illustration, so listen carefully: those you call on beside God could not, even if they combined all their forces, create a fly, and if a fly took something away from them, they would not be able to retrieve it. How feeble are the petitioners and how feeble are those they petition! They have no grasp of God’s true measure: God is truly most strong and mighty.” (22:71-74)

In explicating this passage, I repeat what I wrote above, because I think we should think about it more than once:

This example speaks to our time and all times.  What we praise as the highest has no power to create even a fly or to retrieve something that a fly takes from us.  We are now seduced by our own power, paradoxically, to think we are just robots who can create conscious robots who have reason and heart, who care and ponder their existence, who have a world and perceive their existence in the world, and have an existential longing for their Source.  We are seduced by our God given knowledge, but even if we put all our forces together we can’t create (not cloning) a fly, leave alone a human body/soul who understands Being and Love.   

I ask my students in class to tell me how they understand a room in a building.  After some reflections and discussion, they admit that they understand the building before the room and the campus before buildings and the city before the campus and the district before the city and …. the earth and heavens before this very room, pre-reflectively and pre-ontologically.  They understand the world before the objects in the world.  They understand Being before the world.  And for those whose heart is not hard and blind, we understand God before Being.   

But as soon as robotically we saw ourselves as subjects against the world of objects, as soon as we saw the world as the sum of parts, as soon as we reduced our existence to ONLY receiving sense data from external world and then processing the information inside us and then acting [which indeed happens in theoretical moments or breakdown cases]…as soon as we perceived our existence as “only the quantifiable is the real” and drew a rigid wall between sensible and nonsensible, we turned into robots.  We saw each other as labor and resources to utilize.  We created slavery and wage slavery. We created consumerism and objectification of the world.  We looked at the world as only ‘resources’.  We deforest our forests and tropical into papers and furniture.  We tortured our animals in animal factories and destroyed ourselves in obesity.  We brought the planet to the brink of sixth mass extinction and the domination of Anthropocene, and indeed to our self-destruction, as soon as we turned a blind eye to scriptures.   

“God chooses messengers from among the angels and from among men. God is all hearing, all seeing: He knows what lies before and behind them. All matters return to Him.  Believers, bow down, prostrate yourselves, worship your Lord, and do good so that you may succeed.  Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion, the faith of your forefather Abraham. God has called you Muslims [i.e. ‘devoted to God’] ––both in the past and in this [message]––so that the Messenger can bear witness about you and so that you can bear witness about other people. So keep up the prayer, give the prescribed alms, and seek refuge in God: He is your protector––an excellent protector and an excellent helper.” (22:75-78)        

_____________________________________

[1] One might ask “what about people like Chomsky?” I suggest to read my reflection about Chomskyean Nihilism:

http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2016/10/reflections-on-chomskyan-nihilism-ilove.html

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/

"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?                 

---

[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)