Abstract:
The question, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” was posed by Stephen Hawking in his quest to “understand the mind of God.” We approached the question from the Islamic intellectual tradition by first considering who “man” is. This understanding of man is central because his seeing and doing are contingent on his state of knowing, being and consciousness. In this tradition, man is comprised of both body and soul, the latter of which is the “fire” that gives life and existence. Second, we focus on the soul—man’s real self, its nature, its knowledge of itself and its forgetfulness of itself. To be conscious of who he is, man has to strive, to “find”—for what exists is only what is found and experienced. The act of finding—perception, awareness, and consciousness is never absent from the fact of being found. Hence, existence does not simply mean living; true existence is his true finding and consciousness, so in the final section, we reflect on consciousness, not as a subject of study, but as the ground of being.
Keywords: science, rationality, consciousness, soul, spirit
“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” The question was posed by Stephen Hawking[[1]] in his quest to “understand the mind of God.” Science’s approach would be to construct a mathematical model to describe the universe. But it begets the question as to why the universe exists at all in the first place. Huston Smith,[[2]] in his autobiography, mentioned that the world of science is not the world we live in. Theirs consists of either a world of extremely small, not directly observable micro-objects (microworld) or a world of enormous cosmic scales and speeds (megaworld), while our world, sandwiched between the two, is a lived-in, experiential and experienced, sensuous world (macroworld). In other words, science is the study of phenomena, things-as-they-appear; not noumena, things-as-they-are. Science is empirical reality based on phenomena, but our human reality is not solely phenomena. Empirical or physical reality offers only a “veiled” view of an underlying reality that science cannot access.
Furthermore, science uses the technical language of mathematics that is exact to depict or articulate the two worlds that flanked our lived-in world, but this language is not the same as ordinary human language with its many indeterminate meanings. Therefore, what is described by science and what is in reality are not necessarily synonymous.
So, can we know reality? And, what is it that breathes fire into the equations? To respond, we need to consider who we are, a being created by God who is both divine and human or one that is seen to be a product solely of matter and energy? From the Islamic intellectual tradition, God is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden. When God created us, He breathed of His Spirit into us (Q15:29, Q32:9, Q38:72), infusing us with the “fire” of consciousness giving rise to the soul—that which lies between the body and the spirit, which makes us conscious of who we are in relation to Him and fellow creatures. In this understanding, everything is rooted in the One Supreme Reality. Everything that exists comes from this Reality. In this Ultimate Reality, there is no distinction between subject and object or consciousness and existence for they are only the One Reality’s Names and Forms. Thus, everything in existence is conscious, aware, and alive, and this consciousness permeates all.
Modern Western thought, on the other hand, considers consciousness as an epiphenomenon of existence, reduced to its basic physical and biological elements, and is subject to study using the scientific method. So, the basis of every object is matter, evolving from simple to more complex ones. There is no transcendent, for this has been replaced with the “mind” responsible for cognition and thought. It is that doing away of a transcendent God that limits the response one can give to the question posed by Hawking for in doing so it has removed a gateway to other levels of reality, beyond what science can access.
In this article, to consider Hawking’s question, we first examine who man[[3]] is. Being Muslims, we use our religious take on the understanding of man because only religions tend to focus on the subtle, immaterial soul—the core of man. Modern disciplines like psychology and philosophy have nothing much to say about this deeply-felt core, they only refer to its manifestations in terms of personality and behaviour. For example, though philosophy is an ancient discipline, it should be noted that the term “philosophy” as currently understood is different from the way it was initially understood by the early scholars. Most people today would understand philosophy to mean “…the attempt of man to reach ultimate knowledge of things through the use of his own rational and sensuous faculties and [to be] cut off completely from both the effusion of grace and the light of the Divine Intellect…”[[4]] in contrast to philosophy as the gaining of certainty or the discovery of truth. In other words, for the early philosophers, philosophy was more than a rational or an investigative method. Admitting of a richer epistemology, it was also a spiritual discipline aimed at illumination, awakening and self-transformation—a quest for wisdom.[[5]] The same can be said for modern psychology, which is based on the limited epistemology of modern science, the results of the Enlightenment period, and hence, on logical positivism.
We acknowledge that our approach admits of a hermeneutic grounded in metholodogies and points of view that go beyond those advocated by conventional science. But it is one that we would like to emphasize precisely because this approach is seldom considered within modern scientific scholarship. ln this religious tradition which admits of transcendence and the sacred ground of reality, man is both human and divine; his physical body is a copy of the cosmic realities while his soul is the image of the Divine Names. He is a conscious being in a corporeal world, though his origin is not of this world. He has to traverse this world to actualize or fulfil a specific purpose before his return. We first focus on the soul—its nature, its knowledge of itself and its forgetfulness of itself, followed by a discussion on consciousness.
Soul as the “In-between”
God created man as a single entity that consists of a physical body (from the dust of this world) that is visible with the outward eye and the in-breathing of His Spirit into the body (Q15:29). This divine act of in-breathing results in the nafs (soul)—the essence of who we are, which is seen as a metaphor of God endowing man with life and consciousness. Various terms—qalb (heart), ‘aql (intellect), ruḥ (spirit)—have also been applied to this inward dimension of man, but they do not refer to distinct and autonomous entities, only to different qualities or degrees of levels of a single reality. The higher dimension of this inward human reality is the ruḥ while the lower dimension is the nafs. The former is the origin, while the heart and soul came into being only after the attachment of the spirit to the bodily frame.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali used the term “heart” to refer to the essence or reality of the human being, “spirit” to the source of perception and awareness, “soul” to the self that undergoes transformation, and “intellect” to the heart to the extent that it perceives the realities of things.[[6]] Similarly, Abu’l-Qasim Al-Qushayri states,
… the nafs of something is its existence. The Sufis do not apply the term soul to mean existence, nor the bodily frame. They only mean by “soul” those qualities of the servant that are defective and those character traits and acts that are blameworthy.[[7]]
Likewise, Najm al-Din Kubra writes on the soul, heart and spirit,
Soul, heart, and spirit give expressions to a single thing. However, soul is used when that thing is defiled and hardened, heart when it becomes purified, and spirit when it gains nearness to God…[[8]]
Hence, all four terms refer to the subtle reality of the human being, but from different vantage points. As these realities are within the inward or hidden dimension, where one ends and the other begins cannot be pinpointed. What is important to note, however, is that it is the inward, hidden dimension of existence that animates the outward, visible self.
But what exactly is the soul? It is man’s real self, what makes one person different from another. The soul is neither body nor spirit “…but a third entity constituted out of the two.”[[9]] Al-Attas explains that these entities—soul and body—predate the creation of man; the former relates to the articulate soul or the soul of the Covenant (Q7:172) before its attachment to the body, while the latter denotes the foetus that is similar to other animals before God breaths of His Spirit into it (Nafas al-Rahman, Q15:28-29; Q38:71-72). This spirit that is breathed into the foetus elevates its state of being to a new creation (khalqan ākhara) called “man.” This in-breathing of His Spirit also makes man entangled with God—bestowing upon him the recognition and consciousness of God as his Source of being. Hence, in this world, man exists as a single being, an actus essendi, an act of wujūd, not ens, an existent that appears to possess wujūd on its own.[[10]]
The soul is a subtle substance possessing attributes of both body and spirit and it lies “in-between” the two. Like the body that consists of the earthly clay of this world, the soul can be dark, unaware and ignorant, while at the same time like the spirit it can be luminous, aware and intelligent. Hence, the soul or the knowing subject is always in-between. Likewise, its knowledge of things is also in-between, and it cannot be separated from both the known object and the knowing subject. Because the domain of the human soul is always in between the earthly clay and the divine breath, human experience is always soulish or imaginal, wavering between darkness and light, sleep and wakefulness, ignorance and knowledge, etc.; i.e., polarity. Thus, it is always in a state of flux.
According to Ibn Arabi, the intermediate reality of the soul that lies within the realm of the imaginal (mundus imaginalis) is known only through the power or faculty of imagination (khayal)[[11]]which is a mode of knowing between sense perception and pure intellection. “Imagination” or the “imaginal” realm or world is not “imaginary,” for what is imaginary is the product of personal fantasy. The imaginal realm is also called the “world of suspended images” or the world of images. These suspended images can be compared to the image reflected in a mirror. Like the image reflected in a mirror, the imaginal forms are viewed as both real and unreal, existent and non-existent; i.e., the nature of the imaginal forms is always ambiguous owing to its in-between position. Nonetheless, it is a world that is ontologically as real as the visible world of the senses and the invisible world of the intellect, with its own faculty of perception.[[12]]
Put in other words, it is a world of “subtle bodies” where imagination gives substance to inner experience. That is why it Ibn Arabi said that “imagination has no locus except the soul.”[[13]] This in-between nature of the soul makes it ambiguous, undefined but with untold potential, for each soul has been given the knowledge of all things (Q2:31). In principle, the reality of the soul is infinite—it has a beginning (Q7:172) but no end. That is why it has been called “an ocean without shore,” in describing the soul as expounded by Ibn Arabi[[14]] and why it cannot be pinioned for it has no fixed identity. It is always in a state of vacillation, wavering between the passions of the body and the luminous qualities of the spirit.[[15]] It is only through imagination that these two opposing aspects of man meet, though neither can trespass into the realm of the other. For Ibn Arabi, this in-between world is
The barzakh…the junction of the two seas (Q18:60): the sea of spiritual meanings and the sea of sensory objects. The sensory things cannot be meaning (ma‘na), nor can the meanings be sensory. But the World of imagination, which we have called “the junction of the two seas,” gives meaning corporeal shape and makes sensory objects into subtle realities.[[16]]
In other words, all of creation is a barzakh or isthmus between light and darkness.[[17]]
…the heart is the meeting place between the world of the Spirit and the world of the body.
As the bridge between the bodily and spiritual aspects of man, imagination allows for analogical knowledge and overcomes the dilemma inherent in the mind-body dualism of Descartes that has so vexed the rationalists. This “storehouse of imagination” comprises of images from both the outward and inward worlds, for it is in the soul that invisible or spiritual realities become visible and bodily things spiritualized.[[18]] The spiritual realities are known in the heart and the soul manifest them by giving them forms and shapes while the bodily or corporeal things are perceived by the physical senses and the soul spiritualize them and subsequently store them in memory. Thus, the activity of imagination in this intermediate realm is to give forms to that which is formless as well as to spiritualize that which is bodily or corporeal.
In the words of Corbin, “…to attain to the world of subtle matter one must have an organ of cognition distinct from both pure intellect and from the senses.”[[19]] For al-Ghazali, this organ is the heart, the divine subtle faculty that is the essence of man, where the spiritual journey takes place. It is the nature of hearts to be in a constant state of change or vacillation; hence, it is seen as a more suitable mode of knowing the infinite self-disclosures of God than reason.
This realm of the imaginal is also seen as,
…the place of the encounter, the coincidentia oppositorum, between God’s descent toward the creature and the creature’s ascent toward God. Here, human and divine imaginations meet and the pure intelligible archetypes enter knowledge. Hence, the Imaginal World is a place of union, of holy reciprocity, where divine, spiritual, and human love become one in the being of the lover. For love, after all, is the mode of knowledge whereby one being knows another…[[20]]
Hence, the heart is the meeting place between the world of the Spirit and the world of the body.
Why is this intermediate realm so important? There are several reasons. First, the search for this junction or sacred space has always been the goal of all spiritual journeys because it is the meeting place of past and present, light and darkness, the ephemeral and the eternal. Second, this imaginal realm is the junction or confluence that brings together the realms of sense perception and that of spiritual realities, which converge within the core of the individual being. It is in this realm that knowledge of things takes place; i.e., ḥusul (the arrival of meaning in the soul) and wusul (the soul’s arrival at meaning) occur concurrently.[[21]] Third, this imaginal realm is an altogether distinct level of being or reality—the place where spiritual realities are given forms and bodies spiritualized. This is also the realm where the “union of opposites” (coincidentia oppositorum) takes place, and where discrimination between opposites disappear, where man is able to simultaneously experience the one and the many, or as mentioned by al-Kharraz when asked on how he knew God, “Through the fact that He brings opposites together,”[[22]] and in doing so, becomes conscious of the Divine Unity which is.[[23]]
Finally, most important of all, according to Suhrawardi, if this realm were to disappear, the prophetic and spiritual experiences, as well as the event of the Resurrection, would lose their place. Literally, they can no longer take place because
…their place is neither of the sensory nor the intellectual world, but that of the intermediary “eighth climate,” the world where the body is spiritualized, and the spiritual is embodied…In the absence of the imaginal world, we are reduced to mere allegory, for the active Imagination itself has been degraded to the status of producer of the imaginary.[[24]]
According to Al-Ghazali, this realm is the stairway that connects the lower sensible world of Mulk to the higher intellectual world of Malakut,
…for, if there were no connection and no correspondence between the two, we would not be able to traverse the way of [gradual] ascendance to [the rational plane]. And if that [bridging of the gap] were not feasible, then the journey unto the Divine Presence and to [a state of] proximity to God—be He exalted—would be impossible.[[25]]
This is why the imaginal realm must have an independent ontological status, and is as real as the realms of the senses or the spiritual.
These three levels of existence within man—sensory, imagination and intellection, correspond to the three external worlds of bodies, imaginal and intellect, respectively. The discussion of these realms is inseparable from discussion of the levels of existence or reality. The present world that we live in is only one level of reality; there are others that lie beyond the reach of our human perception, conception and understanding. The higher the level of reality, the more it is disengaged from the forms of this world. These higher levels of reality are more subtle and luminous for they are nearer to the Source.
Without knowing the infinite, we cannot gain any knowledge of finite things.
In short, within the Islamic intellectual tradition, reality is hierarchically ordered where our sensory world is seen as a reflection of other higher worlds that are unbounded by temporal succession, spatial or other limits. In other words, we start with God as the First Cause, the Infinite, from the realm of the concealed or unseen (al-Ghayb) that has no frame, beyond Space-Time. Because the nafs or soul that is the focus of this study is a metaphysical entity—an in-between that is always in a state of flux resulting from the inbreathing of God’s spirit, it too, cannot be bounded. As argued by Spinoza,[[26]] in order to proceed to discover truths, “the proper order of philosophizing” must begin with the infinite, for we cannot arrive at God at the end of a process of purification of our concepts. If we do so, we would end up with a conception of God cast in our image. Hence the need to begin with the knowledge of the infinite, the cause of all things, before turning to the knowledge of finite things. Without knowing the infinite, we cannot gain any knowledge of finite things.
Frameworks exist in this world because there is Space-Time, but to understand the Infinite, we cannot use the lens of the finite. Put in different words, the things of this world are merely symbols or signs of a higher order of reality or echoes of celestial ideas that in themselves are beyond forms and words. Thus, the distinction between noumena—things-as-they-are and phenomena—things-as-they-appear.
To illustrate, we turn to Faruque’s[[27]] recent book on Sculpting the Self. In the book, he presented a model or framework of the self (p. 45), built upon or “inspired by both James’ and Seigel’s multidimensional approach.”[[28]] Due to the many dimensions of the self, he referred to it as a spectrum concept made up of two levels and their respective components. As it is, his thesis is sound, but our two studies are different. First, Faruque’s point of departure is the finite, from this world of phenomena, while we start with God, the Infinite. Second, his model is multidimensional, made up of two levels and their component parts, and the self is explained from these respective lenses; hence, multiplicity. Ours, however, start with Oneness, the Unity of Being, where everything that exists is a Self-disclosure of God. Third, while Faruque used the term “self,” we focus on the soul or nafs. These two terms, “self” and “soul” are not synonymous. The term “soul” has been replaced with “self” for two main reasons. First, the soul is thought to be immortal and the West has doubt about immortality due to its loss of transcendence. In their historical and philosophical account of the rise and fall of soul and self, Martin and Baressi noted that “what used to do the explanatory work was the perfect unity of an incomposite immaterial soul, what now does it is the imperfect unity of a composite material body.”[[29]] Second, Descartes revised the Aristotelian concept of the soul and marked the revision by replacing it with the word “mind”[[30]] (mens). Hence, the two terms cannot be used to mean the same thing. Both positions are correct in what they are saying, but the two points of departure are directly opposed to each other.
A related point concerning theories is that it is we who introduce them, the concepts and the words to explain what we observe. In the bigger picture of things, however, with regards to ontology and the ultimate nature of reality, Tegmark and Wheeler[[31]] on ruminating 100 years of quantum theory, posited that theories can roughly be organized as a family tree where each, at least in principle, can be derived from more fundamental ones above it. These theories would have two components: mathematical equations and words that explain how they connect to what we see. Hence, they are contingent on the viewpoints of the respective researchers, at the level of the finite. As we move down the tree, language change, from the mathematical to words. And, according to them, if such a theory is to exist,
To avoid the problem of infinite regress, where each set of concepts is explained in terms of more fundamental ones that in turn must be explained, a TOE (Theory of Everything) would probably have to contain no concepts at all.[[32]]
Modern science, however, has flattened these degrees of reality to only this sensory world. Science is then restricted not only to one plane of existence in its study of nature—to phenomena, but also in its fragmentation of nature and in its “dissection” of its contents, is devoid of any transcendence. Knowledge then is “objective,” and that which is intuitive and sacred is seen to be subjective, unverifiable and unscientific, and so discarded. To some extent, quantum theory has offered several interpretations on the manner in which awareness and consciousness inform every entity that exists. But these theories are still based on a physical conception of nature and reality, hence, they are unable to escape the materialist stance within which its entire outlook is implicated.
When Man Knows His Soul
In Himself, God is One—the Unknowable Essence, whereas self-disclosure takes the form of the many, i.e., the Divine Names and Attributes. The diversity in the cosmos is the result of the latter, but the root is the former. Put in another way, the Divine Self-disclosure is one, but the creatures receiving it are many, each receiving it according to its own preparedness.[[33]] So although man imagines himself believing in God, this will always depend on himself for each knows God only according to his own situation. So, each person’s understanding will always be unique. In the words of Abu-l-Qasim al-Junayd, “The water takes on the colour of its cup,” i.e., the Divine Self-disclosure (symbolized by water) when received by the heart (symbolized by the cup) is coloured or influenced by man’s individual nature or preparedness. In other words, water is colourless and formless just as the Divine in Itself is without any limiting qualities or attributes, but the cup or man’s heart colours it according to his thoughts, needs and desires. Hence, man knows God only to the extent that he knows himself, or according to Ibn Arabi, man knows God only in the form of his belief, for none knows God but God.[[34]]
So, one needs to understand the saying “He who knows himself knows his Lord” within this constraint and limitation. The few who truly know understands that the finite can never know the Infinite for he knows that his knowledge comes from Him. Most people, however, need to transcend their gods of belief for the Absolute can never be contained by anything as It is the Essence of everything.
For Ibn Arabi, “to know oneself” is to know that one remains forever a mere possibility, and that God is the one who actualizes the possibility. Hence, “to know one’s Lord” denotes that He alone is, and that He alone makes the changes for becoming manifest.[[35]]
Man is the only creature who can recognize God fully in respect of His One Self and His Names because he was created in His image[[36]]—the in-breathing of His Names—as a potential to be realized in this world, though this knowledge is contingent on himself. That is why the soul—the real self, is never fixed; it is always moving, shifting, and fluid, to perceive the ever-changing self-disclosures of God. In other words, the soul or heart is wholly conscious, it perpetually fluctuates to bring the two aspects of tanzih (God’s incomparability via the eye of reason) and tashbih (God’s similarity via the eye of imagination) together, for “…with the eye of imagination, the heart sees Being present in all things, and with the eye of reason it discerns its transcendence and the diversity of the divine faces.”[[37]] Due to its constant state of flux, the soul or heart is always in a state of becoming being or image.
Indeed, man was created in the most beautiful stature (ahsan taqwin, Q95:4), upon God’s own form. Each soul is inherently aware and conscious of its relation to or bond with God, its covenant with Him (Q7:172), of good and evil as well as right and wrong. For latent within the soul is the potential to become a true servant of God and to reflect His attributes or to be iniquitous. Hence, man is asked to purify his soul, for “he prospers who grows it, and he fails who buries it” (Q91:9-10).
When Man Forgets His Soul
The soul as a single reality with multiple faculties and dimensions governs man’s whole being and holds it together. When it leaves the body at death, the body disintegrates but the soul does not. Though created, the soul is eternal. Death, as a rite of passage, can be seen as a change of state, a dissolution of a particular form, or detachment of the soul from the body, not that of its ultimate reality. In other words, the dissolution of the body or detachment of the soul from the body does not compromise the integrity, unity and oneness of the reality of the soul as the locus of the self.
So, what happens when man forgets his soul? He becomes a wounded or a divided creature. Consisting only of materiality, he is spiritually empty. He is no longer whole for in separating himself from his own soul, he becomes fragmented. In modern man’s adherence to science and modernity, all references to the transcendence and vertical causes must go. Via science’s two-pronged approach of empiricism and reductionism, not only has the transcendent been removed, but man too is reduced to only the material. The inner life or the knowledge of the self has been devalued and dismissed as unscientific in order to make way for objective knowledge.
In other words, in forgetting God, man has forgotten himself; i.e., of his special nature, that just as he is human, he is also divine due to that divine spark or consciousness of his real nature vis-à-vis God. It is only by that divine spark or consciousness within that he may preserve his unity and integrity as man. So if this is removed, he forfeits that state and becomes “the lowest of the low” (Q95:5), dissipated and dispersed in the infinite multiplicity of the world.[[38]]
This is the reality of modern man. He lives a life that is divided or compartmentalized, the irony of which, as pointed out by Palmer is such that, having “…live behind a wall long enough, the true self you tried to hide from the world disappears from your own view! The wall itself and the world outside it become all that you know. Eventually, you even forget that the wall is there—and that hidden behind it is someone called ‘you.’”[[39]] That “real you,” the objective, ontological reality of selfhood which is whole and complete has been kept under wraps for so long that one no longer knows that it is there. The emphasis on only “objective” knowledge has rendered self-knowledge or the inner life as irrelevant and insignificant. In other words, more information is made available but not a better understanding or a deeper knowledge of oneself, its meaning and purpose.
Without a transcendent God, the implication is that man is no longer a metaphysical being. The soul no longer has a place, for the vertical relationship between man as creature and God as Creator has been forced out. What remains is only the one horizontal plane that he lives in. So, the once religious man is replaced by a more psychological one, akin to Nasr’s[[40]] depiction of the Promethean Man, who characterizes modern man’s understanding of himself. He has lost the sense of the sacred and lives only for this world. In contrast to Promethean Man is Pontifical Man, the traditional religious person who sees himself as a bridge between heaven and earth, with an awareness of a spiritual reality that transcends him. In uniting between the One and the Many, the universe depends on him for its continued existence, for he is the conduit who connects God with the world of nature. He is the microcosm in which all attributes of the Divine are united.[[41]] Promethean Man, on the other hand, sees himself as independent and answerable to no one. In doing so, he attributes to himself the responsibility of discerning what is true and false as well as right and wrong. In rebelling against Heaven, he basically denies God and consequently, his own soul. Without an immaterial soul, he becomes the measure of things. So everything is centred on him. He becomes the absolute, his “rights” dominating over both God’s rights and the rights of His creation. That is why for modern man, the self is predominant. Indeed, he has placed himself as the pinnacle of things, the first in the “great chain of being,” accountable to none! For without a higher moral restraint, he is free to do as he wishes. The Quran cautions against forgetting God, for in doing so man forgets his own soul (59:19), i.e., there will be no longer any spiritual obligations on his part to remain conscious of the unity of purpose underlying all of God’s creations and hence, a moral duty to treat all that exists with compassion.
Thus, the loss of transcendence is basically a spiritual disorder. To compensate for this loss, the ego takes over. But this is the problem—the ego cannot transcend itself because it lies only within the psyche. In other words, its reality is only at the psycho-physical level. So, in reducing man from spirit to mind, mind to brain, and brain to anatomical structures, thinking, which is what defines man becomes merely a “neuro–chemical” process or an emergent property of the brain.
Though the soul no longer has a place, its descendent, the material self is ever-present. But, this self is seen as an entity that lacks unity. Put differently, in the more God-conscious past, it was the perfect unity of an incomposite immaterial soul that used to do the explanatory work. But, it has now been replaced by the imperfect unity of a composite material body which is solidified daily. Hence, while in the past theories of the self were seen as parts of a larger all-inclusive worldview, this is no longer the case. Furthermore, while previously theory was integrated and the self one, now not only are there multiple theories but the self also has become fragmented. Hence, the soul which started as an entity that was unquestioningly real has now ended in a self that seems to be imaginary.[[42]] No wonder the divided life is now endemic, for in one’s externalized existence, the inner—the real self, has been separated and suppressed.
The Secrets of Consciousness
Everything in the cosmos (other than God) can be divided into the three worlds of bodies, imaginal and intellect. Man, too, is constituted of these three basic levels of existence and possesses the appropriate faculties that are capable of perceiving and experiencing these levels. His external senses enable him to experience the corporeal world, his imaginative faculty the imaginal world, and his intellect the spiritual world.[[43]] In other words, man as a microcosm is complete unto himself and is able to embrace the unboundedness of the world, for he is, in essence, made in the image of the whole.[[44]] And, that wholeness brings with it a certitude of its own reality. Man, then, cannot be reduced to the brain, or its by-product. In this view, consciousness, awareness and mental life are properties of the soul.[[45]] lt is the soul which experiences. It is the soul which knows the body as its body, not as an appendage that can be affixed or separated at will for it is its own existential reality. So, despite constant changes and renewals in the body, man perceives himself as he has always been, i.e., a unity or wholeness that is preserved since it is the soul that is the basis of his identity and individuality. Hence, existence can only be experienced or intuited, not conceived. In other words, consciousness is the ground of being, not the emergent property of the mind or brain.
Another way of putting it is to ask the question, “What if man himself is his own instrument?” According to Eddington,[[46]] the knowledge of objects treated in physics, consists solely of readings of pointers and other indicators. The more precise the instruments, the more exact the pointer readings. Two points are central here. First, the instrument is contingent on man—the one doing the measuring.[[47]] At the same time, what is observed is dependent on the instruments. Second, the inner nature of the object remains undetermined, for what is measured is based only on the “pointer readings” of the instruments that man himself has designed to measure what he thinks is the thing, construct or reality. In other words, man himself is the instrument, for it is he who constructs and holds certain beliefs about the nature of reality according to his personal disposition, and each person constitutes a unique frame of reference or approach to reality (see our earlier discussion on the saying of Junayd, “The water takes on the colour of its cup”). From this perspective, biology, culture and history are only secondary factors. Thus, the understanding of who is man is central, for his seeing and doing are contingent on his state of knowing and being. So, to extrapolate, when measuring or taking the pointer readings of one’s own brain, what one gets is nothing more than responses of those various indicators to the presence of its physical properties, nothing more.
Hence, the “who is man” is in understanding his in-betweenness—the subtle immaterial soul that is intermediate between his baser bodily self (from the clay of this world) and the higher spiritual self (ruh, that subtle inner dimension from the higher spiritual world). The soul lives within this intermediate space wavering to and fro within man within a larger barzakhi world with consciousness of God as well as with every other existence. In the Islamic intellectual tradition, it is believed that the moment God breathes into man of His Spirit, He endows him with the gift of life and a conscious soul.
In this Great Chain of Consciousness, everything that is a part of the chain is alive, aware and conscious. In this sense, consciousness is the ground of being.
In the lslamic traditional understanding, God is also considered as Pure Consciousness, and creations as modes of His consciousness, but of course, the further away they are from the Source, the less aware they become. In this Great Chain of Consciousness, everything that is a part of the chain is alive, aware and conscious. In this sense, consciousness is the ground of being. Ibn Arabi[[48]] makes this point very clear:
The name Alive [al-Hayy] is an essential name of God—glory be to Him! Therefore, nothing can emerge from Him but living things. Hence, all of the cosmos is alive, for indeed the nonexistence of life, or the existence in the cosmos of an existent thing that is not alive, has no divine support, whereas every contingent thing must have a support. So, what you consider to be inanimate is in fact alive.
In this regard, consciousness is the basis of all things, and it permeates all of reality. Modern science, however, has reduced everything, even consciousness, to only the material and thus it is unable to adequately account for the presence of any conscious agents in the universe.[[49]]
That is why Nursi[[50]] (2008) said that were there no consciousness, the beings of the world would be lifeless, wretched and obscure in an unstable, transitory world in the middle of a limitless, empty space. To be alive is to be aware and active. But this aliveness differs among existent things; i.e., there is again order in the hierarchy of consciousness in existent things, from mineral to plants to animals to human beings, where human life contains all the qualities of the earlier ones. lt is consciousness which illuminates the universe and the face of the world—with beings lining up, glorifying and praising God. The Quran, moreover, states that everything in the universe, both inanimate and animate, glorifies Him (Q17:44). And, this glorification is verbal and aware, because for a thing to glorify God, it has to be alive, intelligent and understand what it says. So, every existent thing is alive, knowing, desiring, etc., because these attributes are intrinsic to existence.[[51]] Hence, man is a living conscious being who lives in a world that is wholly conscious where everything that is created is conscious of its Creator.
The Conscious Soul
Nasr[[52]] argues that there must be a correspondence between the knower and the known in order for the knower to know the known. The fact that man is able to know even the immensity of space implies that there must be something in his consciousness that corresponds to that reality to make that knowledge possible. That is made possible only through the in-breathing of His Spirit into man (Q15:29, Q38:72), wherefrom self-knowledge is linked to the knowledge of God, or one’s soul and God. If not for this relationship; i.e., the soul’s “likeness” to God, man would never know his Creator. In other words, the soul recognizes God by virtue of this kinship; i.e., “like being known only by like.”
Put differently, the conscious soul is that which breathes fire into the equations, and much more. It is the essential glue that connects and binds man to God and nature, and that enables him to understand and respond to God at Alast (Q7:172). Human consciousness is from the Divine Consciousness. But because Western science has removed the Divine from their equation, they can no longer talk about it. In removing the only link with the Divine and collapsing the levels of reality to only this horizontal plane, modern man has to resort to himself—his logic and reason. That is why Ibn Arabi argued that the rationalists can never attain to the esoteric knowledge of the Divine for the source of this knowledge is divine inspiration, not speculative knowledge. Reasoning can never yield this knowledge. In other words, for Ibn al-Arabi, true knowledge is divine light in the heart, which
…is not given by thinking, nor by those thoughts that the intellectuals have affirmed – and that knowledge is not extensive learning, it is but a light that God casts in the heart of whomever He wishes to guide, whether they be angel, messenger, prophet, saint or the person of faith.[[53]]
Hence, there is a difference between the knowledge of the rationalists that is derived from the external senses based upon mere things or existents that is bounded as opposed to knowledge of the prophets and awliyāʾ (friends of God) grounded in experience not of existents but of Being which is reached only through the inner faculties of the heart or spiritual “unveiling.”[[54]]
Hence, Hawking’s question is valid, but it cannot be answered via rationality alone for it is the soul that is conscious and it is the soul that is doing the asking, the observing and the experiencing. The mind can never understand God, as He is beyond Space-Time. But, the fact that Hawking is able to ask the question shows that that spark of the Divine is still in him despite him not believing in God, for man has been given the will to choose.
The West, however, had difficulty to understand the relationship between a world out there and a subject here due to the sway and adherence to a philosophy where experience is limited to what is derived from the external senses and based on existents considered as mere objects and things, which over the years has progressed towards an even greater concern with a world of solidified objects. In some ways, however, the subject knows the world out there. So, to explain how man is aware of things, “consciousness” was created.[[55]] But that consciousness is not the remembrance of God for God has been taken out of the picture.
Man cannot be divided. He is whole, with a dual nature that needs to work in harmony with one another, for his body is of this world, but the soul is not. As a microcosm, he is complete unto himself and is able to embrace the unboundedness of the world, for he is, in essence, made in the image of the whole.
The conscious soul is one that knows itself and its Lord to the extent of its receptivity and preparedness, i.e., the understanding of His Word, that uncreated Speech, the Quran. Just as the Prophet (peace be upon him) is the messenger, each soul can also be seen to be a bearer of the Quran in its own way small way. While everything in the universe and within man are signs that act as reminders (Q41:53), the Quran is the ultimate reminder. The reminders are meant to help the soul remember who it is with respect to God.
The Quran is God’s guide and mercy to man—a light from Him, out of His immense compassion and love for man. But this is meant only for those whose souls are alive; i.e., their hearts are able to hear and to take heed. Man can look at the signs in nature and go beyond them to remember the Source (i.e., the soul that remembers and is conscious of its Lord) or to be fixated only on those signs as signs and nothing more (i.e., the soul that forgets itself due to the distractions of the world). That is why the Quran is also called the furqan—it is the ‘criterion’ of intrinsic nature, distinguishing between souls on that basis.
Conclusion
In the Islamic tradition, there are other worlds besides the visible one that man currently lives in. These worlds or existence are hierarchically ordered. Likewise, existence and existential truths, the Quran as well as man himself exist on more than one level.
Man comprised of both body and soul, with the latter being his true conscious self. It is the “fire” that gives life and existence to the body. Though the emphasis of the article is on the soul, the body is equally important. Like a seed that cannot grow without its kernel, without the body the soul cannot do anything for it will have no vehicle to do so. To get the two to work seamlessly with each other, effort is required. In other words, man has to recognize that what he sees around him are only his reflection of reality, not reality itself. To perceive reality as it is, one’s mirror of the heart must be cleansed of the impurities that distort what is reflected on it. This is the effort that man has to take upon himself—to be conscious of who he is or for him to “find” for only what is found exists. So man has to exert himself to this end for existence does not simply mean living; true existence is his true unveiling and consciousness, and that true unveiling is finding himself in God. Furthermore, that finding is contingent on his capacity or preparedness for the grace of Self-revelation; i.e., “The water takes on the colour of its cup.” Thus, the unending struggle within oneself. The more man exerts, the more he distances himself from material existence, drawing closer to the world of spirit, life, and consciousness. This is what is meant to be whole and conscious of one’s source of being—to put things in their rightful places—God, followed by creations.
Noraini M. Noor (now retired) was professor of psychology at several universities in Malaysia, with her last position being at Ibn Haldun University, Turkey. A social-health psychologist by training, her areas of research include women’s multiple roles, race relations, religion and peacebuilding. Currently, her interest is in the Islamic tradition’s perspective of the nature of Man, and how this differs from what is commonly understood in modern psychology.
Aziuddin Ahmad (now retired) was professor at a public university, distinguished fellow at a public university business school, and rector and professor at a private university. Before entering academia, he was for over 20 years working in the banking and financial services sector in both private and public corporations. His undergraduate and postgraduate education were in electrical and electronics, and nuclear engineering. His doctoral degree was in reactor neutron physics. Current passion is in understanding the question of man, and the meaning of man gifted existence with the Breath of the Merciful.
[[1]]: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (UK: Bantam Press, 1988), p. 174
[[2]]: Huston Smith & Jeffery Paine, Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, an Autobiography (US: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 194
[[3]]: In the traditional usage, the term “man” refers to humanity as a whole. In this article we use “man” in this traditional gender-neutral sense
[[4]]: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The Meaning and Role of ‘Philosophy’ in Islam,” Studia Islamica, XXXVII (1973): 57–80
[[5]]: William C. Chittick, “Reason, Intellect and Consciousness in Islamic Thought,” in Reason, Spirit and the Sacral in the New Enlightenment, ed. Anna Teresa Tymieniecka (US: Springer, 2011), pp. 11–35
[[6]]: Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (New York: SUNY Press, 1992), p. 257
[[7]]: Ibid., p. 256
[[8]]: Ibid., p. 298
[[9]]: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, The Concept of Education in Islam. Keynote address delivered at the First World Conference on Muslim Education, Makkatul Mu‘azzamah, March 1977
[[10]]: For this distinction between ens and actus essendi, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Existence (Wujūd) and Quiddity (Māhiyyah) in Islamic Philosophy,” International Philosophical Quarterly, XXIX, 4 (1989): 409–428
[[11]]: William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (New York: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 24
[[12]]: Henry Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, https://www.amiscorbin.com/bibliographie/mundus-imaginalis-or-the-imaginary-and-the-imaginal/, accessed December 2022
[[13]]: In William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, p. 25
[[14]]: Michel Chodkiewicz, An Ocean Without Shore (New York: SUNY Press, 1993)
[[15]]: William C. Chittick, “The In-Between: Reflections on the Soul in the Teachings of Ibn Arabi,” in The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, ed. Anna Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), pp. 29–38
[[16]]: William C. Chittick, “Eschatology,” in Islamic Spirituality: Foundations, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 689
[[17]]: William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (New York: SUNY Press, 1989), p. 214
[[18]]: William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, p. 72
[[19]]: Christopher Bamford, “Esotericism Today: The Example of Henry Corbin,” in The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy, Henry Corbin, trans. Joseph Rowe (US: North Atlantic Books, 1998), p. xxi
[[20]]: Ibid., p. xx
[[21]]: Syed M. Naquib Al-Attas, The Concept of Education, p. 5
[[22]]: William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 116
[[23]]: Frithjof Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts (US: Perennial Books, 2007), p. 175
[[24]]: Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis
[[25]]: In Timothy J. Gianotti, Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul: Unveiling the Esoteric Psychology and Eschatology of the Ihya (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 149
[[26]]: In Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (US: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. xvi–xvii
[[27]]: Muhammad U. Faruque, Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), p. 45
[[28]]: Ibid., p. 49
[[29]]: Raymond Martin & John Barresi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (Columbia University Press, 2006), p.4
[[30]]: Richard Sorabji, “Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy,” in From Soul to Self, ed. James Crabbe (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 8–32
[[31]]: Max Tegmark & John Archibald Wheeler, “100 Years of the Quantum,” https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0101077.pdf, accessed January 2024
[[32]]: Ibid., p. 8
[[33]]: Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, p. 338
[[34]]: Ibid., p. 341
[[35]]: Ibid., p. 345
[[36]]: The word “image” in Arabic (also Hebrew) does not mean a fixed picture. Rather, it is like a moving shadow of a living, breathing Being
[[37]]: William C. Chittick, “Ibn Arabi,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-arabi/, accessed November 2023
[[38]]: Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. Ralph W. J. Austin (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 207
[[39]]: Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), pp. 43–44
[[40]]: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 144–146
[[41]]: Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (UK: Taylor & Francis, 2005), pp. 61–62
[[42]]: Raymond Martin & John Barresi, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self, pp. 4–5
[[43]]: Zailan Moris, Revelation, Intellectual Intuition and Reason in the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 109
[[44]]: William C. Chittick, “Uncovering the Secrets of Consciousness: The Sufi Approach,” Fifth Victor Danner Memorial Lecture [pamphlet], Bloomington: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, April 13, 2007
[[45]]: That is why Roger Penrose, the British mathematical physicist, a recent Nobel laureate, said that there are aspects of our mentality that cannot be addressed in terms of computation. “Human consciousness, on such a view, would be such a quality – so it is not simply a manifestation of computation. Indeed, I shall argue so myself; but more than this, I shall argue that those actions which our brains perform in accordance with conscious deliberations must be things that cannot even be simulated computationally – so certainly computation cannot of itself give rise to any kind of conscious experience” [Roger Penrose, “Why New Physics Is Needed to Understand the Mind,” in What Is Life? The Next Fifty Years: Speculations on the Future of Biology, ed. Michael P. Murphy & Luke A. J. O’Neill (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 115]
[[46]]: Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), pp. 257–260
[[47]]: This is the observer effect in science, where the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed
[[48]]: Mohammed Rustom, Atif Khalil & Kazuyo Murata, W. C. Chittick – In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought (New York: State University of New York Press, 2012), p. 262
[[49]]: Mohammed Rustom, “The Great Chain of Consciousness: Do All Things Possess Awareness?” Renovatio, Spring (2017): 49–60, https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-great-chain-of-consciousness, accessed January 2024
[[50]]: Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words: On the Nature and Purposes of Man, Life and All Things (from the Risale-i Nur Collection), trans. Sükran Vahide (Sözler Publications A. S., 2008)
[[51]]: William C. Chittick, “Two Chapters from the Futuhat al-Makkiyya,” in Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi – A Commemorative Volume, ed. Stephen Hirtenstein & Michael Tiernan (Brisbane, Queensland: Element, 1993), pp. 90–123
[[52]]: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Traditional Cosmology and Modern Science: Interview with Seyyed Hossein Nasr,” in The Inner Journey: Views from the Islamic Tradition, ed. William C. Chittick (Canada: Morning Light Press, 2007), pp. 104–120
[[53]]: James W. Morris, “Opening the Heart: Ibn ʿArabi on Suffering, Compassion and Atonement,” The Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society, 51 (2012), https://ibnarabisociety.org/suffering-compassion-and-atonement-james-morris/, accessed February 2024
[[54]]: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Existence (wujūd) and Quiddity (māhiyyah),” p. 421
[[55]]: Note, however, that this everyday consciousness is “…really the forgetfulness of God. We remember our everyday ambitions to eat, remember to enjoy ourselves in the evening, to get up in the morning; we remember everything except the one thing that Christ said you should remember, the one thing necessary. And therefore to kill this consciousness is really ‘to die’” (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Traditional Cosmology and Modern Science,” p. 224)
