194. Thoughts of Al-Ghazali. Part three

We were discussing Sufism ( mysticism)

 

 

He knew that piety and restraint from passion is necessary, but it was also required to devote with total ardor to God. This could only be achieved by avoiding fame and fortune and fleeing from attachments. He reflected on his intentions on his public teachings, and saw that it was not directed purely to God, but more towards fame and prestige. He realized that he had to give up his post and leave Bagdad.

An intense period of vacillation ensued. One day he would firmly resolve to leave Bagdad and next day cancel his decision. Worldly desires and path towards God were pulling him in opposite directions. This lasted for six months

God intervened!

A lock was put on his tongue. He could not speak a single world. He also became sad. His appetite and digestion went away. There was great weakening of his powers.

‘In powerlessness I had recourse to God. I was answered by Him’

‘He made it easy for my heart to turn away from fame, family, children and associates’. He announced that he was leaving for Mecca (for Hajj?). Although in actuality he was going to Syria. This was a precaution from schemes of trouble makers.

 

“I departed from Bagdad after I had distributed what wealth I had, laying by only the amount needed for my support and the sustenance of my children…… I resided in Damascus for nearly two years. My only occupation was seclusion, spiritual exercise to purify my soul…..cleansing my heart for the remembrance of God, in the way I had learned from the writing of sufis…..mounting to the minaret of a mosque for the whole day and shutting myself in……Then I travelled from Damascus to Jerusalem, where I would go daily into the Dome of the Rock and shut myself in.”

An inner urge guided him to go to Mecca and Medina and perform Hajj. Which he did.

He had to come back to his native land for certain important matters. But he maintained solitude. He tried to keep his heart empty for remembrance of God. But worldly concerns and needs made it impossible to fully achieve this state. He had blessed ecstasy only intermittently. He remained in this condition for ten years.

Things impossible to enumerate were disclosed to him.

Many Islamic mystics like Shahab ( blog 32,94. Also see note 4 below) have considered mysticism inferior to Shariat. But not Ghazali:

 

“ this much I shall mention, that profit may be derived from it: I know with certainty that the sufis are those that uniquely follow the way to God, their mode of life is the best of all, their way the most direct of ways , and their ethics the purest.”

“…….all their (sufis) motions are learned from the light of the niche of prophecy. And beyond the light of prophecy there is no light on earth from which illumination can be obtained.”

“From the very beginning of the Way revelations and visions start…. so that , even when awake, the sufis see the angels and the spirits of the prophets and hear voices coming from them……eventually to states beyond the narrow range of words”

He wanted to come out of seclusion to reform others. He had found out that the faith of some men was weak. He wanted to guide them aright and to deliver them from peril.

He was on the horns of a dilemma: seclusion and devote all the time to God or to come out of religious retirement and guide others by lectures and books.

God intervened!

Sultan ordered him to return to Nishapur and face the threat of this tepidity in Muslims. Thus the decision was taken out of his hands. In addition to that, certain Godly men had many recurrent dreams attesting that this move of his would be a source of good and a right procedure, and it had been decreed by God ……

He was uniquely qualified for this task due to his encyclopedic knowledge of Islam, and philosophy and being an authentic sufi. He wrote many books.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina, born 980 A.D.) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, born 1126 A.D.) are the two most famous Muslim Philosophers of Middle Ages. In philosophy, they both followed Aristotle (Pupil of Plato, born in 384 B.C.), and not Plato. Ghazali exposed, what he thought, were the weaknesses in the arguments of both of them, and also that of Al Farabi (born 870? A.D.). He wrote a book called Destruction of the philosophers. Averroes replied by a book Destruction of the Destruction.

 

He followed Shariat and his mysticism was traditional Islamic mysticism. He advocated orthodox religious views. He did not bring anything new.

 

This mote considers him a great man, because when the time for sacrifice came he rose to the occasion and sacrificed, by quitting the world, for God. He realized God without any teacher. Books were his teacher. This mote also has no guide; books have been my guide. But I did not realize God, because I did not possess the courage to leave world.

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 (1) ‘AL-Ghazali’s path to Sufism, his deliverance from error’. “Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal”. Translated from the Arabic by Mccarthy. Prefaced by Burrell. Introduction by Graham

(2) ‘Kashaful- Mehjoob’ by Daata Gunj Bakhash

 (3) My source in writings about Descartes and Plato is the book, “A history of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell

(1)   From my blog 94:“I am simply amazed that how Mr. Shahab considered it inferior to shariat. The bliss of God’s touch on one’s face is ineffable. Words cannot describe it. One touch is greater than thousand ritualistic prostrations. All great saints, like St Teresa of Avilla, and Sri Ramakrishna have said the same thing.”

 

193. Thoughts of Al-Ghazali. Part two

 

We were discussing sense-data

 

What if the dream state was real and ordinary state was unreal like a dream?

He had heard that Sufis could attain states which were different from normal wakefulness and sleep.  There was a hadith,  “Men are asleep: then after they die they awake.” And will be told, according to Quran, ‘But We have removed from you your veil and today your sight is keen’ (50:21-22)

Ghazali struggled for two months with this dilemma. On one side was the surety of sense-data and self-evident truths and on the other side arguments against them which made one doubt them. He could not surmount this impasse.

Then, God in His great mercy guided him and illumination came to him.

 

At this point, this mote wants to digress and want to site two pertinent examples of two great philosophers.

Remember Ghazali doubting the sense-data. Descartes(born 1596 A.D.) is considered the founder of modern philosophy (3). He went through the same thought process in 17^th century which Ghazali had gone through earlier, namely to doubt everything (Cartesian doubt). He said to himself, ‘here, I am sitting in my armchair by the fire place. But I have imagined myself sitting like this while I was in bed. I have had hallucinations and dreams which appeared real to me, but were false. However, although sense-data can be doubted but geometrical and arithmetical realities are certain’. As he further reflected on this point he came to question mathematical beliefs also. He considered, ‘what if a powerful demon or God was misleading me. God would not do such a thing but an evil demon might. He could make me believe in things where none were present’

“there remains, however, something that I cannot doubt. No demon, however cunning, could deceive me if I did not exist. I may have no body: this might be an illusion. But thought is different.”

‘I cannot think unless I exist.’

“ I think therefore I am”

This phrase has become immortal over centuries!

It was his first truth, which he could accept without scruple.

 

Plato, ( born 428-7 B.C.) discussed what is real and what is an illusion in his famous simile of the cave.

 

“Behold! Human being living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards light……., and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them……Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and prisoners there is a raised way……there is a wall in front. Between the wall and themselves there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire behind them. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun, for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows.”

If he is a philosopher he goes back to the cave to tell others that are looking at shadows. Nobody believes him.

 

Philosophy. Next Ghazali turned his attention to philosophy. “God, most high, gave me an insight in the farthest reaches of philosophy in less than two years.”There were three main divisions:

1.       Most ancient philosophers: they did not believe in God. They alleged that the world had existed from eternity as it is, and not by reason of a Maker. Modern scientist and philosophers, like Einstein and Bertrand Russell, would fall in this category, except their belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

2.       Second category were the naturalists. They believed in God, but did not believe in afterlife. This mote, as a young man, belonged to this group.

3.       Third group of philosophers believed in a Creator, and afterlife. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle belonged to this category. This mote, a secular humanist and novice mystic, belongs to this group. They differed from devout religious in several aspects. Ghazali noted twenty differences from ordinary Muslims, especially three questions, and wrote a book (The incoherence )to refute their beliefs. In general, the philosophers of his time, were unbelievers in religion, they were innovators, and practiced mathematical and physical sciences. They also followed logic and syllogism.

Ghazali spent a lot of energy and effort in discussing these topics in his spiritual autobiography. This mote has no intention of doing it because it is unnecessary and outdated for present times. Suffice is to say that Ghazali was satisfied.

Sufism. Finally he planned to learn the way of sufis. It took him eleven years. First he read many books written by great mystics. It soon became evident to him that theoretical knowledge is not sufficient, he had to practice mysticism. Just like knowing the definition of drunkenness is different than actually being drunk.

 

To be continued

 

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(1)‘AL-Ghazali’s path to Sufism, his deliverance from error’. “Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal”. Translated from the Arabic by Mccarthy. Prefaced by Burrell. Introduction by  Graham

(2) ‘Kashaf ul- Mehjoob’ by Daata Gunj Bakhash

(1)    My source in writings about Descartes and Plato is the book, “ A history of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell

 

167.foreword

167. Foreword

 

Mkadk presents part four of my ‘Journey towards the Great God’. It is a collection of blogs 134-166. I have made no further advance in my quest. It has gradually dawned on me that I have two missions; first mission is to reach God, and the second is to invite others to the Light of God. As of now, I have failed in both missions. The door of God is still closed and I have not awakened the love of God in anybody. Those who are worldly, do not read my blog, or books, or listen to my poems on YouTube. They are not interested in God. Those who are religious are happy in their own rituals. They do not have an inner thirst for spirituality. They praise God, they thank God, they pray to God, they are afraid of God, but they do not love God. They are not even attached to God. They do all those things as a habit, in an absent minded way. Those who are devout worshippers do not need my book because they are quite content, and may get nearness to God in their own way. Only two persons have really liked my books, and praised them, but they are already far advanced in mysticism, much more than I. One of them, Shah Sahib, said, “He should not concern himself about approbation from others; he has been assigned a task, he should just do it.”

 

Whatever I wanted to convey to others has been completed. In these four books I have attempted to answer all the riddles which had perplexed me for years. I will keep on writing more blogs, but they will be about men and women of God or of books, but not about complex subjects. Here is a summary of those topics that I have covered:

1. There are eighteen blogs on God (blogs 97-114).

2. There are three blogs on mysticism, as I understand it (blogs 93-95)

3. There are nine blogs on Fate versus Free will (blogs 134-142)

4. There are six blogs on the systems created by God for the governance of this world (blogs 143-148)

5. There are three blogs on development and critique of religions (blogs 149-151)

6. There are twelve blogs on dark night of the soul (blogs 39-50)

 

Some things have to be added about the proof of God, as provided in my blogs. Without the existence of God, one cannot explain the creation of universe, prophecies about future events, miracles, answer to prayers, and the existence of spirits of dead people. Atheists scoff at these five arguments. They call it “God of gaps argument”. What they mean is that science cannot explain certain things, such as those I have mentioned. They say, these are gaps in our knowledge. That does not mean there is God who is the perpetrator of them, therefore, they are not proofs of God. We, the scientists, are working on these gaps. May be in another five hundred or a thousand years, we will have satisfactory scientific explanation of them.

 

Although I do agree, as I have mentioned in blog 146 (Reply of Einstein), that these supernatural events must be carried out by some yet undiscovered laws, because that is the way of God; everything follows laws, created by Him. Therefore, in a sense, nothing is supernatural. However, even if a thousand years from now we discover the new laws explaining these occurrences, they will still point to a Supreme Mind.

 

The obstinacy of atheists astounds me. They follow two basic assumptions, without any absolute requirement or logical reason to adopt them, as if they were some self evident truths, such as that an elephant is bigger than an ant. These two assumptions are: There is no God, and Revealed knowledge is not true knowledge because it is not testable. All their hypotheses regarding these five supernatural phenomena are based on these two rules that they have adopted. Let us examine some of them.

 

1. God created the universe, because nothing can be created from absolute nothing (discussed in detail in blog 101). Therefore atheist scientists said; No! Universe must have been created from nothing, since we, the scientists, believe that there is no God (and that is an inviolable, unshakable fact to us). A scientist Alan Guth called the universe, an ultimate free lunch.

2.   Bertrand Russell said“...The universe is just there, and that's all.” That means there is no origin of universe. So, Russell denies the current understanding that the universe started from a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and stars and galaxies gradually evolved.

3. David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, said that there are no miracles, because miracles violate laws of nature, which is impossible. It is just superstition. St Augustine relates the miracle of incorrupt dead bodies (blog 160):

“God revealed Bishop Ambrose, in a vision, where the bodies of martyrs Protasius and Gervasius were hidden.  All these years (over two hundred) You had preserved them incorrupt.”

 

Saint Augustine was far from a superstitious fool.

 

4. The chance of intelligent life to arise is 1 followed by 117 zeroes (see blog 153). This is an extremely small chance. The answer by atheist scientists is; have infinite universes. Infinite has 1 followed by infinite zeroes( trillions, googol, googolplex or even more zeroes ), at least  in one of them ( one out of 10¹¹⁷) everything would be exactly right, and intelligent life will emerge.

We cannot fathom one universe. Consider having infinite universes! Who created them? It reminds me of world of fantasy. Create whatever you want, in your mind, and call it a hypothesis, without an iota of data. Keep the mantra; no God, no revealed knowledge.

 

Coming back to the beautiful world of spirituality. God is not a supposition to the great mystics and prophets, because they have actually experienced God. Some have actually seen the light of God, although it had deleterious effects on them. Moses and Saint Paul and Shah Sahib saw it. Moses fell unconscious. Paul became temporarily blind. Shah Sahib (his original name is Noor Alam), a Sufi mystic, told my brother, that he can see the light of God in his mind’s vision, with closed eyes. This mote has written three blogs on Shah Sahib ( 153-155).

These scientists must pause for a minute and realize the absurdity of their denial of a Creator, because it requires three suppositions: universe was created from absolute nothing; intelligent life emerged by itself, against insurmountable odds; and all these dozens of incidents which I have narrated must be wrong and these persons must be liars. It is as if a man was hit three times with lightning on his three birthdays

 

St Augustine could not answer the question that how prophets could see future (blog 159). He wrote:

“For it is utterly impossible that things which do not exist should be revealed. The means by which You do this is far beyond our understanding. I have not the strength to comprehend this mystery, and by my own power I never shall.”

 This mote has attempted to answer this riddle. See explanation 6 in blog 141 and further discussion in blog 142.

Fifteen years and two months have passed since the start of my journey towards God

 

Mkadk

 13^th February, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

162. Saint Augustine and Time. Part Four

 

What is time?

 

 St Augustine pondered over this question. Why did he ponder over this question? Because, he pondered over another question first. How have the prophets been able to predict future events?

A modern man, even if he was a thinking man, like David Hume, an 18^th century Scottish philosopher, would simply deny that prophets could do such a thing (Hume did not believe in anything supernatural). However, Augustine believed in it.

 

If prophets could tell future then it exists somewhere, but future cannot exist since it has not been made yet. Now, I hope you realize Augustine’s difficulty. Let me quote his words from his book (1):

 

‘As a boy I learnt that there were three divisions of time, past, present, and future. But there might be people who would maintain that there are not three divisions of time but only one, the present, because the other two do not exist. Another view might be that past and future do exist, but time emerges from some secret refuge when it passes from future to the present, and goes back into hiding when it moves from present to the past. Otherwise how prophets see the future, if there is not yet a future to be seen? It is impossible to see what does not exist.

In the same way people who describe the past could not describe it correctly unless they saw it in their minds, and if the past did not exist it would be impossible for them to see it at all. Therefore both the past and the future do exist!’

 

Is St Augustine contradicting himself? No, he is simply thinking loud and exploring various theories. He is trying to think which of the two is true, three divisions of time or only the present, and secondly he is trying to figure out how could prophets see future?

He observes very succinctly, “How can two, the past and future, be, when the past no longer is and the future is not yet?”

At one point he even questions whether present exists. He writes: “ How can we say that even present is, when the reason it is is that it is not to be? In other words, we cannot rightly say that time is, except by reason of its impending state of not being”

 

He observes the other attributes of time: it is never still, that it derives its strength only from a great number of movements constantly following one another into the past; once it becomes past it ceases to be. The present has no duration (see footnote 1)

He arrives at a very important conclusion, that the past and future wherever they are and whatever they are, it is only by being present they are.

This is a subtle point, that we do not see past and future as such, both have to be converted to the present.

He floats a theory ( I do not know whether that was his final conclusion about prophecies ) about how future may be foretold. Sometimes future events give a sign of things to come. For instance, one can tell that the sun is about to rise by witnessing the break of day. Nowadays, this theory will not carry any weight. Weather forecasters do it every day. What we are discussing, are future events that cannot be predicted by any scientific means.

He cannot solve this mystery. He surrenders. He writes:

 

“For it is utterly impossible that things which do not exist should be revealed. The means by which You do this is far beyond our understanding. I have not the strength to comprehend this mystery, and by my own power I never shall.”

 

 He asks God for help (see footnote 2)

 

“My mind is burning to solve this intricate puzzle. O Lord my God, good Father………..I long to find the answer. Through Christ I beseech You……..Let Your mercy give me light”

 

He disagrees with some men who says that time is nothing but the movement of heavenly bodies (one rotation of sun makes a day and a night). He argues that everything moves in time, it is not that their

 movement constitutes time.

 

Finally he states his solution. Remember, he had made an important point which I have already mentioned; that the past and future wherever they are and whatever they are, it is only by being present they are. We do not see past and future as such, both have to be converted to the present.

 

He carries this point to its logical conclusion. Where is the place where past and future exist, as present? The answer is; in the mind. Past is memory, present is attention, and the future is expectation.

 

British Philosopher Bertrand Russell did not agree with his analysis, because it made time something mental (2)

 

He still did not solve the riddle that how prophets had been able to predict future.

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­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ (1) ‘Confessions’ by St Augustine

(2) A history of Western philosophy by Bertrand Russell

Footnote 1. Smallest unit of time is a Planck time; 10^-43 seconds. It is the time for the light to take to travel a Planck length.

Footnote 2. This mote also begged God to help him to understand how future can be foretold, by giving him such an experience. I quote from blog 142; “this mote prayed to God, even today, a way to access the future, at least for once, so that I can then say that I have myself seen some future event. For me, at least, then it won’t be hearsay”.