New Age Spirituality – Live with Sheik

Good quality alarm Wally comm Welcome to up their hem greens official channel we are today speaking about spirituality but not actually Islamic spirituality. We're talking about New Age spirituality. And I have with me of course, Sheikh Ibrahim green as salaam alaikum. How you doing? Welcome sensible hiding,

for hosting this and

surely getting helping getting some useful messaging out from us in Charlotte to the rest of the world and this YouTube channel.

Yes, a handler.

And actually, this topic, New Age, spirituality is something that I've often seen you in the office and outside speak about the rise of this thing.

And just to sort of get maybe people a little bit warmed up,

we actually had a call. I'm not sure if you know about this. But we actually had a call in the IRA office about eight years ago. Yeah. And he was from somebody who actually

used to believe in the old or whatever, English paganism, right? He was actually a tradition. So

yeah, it's interesting. What happened was Jamal picked up the phone. He's our media guy. And then he wants you to call back because he wanted some information. But his story is quite interesting, because he was actually a traditional pagan, and he used to worship all these different gods. And amongst all these different idols that he had, there was the one God that he said that they believed the sort of English pagans, they believed to be the supreme God, and that God didn't actually have an idol to all the rest of the gods had idols, I forgotten the name, what the name of that particular

Great God was. And then he said, One day, what happened was, instead of praying to the physical idols, which he usually prayed to as intercessors, to the great God, he decided to just pray to the great God, right, not everybody else. He said, he asked the great God, the unseen God, for guidance. And the first guidance that he got is that he said instantly from my heart, all of the love of anything besides that one true creator, disappeared. So he said, he stopped worshipping idols from that point. And then Alhamdulillah, he managed to find out about Osama and converted to Islam. So he's beginning his his dua was actually within his own paganism, but to this creator, because

obviously, maybe that ancient religion of his, you know, they had him as the Quraysh. They being a supreme creator, and all these or demigods. So it's a really big thing nowadays. So yeah, I mean, I thought that was an interesting segue into this topic today. I think it is. And I think obviously, the first thing is, is that, you know, with all respect to that guy he has, no one has any real idea what the real ancient pagan religion was, right? Because there's no texts leftover unless someone can genuinely establish some, you know, secret transmission of knowledge, generation after generation from the druids until arson, it's like been hidden or something like that. Which is

possible, but probably extremely unlikely. Yeah. And even then, the reality is, it's been almost definitely would have been mixed up with so many different other things, right.

So that's the first problem. So even the pagans, the modern pagans, they may claim to hark back to ancient Greece I, I've always been fascinated until now I one of the things I can't you know, I'm constantly reading about and looking into

our, you know, ancient mysteries, I'm fascinated by partly because here in Shropshire, where I live, we're surrounded by Stone Age relics, I NH forts. And, you know, because of that, I just, you know, I go down the rabbit hole, as they say, of watching this documentary in that documentary, and, you know, the world you know, especially well, the whole world has megalithic structures, which are really incredible. Like no one really knows how they built them.

And some of the megalithic structures, you know,

you're talking about stones were weighing 60 tons that even today, we wouldn't know how to transport we couldn't transport those stones today. Right? And some of these stones are, you know, 60 miles, 50 miles, 150 miles away from where they were mined, and local one has any idea how these people managed to do that. And even they don't even know how they managed to carve the stones because they didn't have the

Tools, you know, like it was all more stone tools really, right?

Maybe they had some techniques, I don't know that no one really knows. So there was obviously something going on. There's something to do with, you know, astrology, whether they were calendars there's a very interesting thing about, you know, wizards the wizards hat, you know, the appointed wizards had this fascinating thing is that they found these gold, literally gold wizards hats.

But they're, they're heavily. They have basically symbolism all over them, which is basically they found out as a calendar, an extremely accurate calendar, you know, of the stars and the moon, the phases of the moon, which again, they don't really know what it's for, is it for helping predicting harvests?

What was their religion, they don't really know, they think there was a huge transition in the hunter gatherer a period of human history, for example, when the moon was really the center of interestingly, they theorized that women, it was actually a mostly matriarchal society, at least, their societies were very free, they were very liberal, in the sense that there was no real structure was very, you know, it was all based around the tribe, they were hunter gatherers, right? So they didn't need any system of legislation. They didn't need any except a few basic rules, right? They needed cooperation, right. And the moon was probably the most important, you know, celestial

body for them, because they didn't, crops were not important. They didn't grow crops, right. So the phases of the Moon were really, really important. Because that's where the hunting obviously, you know, sometimes would take place when the moon is full, and this and that, and so on and so forth. Very interesting. And then there's this whole idea of how did you know once the societies became more and more agricultural, then the sun became more and more important, and then they believe there's this transitional stage between, you know, the, I'm not saying they're worship the Son of the Moon, maybe they didn't even worship them, right? Maybe these were just calendars, right? I

mean, maybe they were upon Tawheed. Because

the very interesting thing is, is this in a lot of these places, there are no images, there's no statues, there's no pictures, and it's clear that there were people who are capable of doing it at that time, because, obviously, we have cave paintings, extremely old cave paintings. Yeah, but in these religious sites, there weren't any. So I don't know, it's all up for grabs. Really? You know?

It's really fascinating. I find it fascinating. But I think, like,

I think the first thing to do is like, let's look at it from a positive angle. I think the very positive thing about the whole new age. It's not a religion, right? But you can call it New Age spirituality. It's very anoxic it's, it's a bit you know, if I'm going to be a bit critical, it's a bit like sort of supermarket shopping shopping here supermarket. So it's been described as supermarket supermarket shopping spirituality, you literally pick off the shelf, what takes your fancy, right and cook for yourself, whatever you like, right.

So

but it really, first of all, the good thing about it, is that

there is a recognition out there. There is a recognition out there

that there is something more than just the pure material. No, I went through this whole I mean, in my journey, I went through this whole New Age spirituality stuff. I still if I go down to Florida, and south, what did he go to the forest and you know,

run naked through the forest and

commune with the trees. And you know, like, yeah, I was, I was definitely into all sorts of I still have some of the old books that I had from those days. Right.

Some, it's something to do with magic, books on magic books on psychosomatic yoga, a lot of yoga.

You know, just a lot of stuff that I would read and research into, of course, this isn't the days before the internet. So if you wanted to look into stuff, it was through reading.

But I mean, I definitely knew that there was something more than just the sheer material existence, right.

So that's one thing and I guess from that point of view, you know, all religions, we have a common belief about that, that this world is, you know, the, the outer appearance of this world is not all that there is but you know, like the idea that, you know, the world is just some material thing is it's, you know, it's first of all extremely modern, make it in terms of the whole of human history. Extremely modern, even if you even if you could say some great

He explained it. And it was only a very small number of Greeks, right? Who had these ideas, very small number of them, the vast majority of them were still pagans and worshipping gods. And, in fact, the worship of the gods was enshrined in their laws, right. Like, it was, it was death for insulting the gods. Right.

So, yeah, I mean, I think the thing is that this is something so common in human history. I think one of the things for sure that, you know, one of the things that I even think as Muslims, right, is that perhaps we have lost touch with is that there is a whole dimension of reality that we're really not really in touch with so much anymore, and I believe it exists, right? And I really do believe it exists.

And so like, if you if you I mean, if we go back and look in our tradition, right, the Islamic tradition, right, you look at the story of Musa right.

Now, obviously, you know, from the point of view, the things that we remember are, you know, the battle between good and evil between, you know, Tawheed and shirk, you know, the great tyrant, and the Federal own, who did all of these evil things, which, of course, is highly important, very important, so relevant today, when you look at China on what's happening to the Uyghurs, and I honestly, you can't help except to think of for our own

reason. But I think the other thing is, is that was extraordinary is the ability of the magicians, right?

From the point of view of what they were able to do was extraordinary. I mean, I want everyone to think about that these magicians are so skilled, right? And I don't mean it necessarily in a positive way. Of course not. Because there's Musa said, you know, magicians will never be successful. So, you know, this skill is based upon deception is based upon lies. I mean, I think that's what we can. I think that's what we need to go into a lot more, right? Why a lot of the New Age stuff is really confusing. And a lot of it is, you know, some of it's just confusion. Some of it's just lies, a lot of it is deception. A lot of it is,

you know, people using things that are real, to make people believe stuff that is not true. Yeah. So I mean, but the point being is these magicians have some real abilities, they, they don't just call the people even Musa he's a prophet Musa is a prophet of God. Right? And when he sees what they do, he feels afraid himself like, so this is something you have to really this is real stuff. This is this is real stuff. It has a real impact. Right?

Just a few

point, something I think the important worth noting is when you had these,

you know, great kings and leaders and people who basically from hedonistic point of view, they could do whatever they wanted to do. Like Kublai Khan or Akbar,

the moral leader, people got into these different things where they tried to mix and match different religions and different spiritual ideas because even though they had all access to all hedonistic heaven on earth, they still weren't really fulfilled by it. So in a way, it's quite the new age is not really too new. Like people have always been.

Like, no, I mean,

talking about you just need a more recent example, recent example of Adolf Hitler, right, Hitler, the Nazis, very interesting, very, and, you know, people, you know, you think of, you know, they call it national socialism. But Hitler and Nazism had a hole, it traced itself back to paganism. It used pagan Sim, sim symbology. symbolism, yeah. Not only that, there were many.

He referred to Providence, often, they took many things from paganism, right? Even in their buildings, that architecture, a lot of the ideas that they had, there was a lot of stuff in that right, they understood the power of religious symbols, they were creating, in a sense, a new attack of new religion, right. So they weren't, you know, they were really they understood the power of religious symbolism, right. And these religious even quasi religious ideas, right.

So religion, generally, even paganism or whatever is I mean, you know, I pagans might be very unhappy for that comparison to be made, right? But basically, Nazism is a type of you know, use of pagan ideas, right. And pagans like to paint themselves as peaceful and whatever, that's not necessarily true. Right? Not necessarily true at all right? And there's just that's just what they picked off the supermarket shelf right? Someone else has gone off the supermarket shelf and picked up a flippin you know, cashmere cover and you know, stick Obama right

A that you make out of it what you will, right. And this is this is really the main real problem with this whole New Age stuff. The main problem is, you just make up what you want. You take what you want, and it's extremely dangerous. Because ultimately, there are no real guidelines. There are no real principles except the ones that you decide to make up yourself. And you could of course, choose principles of love and kindness and compassion and mercy. But you could equally choose pretty gruesome principles, right of death and destruction and deception and darkness. And, you know, all of those things, which people do, by the way, was mobiles. I mean, Mongols are pure pagans, they

worship Pingree. And they, they use witchcraft, by the way, even their leaders consult. Yeah, thank you all the shamanism they use, I mean, this is the whole interesting thing, the use of witchcraft, right? This is like, this whole thing is fascinating, right? And even when you look at the job, right? You look at the job, when you look at if you if people think that all there is to the material, well, even as Muslims, right, that's what I'm saying. Often we have forgotten that there is this whole dimension of reality, right?

That we're not immediately aware about. I mean, from a spiritual point of view, there's no need for it in Islam, because in Islam, you know, it's teaching us how to connect to God.

But if you don't have that,

right, you will be using all of these types of things. These, you know, so the whole idea of spiritual cures of rakia, right, I've using various charms and using various things to ward off evil spirits, like, you know, as so here's an example I think the whole the whole realm of evil spirits, right, and is a very interesting topic for discussion. Because that what that really shows us is there is something real out there. Right? There is something real out there that there are other beings that are not human, they're not. As we know, there are angels, there are angels, and there are other beings. Now we know so, these beings are not human, they are spirit beings, they are known

as spirits by most people, they have extraordinary capabilities, they can do extraordinary feats of physical strength, they can move objects in extreme speed from one very remote place to another, right.

And they're hidden as well. That's the other thing, we can't see them so they can spy on us, they can listen in on us

that way, way more in a way more effective way than any spycraft. It's today, like even with our mobile phones, right? So this is the world of what we know as the jinn. Now, but see, the thing is the beautiful thing in Islam, and I think one of the reasons why it was interesting that you sent me an article about the influence of certain specific New Age ideas, they just did it by way as a survey, to find out a few selected New Age ideas like reincarnation, like the idea that non living bodies have an energy or some sort of spiritual energy.

And I can't remember they had a list of things, astrology, wherever it was astrology. Yeah. astronomy, astrology, of who's got the astrology? Yeah, some various things. And they found that a large a huge number of Christians, and Christians had these beliefs, to some extent, at least one of them. Right. And atheists to a lesser extent, and amongst other non Christian people, apparently, who are not following a religion. They didn't say they didn't mention what the statistics were about Islam and Muslims. I suspect with Muslims and Jews, it may be a lot less and the reason is because we have a very, we have very clear, detailed descriptions, right of the world, the unseen. It's not

mysterious to us because it has been very clearly described the Prophet, the Quran talks about the jinn. It talks about these spirit beings. It describes their nature, right? It just gives us a lot of detail about them. And furthermore, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam has detailed to us some of their capabilities, and even talked about the different ways in which magicians and soothsayers and fortune tellers use the jinn in order to confuse people and trick people. Right. So now here's the part of the problem with that whole world of New Age stuff that you're getting into, right? Part of the problem is, you could be dealing and believing in a real, an actual real

all phenomena. But what is being presented? What is being presented to you is a deception? Yeah. So for example, you might and this is, you know, like, I know lots of people who have experienced this, right? And even Muslims, they are confused, but that's just because they're because of their lack of knowledge about their religion, right. So there's a lot of confusion. I'm sure you'll find this in Pakistan. And, you know, so in fact, the example that I can think of was from a brother in Pakistan, right, who was invited by a friend of his to go and see some so called peer.

So called holy man, right?

So when they went to this holy man, and when they went to the so called holy man, right.

And then when I heard this, obviously, this got me like, laughing in just amusement how ridiculous it was. But from the point of view, why would a holy man do this, right? So when this brother walked through the door, right, straight away, this peer, gave him a packet of cigarettes

and said to him, you were like this.

Now, he said, How? Now he said, I smoke a type of cigarettes that you can't get this is years ago, right? He said, I smoke a type of cigarettes. You can't get it in Pakistan, you cannot buy them off the shelf in Pakistan. Right. And this was some remote place in the countryside. Right? He didn't even know that I was coming. Right? No one told him we just turned up. How did he know? And how did he get that packet of cigarettes right from where did he get it? All right. And then he said, he started telling me things about my life, that nobody knew

that nobody knew. How could he do that? Surely he was a holy man. I said, look, the first red flag brother

is that a holy man would not give you cigarettes because cigarettes are haram. Like even according even if you don't believe it's haram, you believe it's Nakuru, right? It's either Iran or mcru. And no, a holy person would encourage you to do something McIlroy. That's your first red flag. Right. Right then, yeah. Secondly, don't you know about gin? Don't you know about what the gin do? This guy is nothing but a magician. Right? Who is working with the gin? Now everybody has a personal gin. Right? That personal gin is called a curry. Right? And you're cutting lives with you talks to you whispers to you. And you know, most of the time unless he's, you know, converted to Islam, like the

Prophet sallallahu ala he was sort of Jamie right? The prophets Jin became Muslim and only told him good. And apparently, by the way, yeah, I have asked him scholars, and that's not just for the Prophet. Other people's genes can also Alhamdulillah become Muslim and invite them towards good as well. Right. So I don't know if that's, you know, that's a consensus about that. But anyway, that's interesting. So just on that point, I wanted to bring in something as you're speaking, I just remembered.

I remember in 2014, you you sent me this email and you said, these guys in Poland are interested, you should do it our mission there, right. And then we went to Poland. And we went to Poland, we met some Polish brothers as myself and settled in one of the Polish brothers who accepted Islam. He said he nearly apostate from Islam, because of miracles that he saw amongst the Christians. And one of these miracles, it convinced him to such a point that he basically was ready to apostate although he was a Christian, he became a Muslim. And it's only when he learned about the gin. Did he attribute the fact that okay, the gin is making these Christians is a particular type of doing this thing. So

that's very interesting. You're absolutely right. So let me so sort of thing just for everyone who's listening right especially if they're not Muslim, maybe this will be even for Muslims This is very useful right. So what you have to understand is that this is what a magician soothsayer fortune teller right these people will do most of these periods not most of them, but many of these beers, right? They are nothing except magicians. And they deal in black magic, they will do something haram they will abuse the Quran. Right? They will like all this stuff about Believe me this stuff that you see in Harry Potter about you know, you look at their potions right now. Because before I was Muslim

I studied magic so when i i Did I read the first two Harry Potter books and then I find it so boring. I gave up Yeah, but um, but it this stuff was literally taken out of and by the way, that's what her what's her name? I forgot her name now. vacay rolling. Yeah, she actually read these books. She studied the books of magic. She studied ancient books of herbology. So it was like really based around real stuff, right? I mean,

Look at that potions that potions have every haram thing in every piece of filth and every piece of forbidden, you know unclean thing that God has forbidden, right? Yes, they will sacrifice babies, they will do it. They will kill innocents, they will, they will, you know, they will desecrate religious symbols, obviously, for increasing Christian countries that is the cross. Obviously we right from the Islamic perspective, we believe that Christianity obviously is wrong and they have shirked within it. But from the general perspective, they are still people of the book, they are much closer to the truth. You know, they have a book, they follow some guidance, they believe in the

Asherah, that heaven the hell the paradise like we have a lot. Of course, we have huge things in common. So, even from that perspective, desecrating the cross desecrating any religious symbol, whatever it may be of the, you know, the author, you know, Judaism, Christianity or Islam, they do this in order, this is what the this is what the shayateen so the evil jinn, right are known as Shayateen, or devils, right, and they could be good, or they could be bad. In this respect. They're similar to us, the gin,

the gin can be believing, or they can be disbelieving, just like human beings, every religion, every ideology, you have gin, who have the same as us ideas and different. So that's the similarity between the gin and us, they have the choice to believe or not to believe, but they're not physical in the sense that we are physical, right? And as spiritual beings, they are spirits, right? So every because everyone has a jinn. So because the magician does these things, his gin will now agree to communicate with him and help him right. And not just his gym, by the way, any of the shayateen. Right? Well, he will, they will be able to, you know, do these things. And so they can, they can do

many things in terms of confusing people, right? So the magician is Jin will be talking to your gym. And you will be saying, Okay, tell me something about his life. And your gym will be saying to his gym, well, how about this? And how about that and tellement so the magician's Jenna's telling him these things, and then he will say, Oh, you did this and you did that. And you know, these are your favorite cigarettes. And this is how, but now here's the deception. The magician is not telling you that oh, by the way, I did all this evil stuff, right. And I sacrificed I, you know, I stood on the corner and I flushed the put the Quran in feces. Yeah, I, you know, I might kill the baby. Yeah,

whatever. Right. And I'm working with a devil's, he's not gonna tell you that he wants to follow you. He wants you to think that he has the power, he wants you to think that he is some powerful being of his of his own. And that this is some karma. And this is some miracle. Right? And this is the thing, right? So people believe in things that are actually genuinely happening. But what they believe about them is confused, they are confused, because they do not understand. Right? They do not understand this. Right? Yep. It's quite possible that to go back to those pagan times that maybe these stones were moved by Jim, you know, Jane wouldn't have the ability to do that. So if they were

working with gin or whatever, and so on and so forth. So, these things are real. I just want to mention something about the jar. And it's very interesting to go about to what I was, you know, saying previously, right?

You know, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, there was a person who the Prophet thought was the job. His name was Eben CIAT. Right? And the Prophet used to hide and spy on him.

Right to see what he was doing and what he was saying, right? And then once the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam went to him and said, I am hiding something. Tell me what it is. Now he was hiding something in his mind. Right? He was hiding a thought about something. I can't remember what the thing was. It had been say, I guess he got close, but he didn't get it. And the Prophet said to him, you will never get higher than your station. What does that mean?

Right? Because the Prophet understood that these people who deal in this stuff, they have stations, they have Dev, they have stations, which they go right, it means that the job is meddling in this dark, this dark law they start and they can do incredible things that the job will be able to chop a person in half and walk between them and they will come back to life again. Right. So there is you know, he will be able to fly through the air he will bring rain he will cause the two old people won't be so confused. So can I just bring you in because I was about to make this point and then the brother made the exact point I was about to make, and I was about to make him

Hindus as well. So he may a random Hindu pundit telling him personal things. And later on is to do the gin saw. You alluded to this earlier that some religions are validated by the fact that people believe in those things coming true. And I've dealt with people who've actually, I mean, that's how they'll say, they say, Look, this happened and it came to be true. How can we bring them out that quagmire? Because it's a very difficult position to try and convince them. You just have to tell them what I told them. And this is the point you're so right about, you know, Christianity, even within Christianity. I mean, this happens, even like I said, that my friend my friends experience

with was with Muslims, right? This guy was claiming to be a holy man, and happens with Christianity within Buddhism within Judaism. There are these tricksters there are these people who are claiming this mantle of holiness and somehow being inspired by the Divine. And it's exactly the opposite. They are literally working with the devil, right? They are literally conspiring with the shayateen. And this is why miracles don't mean anything.

There is a very, very worthwhile book reading that even Taymiyah okay, it's

the criterion between the friends of Allah and the friends of Sheikh Tang. And the whole book is saying, Don't be fooled by amazing things that people have, right? The fact that people can do amazing things doesn't prove anything. The only thing that is a proof of anything is a total heat. And that's why the other day when I was having this, you know, discussion with a Christian, you know, and he was saying, Oh, Jesus, right, Jesus walked on the water, right? And Jesus did this. And Jesus taught, you know, deal with all of these things. And it doesn't mean anything. Right. So what? So what if someone did all of those things? And that proves that he's God? No, like, any magician

could do some of that stuff. Right? To be honest, they could, a magician could do some of those things. Right? The the criteria, and I said, Listen, if Jesus was saying that he was God, then the Jews have a right to crucify Him, they did the right thing.

That is the criteria. And the criterion is not whether someone can do. And the irony is that this is even in the Gospel, the Bible itself, right? It says that there will come people who do amazing feats, right? And they will fall people the trips and the things that they will do. Right. So closing someone's, oh, this amazing thing happened is not a proof of anything. You have to go back and look to a person and say, Yeah, but what do they believe? What is their belief system? Do they truly believe in one God without any partners? And then the clue is, do they follow the revelation? Do they believe in the prophethood of Muhammad? Do they actually follow the guidance of Islam? These

are the real things, right, that you have to go back and look to. Right. And not only that, but I mean, sometimes the trickery by the way, support is not is not.

It's not like even with the gin sometimes it's just pure tricks. Like so for example, I remember in Sri Lanka, right.

You know, in Sri Lanka, I remember someone telling me about how there was this Buddhist festival and there was a statue of Buddha. And you know, the statue would cry, or it would milk would come out of the statue, you know, and, and she was a little girl and she basically wandered around the back, you know, of the statue, like accidentally, right, and saw that there was a pump pumping with tubes pumping milk, out of the eyes of this butter roll out of the whatever, it wasn't this pillar. And she said, Mama, Mama, look what's going on all the all the, you know, all the Buddhist whatever you call them, right? We're getting all you know, like hamdulillah she converted to Islam later, right.

So the point is, is that, you know, this trickery takes place in many, many different levels, right? I mean, so back to the whole New Age stuff is a lot of this stuff, astronomy, astrology, numerology, you know, like some of these things, right?

It seems from the surface that there is something genuine, right? But is it really coming from where you came? It's coming from?

That's the question. These are the really important questions that need to be asked.

And that's not to say that there isn't, you know, there are some things that yeah, they you know, there are some things that may be can be achieved some things that we can do, maybe the some of the stuff is genuine, right, but from the point of view, even from the point of view of say,

spiritual development and personal enlightenment, and so on and so forth. Yes, there are without doubt, I've experienced all sorts of extraordinary things. Nothing to do with in religion x per se, right. But

but it is nothing that I can think of that has any explanation that could be explained in by materialists. Right?

Like, how do you explain having a very light? It's us?

How can you explain that you're having a feeling like it's not just a feeling, right? It's literally almost like to the stage of a panic attack.

Right? Like, it's a very, very, like, it's not just the normal feeling. Yeah. And that is about somebody that you care about. Hugely.

Right? And exactly at the time that you are having this feeling. You find out something is happening to that person. And I am sure that this has happened to many mothers, may lovers, right. Many parents, parents get this gut feeling about their child, suddenly, you know, this is not my Oh, yeah, these things happen all the time. No, no, no, this is you get a feeling right. You know, something's wrong. And this person, how do you explain that in sheer materialistic terms? This, too many people have experienced this too many times. And I just want to I just want to add to this point, Rupert Sheldrake, he's, he's a Cambridge biologist, right? Yeah, I've read, I've listened to

him. Stuff that you learn. If you're walking down the street, and you feel someone's looking at you, you look up, and you will see someone is staring at you. So consciousness interacts with the world. And we have no scientific basis for this assumption that consciousness is just stuck within our materials. Oh, yeah. There's no evidence for that at all.

Yeah, so there is definitely definitely so many things like like that. Right? Do non material objects have sought some sort of energy? Right? 100%, I believe they do. Right? This is something that, you know, when I was with the whole New Age stuff before I was like, really into Buddhism, it's interesting that you know, like, in this, when I was looking into Buddhism, they said that everything has an energy, right?

Everything has some energy, right? If you, you know, even if you drive a car a lot, right, a bicycle, or it has some energy, there is something beyond you just being very intimate and familiar with that thing, right. And I would say the proof of something being there is the fact that stones used to make just there is a Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam, there was a pillar, where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam, which he used to lean on, when he gave a hotbar. And then when they built a member for the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the Prophet was not any longer leaning on it, they heard a noise of crying, coming from this pillar, and the prophet had to go and

console it. This means that even non anima objects have some sort of energy, whether you would it's not a soul, because it's not a soul. Like it's a human soul, or a you know, like creatures have a soul, right? But there's some energy, they have some form of consciousness. I don't know what it is, right? But it's there. Right. And this is very deep, there is something that connects us all. And, you know, this is very important, I think as Muslims, right, we don't need to go too far from it, we don't need to exaggerate about it, we don't need to get lost in it, you know, hamdullah, we have our guidance. And the guidance that we have is enough, right? But listen, everything is going to be able

to testify for or against you on a day of judgment.

The ground where you prayed will testify, right? So everything we do has a consequence, everything we do leaves an imprint, we should make us that should make us think very deeply about

how we behave, what we do, how we treat everything, right? Even trees, and even whatever, right everything, you know, we have to realize as a Muslim, it's all about balance we have we are supposed to be 31st on the earth, right? So this, you know, this, this need for that responsibility, right is very, very deep and very, very profound. And you know, we we need to be aware of that. And I think part of the thing is that in our materialistic modern world, we've become so disconnected. We've become so distracted, we've become so removed, that we don't feel that reality. I mean, yeah, part of the beauty of Islam, is it what it does, it takes away the superstition, right? So obviously,

it's very easy to get carried away with these things and just take them too far. Right. To the extent that you may even start what praying to them and worshiping Him and you know, whatever. Right. Okay.

But yeah, I mean, I definitely think there are you know, there are things there are real

teas, there are extraordinary things that not even extraordinary. I actually think they're very ordinary. Right? It just doesn't fit the materialistic paradigm. So it's just sort of ignored. Right.

And I think this is this is the, this is part of the way. And obviously, as Muslims, we can fall into the danger of going too far down there purely materialistic, you know, obviously, reason is very important. The use of reason is very important in Islam, but that, you know, then we have the idea of fitrah. Let's take the idea of fitrah, for example, what is that? Right? What is that? That's, you know, that's

yeah, I just wanted to add to that point, you know, there's a beautiful story we get from the Sierra in which the bachelor conducts taking place. And, you know, the Sahaba, in great difficulty, the surrounded by the enemies, one moment, makes the grand change, and that is that one person goes from the enemy side to the sahaba. And he says, Allah through Iman into my heart, and he goes back in those dissension.

So what is Allah throws eemaan into his heart. I mean, we have this written in the seat. I mean, what I mean, that's not some logical argument. Is it? Is it? Yeah, no, of course. I mean, this is I mean, obviously, from that perspective, when we look at the Creator, Allah who has control over everything, you know, obviously Alhamdulillah, this is a beautiful thing in Islam. I think the really beautiful thing in Islam is the whole hierarchy of creation, and how that, you know, how the unseen world connects to the worlds the world of the scene, is, its broad outlines are very clearly demarked. Right? And certainly, Islam gives us everything we need in order to be able to sort out

what is useful from what is not useful, what is beneficial from what is harmful, right, from what is lawful. So there may be things that you may perceive it to be beneficial, but this actually unlawful, right? It's actually not allowed, right?

Because ultimately, the harm that it will do to you is much more than the good that it will do. You know, so for example, as far as I know, there is a broad agreement, I wouldn't say a consensus, right. But there's a broad agreement that you know, for Muslims to deal with any sort of magic, even what might be called white magic. Yeah. Because if there are good gin, right, then a person may argue, well, can't you use the good gin? Right? In order to do good magic, but But broadly, no, because going into that whole realm is its itself detrimental to the human being? And there's no need for us to do that. Right. We have what we need within you know, what we need for our guidance

for our, you know, good living on this earth. And our success in the next is they're contained in the Quran and Sunnah. And I think this is what's important is that as Muslims, we do have to be very careful not to allow, you know, these New Age ideas, by the way, I think a lot of quite a lot of the whole self help industry. Yeah. So closely connected to this New Age spirituality, right? We do have to be very careful. That's why, you know, in our previous discussion, I, you know, I don't want to say yeah, read this book and read that book. Right. I think there's useful stuff in there. But you know, and I'm not saying I'm this great person, right. But in short, I think I have enough to be

able to filter right? To filter this stuff. You know, I'm not I don't get confused. When I read these books. They don't confuse me. I can clearly see. Yeah, this is not this is not useful. This is Oh, this is really useful. This allows us to look at something that is in without within our deen. But you know, from a useful angle that maybe we didn't see it before. Right.

So yeah, I think

could you go on a bit further, because I think that's a very important point about the whole self help industry. I mean, there's something I want you to highlight, and maybe you can comment on this is the whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where he goes from safety to all the way up to self accurate, accurate, accurate way, the cold actualization, right? Virtualization, virtualization, sorry. And then he revised it many years later, a lot of people don't know, right? We actually put self transcendence as the number one thing. So when you made a very interesting point, I want you to explore a bit further. What do you mean by the self help stuff, which is really popular now? How's

that LinkedIn is new agents have it doesn't seem like it is? No, it definitely is. A lot of it is because a lot of it is crossover between the two things. Right? A lot. There's a lot of crossover

Uh, because some of these, you know, self help gurus they do delve into that realm and you find a lot, you'll find also, by the way, a lot of the people that go to them, right, and a lot of people that go to these places are also people who often have these similar New Age beliefs. Why? What's going on? Right? Because ultimately, a lot of the self help industry is filling that void that people have, what is the void they have in their life, they have a void of the psycho spiritual guidance that is absolutely essential. I actually think Maslow's

pyramid. Yeah. It's something wrong with it. I've tried it. I've really thought about it, right. I mean, he's got some really good ideas, like as an idea, it's a good idea. But it's not a pyramid. That's the problem. You see, unlike one of the talks that I used to give way, way back in the days was called Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Life. Yeah. Okay. And one of the things that I pointed out in this talk was that if materialistic needs were the most important things for human beings, right? Yeah. So looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, yeah.

If materialistic needs were the most important thing for human beings, right? Yeah. Then why are some human beings ready? Right, in order to reach what did you call self transcendence? Self transcendence? Yeah, yeah. So many people who take drugs, what are they trying to do?

They are trying to self transcend. When you talk about things, like for example, psychedelics, yeah. When you talk about smoking marijuana and heroin, like not everyone does it just because they want to get high even when they want to get high, right? What does it mean high? It's, it's an attempt to reach self transcendence. That's what he is trying to do. And these people will deprive themselves of food and shelter, and sex and all of those things in the hierarchy of needs. Because that need to self transcend is more important than all the other needs, right?

You see, this is really deep.

It's very, very deep when you understand that, right? And, because why because human beings were not created to be sophisticated monkeys, we were not created to be sheep and cattle, just grazing and looking for where the grass is greener. We are fundamentally spiritual beings. Our real home is paradise. Right? That's an paradise is a place of transcendent beauty, where we see the face of Allah and we commune with angels, right? This is where we're supposed to be. Right? And where we are far from doing any evil or doing anything that is displeasing to God, this is our true nature. Right?

Okay. So this is the thing is that at the end of the day, anyone who does not know God, anyone who does not know the path to God, anyone who is not on that path of surrendering and submitting to God, and following his guidance, they are going to be missing all of those dimensions of their being. Right. They, you know, like I said, like, even when you talk about something like mindfulness, I mean, mindfulness is essentially a spiritual practice. It's rooted in all spiritual traditions, right? What they've done now is they've taken this idea of mindfulness, divorced that from the spiritual tradition of organized religious practice, right. And they just basically made it as

another thing to it's pure opiate. It's like an opium for the masses, so that you can be a more productive worker in the cog machinery of the mass consumer society. Why? Because they realize that human beings are missing some sort of spiritual dimension. They don't really want them to follow true spiritual guidance, right? So what do they do? Give them a little bit of it, right? This is gonna make you more productive, right? Learn to be mindfulness. But like I've said previously, like, if you're not mindful of God, you're not really mindful at all. I mean, you may be more mindful than you know your average football Hewlett hooligan, right. Drinking in the pub and beating people up.

Yeah. But you're not really mindful. If you're not mindful of God in what you're doing. You might you actually really mindless, right? So this is the problem, right? It's all just trying to keep people like people are desperate people.

A lot of realizing there's this gap in their life, people are realizing that that pure materialistic explanation is not real. In any it's not real. So

yeah, yeah, I want to take you back to a sorry, just to make one point, bro. So the real ultimate problem with all this New Age spirituality stuff, it literally is opened for the masses, right? It's literally distracting people from what is really going to give them life. Yeah, it's a little bit like you know, and that instead of a person really recovering and getting out of hospital and living a full life, they just keep your life support machine. That's what it is like, it's just giving you this artificial semblance of life, but it's not really life at all. I really liked that example, I want to take you back to a speech because this it dovetails with what you're saying. A speech, which

took place some years after the launch of the new New Atheists movement. So the four horsemen, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins, one of them Harris, he actually went a bit stray from that perspective, he gave a talk in which he said to the atheists, that unless we can tap into spirituality, unless we can catch up and understand the deep reality, which religion has been trying to tap into, then we're going to be at a severe disadvantage. And this entire talk was given in front of a bunch of atheists. And he was trying to convince them saying, Guys, there's some things very significant, which we are missing out on. So, you know, this type of thing, even hardcore

materialist, essentially, they realize they're in a losing battle, unless they can provide some spiritual, you know, so sort of framework.

Yeah.

I mean, like I said, you know, they'll try to do it, obviously, with the advances in psychology. I mean, you know, it's funny on my, you know, I was went for a walk today with my boys. And on the walk, I was thinking, you know, about this subject.

And, you know, I had this realization about science, right? Science calls, all sorts of things like myths and legends and nonsense, and there's no proof for it until they discover it. And then it's like, science has discovered this. It's like, No, we flippy knew that all the time. What do you mean, science discovered it? Right? You are the one saying that was all probably gobbledygook. Yeah. And now suddenly, science has discovered it. And you think it's real because science discovered it, we always knew it was real. It was always there. And this happens all the time, by the way, but this happening all the time. Like, it's just ridiculous, right? This this viewing the world through the

lens of science as if it's only valid when it's validated by science, it's probably one of the most absurd irrational things amongst them very many irrational things that human beings do. Right?

You know, like, I mean, like, like, like, you frozen, bro. No,

no, no, I just, I just remembered something you said a few years ago that I think the father considered his time scientists were just seen as sort of quacks. I mean, this whole sort of scientism was that you said that, that just 100 years ago, scientists have taken them. It wasn't me. But I mean, certainly they're exactly I mean, you know, if you read the history of science, of course, scientists were, it was called natural philosophy. It wasn't even called Yeah, it was, it was called natural philosophy. And these guys were just rich people who just, you know, followed a particular methodology have invested a lot of time, right. And it wasn't really taken seriously at

all. Right? What was taken seriously, and in fact, most of Well, up until recently, anyway, most of the so called advancements in science has nothing to do with science. It's to do with mechanics and engineering, right? And besides me, like to claim it for itself, but it's not it's basically human beings tinkering around with how things work. Yeah, it's trial and error, and thinking and thinking around with how things work, even including, you know, electricity in the sun. That's all they're not scientific inventions, per se. It's just someone like the wheel. Right, the wheel wasn't a scientific invention. It was just someone came up with an idea and kept fiddling around until they,

you know, until they got something that worked, right. But obviously, that's not true anymore. Now, science, you know, now scientific discoveries, discoveries are having a real impact in, you know,

how things are done, right, and how we can,

you know, you know, discover new things, but like I said, I mean, I think what we will find increasingly in the future, is that things that human beings have always sort of understood, and we've always taken it for granted. Science will, you know, discover them but like I said, they're not, they're not scientific discoveries. They're just things we always knew were there and science just as caught up, I think is the things that and this, this applies to the world of spirituality. I mean, they'll just take things

was brought. I remember one Sheikh Abu Abu Salam, right. I was having this conversation with him a while ago, right? Because obviously, as you know, I'm hugely interested in psychology and you know, the human mind. I think it's fascinating. It's one of the most like, you know, the whole journey into the inner being is just like an incredible, like a whole different dimension. But it's very interesting that he said, You know what, when I look at some of these books of psychology, I actually noticed that it seems like literally, they have cut and pasted things from Ghazali in from spiritual masters, literally, like the sentences, the sentences are the same. It's literally as if

they went to their books, and they cut it, and pasted it, and they just call it psychology. Right? So like I said, that these spiritual cycles, what he called psycho spiritual truths, right, that have been known for generations and for ages. Right, you know, and but now, you know, psychologists are discovering them, right? I mean, that's it, you know, you sit down and listen to any one of these people who is talking about whether it's about happiness, or, you know, whatever depression, these things, you'll find, it all sounds very familiar to us, right? A lot of it sounds, you know, character leadership, you know, it's like, we know, all of this stuff is there and our dean is it's

been there for 1400 years, 1400 years ago, and it's been there in Christianity. It's been there in Judaism. It's been there. And to be honest, most organized religions. It's been there, right? The bottom line is short of coming up with their own organized religion. You need I mean, this is this is I want to leave this for another day. I want to leave the discussion of why do we need organized religion? Right. I think that's what we should talk about next week. Yeah. i Why do I don't want to discuss about it now? Because it's, it leads on to the next discussion, right? If the new age or the New Age stuff is very interesting, is there's something out there but a lot of it, they're getting

it wrong. Right? You know, and obviously, we have this need for spirituality we have this need for these psycho spiritual disciplines. Well, why not follow it follow organized religion, why should we we should lay I'd like to put the case for that. But I'm not going to put it now. Let's leave that for next week. And Sharla I think this is a good topic. Why do we need organized religion? Absolutely. And just I mean, when you when you when you just said that I was thinking about going inside and grabbing a book from the 1940s on religion without revelation by Julian Huxley. Well, he wrote, yeah, he wrote this book in 1940. And he actually described because in the preface of the

book, he's obviously describing the current events in London and World War Two was actually just begun. And he describes Communism and Nazism as a religion. And then he goes on to argue why there needs to be a naturalistic atheistic Darwinian religion, from the bottom up because we still need a religion so we can start off on that inshallah. Interesting. So Julian Huxley was Aldous Huxley's what sound or something. He was Thomas Henry Huxley, his grandson,

but always Bulldogs grandson. So yeah, interesting thing about him. This is a good way of plugging the next the next show in Sharla is that he was a militant atheist. He believed in a new religion for humanity, which he called evolutionary humanism. He was the first president of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. And he believed this new religion has you had to be evangelized to the world.

And he was in a very powerful position to do that. So that'll be an interesting topic to begin off with, but just like, Have you discussed that in Darwinian delusions on your YouTube channel, bro? No, not my I think that's I think maybe we need to swap maybe I need to be the host for you on Darwinian delusions. We could do that we could do that. We need to do a row because that that isn't the topic that I want to hear you discuss Inshallah, on your channel? Yeah, I need to do more research because I'm not too I'm a bit like still it's very interesting, but I haven't done too much Well, I think that's gonna be something that I have to do bro we have to give you a deadline for

that.

Deadline what we want to hear more from you, bro. We want to

everyone does visit your channel as well, bro down in delusions where, you know so well, Mashallah. He's our growing expert on, you know, showing the How can we say it showing some of the deficiencies in Darwinism as a convincing explanation? Absolutely. Okay. So before we end, I've put a plug in there for the forbidden prophecies. And that's obviously linked to New Age.

Spirituality by the likes of people are Aleister Crowley, who are massive into this. And he's described in the book as well.

Yeah. Could you just explain what the purpose of this book is and why people should read it? Yeah, I think it's I think it's very interesting from my point of view of talking about prophecies. I think it's very specific. It's a very, very specific book, on the realm of prophecies, astrology, Nostradamus, Aleister Crowley may in prophecies, those type of things that a lot of people plug into? And he's just examining that. Yes, I mean, from the point of view of, it's very powerful. If there are some people who have some how been able to see in the future, for most of us, that would be a very, very convincing argument that there is, you know, that they have some way to access some

type of knowledge that is not explained. materialistically they have some, but I mean, what he does is he really examines how true their claims are. All right. So yeah, he's pretty thorough with Nostradamus. And some of these claims, and to see really the things they predicted, did they really come true? Was it really true? And the conclusion is no. But interestingly enough, when we look to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa salam, may God's peace and blessings be upon him, we see that the predictions that are there in the Quran, and that were made by the Prophet Muhammad have actually clearly consistently come true.

And because, of course, the origin of these prophecies was not the Prophet himself. He didn't claim to have this knowledge from himself. This was something that he got from God. So it's like a proof of prophethood. I think that's what's useful about that book. It's one of the proofs of the prophethood of Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings but when I say proof, I mean, you know, it's one of the signs. Yeah.

So just before we end, I just remembered something. There's a, there's a brother who lives actually not too far from here. He asked me a very difficult question or a difficult situation for me. And maybe just because it's related to this topic, you can answer it and we can actually, I can send him the video after this live stream, and I'm sure he'd appreciate it. So with him, he was a Sikh who became a Muslim. And we contacted some of the brothers from Speaker's Corner to give Dawa to his father. Now, I obviously, shake when you've disappeared.

Yep. Okay, you binary? Yes, sorry. So what happened was, he contacted some of the brothers in Speaker's Corner to give Dawa to his father. Now, we obviously assume that his father is Sikh, because he was a Sikh who became a Muslim. And it turned out that actually no, his father converted from Sikhism to Christianity. So we had to and obviously, Speaker's Corner, deal with Christianity. So it was supposed to be somehow easy for us. But then he explained, a complete

a completely new angle, and we will, it was just very difficult to handle. Right? What he said is, look, my father became Christian, but he didn't become Christian from Sikhism, just based upon. I don't know, the arguments from the Bible. It was simply that I wasn't born, right. And my, my mom wasn't getting pregnant. So as a Sikh, he went to the Hindu pundit, he went to different people to try and get his mum pregnant. And then what happened is, he went to a priest.

I'm not I'm not sure what denomination and that priest basically said, in two weeks time, the Holy Spirit will come and you will have a son, your wife will be pregnant. Two weeks later, his wife did become pregnant, and she was born with him. And this is only one son and he actually converted to Islam. Now, he wanted us to give Dawa to his father. And I actually said to him, Look, I don't think anything to do with what you've heard our Speaker's Corner is going to help in this situation, all of the arguments against the Trinity and that sort of thing. So for him, what advice would you give him on how he can give power to his father? What what when I meet people like this? Yeah. I, the

first thing I do is validate their experience. Yeah. I said, Listen, something happened. A miracle happened. Something amazing happened. Yeah. And I'm not even going to deny the reality of that experience. So that's what I say to born again, Christians, people who say, I was like this, I was like that, then I believed in Jesus, and it changed my life. And I said, Look, God, this, how you have to understand about God, God is compassionate. God is merciful, right?

If you take any step towards God, God is going to take you know, he's going to come towards you even more, right? You did the best that you could. You took a step towards God. Right? And for sure, Christianity is definitely more true than Hinduism, Sikhism, any of those other things that you went to. It was the closest truth that you came to. Right. And it's

Not that someone who's Christian can't have some connection with God, right? Because even I, as far as I remember even telling me I mentioned this right? There are people who even not they're not, you know, they're not Muslim, right, but because they're sincere, and they're doing the best they can. And you know, they're on their path with the best knowledge that they have. Right? So it's not that it's not that everything about what happened is completely wrong. But however, you have to understand that God is going to keep testing you. And maybe there is a greater truth than the truth that you discovered. There is something more true, it's not that everything that you went through

was wrong. It's not that everything about Christianity is wrong. Absolutely not. Right. A lot of it is true. Right? However, this is a test from God to see. Are you really gonna follow the right path? Do you really love God? And you? Do you really believe in god i? Or are you attached to some particular experience that or some particular thing that happened to you? This is your test, all I can do is explain to you what Islam is and why it's the truth and understand it. And my advice to you, this is just a test to see from God, whether you are really you love him or not. Because if you love God, you will follow the truth.

Yeah, that's how I would approach that particular situation. Yeah, I really like how you said, you wouldn't deny the experience within the interpretation of the experience. Yeah, it goes back to basically what we've been saying. Right? Yeah. No, and it's the same with the New Age stuff, people experience things that are really real, right. Some of them to be honest, we don't have an explanation for and we don't need to write, you know, I mean, they happen, but some things are just pure deception.

You know, it's not the experience wasn't real. It's just that how you interpret them.

Absolutely. So you've got another live stream in approximately an hour from now. Okay. Would you like to say something about that? Yeah, I mean, I do. And I do a regular show with Newcastle fast FM, which is Marshall, I've been going since the Ramadan. All of my Facebook users know I do another one on Monday, a regular one, which is the journey into yourself, it's all about knowing yourself. I've been doing that almost every week since Ramadan. If I don't say martial, it's been an amazing journey. That I, you know, I think I need to sort of condense it all and turn it into some sort, of course, or something that people can follow it, you know, rather than listening to me going on for

an hour everyday, but really useful. But I also do this. On Saturday nights, I do this,

you know, this show with Abdullah Baker, who is an old friend of mine from, you know, used to be the Emir of Brixton mosque, and it's been involved in many things, including the you know, what you call it, anti extremism, it's all become an industry now. Yeah. But he's a sort of expert in that. Have what you say what you went about it? He's a good brother, right? He even you know, if people questioned some of the things he's got involved in, but you know, he I'm sure he's done it all very sincerely. But you know, I know him from time he's a good brought brother. Handle learn. So we have some really, really interesting and challenging discussions. You know, we like each other a lot, but

it doesn't stop us having a really good go each other. You know, we disagree. So yeah, so bro, tell us more. I want everyone to know more about your channel as well, bro. Because what because obviously, you know, tell us about Darwinian delusions, bro, and what what started you down that path? Because I would love people to tune into that, like, you know, I've listened to a couple of your talks really interesting, bro, one of your lectures I listened to about the you know, the failings, not the Fens of Darwinism. But you know, it was really interesting to see that when people talk about all evolution as a fact, like the Earth goes, right? And this Earth goes around the sun,

right? And you just show no, it's not like that at all. Right? So tell us about your journey into looking into Darwin Darwinism. You have a live stream shortly. So I'm aware of time, I'll be very quick. Well, there's two, two things. The first is that

in 2015, late 2015, when I was at the IRA office, I showed you my first presentation that I was giving on this topic before the channel was launched. And once I gave the presentation, it's quite technical. And your advice was, forget the technicalities, you just need to show to people that they've been lied to. And that's the most important thing that you need to show people that there's propaganda involved, so that they don't, because they're not going to understand the science. I don't remember fully what your advice was, but it was definitely along the lines of get people to understand that they've been lied to like that. And that's obviously true. So that's one of the

reasons why the channel was was actually launched a second is you recommended a book which I didn't know Darwinian very term, right? And I literally read that book.

Walk with a fine comb, and that primed me. And the reason why is because it is an atheist philosopher, it was run on about. And just before we by the way he published the book he actually committed suicide it was it's quite sad story. But that book primed me and he opened up all these channels, right? So Darwinian fairytale, so I thought, okay, Darwinian delusions, you know, The God Delusion.

It's nice sort of thing. The main objective is, is like you're advised to get people to understand. It's definitely more complicated than you think. Like on the on the minimum, it's not a eternal truth. And then that's a segue for them to learn themselves and understand that science isn't the be all and end all. That's basic. Okay, everybody just watching. We have a Sapiens live, by the way, around eight o'clock on Sapiens Institute is going to be myself and my job, and we will see all that As Salam aleikum

wa