Fahad Tasleem – Experiential Signs Spiritual Experiences & Finding the Truth
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Bismillah R Rahman Rahim, Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa Salatu
was Salam ala Rasulillah crema my bod. So I wanted to welcome
everyone here, to this the Sapiens live
session, we're going to be Charles speaking about the topic of
experiential signs, how to use people's spiritual experiences to
help them find the truth. Now, this particular topic, it's it,
it's of interest to me specifically because,
you know, recently I was with someone and I asked him, I said,
you know, if someone came to you, and asked you to define or to
explain Islamic spirituality, how would you do it, and I got a, and
this is a room full of what I would say, you know, practicing
Muslims who are passionate about their faith and so on. And they
really had a diverse range of answers.
Whereas when I presented the question, how would you introduce
Islam to someone, just as a general principle, you know, they
had kind of your standardized, you know, Tawheed, starting with
Allah, Allah is worthy of worship, and so on, so forth. So that kind
of led me to, to really think deeper about the concept of
spirituality within Islam, and then how we can use spirituality
or spiritual experiences, as a tool to invite people to encourage
people to think about the truth of Islam. So, with that said, what
are we going to be speaking about today? Well,
what we're going to be covering in this topic, in today's session,
we're gonna be looking at why this particular topic and why now, why
is it more important than ever, that we understand this topic
in a way that we're able to articulate it properly, that we
ourselves understand it, and that we're inviting humanity to Islam
as it is as the normative understanding of Islam. And we'll
get into that in a second. Because one of the things that I'll be
reasoning, what I'll be speaking about is that a normative
understanding of Islam devoid of a concept of spirituality, is in
fact, not really an appropriate method. Because it is only giving
someone a piecemeal understanding of Islam, it's not holistic. Okay.
But I'll get into that. So we're going to start off with
understanding why this topic and why now. So we'll look at it,
we'll look at our contemporary world, we'll look at specifically
spirituality and spiritual experiences, how people are
craving, deeper spirituality and so on. Then the second part, we
will move on to or the second section, we're going to looking at
our current approaches, when we as Muslims, or people that are
interested in inviting people to the truth, inviting people to
Islam? What are the current approaches that are that are being
used? And how are they you know, how do they compare with a more
holistic understanding of Islam? And where can we perhaps improve
in that, we're then going to move on to the concept of Islamic
spirituality itself. Like I mentioned, I had, I had a
conversation with, with a group of people and, and I asked him what
Islamic spirituality was, and there's such a diversity of
answers, that it will I was a bit taken aback even though, you know,
if I asked some of you what is Islamic spirituality, you might
actually be able to give a pretty succinct, pithy answer, and say,
Well, this is Islamic spirituality. But nevertheless, I
think it's important that we ourselves if if it's true, that we
can use spirituality, and spiritual people spiritual
experiences, as a way to call people to the truth, to invite
people to Islam, then it's very important that we ourselves, have
a good understanding of what Islamic spirituality is, so that
that's what we'll cover in the third section. Now,
after understanding what Islamic spirituality is, we're going to
look at the ontology of the soul. And what I mean here, in fact, is
more perhaps it should be better titled The ontology of the human
being. Because while we understand we may understand, a conceptually
what Islamic spirituality is, if we don't understand the nature of
the human being, and its and its in his connection with the soul
and the body and so on and so forth. Our excuse me, our
understanding, may be one that is not we're not able to articulate
Islamic spirituality as it should be.
articulated. So we'll get into that. In the fourth section. The
fifth section, we're going to take an example of a spiritual
experience, in the sense that one of the we'll look at a couple of
approaches of how to use spiritual experiences, one of those
approaches is going to be, how can we invite people to spiritual acts
that we as Muslims do, and to partake in those acts and partake,
partake in some of those acts, with a good understanding of
Islamic spirituality. So we'll have an example of one of those
spiritual experiences, or spiritual acts, let's say, that
are inside the Islamic paradigm Islamic worldview. The second
thing would be What about someone that has their own spiritual
experience? A Christian has their spiritual experience or Buddhist
has their spiritual experiences? How do we then deal with that? And
how do we use that as a means to call people to the truth or invite
people to Islam? So that's in general, that's the that's where
we'll be going in this particular presentation inshallah. So I ask
Allah subhanho, wa taala, to make it a means to our betterment both
in this dunya and the Astra and ask Allah subhanho wa taala, to
accept it from all of us, and all of you that are out there in sha
Allah. Okay, so why this talk? And why now? Well, one of the things
that we see that within the modern world, you find that people have a
multiple have have had many, many distractions, have many things
that have that are part and parcel of the modern world, that cause
the human being, to almost live a type of encircle insular, cerebral
cold life, right. So we in the modern world, we have access to a
lot of information right at our fingertips, we have access to
comforts and things that we would consider, you know, very, you
know, certain eases within the modern world that we could never
imagine, you know, 5060 100 200 years ago. So, a lot of those
aspects of the modern world,
many would argue that, that causes the human being a type of
discomfort. So you could be on your cell phone, and you could be,
you know, let's say, looking for that, that particular text or you
receive a certain text, you put your phone down, but then you get
a notification. And, you know, research is research has shown
that that notification is somewhat more or less equivalent to
getting,
you know, it's the phenomena of getting a notification is, is
similar, somewhat similar to taking a type of drug or having a
type of high. So you know, the same phenomena occurs within the
the, the the chemicals within the brain. And so when you get that
text, you're looking for the next text, or the next email or the
next and the notifications prompt, that's your constant looking from
one social media outlet to another one email account to another. And
so this process keeps on going. But the reality is, is that while
you get that first dopamine shot, that, again, is some research,
many researchers will say that's equivalent to certain drugs that
also give Don't you know, that, that that excrete dopamine
that it's not satisfying. And so I think, the researcher and so you
can see here, within the images, you've got, obviously, the gaming
on the cell phone, that's a cause for this insular, you know,
atomized lifestyle in the modern world. But not only that, just the
phenomena of the modern world as well, in the sense that you have
things that happen around the world, that can also cause a
person to be unstable internally, in the sense that they're looking
for something deeper when it comes to their life, meaning and so on
and so forth. So you have wars around the world, for instance,
that are proliferating, and, you know, that are happening all the
time, you have certain social causes that, that add to this type
of anxiety, where a person is looking for a deeper meaning or
deeper understanding of themselves and the world that they live in.
And just the phenomena of the the environment of us having a type of
consumer mentality, where it's going from one product to the next
buying one thing to the next. And I think it's summarized really
well, just the phenomena of modernity with this statement from
Lawrence shammies. And he writes in the hunger for more searching
for values and an agent
Read, he says, consumption without excuses, and without the need of
justification. And so here he's talking about a, a certain
phenomena of the modern world, and that has to do with consumption.
And so he says consumption without excuses and without the need for
justification.
The beauty part was that it finessed the irksome question of
values and purpose. So during the past decade, during the past
decade, many people came to believe that there didn't have to
be a purpose. The mechanism didn't require it. In other words, the
consumer mechanism didn't require that you needed a teleology you
didn't need a purpose, and meaning and all these deeper things like
the the idea of consumerism, or the idea of the modern world, you
could do away with any concept of, you know, what happens next, what
are what are things are things meaningful, is there a purpose to
my existence, my life, and so on, so forth. So what he's stating is,
during the past decade, many people came to believe that there
didn't have to be a purpose, the mechanism didn't require it,
consumption kept the workers working, which kept the paychecks
coming, which kept the people spending, which kept the investors
investing, which meant that there was more to consume. The system,
properly understood was independent of values and needed
no philosophy to prop it up. It was a perfect circle. It was a
perfect circle, complete in itself, but empty in the middle.
And I think it's very profound, how he how he explained that
because in our, you know, in our day and age, we see more and more
people feeling that emptiness and feeling that idea that yes, I can
go to work and come back and, and you know, and eat my TV dinner and
sit in front of Netflix and chill, and whatever it might be. But all
of this is just a rat race that goes round and round every day is,
you know, just another day. And so that emptiness starts to now not
at the human being. Now, because that emptiness starts to not that
human being
we have to ask like, well, what is that thing that's knowing that the
human being what is it that, you know, what does that
dissatisfaction and the, the ninth century scholar
in hasm
Andalusi he was a Muslim theologian, he was a, you know,
you'd say, a polymath, very erudite scholar, who comes out of
Muslim Spain, in the in the ninth century. And he has this stage,
which I thought was very profound. He said, I have tried to find one
goal, which everyone would agree would be excellent and worthy of
being striven after I found only one.
It's what was that goal? He says, to be free of hub? And how am I
given, I've given a brute brief translation, your anxiety, but I'm
gonna speak about that in a second as well. So he says, dispelling
hum is a goal upon which all nations agree. In the case of
every other objective, there will always be some people who do not
desire it. For example, there are some who have no interest in
amassing a fortune fortune, preferring abstinence to
ownership. So his understanding and his prognosis of the problem
is that that thing that's needed that whole within the human being,
is that the problem that that people are feeling, feeling is the
problem of him. So what does he mean by Hummer? What does the word
hum mean? So, lanes lexicon, defines it as follows. That hum is
anxiety, that's kind of a one word answer or disquietude, or trouble
of mind. And this is very important because what we're going
to see as we move forward, is that one of the things that Islamic
spirituality provides is a type of freeing from a trouble of the soul
and the trouble of the mind and what exactly speaking about So,
coming back to the definition of hum, he says, hum is anxiety or
disquietude, trouble or trouble of the mind, solicitude care or grief
or sorrow, distress or disquietude affecting the heart or mind by
reason of some harm or annoyance that is expected to happen and
this is a really important distinction between hum and the
hum. So he says and he actually mentioned that next he says
differing from lum which signifies distress or disquietude affecting
the heart or mind by reason of what has happened. So we noticed
that you have this concept of certain occurrences that are
happening or what have
happened in the past, let's say that is what you will call him
when you're you feel something about things that have happened
happened in the past. But what hum really is, is this idea when you
start reflecting upon what's happening to now and what's going
to happen in the future. And we start looking at the future and
saying, it's all just empty. I'm just a cog in a machine. Right.
And I personally think that in the COVID environment, where many of
us were truly atomized in the sense that we had this existence
that became extremely insular and solitary, we were very alone. In
many cases, that this, this idea of hum became exacerbated, we felt
more of it, right. And so hum, as opposed to hum hum is related to
that, which is about your current situation, or the future, when you
look to the future, and it's bleak. You've just day in day out.
So where does a person go? And where's the deeper satisfaction
and deeper? You know, like, where's this all going? And like I
said, as opposed to thumb, which is things that happened in the
past, or occurrences that happen the death of a loved one, whatever
it might be. So you have we have this problem. It's, it's it's
reached, you know, a very extreme level in the modern day and age,
right.
So now enter the modern gurus, obviously, if there's a problem,
you're going to find people rushing to give a solution to that
problem, and truth. And so what I have here is a picture of a number
of prominent, you can say, modern gurus. So you know, and I'm sure
you recognize some of them, at least right here in here in
Houston, you've got Joel Olsteen, he's a Christian preacher. But a
lot of his talk is all about, you know, you and hope and you know,
that you can do it and you can you can get there by the will of
Jesus, and so on and so forth. And so, you know, he's, he's, he's
giving this deeper solution, which what you'll notice is when you
hear when, when he's speaking, he's not necessarily giving very
robust,
deep academic arguments or deep academic dissertations about how
to solve this emptiness, but a lot of it is almost you can say, super
superficial, superficial talk, you know, just Kalam, folly, as they
say, right. But yet it kind of inspires people. So every Sunday,
people would come to the church or tune in on TV, and he would have
these messages of hope and the future and it's bright, and Jesus
is with you, and so on and so forth. For with what goal or what
understanding the understanding that humans in our in modernity
are craving that. Similarly, you have a YouTube sensation, I would
say Sadhguru. Now he's coming from an Indian paradigm, let's say a
Hindu paradigm. And so but yet, what is he presenting, it's all
about the self and sitting still solitude and all of these various
ideas. Again, it's there because he understands, like Joel Osteen
understands that there is this human need, and human beings are
craving this, especially in modernity. And of course, the last
one is Tony Robbins. So you're talking about, you know, someone
that is outside the context of a religion, or a specific
philosophy, but it's just more of that, you know, self help feel
good, you can do it and the future is yours, and so on and so forth.
Now, that being the case,
what we want to ask, is, what where does Islam fit into all of
this, like when we want to invite people to Islam, there is a deeper
spiritual need. There is a deeper spiritual calling that people
have, there is a disquietude, there's anxiety, there is a a hum,
and what is very unfortunate is that within our tradition, we have
a deeply spiritual tradition. But when we look at our own approaches
to how we deal with the concept of Dawa, or inviting people to the
truth, or encouraging people, or helping someone to find the truth,
we find that many times it's almost cold and clinical. Because
we are so focused on the argument, or we're so focused on you know, a
type of that we want to make Islam just be very rational. And so
we're going to now employ various means of discursive reasoning to
say look, you have, you know, premise a premise b therefore, C,
that sometimes when
We miss out on the fact that we're not talking to a machine. But
we're talking to a human being that has a multitude of emotions,
and psychospiritual states and opinions and and worldviews,
paradigms, cultures and so much that goes on within the human
project. And we tend to hyper focus, many of us tend to hyper
focus on one element that almost makes Islam seem just, again,
cold, cerebral clinical, so therefore, we have this human
machine, and we're going to input certain information. So we have
information, Allah is one, the only one where the worship
Mohammed Salah Salem, Prusa, prophethood, that are the shahada
right now they've been guided, when in reality, we may be missing
the bigger picture. So what I wanted to look at next was
comparing our or in many circles, the current environment, or the
current understanding of what people generally think Tao is, or
what people think, sharing Islam is, or, or sharing the truth, or
inviting someone to the truth, or helping someone finding the truth,
what is somewhat prevalent, and perhaps this has to do with the
modern age itself, that we ourselves are affected by that
sort of consumer, you know, cold, cerebral, you know, view of the
world, that we've been kind of put into the position where we, we
have limited the invitation to Islam to just debate and just, you
know, kind of being able to show the superiority of Islam by
putting down another person or whatever it might be. And again,
you're gonna see this and I'm not knocking debate in its entirety,
obviously, that has a benefit. It has a you know, there's certain
times when when when debate is necessary, but a lot of times we
have now become myopic in how we understand inviting someone to the
truth. So it goes from this kind of caring, warm,
you know, welcoming phenomena, to one that becomes almost cold, a
truce, almost, you know, that it's, it's, it's just full of
debate, right? It's full of kind of just argumentation didn't
write. Yet when we look at it, we're actually inviting a complete
human being. So we're so the two approaches, we can you have one
that's quite prevalent, which we will call functionalism. Right? So
functionalism, it's more it's represented by that robot that's
on the my right side of the screen. So functionalism is a view
of the human being that has a type of understanding of the person
you're speaking to, to be like a robot. So what is the robot is
programmed, right? So there's an input, there's an output, there's
no sort of reflection or contemplation. It's, there's no
feeling no emotions, it's just you have you know, a certain input,
certain premises, certain conclusion, deductive reasoning,
you know, discursive reasoning, whatever it might be, and then
boom, you have an output. But in reality, the human being is not
just pre programmed, and does not lack reflection, contemplation,
feelings, and emotion. Rather, the human being is a complex network
of the upper right, the intellect, the knifes the desires, and you
know that that base base desires, the rule, the spirit, or the soul,
within the human being, that consciousness, the ULb, the heart,
the fitrah, as we're gonna speak about, and that this human being
is extremely deep and extremely multi varied, and it has a, it's
very complex. So, when we look at these, the human being, even when
we look at our tradition, Allah subhanaw taala, when describing
the human being doesn't just say that this is a thinking being. Now
I'm not saying Allah subhanaw taala doesn't mention that we are
thinking beings, of course, we're always encouraged to think, to
ponder of Allah taki Luna, do they not use the reasoning, but Allah
describes the human being in many ways, and some of those ways have
to do with that hum with that disquietude and the reasons for
that disquietude. So for example, how does Allah describe the human
being, he says in one in that first ayah that I mentioned here,
what canel Insano acciara che in general, the human being loves to
argue,
you know, in another, another place in the Quran, suitable calf,
Allah subhanho wa Taala says Wilma ot terminal en mi Illa kalila.
We've only given you a just a minuscule little bit of knowledge.
And so with that little
knowledge, how does Allah describe the human being? Went loves to
argue, right? Little bit of knowledge, but based on that
little bit of knowledge, loves to argue, that's just, you know,
whether the person, you know, do they know the entirety of the
other human being they're speaking to do they know their complete
background? Do they know that this person was abused as a child,
whatever it might be all the background, the human being loves
to argue, right? The human being is in haste, what kind of insanity
are Jhula? Right, that the human being is constantly in a hurry,
that rat race I was speaking about, that's, you know, something
that we you know, that things we want things done quickly, and
immediately. And so now it's just we're always in this rat race,
this idea of just taking some time out and calming oneself to think
deeper when someone is in that circle that I was speaking about
earlier, or that Lauren shammies was speaking about earlier, that
being caught up in that circle. It's part of the human condition.
The human being is anxious again, anxiety hum, right? In Al Insana,
holy, holy call Hulu are indeed the human being is created
anxious, right, mankind is an ingredient in decrease anxious,
either Messiah who shall rouges who are, and when some sort of
evil touches him, right, this goes back to home versus home, what
sort of evil touches him, he's impatient? Oh, man, this is like
my world is about to be destroyed, I don't know what's going to
happen. And all of these, you know, my role has come crumbling
down. But then what happens when good comes? What either must sell
hadal Manu, ah, but when that good comes, they withhold it, they get
greedy with it, right? And such is the human being right little bit
of knowledge, and making conclusions arguing argumentative,
you know, being impatient, being anxious, withholding good, you
know, being very impatient when evil touches the human being, the
human being is complex, right?
Okay, so coming to these two, these two concepts, we're talking
about Tao of functionalism. So a functional approach to the Dow
addresses a human being with, with a mind that functions as a series
of inputs and outputs. So it basically approach the human being
as a computer. What's the assumption here, the assumption
is, is that Dow is based on abstract rational arguments, and
that they are sufficient to produce the results. Alright, so
it's similar to an algorithm. So you have these, you know,
algorithms that you basically put out. And so the, or you have
algorithms, you know, much like how the internet works today,
right? There's a series of algorithms. And that's how they
kind of give a,
an avatar. So social media works by making avatars. And then they
basically look at your your, your, your buying preferences, where do
you live? What is your age?
You know, what is your political affiliation? What are your some of
your opinions, and all of that data, data is gathered together.
And then there is an avatar that's created, so and so therefore, and
then you have algorithms, you have information that comes together
with this avatar, to then target you as a human being. But this is
a very good, cold cerebral approach.
And much of the time when we are inviting people to Islam, our
approach is very similar, right? So this approach fails to address
the human in a holistic way. Human beings are not only rational. In
fact, there are a dynamic interplay between emotions,
psychology, cognitive faculties, you know, and I would add to that
spirituality were psycho spiritual, emotive beings.
Let's compare that now looking at that and comparing them
juxtaposing that with Tao holism that will holism and holistic
approach to the Dawa, that addresses the human being, as he
is, as the human being is, Allah knows the human being better than
we know, the human being, right. So we created us. That being said,
we understand that the human being has an intellect, it has a heart,
it has a fitrah as we'll get into in a second, it has enough a body
a rule, and so on, so forth. Okay. So, let's now start. So if that's
the case, if we understand that, that, that the human being is a
complex interplay of emotions and psycho spiritual states, and
culture and background, and cognition, so I don't want to, you
know, basically say that cognition has no part to play. Obviously,
the human being has cognitive faculties. And using those
cognitive faculties will become very important, especially when we
get to the end of today's live seminar. And we speak about the
various understandings of spiritual experiences, because we
can't just do away with cognition, but at the same time, we cannot
just hyper focus on cognition itself with and leave off
For the rest of the of the of the human, emotive psychospiritual
interplay. So let's let's take a brief look at the human being and
I say brief because we have covered a lot of these topics and
other
other courses that that are that are available on YouTube, and
other sapient thoughts series that I know myself I've done. So I'm
going to briefly look at the construct of the human being to
give us a good idea about what is the human being, right what what
do we mean by the human being from an Islamic paradigm. So the first
thing we understand, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam said mobbin mo looting Illa EULA do Al and Phaedra. There is
no child that is born except that they are born upon the fitrah his
parents then make him a Jew, a Christian or Meijin. As an animal
delivers a child with limbs intact, do you detect any flaw?
And so one of the first things we understand about the human being
when we're speaking about what are he was the human right? You can
even say that we're talking about the anthropology, not
anthropology, as we understand it in Western academia, but who are
what is the human? So from that perspective, understand, one of
the first things is that every single human being is born upon
the fitrah. Now, what do we mean by the term fitrah. So if you've
heard,
you know, any sort of talks or live streams from Sapiens, you
know, you know, and if you've been following Sapiens, you know, that
we speak about this very often. So that's why I don't spend too much
time on it. But for purposes of today's live stream, I'm just
gonna present a working definition, I've actually
presented this in a lot more detail in in the sapient thought
series called The Human Project. So if you'd like more information,
you can you can check it out there. But for today's for today's
purposes, the working definition will say is the original, what is
the fitrah it is the original normative disposition, and I'm
using three words their original normative disposition. So the
first what this hadith tells us is that it is original it is the
original way in which Allah created the human being, the term
fitrah is what we call an Israel here in terms of if you study
Arabic grammar, which signifies how something is or the way
something is, so you have similar terms like you have obviously
fifth or up you have a Hilda the way something is created Jinsol
the way the sitting how someone sits or the sitting or the
gathering, then you have the one that many Muslims are familiar
with Qibla the way you turn the direction, you turn, Qibla fitrah,
you know, Giemsa, Hilkiah, and so on. So these terms are about the
way the original state and the original normative disposition. So
here what we're saying when we're looking at the Hadith of the
Prophet Salam, that originally This is how Allah subhanaw taala
created the human being was upon the fitrah it is an original
state. Okay. Second, so we talked about original, original normative
disposition. Allah subhanho wa Taala says for us in what Hagel it
Dini Hanifa, so direct your face towards the religion inclining to
truth hear, Hanifa or Hanif, it's just it's this idea of inclining
towards the truth. The term Hanif it's a bit difficult to translate.
And then Allah says, fifth Allah Hill, Lady Fatima, Nas Alia, it is
the fitrah, right of the fitrah of Allah, the fitrah, that Allah
subhanho wa Taala created all people. And then Allah says lattre
de la, de la, there is no change, no change, there'll be the
creation of Allah. In other words, this
this state are this original, primordial state of the human
being, that it doesn't, it cannot be replaced with something
altogether. So the word here just very quickly, for those who might
be interested, the word here is the V. So had the word been to
hear in other words, to change that, we would say that the fitrah
itself cannot be changed cannot be corrupted. But the deal means to
take something and completely replace it. And so therefore, the
fitrah there can be changed. It can be affected as we're going to
see it can be clouded, but it can never be completely replaced.
There's no Wi Fi in the hulk of Allah, right. It's not the deal in
the federal. So. So this is the way that Allah created the human
being, like I said, the fifth, right, the self, the term itself
is is Malaya which means you know, it is the way the direction how
Allah created something. The second term there, which I
mentioned, was normative. And when we say normative, what we're
speaking about, here, we can we can compare it to the term
descriptive. Okay,
Okay, so just bear with me for a minute. When we talk about
something normative, we're saying how something should be, how, how
is it in, let's say, reality? What is the normal way of understanding
something? Descriptive is how others may describe that
particular thing. So if we, let's say, we want to take a normative
understanding of Islam. It's basically how Islam describes
itself. What does Islam say about itself? If we want to take a
descriptive understanding of Islam, that would mean, well,
let's present Islam to someone in let's say, Midland, Texas, and
what is their perception of Islam? They may say, oh, you know, Islam
is just a whole bunch of rules. And there's people that, you know,
that commit terrorist acts or whatever it might be, that's a
descriptive way of looking at it. But what does Islam say about
itself? What is the normative normal understanding, right? So
you have normative, that which is kind of the the reality or kind of
the normal way something is, and then you have that which is away
from that. So the way the human being is, as it was originally
created to be the normative state, right, as it is, as Allah created
it, this is the second part of our definition. So the original
normative, and then we'll move on to the third point. And that is
disposition. So in other words, there's a certain disposition that
the human being has, that there's, it was original, it's normative as
it should be, right? And by the way, this term, just to maybe
elucidate it a little more. The term normative is quite prevalent
in our current culture as well, at least within current Western
culture, when we are dealing with
you know, things like gender issues, things like the LGBTQ
issues and things like that, because they speak about
normative. So if you said your sis normative, for instance, sis
normative means that you believe that there are two genders you
believe that is normal, that is the normative normal way that the
human being is that there are two genders. Similarly, you may say
that you are heteronormative, you believe that the normal state of
the human being is one of heterosexuality, as opposed to
homosexuality, and so on and so forth. So from that perspective,
it just kind of elucidates the point of what we mean by
normative, the normal way in which Allah subhanaw taala created, and
that normal way has a disposition. Now, there's two main views
related to this particular disposition. And that is, number
one, that this fitrah it contains primary inborn knowledge of
Allah's existence, and that he deserves to be worshipped, right.
And it includes some basic morals as well, that we are born with
this right. The second opinion amongst our theologians is that
the fitrah does not contain knowledge itself. But it contains
the you can say it is the means by which you can get to knowledge and
you can get to truth, it directs one towards the truth, right?
There's a potency that one has that's disposed towards a
recognition of Allah, and that he alone is worthy of worship. So the
fitrah itself has a potency within it to recognize God and a
propensity or that it's primed to worship Allah subhanho wa Taala
alone. So now, whichever opinion one takes, we can understand that
that fitrah your original normative disposition,
when it comes to, you know, the the world that we live in, when it
comes to modernity, when it comes to being brought up in a household
that's, let's say, have a different worldview, this fitrah
can become clouded. And so when that hitter has clouded, you find
that the objective of the person of the one who's interested in
guiding the person back to the truth is to deal with those clouds
to remove those clouds, to have the person that they've moved away
from that original normative disposition, and bring them back
to that true normative original normative disposition that
primordial state of theirs. That is true and how Allah subhanaw
taala. How Allah subhanho wa Taala created the human being. So how is
this done? What is the process by which we do this and this is at
its core, this is what Tao is about. This is what you know,
helping someone find the truth is about it's about unclouded, the
fifth. So, that being said, there are a number of ways that one can
uncover the Phaedra right, one of those is revelation, being exposed
to the Quran, being exposed to the beauty of the Quran, the you know,
the auditory beauty of the Quran, the cadence of the Quran, the
words of the Quran, the deeper meanings of the Quran, reflecting
upon the Quran, and so on and so forth.
or even just the, you know, the acoustics of the Quran can also
have a an effect on removing the clouds or removing these types of
clouds on the fitrah rational arguments. And this becomes really
important. So when really important when we're speaking
about Dow holism versus Dow or functionalism, rational arguments,
again, we're not just throwing them on the side, but we're saying
they are not. They are a way to remove the clouds upon the federal
right one of but it's not the end all and be all right. So rational
arguments, we're not putting them aside, but they can be a means to
removing the removing the clouds upon the federal spiritualities.
What we're going to be speaking about today are spiritual
experiences, one's character, how you approach the person speaking
to critical thinking, how a person can, you know, kind of think
critically about things, experiences, experiencing the
natural world experiencing beauty, positive experiences, negative
experiences, and so on. All of that can be ways to unclouded
fitrah. And the reason these clouds come upon the fifth route,
or the barriers come upon the fifth, or the fifth rise is kind
of moved from its original normative disposition to somewhere
else. The reason that happens a lot, you know, there's a number of
reasons. So number one, it can be one's upbringing, one's
environment, it can also be sins, as we're going to see when we
speak about the ontology of the soul. And there's a number of
reasons these clouds for point being is that one of the ways in
which these clouds can be taken off that you can guide a person or
help someone find the truth is by spiritual experiences, is by
understanding spirituality and, and inviting people to experience
certain spiritual practices, and also giving the person an
explanation of spiritual experiences that they've had,
which may be an alternative to the explanation that they think is
that they think is the correct explanation, and we'll get into
that a little bit later. Okay, so let's start off with this. What is
Islamic spirituality?
All right, so now
I wanted to ask you guys make it somewhat interactive. If someone
asked you what is Islamic spirituality? What would you say?
Give me some on YouTube here. What are some of the
what like, how do you define Islamic spirituality? Someone
says, Okay, does Islam have spirituality? What What does Islam
say about spirituality? What do you think? smuggler?
Maybe I
Okay.
Okay.
So
that's very good. As you someone hit the nail right on the head.
I'm not gonna say who. But all you guys are you guys have the right
idea. Definitely. Right. So the person who said the right thing,
they're gonna find out in a few minutes that they will write
Sharla
Okay, so let's take a look, what is Islamic spirituality? What do
we mean by that? Now, start with spirituality, just very briefly.
It's something that's defined by the Prophet SAW Selim himself in
the very famous hadith of Gibreel, and Islam.
If you remember that it's very extensive. So I'm not going to go
into the entire Hadith. And nor am I going to get into a deep
explanation of the Hadith. But we understand that in this what many
scholars would would consider a foundational Hadith.
The Prophet says salam expounds upon three things, Islam, Iman,
and so on. So just briefly, you know, the Hadith, and it's got
various narrators, and you know, and anyway, so, the Hadith
mentions that someone comes into a gathering where the companions are
sitting with the process, alum, this person is wearing white
clothing, black hair, comes right up to the process and walks up to
the Prophet and salaam sits down puts his hands on the legs or the
thighs of the process. So it starts asking questions. And so
one of those questions is above the knee and none Islam. Tell me
about Islam, the process that I'm expounds upon the five pillars of
Islam, as we know, right, and so again, I'm not going to get into
too many details. And then the person says set up you spoken the
truth. And then the narrator, one of the narrators are willing to
help Bob says I found it very strange that he's asking the
question and yet he's saying that you're right. And then God Larry
salaam asked the process that I'm about Eman, a Bernie handle Eman.
Tell me about Eman the process. I mentioned the Six Pillars of human
right to believe in Allah, the angels, the prophets, the books
and so on and so forth. Okay, and then again, Jeffrey Are you know
the
person says, so that you've spoken the truth. And then he asks him
about it ask the process tell him about Ehsaan tell me about SN what
is Ehsaan. And the Prophet SAW Selim says that our son is to
worship Allah as if you see him for even though you do not see
him, you know that he sees you Okoma called Salah Salem. And so,
when we speak about Islamic spirituality, we see that it's in
this area of what we would call asana and Asana Asana is quite,
it's a quite as a very deep concept, but let's try to at least
scratch the surface inshallah. So we'll start before we get to
Essen. Let's start with a concept of iman first. Okay, Eman. If we
look at the etymology of the word, where the word comes from, what is
the background of the word what is the source of the word, it comes
from the try ladder Amazona. And so when we go to like, Lane's
lexicon yet again,
I'm gonna refers to him if he was or became or felt secure, safe in
the state of security, or safety. Originally, he was or became
quiet, tranquil in heart or mind. So I want us to take a moment here
and think about that for a second. When we look at the word Eman, we
understand that Eman is this internal, what we may call belief,
right? Even though belief is a very loose translation, which I'm
not very fond of, but it has to do with things about like, obviously,
the six pillars of belief, right? believing in Allah, the angels,
the books, and so on, so forth. But from a linguistic point of
view, when we look at the etymology of the word, we see that
it comes from this idea of stability, security, tranquility,
and peace. When we were speaking about the concept of hemp, the
concept of this disquietude, this anxiety, what we find is that what
Eman does is it's giving the appropriate medicine for that.
Right it exactly what Iman is, is to take away How is to settle hum,
it's just it's to get you know, is to take that person that's in that
state, that they're you know that they have the state of anxiety,
they have the state of you know, that they're disquieted
and so on, and gives and kind of solves that issue. Right. So, Eman
is a person when they have this Iman, when they have this type of
internal belief.
The six pillars of the process that I mentioned, and what we
understand about Iman, you find that there is a type of
tranquility and peace that enters into the human being. Now that
tranquility and peace could be due to understanding deeper
existential questions. Why am I here? Where am I going? And, you
know, how did I get here? Right? So, you know, how did I get here?
Like, what is my purpose? What will you know? Why did why do I
exist? The ad having the answers those questions, and having
emailed those answers gives one a sense of stability, a sense of
security, a sense of tranquility. Thus, when someone is faced with,
let's say, challenges in one's life, where we move from home to
them, you find that they can deal with those challenges in a way
that a person that does not have that emotion, can can deal with,
right. So, you know, imagine what it does is it gives a sense of
stability, security, safety, tranquility and peace. And really
the whole idea of spirituality itself has to do with this idea of
tranquility and peace. Okay. So when we say Eman, we say we're
talking about tranquility, peace, security, safety, all this kind of
spiritual, you know, in the spiritual notion of peace and
tranquility. But it's not limited to just a spiritual notion of
peace and tranquility. And this is where the distinguishing quality
of Islam comes up the single cost distinguishing quality of Islam as
a worldview. In other words, you have your modern gurus, whether
you're talking about Sadhguru, whether you're talking about, you
know, Tony Robbins, or you know, whoever it may be, that what
they're trying to do is they're trying to give this umunna This
state of peace and security by various means, you know, by, you
know, giving them hopefulness about the future and, you know,
you can conquer it all and so on and so forth. But where the
Islamic paradigm the Islamic worldview differs, is that when we
think of Eman, it's not just this spiritual type of stability, peace
and tranquility. But it's it's a much deeper type of peace,
tranquility, security and safety. And what do I mean?
When we think about it, it's two types of stability and tranquility
and peace. You have that spiritual stability that spiritual
tranquility and peace, but you also have a rash
component. So remember, I was saying that we, while our approach
should not be Tao of functionalism, where we're now
looking at the human being as a robot, but we cannot be devoid of
rationality either, right? It must work in tandem. Because imagine
someone that they now feel like, so for instance, I was watching a
certain YouTube video, and someone was asking about how Christian
spirituality helped them. And, you know, the person was mentioning
that, you know, I used to be, I used to be very addicted to to a
certain drug. And, you know, and I would constantly need this drug.
And so, every time I would take this drug every time I would, I
think it was mentioning heroin, I would get this warm feeling. But I
kept on needing it over and over and over again, until I found
Jesus. And then that warm feeling that blanket that I needed, was
just Jesus right now, from that person's experience, we understand
that he experienced that, like, one of the things is we're not
going to deny that individual's experience, we're not going to
say, oh, you know, that experience itself is wrong, or that
experience is fake. But the perp The point is, is that what is the
interpretation of that experience? Was it Jesus? Was it Allah
subhanaw? taala? What was the interpretation? And how do you
tell which interpretation a person is going to make of that
experience? That's very real, that we do not deny? How are we going
to understand it? What what is the other aspect that you need to
this, and that's where rational stability comes in. Because you
could have that spiritual experience. And you experienced
it, it's very real. But let's say the rational aspect of, you know,
the Trinity, for instance, that's going to cause instability, it's
going to be you know, you're gonna have disquietude, from that
perspective, a rational perspective. And so, you know, you
can take it and put it in a box called, you know, unsolved
problems, and lock it away and hanging in abeyance. The problem
is, it's still there, though. And so are you really stable, from the
point of view of like what we said, I'm gonna do having that
stability and having that true, deeper peace and deeper
tranquility. So when we talk about Iman, we say that it's related to
the term or comes from the term Amana which has to do with not
only spiritual tranquility, but also has to do with rational
stability, and this is going to be very important moving forward.
Okay. So that being said.
So I just wanted to actually highlight that this concept of
rationality and spirituality, you find this throughout our
tradition, throughout the Islamic sources. And so when we look at
the Quran, for instance, you find whenever Allah subhanho wa Taala
mentions knowledge and I would urge you to look through the Quran
and see for yourself, whenever Allah subhanaw taala mentions the
icon, or mentions knowledge or mentions, you know, knowing
something that mentions epistemological principles or
something of this nature, you will always find something connected to
spirituality around the idea or within the eye itself. So a very
famous idea that's usually quoted in books. You know, so for
instance, books about like Kitab Al Imam Al Ghazali, mentioned
this, actually, there's a catabolism by Sheikh Hussein Amin
as well who also mentioned this, and they mentioned this very idea
that you see on the screen, but they mentioned part of the ayah
the part that they mentioned, because their speed, their focus
is on knowledge. They mentioned the last part of the * yes, the
will Edina Yala Moon will lead in the lion lagoon is the one who
knows equal to the one who doesn't know. But you see, right before
that in the very same ayah Allah subhanho wa Taala mentions
something else that's as if it's kind of coupling two things
together. Allah subhanho wa Taala says a man who according to Allah
in Layli, Sajid and we're all human and you know, is the one who
is on it or devoutly obedient and not in lelee You know, throughout
the night Saj that walk Iman standing, sorry prostrating and
standing right so is the one who's devoutly obedient you know, at
night to standing in prostrating?
He's caught human. Yeah, through akhira is hoping or sorry, he's
fearing the hereafter. Actually, the translations right there. He's
fairly well you have to do Rama to rugby, and he's fearing or sorry,
is hoping in the Mercy of Allah subhanho wa Taala mercy of his
Lord. Okay. So in other words, is the one who is devoutly obedient,
standing and prostrating a night all right.
You know, a fearful of the Hereafter the consequences of
their morality and moral actions and things like that. Well, you
got to do Ramadan, rugby and hope
Paying for the mercy of their Lord? Is that person equivalent to
the one who doesn't do this? And then Allah says holiest they will
live in a yellow moon or land. Well leadin Allah, Allah Moon is
the one who knows, equivalent to the one who doesn't know. In other
words, you have a spiritual reality. These are all spiritual
concepts, spiritual acts, for instance, and both external acts
and internal acts. So the first part Amma who was a man who upon
it on Anna, Lady side, in the Mocha Iman, the one who's
standing, the one who's prostrating and standing, these
are physical acts, but these are physical, spiritual acts. And then
you have internal acts. Yeah, little akhira fearing that's an
internal state of the heart that you understand you as a human
being that you fall short. And you have, you know, certain things
that you didn't you know, you didn't you weren't the best in and
you didn't worship Allah as you should have worshipped and so on
and so forth. So you have a feat you're fearful, you wronged the
person, all those things come inside that person's heart, this
internal spiritual state, yeah, through Africa, that you're
fearing the hereafter. Well, you got to do Ramadan rugby, and that
you're hopeful for the Mercy of Allah subhanho wa taala. Those are
all spiritual aspects, all spiritual acts, and spiritual,
emotional, spiritual, psycho spiritual states
that Allah ties with knowledge. So again, what the reason I'm
bringing this up, and we can see this over and over again, the
Prophet SAW Selim says, there's a dua that process and teaches you
says, Hola. Hola, como, una de bah? Well, I didn't know Bartylla
Bartylla or established Inaba, oh, Allah show me truth as truth. Here
we go, talking about truth, knowledge, rationality, whatever
it might show me truth as truth and allow me to follow it. Let me
follow it and show me falsehood as falsehood and keep me away from
it. Obama calls for SLM. But interestingly enough, it's a DUA,
he's asking Allah for that there's a spiritual component, dua is, you
know, a spiritual act that's both, you know, an act external and an
internal act, and so on and so forth. There's many examples that,
you know, we don't really have the time to expound upon all of them.
The point being, is that when it comes to one, understanding Iman,
that there is a deep connection between rational stability and
spiritual tranquility, and these are constantly connected in our
tradition in the Quran and in the Sunnah, and so on and so forth.
So, now moving on.
So we talked about Iman, we talked about that sort of internal
tranquility, stability on a rational level on a spiritual
level. So now let's speak about kind of the crux of the matter,
and that is exon.
So the term itself as son, just very quickly, it comes from the
trilateral route, try literal route Hashanah, which means good
or to beautify. And you can you can compare it to the term. Jamil,
for instance, because Jimena is another word that is used in in
Arabic to say that something is beautiful, right? So if you want
to say something nice to your wife, you can say Auntie Jamila,
right, and I encourage all the husbands to say that to their
wives, the law, right. So the concept of but generally, when we
talk about the term Hasson and we talk about and we compare to the
term Jamil
something is, you know, that's, that's beautiful versus beautiful
of a nature that's, that's these are two different concepts. All
right now, how the different The term has done, not only talks not
only refers to like an external beauty, but would also refer to an
internal beauty. So it's not only just beauty of
like a physical beauty, one that is seen one that is delightful to
the eyes, but it also refers to a beauty that's deeper inside a
person, right? So that beauty can come from a good moral character
of a person. The person is truthful and honest, and loving
and caring. And so this person has has had like, their their hassle,
right? They're just they're beautiful inside and out. Yeah.
And so that's why the concept of s Sun can also refer to excellence,
that that x, that there's a spiritual excellence, and the
spiritual excellence has to do with the very idea of that you're
not only that you have this not only this external beauty, that's
manifest when that internal spiritual struggle is kind of is
constantly happening. You're constantly going higher and higher
in, in levels up and closer and closer to Allah, that that becomes
manifest externally. So you see someone and they pray, but when
you see them pray, it's just it's beautiful. Right? But there's
Ehsaan there, right? There's excellence in the
particular prayer or in that particular act of worship, or when
you see a person, you know, they say that that person knew on their
face or whatever it might be, that might be because of the night
prayers, and so on and so forth. So Sn is a concept that is, you
know, it's quite multifaceted in the sense that it's referring to a
type of beauty.
And that's, by the way, that's why you can do axon to other people or
as sound to Allah, right is that you can treat like axon to your
parents, right? That That term is used for that particular for that
particular purpose. And that's why it's multi, it has that ability to
do used in different contexts and in different ways. So, that being
the case,
when we talk about s sun, coming from the point of view of
spirituality, it includes the concept of beauty, and kindness
and love and so on so forth, right? The type of s sun when the
Prophet Islam says, it is to worship Allah as if you see him,
for even though you do not see him, he sees you. If that's the
case, what did the process of mean, to see Allah?
Now, obviously, he says, even though you don't see him, we're
not talking about ocular vision, we're not talking about, you know,
seeing Allah like, like, you can, like you can see something like,
like, you know, I can see the camera or I can see the screen.
But yet the Prophet ism uses that phraseology uses those terms. It's
to worship Allah as if you can see him. And this is where I wanted to
move on to the concept of Islamic Spirituality, from understanding
what do we mean by seeing Allah because we're not talking about
ocular vision, there's something much deeper that we're speaking
about.
Okay, so let's move on to very quickly the ontology of the soul.
And this is when we're going to start speaking about what does it
mean to to, in a sense, see Allah obviously we don't see Allah. We
only physically see Allah by way of our ocular sensitive boy,
seeing Allah is a phenomena of the Hereafter, none of this dunya
anyway, so I wanted to touch upon the ontology, this soul, very
briefly from an understanding of what what's known as I had to
know, and this particular ayah Allah subhanho wa Taala says Allah
who notice Samajwadi will old Allah is the Light of the heavens
and the earth muzzleloader. He commish cat. The example of his
light is like a Mischka. Howard. Mischka is like a niche that's in
a wall right so back in the olden days, they would put a lamp in a
kind of an indent in the wall or an engraved indent in the wall to
basically focus the light so if you have a lamp the light is going
everywhere. If you put it in the in then it's going to focus it in
a certain place, right. So this particular so the example of his
light is like a niche with which within which is the translation
says when which is a lamp but really what is speaking about is a
mitzvah mitzvah comes from the term Saba, which that which means
like morning, it's that which emulates the morning, right? So
here's spot speaking about the flame, in fact, not about the
lamp. And we know this because right after that Allah subhanaw
taala says, I'll miss VoWIFI Sujatha that the Misbah is in a
class, okay. And this is a Georgia Sujata to Ghana, Coco, Coco, that
this this zoo, Georgia is like a star. That's a pearly white star.
That's a glittering star, and that it is, it is lit by a tree that is
neither of the east nor the West. Okay? And it's a blessing tree. So
a blessing tree, neither the east nor the West. And Allah subhanho
wa Taala says, and and the oil that's lighting this flame is
blessed olive oil of a blessed olive tree. And that oil itself,
it's as if it itself is going to catch on fire. Right? So it has a
certain shimmer, a certain shine that if like it could just catch
on fire itself. And then Allah says no, don't Allah, no Light
upon light, and Allah guys was like, even whomever he wills, and
Allah presents examples of Thun leanness examples for people.
And Allah is the knower of all things. So what does this refer
to? And again, I'm going to move through this relatively quickly.
So I want you to take a look at this diagram. Okay.
So when we talk when we're looking at it to note we see that that
particular flame that was being referred to that is the rule. That
is the soul that is the spirit of the human being. The glass is
referring to the heart of the human being the niche right that
that intense indentation in the wall where you put the lamp, that
is the the torso, the upper torso of the human being this
area right here the chest, okay? The olive oil is referring to the
fitrah, which we spoke about, okay. And when Allah says no run
Allah node, he's referring to the node of your Rua, which is fueled
by the fitrah. Fueled here, I'm in quotations
and the light of revelations, new Quran Allah knows, okay, when this
human construct that we've been given an example of by Allah
subhanaw taala, it's very profound because when we think about the
concept of the rule, it is something that Allah subhanho wa
Taala has created, what we would say x Nilo, in other words, there
are two types of creative processes. So Allah creates by way
of his AMA, right, by his, you know, whenever He decrees a
matter, whenever he says,
Whenever He decrees a matter, he merely says to a gun for your
call, right? So then it's x Nilo, it happens, it's created out of
nothing, as opposed to other creations that have a time
element. And that there's, let's say, pre existing material that is
used to create a particular beam, right. So for instance, the human
being itself, you have the component of the rules, which as
Allah subhanho wa Taala says, When the fuck to female who Hey, and
when we breathe, and when we put them, we breathed the spirit into
Adam alayhis, salam, then the we were taught, we told the angels to
prostrate to animal SLR. So there's a component of the rule,
and then this component of the body, in the very famous Hadith
that you can find in, in most Hadith collections, where the
process of mentioned the creation of the baby, you mentioned that
there, the process that I mentioned, this, you know, various
creative stages from Allah, from from alacarte, Mudra, and so on,
so forth, and describe certain number of days, 40 days, and so
on, and so forth. And that all has a time process. But when it comes
to the rule, it's the angel that comes and puts the rule into the
body, right. So these are two different kinds of
different kinds of creative processes that are part and parcel
to human being, you have the external body, and you have the
internal Ruach. Now, this external body is just like any other
animal's body, okay? In other words, just like animals have the
desire to eat, to sleep to, to form a cage, and so on and so
forth. The human being has those as well, that's part of our animal
or bodily constitution, right, our material constitution.
At the same time, because we have a rule that is fueled, again,
fueled by the fitrah, we also have a moral component, we have a
spiritual component, right? So comparing the two, when you look
at the animal kingdom, you don't see a lion, you know, chasing down
on gazelle. And the gazelle says, you know, in the middle of the
chasing stop to the lion and saying, I find what you're doing
morally reprehensible, right, because there's no concept of
morality, when it comes to the animal kingdom, desires, and
their, you know, they basically obey what their desires, tell them
to do. Right. And that's how Allah created them. However, when it
comes to the human being, there is a Ruhani constitution, there is a
spiritual constitution, in addition to a bodily constitution,
and that Ruhani Constitution, that spiritual constitution is what
gives the human beings limits, because desires in of themselves
are blind. You know, I mean, a desire is a desire, you have a
desire to eat, or a desire to have marital relations or desire to do
this, that desire itself is blind, what gives it its limitations is
the moral component or the root component for Rouhani component.
So this rule that is an every single human being, it is trying
to connect with Allah subhanaw taala. So you can see this kind of
like an outward force on the heart itself, right. And this outward
force is trying to connect with Allah. And that connection happens
by way of Revelation. So the rule is having this outward push on the
heart, and it can connect with Revelation. However, there is an
opposing force on the heart. And that has to do with one's knifes,
that is related to their desires, their bodily base animal desires,
which is having the opposite push on the heart. And so therefore,
you find that the heart is constantly in a state of motion,
right? That's why the heart is known as the earlobe it is always
in the state of overturning right? Allah you can label right like to
overturn. In fact, the word for revolution. In Arabic, one of the
words for revolution is in the lab to overturn right. So the heart is
always in the state and even the physical heart is always in a
state of motion, right always beating. And so the heart is
sometimes expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, right. And
so to is the spiritual heart
because you have this outward push by the rule, and then you have
this kind of, you know, external factors that are pushing upon the
heart, and that comes from the person's bodily desires or
animalistic desires that that a person has. Now, here's the thing,
there is an effect on the heart. That is that when a person sins,
because remember, we said, what are the things that take a person
away from their original normative disposition? So we said, one is
one's environment. So we can see that right off the bat, the
environment has an impact on you know, your, you know, your your
knifes your bodily desires, your culture, your worldview, if you
think like, you know, sexual relations with anyone, and
everyone is okay, that's going to have an effect on the heart.
Similarly, sins has an effect on the heart. And we know this
because the prophets Islam says that when the son of Adam sinned,
a black.is placed in the heart. So remember, the, in our diagram
here, we said that the heart was the glass that surrounds the the
flame, we attach that to the heart, we said that that was the
heart. Think of that in the sense that if a black dots placed upon a
glass, and you have revelation that's coming in, if enough black
dots are upon this glass, you cannot have the light of the rule,
connecting with the light of revelation. And that's why the
recommendation for many scholars that if you are finding a hard
time connecting with the Quran, or spiritual acts, in general, it's
good time to make doba to clear away those sins, right? Anyhow. So
that being the case, we have,
we have an understanding, hopefully, I'll be in a bit
briefly of the human constitution, the ontology of the soul, okay.
Now, let's come back to the concept of worshipping Allah as if
you see him, right, because this idea of the rule, and its
connection with Revelation, notice, it's not a you're not
watching the revelation. But it's something that's attracting the
heart directly. In fact, the very concept of an idea is a sign. And
so a sign points out something that's already there, right, your
fitrah the raw, you know, that you we already have the truth. Either
we have the disposition for the truth, or we have the truth within
us as knowledge, or perhaps proto knowledge. So that particular
truth.
Like when we think about this particular truth, that it's going
to, it's going to be inclined towards something outside of
itself, like revelation or whatever it might be anyway. So.
So how exactly is it that we worship Allah, even though we
don't see him right, is to see Allah started to worship Allah as
if we see him, because there is the concept of ocular sight. And
then there's a concept of spiritual sight, what we may call
insight. And this comes from the rule itself, it's the ability to
see things right. And Imam Al Ghazali, he says, and this is
where the kind of ties in the concept of Ehsaan and single, you
know, the idea of seeing Allah, He says, Now man is composed of a
body which precedes with ocular vision, what an Arab is called
bustle, and a spirit ruler, and a soul knifes which proceed with
intersite basura. Or we can also say, sapiens, right? Each of these
things has an aspect, and a four, which is either ugly or beautiful,
right? Furthermore, and this is important, why did you mentioned
ugly versus beautiful, because you can see certain things that you
immediately recognize to be ugly or beautiful, that has to do with
ocular sight. But you can also feel certain things. In other
words, your rule will testify to certain things as being ugly or
beautiful, and hence the concept of Ehsaan comes in. So. So he says
that each of the things has an aspect and a form which is either
ugly or beautiful. Furthermore, the soul which proceeds with inner
sight, is of greater worth than the body would cease with ocular
vision. And that's really the point here is that what
spirituality, and what we're talking about here has to do with
something that's deeper and more, more inclined towards a person
kind of seeing the truth. And here I'm thinking in quotation marks,
then something that maybe just distinct discursive reasoning or
something, you can just prove right out of the bat, right. Okay.
So we've taken a look at that.
We've taken a look at the the rule.
One, let me just touch on something just to elucidate the
point. So when we speak about the rule, I'm trying to see how to
express this in the best form.
We're speaking about a a certain
like
Uh, so let's let's take a look at the concept of is that when you
look at, let's say a beautiful sunset,
now, you're gonna, let's say be with with your loved one. And you
might say, Okay, well that's beautiful. Look at that beautiful
sunset. And your loved one imagine they say, that's the ugliest thing
I've ever saw. Prove to me rationally that that is beautiful.
The point is, is that there's no rational proof of that, right?
That's something you kind of sense internally, okay? It's an IO. Now
one of the function of ayat is that it, they are attracted, or
they are, they're targeted towards the fitrah. And so that's why the
natural world can be a sign. The Quran has signs or ayat. And what
a sign does, there's two kinds of functions of a sign two functions
of an IRA. Number one, or two or two phenomena that go together
with an IRA. Number one is that there is no time element. Like
with an IRA, you don't, you know, you're not going to take time to
like ponder upon and then then it's like, okay, now just know, it
happens immediately. Right? That's number one. And number two, it
touches on something that's already there. So to give an
example, I given this abrogating, example many times that is that
Imagine now that, you know, after 1020 years after my graduation
from from college, 1020 years later, I'm unpacking some of my
boxes, and I find my gown, my graduation gown, the one I wore
for my graduation. Now, immediately, when I see the gown,
I'm taken back to the day I graduated.
I remember, you know, the look on my parents face, right? They were
proud. I remember, you know, the place I was sitting, I remember
the fact that my last name starts with a tee. And I had to wait for
200 people before I was able to go up and get my degree, all of those
things come back immediately.
Because of something that was already there, that memory that
that that you know that that that whatever memory was there, and
that gown becomes an idea. So there's no time element. And
there's no information transfer, I didn't just learn something new,
it was something that was already extant it was already there, it
was already present, right. And so to when it comes to the fitrah,
the fitrah, that knowledge or proto knowledge of Allah is
already there. And so when you see an idea, it's not just a rational
argument, that therefore now there is but it has a direct type of
connection. Right? And hence, the rule. And you can say like, by
extension, the fifth truck has a type of perception, that is a
better and greater perception than just ocular perception. And I'm
not sure if I actually expounded upon that, in a way that was
understandable, but hopefully, we can, we can expound upon that more
in the in the q&a, inshallah. But I thought this was very powerful
from Imam Al Ghazali. All right, so we're going on, I want to make
sure that we leave some time open for q&a. Let me give you an
example of a spiritual experience. So all of this, this whole
discussion has to do with when you
are calling someone or inviting someone, to the truth to Islam.
And so one of the ways we can do that is by way of inviting people
to spiritual experiences, or spiritual acts that we may that
someone may do, you know, one of the most popular ones, at least on
colleges, college campuses, here in the US, is the FASTA THON, and
I don't know if you guys have a faster thumb or do faster thorns,
and you know, so non Muslims are always invited to fast with the
Muslims.
But what I find missing in those is that while they may experience
the fast, they may not understand the spiritual significance of the
fast. And usually, when we explain the fast we do it in somewhat of a
superficial way, or a way that doesn't really highlight the
reality of the fasting itself. Right. So an explanation we might
give is, we fast, to feel what it's like to be poor, to increase
us in our compassion.
Yeah, that that is that's one of the outcomes of fasting Inshallah,
although I would argue that sometimes it may be you may have,
you know, you may not have that, that may not be the, the outcome
of fasting because, you know, at the end of the day, when you open
your fast, you have a meal, you have your support system orders,
and Allah knows what, right that are waiting for you. Whereas
someone who's truly poor, does not have that. So yes, while you're
fasting, maybe that might be the experience that you have, and
maybe that would increase your compassion, but there's a deeper
spiritual understanding that one needs to have when they're
fasting, especially if you're coming from a paradigm outside of
Islam. So I wanted to give an example of that. That is the fact
fasting itself.
So, what is the spiritual significance of fasting? Allah
subhanho? wa Taala says yes Aluna Can you rule so here we're talking
about the rule of talking about spirituality, they ask you
concerning the rule called say the rule, a rule, I mean Amanita be
say that the rule it is from the AMA of Allah, the Command of
Allah. Okay. And so one thing we understand that the rule is from
the ambit of Allah from the Command of Allah. And I was
touching upon this a bit earlier, when I was speaking about the
different processes of creation, right. So the rule comes from an
Emer from a command. Okay, what is the command? Right as Allah
subhanaw taala says a suited Bacara. But in a similar way, it
will audit what indicado M run for in NEMA your kulula Who can buy a
coin, that he is the originator. And it's interesting that uses
your buddy or some Awatea because the idea comes from origination
origination out of nothing, right? That's why the term Bidda is an
innovation. Like it wasn't it didn't exist before. And now you
just came up with it. Right. So Allah's But Dr. Sommer Whitesville
aren't he creates out of nothing? And he mentioned what how does
that create a process happen? Right? So he says that either
Cadabra when he decrease a matter, okay?
For innama, your kulula, who can for your call, that in He only
says to it, but in other words, significance, which signifies
exclusivity. But in the Maya kulula, who couldn't for your
call, he merely says to it be. In other words, when you're going to
have a creative process, X Nilo, in other words, creating out of
nothing creating by the amount of Allah, He merely says to a beat,
and it is, in other words, by way of his column by way of His Word.
So the rule is by the command of Allah, and that command happens by
way of God and for your goon the speech of Allah the kalam of
Allah, right. So, that being the case.
So why is that significant? What happens in normal law? Well,
number one, remember, we said that you have an animalistic reality of
bodily material reality, and it has its own desires, and so on and
so forth. And then you have the Wuah. Okay, so the animal body
that Allah subhanaw taala created, remember, we said that it came in
went through a process, and much like animals go through a process,
and so on and so forth. So, and yet the rule that Allah subhanaw
taala puts in the human being is by way of his other. Here's the
thing in Ramadan, it's as if Allah subhanaw taala is saying 11 months
out of the year, you eat and you drink, and you do whatever you
want, right. And if we were to take a horse motif, in other
words, like a, an analogy, based on a horse and a rider, and that's
why this is in the picture, your body, your material body, with its
desires is like the horse. The rule is like the writer, the one
that's riding the horse and trying to control the horse, 11 months
out of the year, the horse because you've been feeding it, like all
the food, right? So when you think about your material body, where
does the food come from? The food comes from where it came from, the
material body was created from Earth, Dean, etc. The body was
created from Earth, it gets its food from the earth, right? So you
know, you're gonna get, you're gonna get vegetables and fruits,
and all that is from an earthly material. So when it needs
sustenance, when it needs support, it's going to be taken from the
place that it came from, which is the earth, right? So it gets its
sustenance from the earth. And so 11 months out of the year, this
horse that has been fed all of them what's out of year, it's
running wild like crazy. Why? Because of the rider perhaps isn't
that strong? Because the rider needs to be strengthened. So how
do you strengthen the rider? Well, you give the rider food from its
source, the writer here being the rule, where does the writer get
its source? Where does the rule get its get its sustenance? From
its source? What is the source? The amount of Allah? And how does
Allah issue around it? How does Allah issue commands, confer your
code by the Kalam? Do we have access to that Kalam? Yeah, the
Quran? So how do you strengthen the writer? It's by way of Quran.
Right? So the Quran member neutron Allah, no Light upon light. So you
strengthen the writer by way of Quran. So what happens in Ramadan,
you take food away from the horse, because you're fasting, and you're
spending the day weakening the horse, and you're spending the
nights in taraweeh strengthening the writer. Right? And so we find
that the very purpose of fasting isn't just to feel how the poor
feel, but rather it has a deep spiritual significance because
it's supposed to elevate. So if we were to say as an example,
inviting someone to feel
asked, it's not only inviting someone to fast but connecting the
idea of fasting spirituality, what is the phenomenon here? What are
we trying to do? Right? When we're fasting, we understand that
there's a bodily component, there's an animalistic reality.
And then there you can say, is an agile angelic reality, right? The
rule and strengthening the rule. And so really highlighting the
concept of that, that dynamic, that interplay between the rule
and the body, and so on, so forth. So one way would be to expose
someone to fasting, right, invite them to fast expose someone to the
Quran, because we understand that the Quran is multifaceted, multi
layered, and not only it's, it's it's not only its wording and the
arguments that it presents, but it's multi layered in the sense
that it's acoustics are something that are attractive to the heart
to the rule, right? Neuronal are no right or left relation, the
light of revelation upon the light of the, the rule. So it's
acoustics are attractive, its meaning is attractive, its
structure is attractive. It's recitation is attractive, the
prayer one does by reciting the Quran is attractive, and so on and
so forth attractive to the rule. So having someone exposed to the
Quran, witnessing the tarawih prayers.
Now, here's the thing, and this is the last point I'll make. So we
spoke about the human being spirituality, hopefully, we gave
a good understanding of Islamic spirituality. Now, what if someone
comes and says, Well, I've had spiritual experiences, up to this,
hopefully, we've now understood that spiritual experiences can you
can have them. But that doesn't mean that will lead to true
spirituality, true. Iman, in a sense, or even as sun, because
axon is based upon Iman, which we said was stability, what kind of
stability, spiritual tranquility and stability, but also rational
stability and security. So if someone says, I've had a spiritual
experience, we're not going to deny that experience. You don't
say like, No, you didn't experience it, because they did.
You can't deny someone's personal, you know, first person experience
that they've had. But what you would encourage the person to do
is to stand in the possibility that there's a different
interpretation, one that is more holistic, that gives you
tranquility, rationally and spiritually, by way of your
knowledge and by way of your heart, mind and soul, right. And
body from one perspective, right. And so, having the person saying,
Look, you have this particular experience, like someone like I
was mentioning about the the person who said, I was addicted to
drugs, and so on and so forth.
By saying, like, look, is it possible that that spiritual
experience you had has more to do with the one true God? And that
that one true God is the one who brought you that tranquility? And
also, it's very clear about who that one God is right? That he is
a Rahman Rahim. And he is one that he's not three and one, and so on
and so forth. Right? So encouraging the person to stand in
the possibility that there's a different explanation, or there's
a different meaning to the spiritual experience that they
might have had. Right? So someone says, I experienced Jesus, right?
Standing in the possibility that there's a different meaning to
their spiritual experience, right? Understand, understanding that
they're coming from a specific worldview, and that their paradigm
is going to have an effect on how they understand something. So just
having the person stand and the possibility, the explanation that
they've given their spiritual experience. It, there may be
another explanation. Right. So that basically is what I wanted to
wanted to basically cover. We can look and see if there's any sort
of questions.
Let's see.
So looks like a lot of questions as I was speaking so.
Well, alright.
Let's see here.
So someone said,
you're actually refuting the attribute of a logical rock man or
him? So I don't really see how I'm refuting that.
Are you saying I'm refuting that or you as the Dyer is refuting
that? I don't follow.
Let's see. So
So someone asked, can you say that the experience was just merely a
dream?
I think that'd be kind of difficult to say, you know,
because people understand dream states. They know when they go to
sleep and they're, they're dreaming. I think it might be
difficult, I think
a better explanation would be to, to say that, you know, that that
the interpretation is something else, right? I'm gonna have to
have more of a specific example. You know, because some experiences
which people consider to be spiritual, in fact, are not really
spiritual from, from a true spirituality understanding, right?
So someone say, Look, you know, I, I took a mushroom, and I had these
crazy experiences, I saw aliens and things like that. Okay, but
perhaps, you know, that short lives experience that you had, has
a different explanation, it has more to do with the neural
chemicals or whatever it might be. And that things that you're seeing
are just not really the explanation. That's correct,
right? Or what explanation to you've given it and I'm not sure
what explanation they would give it. But it would depend on what
they would say the explanation is, or taking something like
I don't know, ghosts, I saw ghosts, even though that's not
really a spiritual experience, experience. But if someone says I
saw ghosts, like Yeah, okay, and so what sort of interpretation? Do
you give that particular experience while the someone who
came back from the dead and so on and so forth? Okay.
But is it possible that that can be explained by the Islamic
paradigm and then you can speak about jinn and so on and so forth?
But I don't know if that would constitute as a spiritual
experience? I think a spiritual experience experience is more of
something that's very personal. No one knows best.
So any other questions?
Let's see.
So if you did ask them questions, go ahead and repost them if you
cut out appreciate it.
Souls is consciousness, knifes is body, um, a very, very, very
simplified way of looking at it. Yes. But the issue is that the
term knifes
within Islamic source material is used in different ways. Right? So
nuts can include the entire human personality, right? So like the
concept of AI, like it's an ontological
statement, right? So when you say Anna, or you know, Nuptse, like,
that's myself. It's not refer like, we asked like, What do you
mean by yourself your knifes. So nuts can refer to the self itself,
right? Like yourself itself, it can refer to the entire
personality. In fact, Allah subhanho wa Taala uses that term
to refer to himself, right? But here, we're not going to say that
he's out to build some sort of a body, right? Obviously, he's
referring to the idea of him being a,
you know, like a beam, right? So when you have the Docomo Allahu
NAFSA, so Allah warns you from himself, here, we're talking about
self as a separate construct than what we were speaking about. So
depending on the context of where we're using the term knifes in
Arabic, you're going to have to interpret it like that. Right? And
Allah knows best.
So someone said, What is your thought? What are your thoughts on
reciting Quran in public spaces in the West? I think it would depend
on where you're reciting it. And, you know, if the occasion calls
for a recitation, right? Sometimes it can be quite,
it can be quite, it can have the opposite effect. Meaning that, you
know, that if, if, if you're in a busy place, and
you know, maybe it might, people might not appreciate it, right,
especially if people are in the middle of something, they're doing
something trying to listen to something. But you know, if it's a
public place, I don't know, again, I think it'd be very situational.
It depends. Allah knows best. Any other questions? Can we have a
seminar on philosophy of Islam? Seems like a very big topic, but
what I'll recommend is that our, our brother, Mohammed hijab, is
doing a series called London Nia, which he's written the poem. And
he's explaining from that poem, Theo, philosophical points related
to Islam and its comparison to other, you know, philosophies that
are out there that run antagonists to Islam. So I think the recent
one he did was on feminism, etc. So
do we have priorities in terms of which methodologies to choose from
when giving dower like the ones you gave? Which do we prioritize?
So again, it's going to be very situational.
You know, I don't know if you can say you prioritize one obviously,
you're going to prioritize Tawheed.
That's not necessarily Tawheed in the sense that
as a rational argument, because when we understand Tawheed, we
understand that there's a certain concept of dying, right? That that
is the bare minimum
One that you need to present to someone at least gives them the
understanding of what the heat is.
And this is and really, that's what you're obligated to do. Now,
that being the case, there's gonna be different ways of how you
present what Tawheed really is, what does it mean? Like we just
got done speaking about Iman.
But essentially, we're tying it to the hate. So it's going to depend
on the person, like, you know, are they a spiritual person, or, you
know, some people, they are very kind of analytical in how they
look at the world and things like that. And for them, rational
arguments might be the way to go. Some people are less analytical,
some people need more spiritual experiences. So it really is going
to depend upon the person themselves, how much you know
about them, their own culture and background. You know, what I think
is really fascinating. I was
reading a little bit about
a bit of Loony, right, I think that's how you say no, and he was
the one that accompanied
muda husbandry, when they went and they, you know, went and took over
India, at the time, if he no matter what there was no way he
did 17 excursions deep in the heart of India. So he had a
scholar with him. And that scholar wrote, wrote a quite an extensive
Tract on
what you would call like the the Hindu practices of that time
period. But what's interesting is that he wrote it in such a way to
understand that these people have XY and Z ideas, like they have
certain Shi'a they have certain symbols, and to understand what
their symbols are, it means to understand how to make Dow to them
the best. And so a lot of the Dow that was done, sometimes it went
to some extremes, but had to do with more of a spiritual type of
presentation of Islam, right for the idea that understanding that
that's where the the background was of the people that they're
addressing. So it really depends, I mean, you're gonna have to kind
of see what the background of the person is, where they're coming
from, what culture they're from, and so on, and so forth. Lord
knows best.
Let's see. Any other questions? I think we have a few more minutes,
if there are any.
Oh, this is a good one. Can experiential signs be objective?
Right.
I think that's, that's, that's a tough call. Right?
I would say certain signs can be objective, but objective, in what
sense? So I would argue and I've argued this in the seminar, which
I did on beauty and the recognition of God, that the
natural world
recognizing beauty in the natural world is most definitely
objective. However, beauty in the hands of human beings like art and
things like that, that's definitely going to be subjective,
right? And we know this not necessarily through some sort of
discursive reasoning. We know this by way of experience, right? So
the objectivity of nature is something we see all around us
when people are trying to sell a cereal, this is all natural,
right? Or, you know, they're selling us whatever, right?
Protein Powder, all natural, whatever it might be, but why?
Like, it's almost as if all natural or nature is a type of
meta phenomenon, right? So you know, they have the concept of the
the true the good and the beautiful. So you can't say
something is you know, true is your baseline Right?
to Chico zoo to in his book The ethical
What do you say the the something ethical something concepts in
Islam or in the Quran,
he mentioned that there are certain terms that are like their
meta terms. And they are secondary, and you have primary
terms that are built upon it, right. And so you have for
instance, good. Now, you use good as your starting point, you build
terms upon it. So you say, Okay, so, you know, a massage would be
good. Okay, well, would good, be good. Okay, but that's, that's
your lowest point. You can't go beyond good, right? Similarly,
truth. You know, I believe X because it's true. What is true,
true. See out, so then you also have beauty. You can't say like,
oh, I look at something because it's beautiful. is beautiful, is
beauty. Beautiful. So you understand that? So from that
perspective, I would say you could say natural beauty would be
objective, like you experience natural beauty, and that's an
objective experience. Right? Whereas human made beauty, it has
certain certain things that make it intrinsically subjective. So
for instance, it's subjective, from the point of view that when
someone is painting, even if they're painting a mountain, it's
going to be framed. So you're looking at it from the subjective
view of the person that's doing the painting, right? Because it's
got framing, whereas in the natural world, there is no
framing. It's just vast. Right? The vastness of nature is there's
no framing, there's no kind of human perspective, x with the
exception of your own. Right. So from that perspective, I would say
its objective can be objective. No one knows best.
So you like the word order better? Maybe you're more analytical man.
I don't know.
I look at it as a wow. It's, it's beautiful. Jimmy.
I don't know if I'll go to my wife and say you look very orderly
today.
Anyway.
Okay.
All right. Any other questions? I'm trying, I'm gonna try to
scroll up here. And see.
Okay, so you've got a question, but I think it's outside the scope
of what we're speaking about. Right. So you said how can you
prove to an atheist existing, the existing of consciousness?
Where would it go and how it's related to the soul and knifes,
we'll see, again, when we come to this whole concept of trying to
prove something to someone.
I think that's sort of discourse. It's, it becomes sometimes it can
be counterproductive, right? Because the very idea of okay, I'm
going to prove this to a person or prove that to a person.
Try to transcend that try to transcend that sort of verbiage
that I'm gonna prove consciousness or improve that consciousness is
something that Jani you know, a person is conscious, they know
they're conscious, right? It's, it's not, it's not really a
phenomenon, that you're going to sit there and say, Oh, let me
prove consciousness to you. Because you're going to, you're
going to enter into a rabbit hole trying to do that, right. As far
as the soul and the knifes and things like that, I mean, you
know, to be very honest, the type of
certainty you would get by way of experience is at a higher level
than what you may get as a as a rational endeavor. Like, I'll give
you an example. So you know, in the Islamic framework, we know
that there are three levels of European three levels of
certainty, right? You have you have anybody again, I know Lea
clean and happily agreed. So Emily, clean is a rational
certainty, right? So just take the quintessential example. Everyone
knows they're gonna die. Like death, you know that you
understand that? That's a reality, you're gonna die, right? Very few
people think, Okay, well, I'm gonna live forever. You know,
especially when you get older, right? Maybe as a young person,
you might think that you might not even think about it at all. But
you have that as a not, you're certain about that. Now, when the
angel of death is knocking at your door, and you see the Angel of
Death, you have idled your pain. You can see the Angel of Death,
right? And so now you're even more sure. And then when you have the
experience of your soul being pulled out of your body, you are
you can't be any more sure, because of the experience you
directly had. Right? So Elmo your pain. I know you're clean, happily
agreed, right? And this is kind of a kind of a nice construct of
understanding certainty as well, that you can give someone
knowledge like it will create you mentions something really
interesting. He says, imagine if you never tasted sugar. Now you
have a good friend, you trust him, you know him, he is like your best
friend. He's the most honest person, you know, and he tells
you, sugar tastes great. It's very sweet. Right? And you say, Okay,
well, that's, that's good. So now you have a certain knowledge of
sugar being sweet like because you have testimonial knowledge, he
told you and you trust him and so on and so forth. And then you see
that sugar is used in certain desserts. So you see that this
person is putting sugar in cake or whatever it might be. So now
you're like, okay, so you're certainly is increased what they
want to do sugar unless, you know, unless they're gonna make dessert,
right? And then you taste sugar. Now that direct experience of
tasting sugar has increased your your opinion to at its apex.
Right. So my point in mentioning that is that you know, it's the
whole kind of verbiage that we use about proving this or proving that
I think it's time we kind of transcend that and we try to have
a more holistic approach Inshallah, right, because frankly,
trying to prove the consciousness I don't know that's a tough one.
Let's see. So let's do one more question Inshallah, if anyone has
one, and if not,
let's see
II
let's see a quick Nimi now Okay, so
Okay, good deal. All right, I think that's good.
So, we'll go ahead and ended here in Sharla. Zuckerman, Ohio May
Allah subhanaw taala bless all of you bless all of you for
attending. If you've got a bit monotonous and boring in between
my apologies about that,
you know, I, I tried to
present the material as best as I could. So there was some fault or
some,
you know, some some mistakes or whatever it might be, that's all
for myself or from shaitan and he sort of benefits all from Allah
subhanho wa Taala May Allah bless you and bless all your families,
just like Mohammed said. I'm a late comer Abdullah.