The Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality (continued)

Pantheistic Sufism obviously cannot favour such a view, and suggests difficulties of a philosophical nature. How can the Infinite and the finite egos mutually exclude each other? Can the finite ego, as such, retain its finitude besides the Infinite Ego? This difficulty is based on a misunderstanding of the true nature of the Infinite. True infinity does not mean infinite extension which cannot be conceived without embracing all available finite extensions. Its nature consists in intensity and not extensity; and the moment we fix our gaze on intensity, we begin to see that the finite ego must be distinct, though not isolated, from the Infinite. Extensively regarded I am absorbed by the spatio-temporal order to which I belong. Intensively regarded I consider the same spatio-temporal order as a confronting ‘other’ wholly alien to me. I am distinct from and yet intimately related to that on which I depend for my life and sustenance.

With these three points clearly grasped, the rest of the doctrine is easy to conceive. It is open to man, according to the Qur’«n, to belong to the meaning of the universe and become immortal.

‘Thinketh man that he shall be left as a thing of no use? Was he not a mere embryo?

‘Then he became thick blood of which God formed him and fashioned him; and made him twain, male and female. Is not God powerful enough to quicken the dead?’ (75:36-40).

It is highly improbable that a being whose evolution has taken millions of years should be thrown away as a thing of no use. But it is only as an ever-growing ego that he can belong to the meaning of the universe:

‘By the soul and He Who hath balanced it, and hath shown to it the ways of wickedness and piety, blessed is he who hath made it grow and undone is he who hath corrupted it’ (91:7-9).

And how to make the soul grow and save it from corruption? By action:

‘Blessed be He in Whose hand is the Kingdom! And over all things is He potent, who hath created death and life to test which of you is the best in point of deed; and He is the Mighty and Forgiving’ (67:1-2).⁵⁷

Life offers a scope for ego-activity, and death is the first test of the synthetic activity of the ego. There are no pleasure-giving and pain-giving acts; there are only ego-sustaining and ego-dissolving acts. It is the deed that prepares the ego for dissolution, or disciplines him for a future career. The principle of the ego-sustaining deed is respect for the ego in myself as well as in others. Personal immortality, then, is not ours as of right; it is to be achieved by personal effort. Man is only a candidate for it. The most depressing error of Materialism is the supposition that finite consciousness exhausts its object. Philosophy and science are only one way of approaching that object. There are other ways of approach open to us; and death, if present action has sufficiently fortified the ego against the shock that physical dissolution brings, is only a kind of passage to what the Qur’«n describes as Barzakh. The records of Sufistic experience indicate that Barzakh is a state of consciousness characterized by a change in the ego’s attitude towards time and space. There is nothing improbable in it. It was Helmholtz who first discovered that nervous excitation takes time to reach consciousness.⁵⁸ If this is so, our present physiological structure is at the bottom of our present view of time, and if the ego survives the dissolution of this structure, a change in our attitude towards time and space seems perfectly natural. Nor is such a change wholly unknown to us. The enormous condensation of impressions which occurs in our dream-life, and the exaltation of memory, which sometimes takes place at the moment of death, disclose the ego’s capacity for different standards of time. The state of Barzakh, therefore, does not seem to be merely a passive state of expectation; it is a state in which the ego catches a glimpse of fresh aspects of Reality, and prepares himself for adjustment to these aspects. It must be a state of great psychic unhingement, especially in the case of full-grown egos who have naturally developed fixed modes of operation on a specific spatio-temporal order, and may mean dissolution to less fortunate ones. However, the ego must continue to struggle until he is able to gather himself up, and win his resurrection. The resurrection, therefore, is not an external event. It is the consummation of a life-process within the ego. Whether individual or universal it is nothing more than a kind of stock-taking of the ego’s past achievements and his future possibilities. The Qur’«n argues the phenomenon of re-emergence of the ego on the analogy of his first emergence:

‘Man saith: "What! After I am dead, shall I in the end be brought forth alive?" Doth not man bear in mind that We made him at first when he was nought?’ (19:66-67).

‘It is We Who have decreed that death should be among you.

Yet We are not thereby hindered from replacing you with others your likes, or from producing you in a form which ye know not! Ye have known the first creation: will you not reflect?’ (56:60-62).

How did man first emerge? This suggestive argument embodied in the last verses of the two passages quoted above did in fact open a new vista to Muslim philosophers. It was J«Áiz (d. 255 A.H.) who first hinted at the changes in animal life caused by migrations and environment generally.⁵⁹ The association known as the ‘Brethren of Purity’ further amplified the views of J«Áiz.⁶⁰ Ibn Maskawaih (d. 421 A.H.), however, was the first Muslim thinker to give a clear and in many respects thoroughly modern theory of the origin of man.⁶¹ It was only natural and perfectly consistent with the spirit of the Qur’«n, that Rëmâ regarded the question of immortality as one of biological evolution, and not a problem to be decided by arguments of purely metaphysical nature, as some philosophers of Islam had thought. The theory of evolution, however, has brought despair and anxiety, instead of hope and enthusiasm for life, to the modern world. The reason is to be found in the unwarranted modern assumption that man’s present structure, mental as well as physiological, is the last word in biological evolution, and that death, regarded as a biological event, has no constructive meaning. The world of today needs a Rëmâ to create an attitude of hope, and to kindle the fire of enthusiasm for life. His inimitable lines may be quoted here:

First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,
Next he passed therefrom into that of plants.
For years he lived as one of the plants,
Remembering naught of his inorganic state so different;
And when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,
Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants,
Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers.
Like the inclination of infants towards their mothers,
Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.
Again the great Creator, as you know,
Drew man out of the animal into the human state.
Thus man passed from one order of nature to another,
Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.
Of his first souls he has now no remembrance.
And he will be again changed from his present soul.⁶²

The point, however, which has caused much difference of opinion among Muslim philosophers and theologians is whether the re-emergence of man involves the re-emergence of his former physical medium. Most of them, including Sh«h WalâAll«h, the last great theologian of Islam, are inclined to think that it does involve at least some kind of physical medium suitable to the ego’s new environment. It seems to me that this view is mainly due to the fact that the ego, as an individual, is inconceivable without some kind of local reference or empirical background. The following verses, however, throw some light on the point:

‘What! when dead and turned to dust, shall we rise again?

‘Remote is such a return. Now know We what the Earth consumeth of them and with Us is a book in which account is kept ‘ (50:3-4).⁶³

To my mind these verses clearly suggest that the nature of the universe is such that it is open to it to maintain in some other way the kind of individuality necessary for the final working out of human action, even after the disintegration of what appears to specify his individuality in his present environment. What that other way is we do not know. Nor do we gain any further insight into the nature of the ‘second creation’⁶⁴ by associating it with some kind of body, however, subtle it may be. The analogies of the Qur’«n, only suggest it as a fact; they are not meant to reveal its nature and character. Philosophically speaking, therefore, we cannot go farther than this - that in view of the past history of man it is highly improbable that his career should come to an end with the dissolution of his body.

However, according to the teaching of the Qur’«n the ego’s re-emergence brings him a ‘sharp sight’ (50:22) whereby he clearly sees his self-built ‘fate fastened round his neck.’⁶⁵ Heaven and Hell are states, not localities. Their descriptions in the Qur’«n are visual representations⁶⁶ of an inner fact, i.e. character. Hell, in the words of the Qur’«n, is ‘God’s kindled fire which mounts above the hearts’⁶⁷ - the painful realization of one’s failure as a man. Heaven is the joy of triumph over the forces of disintegration. There is no such thing as eternal damnation in Islam. The word ‘eternity’ used in certain verses, relating to Hell, is explained by the Qur’«n itself to mean only a period of time (78:23). Time cannot be wholly irrelevant to the development of personality. Character tends to become permanent; its reshaping must require time. Hell, therefore, as conceived by the Qur’«n, is not a pit of everlasting torture⁶⁸ inflicted by a revengeful God; it is a corrective experience⁶⁹ which may make a hardened ego once more sensitive to the living breeze of Divine Grace. Nor is heaven a holiday. Life is one and continuous. Man marches always onward to receive ever fresh illuminations from an Infinite Reality which ‘every moment appears in a new glory’.⁷⁰ And the recipient of Divine illumination is not merely a passive recipient. Every act of a free ego creates a new situation, and thus offers further opportunities of creative unfolding.

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Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:03:28 AM

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