The Metaphysical Side of Human Being?

Firstly, everyday when we look at ourselves in the mirror the first thought comes to mind is "this is certainly not me".  It is true however, that we feel we are looking at our body as a possession which implies that there is a real me beyond the image in the mirror.  We can hardly deny this feeling that has existed with us ever since we have reflected on this matter. 

Secondly,  when we are asleep whether over nighttime or when we are unconscious due to a medical condition, we are not expected to be responsive and reactive to our environment.  In other words, our consciousness seems to be what we are identified with, whoever we are.  Human character, personality and temperament can not be attributed to our body.  

Thirdly, as Rumi said, when some one is dead his or her loved ones do not consider the remaining body to be their love.  Evidently, it is not the visible body that we love. The dead person is considered gone while the physical body is still present. 

These classical examples from daily life represent a profound truth about the nature of our entity. They lead us to believe that the core of our existence ,in fact, lies in the supernatural side of us that exists in an invisible dimension to our eyes.  

Let's have a look at a few of the related Quranic verses which hopefully will guide us to form an idea of the true nature of human being beyond a body of flesh and bone.

                                                            بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

4:1
"O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah , through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever, over you, an Observer.

21:35

"Every soul will taste death. And We test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned."


14:51
"So that Allah will recompense every soul for what it earned. Indeed, Allah is swift in account."

91:7
"And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it"

91:8

"And inspired it its wickedness and its righteousness,"

91:9

"He has succeeded who purifies it,"

91:10

"And he has failed who instills it ."

50:16
"And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein"

39:42

"Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought."

38:72

"So when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My [created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration."

  صدق الله العلي العظيم

 
I would like to begin by clarifying that the purpose of this writing is not to find out the way and the sequence in which the first human was created but it has the intention to put together different pieces of underlying information in the above messages in order to form an understanding of the metaphysical side of human being according to the Quranic view.

Clearly, from 4:1 we can understand that all humans were created from the same essence " Nafs" as it is called in Quranic language.  In most translations "Nafs" has been turned to "soul" which I am not sure if it is the right counter word in English since soul is used in the last verse 38:72 in its distinguished context.  For the lack of a better term, we should stick to the original word "Nafs" for now.

   Over the verses that follows, "Nafs" and its functions is described with some details:

• 21:35 states the mortality of "Nafs". 
• 14:51 Every "Nafs" will face the consequence of what it has achieved. This concept will pave the way to understand hellfire as an outcome rather than punishment in the afterlife. Furthermore, it implies that our actions and our choices impact our "Nafs" permanently. That is, in the course of our lifetime we will gradually shape our "Nafs" into its final status before we leave this world.  
• 91:7 God has made the "Nafs".
• 91:8 God speaks to us through "Nafs" which is the base for our internal moral judgments. "Nafs" is therefore, our source of inspiration and is our communication channel with God in which our ethical feelings are formed. Depending on God's inspiration we will feel guilty, troubled, or conversely happy and content.  Human conscience as known today is probably the perfect fit for this Quranic description. 
• 91:9 The success of our life in this world is determined by the final status of our "Nafs".  In this sense, the highest achievement of our life time is to purify our "Nafs" from all voices but God's.  
• 91:10  The real failure in life, on the other hand, is to completely lose our "Nafs" to sins and to Satan in general, as opposed to God. 

Before proceeding with last three verses we need to establish what is "Nafs" as far as we can read between the lines.  From the explained verses, we can infer that "Nafs" is the common core of all humans with inherently the same nature which gives everyone an equal potential to prosper spiritually.  Additionally, everyone is given a pre-determined limited time to learn from the laboratory of life by freely experiencing wicked and righteous actions.  We are given the freewill to choose between engaging devil and divine to see how they affect our happiness in the short and in the long term.  The choices we make in our life will reflect on our "Nafs" and will either illuminate it or darken it steadily so that "Nafs" itself will represent the result of our life journey.

An enlightened "Nafs" has overcome the temptations of Satan and has grown under the light of God's inspiration. It has learned and practiced God's names and his qualities. Such guided "Nafs" finds peace and happiness in following God's light in terms of differentiating good from bad or right from wrong in daily life's judgments and actions.  It glows with light and emits love to all others in his or her proximity.  This perfected "Nafs" has been in touch with truth most of his lifetime in this world so when it enters the next life it is well suited to live in harmony with  the world of pure, unveiled truth. That is why, it can enter the heaven which was tailored to its exact status so that "Nafs" will continue to further learn and thrive in its ever continued growth toward God.

In Contrast, the "Nafs" that has followed Satan's voice and has engaged in evil actions will get darker and darker and loses its functionality and its capability to hear the inspiration of God.  As a result, such "Nafs" will deny sings of God, which work as guidelines to the truth, to the degree that it will entirely lose its ability to see the reality of life and to grow out of the basic lessons of this world. Having turned to a senseless stone at the end, such "Nafs" has to go through the hard way in afterlife to learn what it has missed in the first life.  As a matter of fact, whenever we humans stubbornly resist learning a fact of life we end up with learning it the hard way.  That is, through a painful and forceful process.  In other words, if we choose to willingingly and knowingly disapprove the ultimate truth of the world, which is God, we will virtually turn our "Nafs" to a stone. Then, perhaps the only cure would be to melt down this hardened "Nafs" by fire in order to turn it back to a pulpy flexible core that will regain its original features including its learning potentials. This way, the restored "Nafs" can appreciate and follow the light of God to move out of that hard learning phase of hell.

Summarizing the functions and features of "Nafs", it is the source of inspiration equally from God and from Satan.  "Nafs" initially is created in an equilibrium between its inclinations toward goodness and wickedness until we prefer one over the other.  Otherwise, the freedom of choice would not make sense.  That is to say, if one force was overriding the other we would have felt powerless and predetermined, which is certainly not the case.  Our thoughts and actions will nourish our "Nafs" so that it will become the product of our life.  It is the only saving that we will transfer to the next life and its final status will entitle us to the next learning setup which hopely will be heaven for all us.

That said, "Nafs" is not the only component of our supernatural being.  The verse 50:16 explicitly stats that  "And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him,...."  which implies that it is not the "Nafs" who is in control.   "Nafs" too works as possession of our true self.  In fact, the nature of our entity who is in charge of all aspects of our being is mentioned in the beautiful and  extremely important verse 38:72;  "So when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My [created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration."  When God was done with the making of first human, that is creating from clay, shaping and making the "Nafs" he has blown into us from his holy spirit.   This is the missing piece of our puzzle and the most precious one. 

In truth, the decision maker and the owner of our the physical body as well as the metaphysical part "Nafs", is our "Soul", which is of the spirit of God ruling over both the visible and the invisible side of us.   Our Godly soul is the ultimate self. It is the eternal essence of us which inherently has the potentials of God on a human scale. Although it is like a drop of an ocean, it has the similar qualities and properties.  It is the will, the determination that drives us through life. It is the one who picks from the inspirations and temptations we receive through our "Nafs".  It is the intellect and the spirit that resides on the invisible dimension of our existence. It is the driving force that is subtle yet in complete control of all our physical body similar to God's relationship with the material world. "Mind" is probably, the equivalent modern day term for soul. our supernatural entity. 

Having looked at the features and functionality of  "Nafs" and "Soul", we may recognize that "Nafs" is very much analogues with our heart and likewise "Soul" is reminiscent of our brain.  That is to say, as "Nafs" presents the divine and the devilish inspirations to our mind so does our heart pumps up the bright and dark blood to brain and throughout our body. We may further conclude that it appears as if  our physical body, our heart and brain in particular, is a material representation of our metaphysical side.  This makes sense especially when we take the symmetrical property of all creatures into account. 

At the end, as much as the above revelations fascinate us, they lead us to more challenging questions 

Does this metaphysical side exist in all creatures ?  
To what extent our "Nafs" is influenced by our parents' considering that we inherit their gens ?  
   

    

     

The Amazing Story of Human Creation in Quran Might Be the Answer to the Evolutionists as well.

  Among the verses of Quran in which the creation of human is narrated, verses 30 to 34 of Al-Bagarah (2) are quite unique.  In a fascinating comparison of Adam with angels, essentially, God reveals the fundamental supremacy of human nature that qualifies him to be God's successive authority on earth.  One would wonder what the distinguishing feature of man is that has made him even superior to angels?

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

2-30

"And, when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority." They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?" Allah said, "Indeed, I know that which you do not know."

2-31

"And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, "Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful."

2-32

"They said, "Exalted are You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise."

2-33

"He said, "O Adam, inform them of their names." And when he had informed them of their names, He said, "Did I not tell you that I know the unseen [aspects] of the heavens and the earth? And I know what you reveal and what you have concealed."

2-34

"And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.

  صدق الله العلي العظيم

From www.Quran.com

    Perhaps judging from the animals' life previously existed on earth, angles had reasons to believe that any other new creature in the material world would necessarily involve killing and blood shed over dominance of earth's resources for survival.  This actually seems to be true for the most part of the history of human's life too, if we were to dismiss the intellectual and spiritual growth of mankind. God, however, proves them wrong by putting Adam and angles to a test which was to learn the names. And the result ,according to the verses 30&31 above, is that Adam learned the names but angles did not.  

    Considering the fact that nature and details of the names have not been specified (in my opinion because it doesn't matter actually), the remarkable revelation of these verses is to demonstrate the unique learning capability of humankind in comparison with the best of creation that are angeles.  This contrast could not have been made more explicit.  Learning ability, to the extent that humans possess,  is indeed the main distinguishing feature that superiorize us over all other beings in the seen and in the the unseen world. 

    The prominent counter argument would be the limited learning capacity we can see in most animals in terms of being trained to behave in a certain way in exchange for food or other treats. "Conditioning" is probably the name of this type of learning.  In this sense perhaps, we can encapsulate the evolution of all natural creatures in a form of conditioning as well.  It is a well known fact that from the smallest to the largest live organisms learn from their natural habitat how to improve themselves in order  to survive in competition with other species. This process of gradual and subtle improvements towards perfection over millions of years, natural evolution/selection, is basically what has derived all creatures including mankind from a single cell or gen all the way up to their current shape and form, in the evolutionist point of view.  

   While it is true that all living creatures are equipped with some degree of learning talent, the evolutionary changes that take place even over a very long period of time have never made a fundamental alteration to the nature of that creature.  They are always imposed by the survivability principle with minor scope of refinement.  Animals ,for example, may learn to change the color of their skin in order to act as camouflage to hide from their predators or from  their prey. Please check out the link below to see unbelievable examples of such cases.  Yet, it is highly unlikely that a crawling Gecko for instance, learns to fly or live in water no mater how long he is given to evolve.  

http://www.boredpanda.com/animal-camouflage/

   Learning process in human on the other hand, can be summarized as an intellectual and spiritual transformation from the few known facts we know about a question in our mind to the unknown answers.  In other words, it is a metaphysical journey from obvious, from apparent and from the seen world to the unseen world with often times unpredictable results.  History is the best display of the range of astonishing learning of mankind from the beginning of time to now.  By the way of example, math starts with defining numbers as its basic foundation and then simple operations such as addition, subtraction and multiplication follow.  All this elementary findings are easily verifiable by our 5 senses.  From this simplicity it builds up its complication to entirely theoretical and abstract concepts such as calculus.  Similarly, the same escalation of complexity can be traced in chemistry, physics and in all other branches of natural science.  

    Interestingly enough, when it comes to an absolutely abstract subject namely philosophy, it appears that the same chain of thoughts take place.  That is to say, we start with an undeniable fact like, "I think so I am" as Descarte said, and then develop our metaphysical principles on this base.  

     Even more interestingly, the impact of acquisition of knowledge on humans is not limited to mental faculty but it will also result in an spiritual transformation. That is, if you learn math long enough it becomes your second nature and you become a mathematician which is a name given to a person with certain cognitive skills who has developed capabilities in solving mathematical problems. The same is true about becoming a physicist, a chemist, a physician or a philosopher for that matter. They develop specific traits and characteristics that are associated with each profession.  In reality, their personality has changed or to be exact, their mind has evolved to a superior entity that they were not before while their physical appearance has not altered at all.  By the same token, we can fly as a bird or we can swim as a fish without physically transforming to one.  We become a driver when driving becomes our second nature.  We become a foreign language speaker particularly when the names of that language become our second nature. Through these examples we can clearly see that we convert to what we truly learn. 

     Contrary to all other creatures on earth, human evolution is in truth not confined to the material world.  We learn about kindness and charity to others by practicing these names and once we have experienced these qualities long enough then we become kind and generous. This is definitely an spiritual elevation as acquiring these characteristics make us enjoy life more deeply and we will feel more peaceful internally than ever before. We learn about forgiveness by being forgiving and above all, we learn about love by loving others.  

    Much to the surprise of angles, humans can learn the names on earth which involves mud and blood.  Nevertheless, we are capable of transcending beyond our material nature and reach for the stars well above the reach of all angles.  That is what God has made us for and that is how mankind was created in the first place.  The inevitable spiritual transformation occur either through the earthly experiences of  life or through the hard way of afterlife for some. 

   In short, the above verses explains the Quranic view on creation of human.  That is essentially he has been originally designed and created differently from all other beings including all creatures on earth and all the metaphysical ones in heavens. According to Quran, human being came to existence from an smelly mud and has learned some of the names so far, proving to be the second authority on earth.  Since the ultimate attributes belong to God and the ultimate truth is in fact the nature of God, it should be no surprise to perceive humanity as the only creation who is well capable to elevate his spiritual being as close as possible to the characteristics, the names, of God.   This seems to me a convincing understanding of appointing a successive authority on earth as stated in the first verse. 

    I wonder if the Quranic perspective of human evolution is seen in nature besides mankind and if such transformation is ever conceivable as the work of nature for any other creature on earth in the evolutionist view.