Our being both creatures and spiritual subjects is a wholly contingent state. That dependency is reiterated by the two relinquishments of self that we experience:
AL-LAH takes back the souls upon their death, and those, undying yet, who sleep. He keeps the ones whose death He has ordained and sends the others back [to live] for an appointed term. Indeed in that are signs for people who reflect. (Q39:42)
اللَّهُ يَتَوَفَّى الأَنْفُسَ حِينَ مَوْتِهَا وَالَّتِي لَمْ تَمُتْ فِي مَنَامِهَا فَيُمْسِكُ الَّتِي قَضَى عَلَيْهَا الْمَوْتَ وَيُرْسِلُ الأُخْرَى إِلَى أَجَلٍ مُسَمًّى إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لآياتٍ لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Though we can reflect on it, this subject state of ours is fundamentally unknowable; to ‘know’ it is to turn it into an object, and even then no knowledge has been given you except a little. As an object, moreover, I find myself unworthy of regard – sinful, error-prone, defective in every way, and currently declining towards decrepitude and death.
This intrinsic faultiness has a potential benefit. As a finite object, however many flaws I own, I can take comfort in having limited liability for my offences. My expiation for them should be as limited as I am myself – a statutory penalty for a statutory crime, let us say. But then, with the utmost shock and horror, I find in the Qur’an that my punishment is potentially unlimited and eternal.
Then it is said to those who were unjust, “Taste the torment of eternity. Are you requited other than for what you earned?” (Q10:52)
ثُمَّ قِيلَ لِلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا ذُوقُوا عَذَابَ الْخُلْدِ هَلْ تُجْزَوْنَ إِلاَّ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ تَكْسِبُونَ
Surely the disproportion between my limited crimes and GOD’s unlimited punishment would be the height of injustice . . . if the boundlessness of GOD were not in some sense mine as well. How could I taste anything without His Spirit? By betraying Him, I have somehow introduced a breach into the indissoluble unity between the rounded finitude of objects, of which I am one, and the expansive infinity of subjects, in which I participate by virtue of His Spirit. It is as if I initially had in my grasp, then ruined, and finally lost my own eternity. And yet nothing can truly destroy that Spirit, that eternity, for I am not just an object. (See Chapter 19 for the conditionality of an eternity in Hell.)
In horror movies, a fate worse than death itself is the terror of discovering oneself to be other than oneself – the unwilling host of an alien life form, a subject compelled to be the object state of another being. This is the real horror of Hell – the excruciating realization that one has been and might forever be a living lie, and thus the enemy of one’s own True Self. Only when one has seen that Self, in all Its grandeur and beauty, does one realize how disastrous is the identity one has chosen instead. The self-loathing that ensues then will be indescribable.
On that day, those who had denied and disobeyed the Messenger will wish that they were level with the earth. (Q4:42)
يَوْمَئِذٍ يَوَدُّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا وَعَصَوْا الرَّسُولَ لَوْ تُسَوَّى بِهِمْ الأَرْضُ
It is in this extremity of despair and desolation that we hear GOD’s final word on the matter:
I unleash My punishment on whom I will. And My compassion comprehends all things. (Q7:156)
عَذَابِي أُصِيبُ بِهِ مَنْ أَشَاءُ وَرَحْمَتِي وَسِعَتْ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ
Our torment stems from an estrangement from our own true identity. Thinking ourselves to be subjects independent of GOD (and orthodox theology does little to dispel this illusion when it emphasizes our freedom and separateness from GOD), we find ourselves treated like outcasts from His Kingdom, the real universe. But the scope of GOD’s Compassion comprehends all things, and is ultimately not to be denied. Remembering our origins in His spoken word, we eventually enter into His comprehension, like thoughts that come to mind after long years of forgetting.* The Fire of Conscientia (Latin for “knowledge within oneself”) finally heals the breach, and we return to. . . thoughts of Him.
وَقِيلَ الْيَوْمَ نَنسَاكُمْ كَمَا نَسِيتُمْ لِقَاءَ يَوْمِكُمْ هَذَا
* And it is said, “Today We shall forget you just as you forgot the meeting on this Day of yours.” (Q45:34)
Like so much else in the Qur’an, we are not meant to take the ‘forgetfulness’ of AL-LAH literally; to do so would be blasphemy. Rather it symbolizes a deficiency or ‘shadow’ in a creature’s participation in the Life of GOD, which is concurrent with His Mindfulness. It bears about the same meaning as this:
لاَ يُكَلِّمُهُمْ اللَّهُ وَلاَ يَنْظُرُ إِلَيْهِمْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ وَلاَ يُزَكِّيهِمْ
AL-LAH will not address them nor will He bestow His gaze on them upon the Day of Resurrection, nor will He absolve them. (Q3:77)
In my mind there lurk memories so painful and thoughts so vile that I am unwilling to call them mine. But I cannot deny that I am their creator. I start, therefore, to work dissolving them in a deeper understanding and a desire to get to the bottom of them. It is as if they have a life of their own; they will not lie down and be still. They are like nothing, and yet in them I see myself as in a mirror.
Then, as I reflect upon the nature of the thoughts that live within me, I am reminded of the life I have in GOD.* Without these thoughts of mine, I would be forever transparent to my inquiring subject-self; there would be no reflecting surface for introspection. Could I, then, likewise, be nothing more than a projection of One Who is Supremely Self-Aware, Knowing Himself not only by what He takes up as good and true but also by what He rejects as unworthy of the Divine Mind? Or should I say nothing less? Truly we have undervalued GOD and ourselves if we consider His thoughts (i.e., projections of His Intelligence) to be trivial things.
* When spiritual adepts, mystics, and even those who have near-death experiences undergo states of bliss and cosmic consciousness, they are probably tapping into the vein of the Pure Subject-State of GOD in His Unicity. The Qur’anic descriptions of Paradise may be intended to convey something of the endless ecstasy of this objectless identity – an experience that we cannot sustain insofar as we continue as objects. We have a comparable sensation of unity with the Divine when we are ‘in the zone’, a foretaste of the freedom of GOD, which I mentioned in Chapter 3.
My thoughts have no independent life; I do not know them so well that I could create in them the power to think their own thoughts. AL-LAH, on the other hand, is nearer to me than I am to my own thoughts. That same power to think that I cannot transfer to my thoughts He has actually given me; I did not develop it on my own (nor can I control it even now). Because of this affinity, this imitative Spirit of His that He sees in us, a Subject inherent in an Object – and yet single, like a glance of sight (Q54:50) – He takes Our Affair (amruna) immensely seriously. Conscience is a serious business, felt like Our Command (amruna). Heaven is not just a ‘better place’; it is seriously, stunningly beautiful and glorious beyond our wildest imaginations – Our Pleasure. And Hell is, likewise, terribly serious and real – what we would call so utterly painful as to be unreal. And there too, GOD knows Himself . . . by what He is not.
As subject, I am invisible to myself, like GOD the Unknowable Subject. And as object, I receive His Transparent character, and then reflect or hide it. My self (subject) contemplating my self (object) is thus subsumed in the Divine Self-Knowledge constantly revealing to Himself that there is an identity: no other god – no real duality of subject and object – but the One GOD.
لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ
The GOD You Already Know 