The material in this blog is now available at amazon.com under the title: Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an.
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Because so many thinkers nowadays are uncomfortable with the idea of God, references to ‘Universal Mind’, ‘Cosmic Intelligence’, or something similarly aloof and impersonal have long been gaining traction in philosophical circles. The attractiveness of such language is the distance it puts between the recent and exciting possibilities suggested by super-computers and the wonders of the human mind, on the one hand, and the old anthropomorphic deities that bear the taint of their primitive passions, judgemental attitudes, and biases associated with being ‘personal’, on the other hand. We tend to think of perfection in terms that are cleanly abstract and impeccably scientific. The God of scripture and religion, the God that people pray to and adore, has, it seems, too much baggage from the past to deserve modern intellectual respect.
I will refrain from elaborating here on how the impersonal, conceptual deity of the intelligentsia is even more subservient to their particular social and psychological foibles than the traditional personal God of the common people is to their needs. That may deserve a chapter of its own. My main concern at this point is to indicate how poorly a ‘Universal Mind’ accounts for the world as we find and enjoy it. Creation of any sort is a work of the heart, not only the mind, and is nonsensical from a purely logical standpoint. To explain our living, changing world, we require something more than the strictures of intellectual rigour. We need Divine Mercy.
From a stringently rational point of view, which would be that of the God of logical consistency, this finite, faulty, and filthy world of ours is literally unforgivable. It contains too many blemishes and pointless addenda to the Supreme Unicity of a Single-Minded Deity. Absolute Unity seems to preclude any chance of multiplicity, let alone the chaotic confusion of the creatures we see around us. Dwelling Alone (All One) in His Absolute, Infinitely Spaceless and Timeless Perfection, GOD is sufficient unto Himself, and cannot be said to ‘need’ anything.
Truly GOD is Free from need for any of the worlds. (Q3:97)
فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ غَنِيٌّ عَنْ الْعَالَمِينَ
But this world of ours does express His Perfection when we take perfection to be the possession of all ideal attributes, including those that can only be expressed in the presence of imperfection. Confronting the less real, the greater Reality is neither mute nor indifferent.
And We did not create the heaven and the earth and what there is between them for the fun of it. / If We had wanted entertainment, We could have obtained it from Ourself if We were so inclined. / No, instead We cast the true against the false, destroying it, and so it disappears. And woe to you for what you are imagining! (Q21:16-18)
وَمَا خَلَقْنَا السَّمَاءَ وَالأَرْضَ وَمَا بَيْنَهُمَا لاَعِبِينَ
لَوْ أَرَدْنَا أَنْ نَتَّخِذَ لَهْوًا لاَتَّخَذْنَاهُ مِنْ لَدُنَّا إِنْ كُنَّا فَاعِلِينَ
بَلْ نَقْذِفُ بِالْحَقِّ عَلَى الْبَاطِلِ فَيَدْمَغُهُ فَإِذَا هُوَ زَاهِقٌ وَلَكُمْ الْوَيْلُ مِمَّا تَصِفُونَ
Why does GOD permit the false to be mentioned in the first place? Because, without this grace period, this short dark gap in the brilliance of Eternity, we would have never grown up out of the soil of mere existence, and the divine attributes we possess like glass possesses sunlight would have never shone through us. Divinity appears all the greater for its manifestation in lesser forms of being.
The Divine Forgiveness is what gives time and space for all this to be. As the Gracious, the Compassionate, AL-LAH both creates room for this dazzling demonstration to occur and kindly pardons it in advance, allowing it to flourish in relative peace and freedom. If we were to say only that this world was conceived in sin, no power could justify it. Rather we believe that our universe was engendered, prior to sin, in clemency and forbearance as a moral order, permeated from its inception with the creative power of mercy. This is why the first description of AL-LAH in the Qur’an is associated with life-giving Love rather than rigorous Truth. And this is why, when in the second verse we read Praise be to GOD, the Master of the worlds (Q1:2), this moral order is subsequently confirmed with the very same attributes,
The Gracious, the Compassionate, (Q1:3)
الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
as if to stress that even after all the dirt, deceit, and destruction in the worlds, nothing has really changed. AL-LAH continues to approach His creatures with His original, all-encompassing Mercy and respond to their individual pleas for more Time and more Compassion, right up until the moment our performance ends.
From Abi Hurairah, [who reported] that theMessenger of AL-LAH (may GOD bless him and give him peace) said, “AL-LAH the Mighty and Glorious said, ‘The son of Adam wrongs Me in reviling time, for I am Time; I alternate the night and day.’” (Sahihu Muslim, Book 40, Hadith 2)
عَنْ أَبِي، هُرَيْرَةَ أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ” قَالَ اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ يُؤْذِينِي ابْنُ آدَمَ يَسُبُّ الدَّهْرَ وَأَنَا الدَّهْرُ أُقَلِّبُ اللَّيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَ ”
Once again, I remind readers that expressions such as I am Time are not to be taken literally. Here we have the paradoxical presence of the Infinite in the finite, of the Divine Life in our daily lives, and so must learn to accept the ambiguity, allusiveness, and waywardness that only koan-like poetic language can provide. Many of us have an inkling of how such language works, based on our common sense of Love being the one force that breaks the bounds of common sense.
The GOD You Already Know 