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Fundamentals of Islamic Thought Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari Unity of the Universe Is the universe (nature, the spatiotemporal creation of God) a real unity in its totality? Does tauhid, the unity of God in Essence, attributes, and agency, imply that the creation enjoys a kind of unity in its totality? If the whole universe is interrelated as a unity, what form does this interrelatedness take? Is it like the way the parts of a machine are connected, purely contingent and artificial, or is it like the relation of the members of a body to that body? In other words, is the relation of the parts of the universe mechanical or organic? I have discussed the nature of the unity of the universe in my annotations to Usul-i Falsafa (Principles of Philosophy), volume 5. I have also spoken in Adl-il-lahi (Divine Justice) of how nature is an indivisible unity, how the non-existence of one part of nature equals the non-existence of the whole, and how the removal of what are called "evils" from nature would amount to all nature's ceasing to exist. Modem philosophers, especially Hegel, affirm the principle of organically, that is, the principle that the relation of the parts of nature to the whole is as the relation of the members to the body. Hegel proves this point on the basis of principles whose acceptance is conditional upon acceptance of all the principles of his philosophy. Hegel's materialist followers, the partisans of dialectical materialism, have taken this principle from him and defend it vociferously as the principle of reciprocal influence, the principle of the universal interrelationship of things, or the principle of interdependence of opposites and advocate the position that the relationship of the part to the whole in nature is organic, not mechanical. But all they can prove is a mechanical relationship. Materialistic philosophical principles cannot prove that the universe in its totality has the character of a body and that the relationship of the part to the whole is the relationship of the member to the body. The theosophies who have held from ancient times that the world is the "great man" and that man is the "little world" have had such a relationship in view. Among Islamic philosophers, the Ikhwan as-Safa particularly stressed this point. The 'urafa; too, in their turn looked upon the world and being with the eye of unity, more than did the hukama 'or the philosophers. According to the 'urafa all of creation and all creatures constitute one flash (jilva) bearing witness to the Preeternal: Your face mirrored in the cup Impelled the 'arif to raw craving,
The 'urafa 'term this other the "holy emanation" (Fayz-I muqaddas) and say analogically that the holy emanation is like a cone that at the apex, that is, where it impinges on the Essence of the Truth, is pure simplicity (pure Existence) and at the base, extended and ramified. I am not going to develop any of the philosophers' or 'urafa ‘s explanations here. I am pursuing the subject because it relates to my own preceding discussion. I said earlier that the universe has as its reality the properties of from Him-ness and to Him-ness. On the one hand, it is proven that the universe is not a moving, fluid reality; rather, it is motion and flux itself. On the other hand, research on motion has proven that unity of source, unity of end, and unity of course impart to motions a kind of unity and singularity. Therefore, considering that the whole universe runs on one evolutionary course from one source to one end, it necessarily takes on a kind of unity. The Unseen and the Manifest The word ghayb (unseen) can also be translated as hidden. The unseen, the hidden, falls under two categories: the relative unseen and the absolute unseen. The relative unseen embraces things that are concealed from an observer's senses because of his remoteness from them or some similar reason. For instance, for someone who is in Tehran, Tehran is the manifest and Isfahan is the unseen. But for someone in Isfahan, Isfahan is the manifest and Tehran is the unseen. In the Noble Qur'an, ghayb is sometimes used in this relative sense. For instance, where it says, "These are some of the stories of the unseen we have revealed to you" (11:49), it is clear that the stories of the ancients are unseen to present day people but were manifest to the ancients themselves. But in other instances, the Noble Qur'an applies the term ghayb to realities that are inherently invisible. There is a difference between realities that can be sensed and touched but remain hidden because of distance or some other barrier, as Isfahan is hidden to people who are in Tehran, and realities that are unsusceptible to sensation by the outward senses because of their boundlessness and immateriality and so are hidden. Where the Qur'an characterises the believers as those who have faith in the unseen, it does not mean the relative unseen. All people, believers and unbelievers alike, admit the existence of the relative unseen. Thus, where it states, "With Him are the keys to the unseen -none know them but He," and so restricts knowledge of the unseen to the Divine Essence, it means the absolute unseen. It does not accord with the definition of the relative unseen. Where it refers to the manifest and the unseen together, as for instance: "the Knower of the manifest and the unseen, He is the Merciful, the Compassionate" (59:22)-that is, He knows the perceptible and the imperceptible-again it means the inherently invisible and not the relative unseen. What sort of relationship have the world of the unseen and the world of the manifest? Does the perceptible world have a boundary, beyond which lies the world of the unseen? For instance, is from here to the celestial vault the world of the visible and from there onward the world of the unseen? Plainly, such conceptions are vulgar. On the supposition that a physical boundary separates the two worlds, the two worlds would themselves be manifest, physical, material. One cannot explain the relationship of the unseen and the manifest in material, physical terms. The nearest we can come to a definition the mind can grasp is to say that it resembles the relationship between primary and secondary principles or that between figure and shadow. That is, this world amounts to a projection of that. It can be inferred from the Qur'an that whatever is in this world is a being sent down of the beings of the other world. "What are termed "keys" in a previously quoted verse are in other verses termed "treasuries": "And there is not a thing but its treasuries are with Us, and. We send it down only in assigned quantities" (15:21). It is by this reckoning that the Qur'an conceives of everything, even things like stone and iron, as sent down: "and We sent down iron" (57:25). Plainly, what is intended is not that "We have transported all things, including iron, from one place to another." So the realities, the principles, and the essential substances of the contents of this world are in another world, which is the world of the unseen. "What is in this world are their laminae (raqiqa), their shadows, or these things themselves at the level of descent into this world. Lo! The star-studded wheel, so beauteous and splendid!
Just as the Qur'an presents a species of faith and vision of being under the heading of the unseen and accounts it necessary, it also at times expounds this topic under other headings, such as faith in the angels or in the prophetic mission of the prophets (faith in revelation): "The Messenger believed in what was revealed to him from his Lord, as do the believers: each believes in God, His angels, His books, and His messengers" (2:285).". and whoever denies God, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day has gone far astray" (4:136). In these two verses, faith in God's books is accorded independent mention. if the celestial books that were sent down to the prophets were meant, this belief in the prophets would suffice. The context shows that realities of a different kind, not that of tomes and pages, are meant. In the Qur'an itself, there is repeated mention of hidden, unseen realities named the clear Book, the Preserved Tablet, the Mother of the Book, the Inscribed Book, and the Concealed Book.37 Faith in such supernal books is a part of Islamic faith. Basically, the prophets have come to impart to man the kind of vision and worldview that would allow him to form an image, however sketchy, of the whole system of the creation, to the extent of his allotted powers. Creation is not confined to sensible, palpable phenomena within the scope of the physical and experimental sciences. The prophets sought to raise man's vision from the sensible to the intelligible, from the evident to the hidden, from the limited to the limitless. Unfortunately, the tide of narrowly materialistic and sensualistic thought has washed so far that some urge that all the sublime, vast, far-reaching concepts of the Islamic worldview be brought down to the level of sense objects and material things. This World and the Hereafter "God has mercy upon one who knows: from where? Through where? and to where?"38 Ali did not say, "God has mercy on one who knows from what? Through what? and to what?" If he had said that, we would have taken him to mean, "Of what were we created? Of the earth. And into what shall we pass? Into the earth. And out of what shall we arise again? Out of the earth." If he had said this, he would have been alluding to this verse of the Qur'an: "From it We created you, into it We will return you, and from it We will extract you another time" (20:55). But Ali’s assertion here refers to other verses of the Qur'an and bears a higher meaning: What world have we come from? "What world are we in? To what world are we going? Within the Islamic worldview, this world and the hereafter, like the unseen and the manifest, are both absolute concepts, not relative ones. In the language of the Qur'an, each is a separate emergence (nash'a). Works are relative: works of this world, works of the hereafter. That is, if a work has for its object egotism, it is a work of this world; ifthis same work is carried out for God, to satisfy God, it is a work of the hereafter. In a later volume of this series, Zindagi-yi Javid ya Hayat-i Ukhravi (Eternal Life, or the Afterlife), I will discuss this world and the hereafter in detail. |