The Story of Everything
The culmination of past and contemporary ideas.
When you meet someone whose ideas resonate with you, it gives way to a beginning of a friendship. Now imagine reading a book written 800 years ago that resonates with your beliefs. That meeting through words becomes proof for self-validation and erases doubt, as I express through Ibn Tufail.
Man alone is enough to recognise God.
Hayy was born on an isolated island. How was he born? Maybe he drifted ashore in a Moses basket. We don’t know. The interesting part of the island was that there were no humans inhabiting it. So he ends up with a Gazelle who nourishes and protects him. He grows up alone on that island. As he grows older, he notices things. Things that animals do not necessarily discern. He sees that animals' body parts are weapons, unlike his. And unlike him, they are physically stronger. But he observes that even though animals have weapons, he has hands. Hands that can do much more. Hands that can dress him, can help him use tools that can imitate the sharpness of animals' claws. Hands gave him more options. He continues to observe and teaches himself as much as possible.
A few years later his mother, the Gazelle, dies, devastating him. Anguished, he pondered why death came to pass when she appeared well on the outside. He felt there must be something wrong on the inside. So he performs an autopsy on his mother. He reaches the heart and thinks that this heart must be the centre of her body. He cuts it open and finds two chambers, with one room empty and one full of blood. He wonders that this empty chamber is the reason she passed away. He figures out how this blood circulates through the body and maps out his limited understanding of anatomy.
As he grows older, he becomes wiser and observant; He studies other animals and their anatomy and classifies them into types. He also explores the resources in his environment and builds a house for himself, and makes warmer clothes.
He studies the nature around him and finds that the earth, air, water and fire were the most basic physical entities; Hayy understood that boiled water loses its ability to go down and moves upwards- it evaporates and at the same time becomes cooler. He performs similar experiments in his surroundings and concludes that a physical force had to be applied for phenomena to come about. That made him realise that everything around him is in a cycle of cause and effect.
Hayy studied the movements of the sun and the moon, and he realised that they never changed there shape despite changing there positions in the sky. He concluded they must be travelling in spherical orbits, which led him to another hypothesis that the entirety of the universe must be interconnected in a similar fashion relative to each other.
Given that, he understood cause and effect. He looked at the Heavens and questioned whether the universe had no beginning or whether it came into being from non-existence… He pondered and pondered; he studied everything around him and became convinced that a force of some kind must have caused the universe. A power that was not part of it. He thought about this for many years and weighed up arguments for both possibilities. And then he began to wonder maybe both the statements imply the same thing? Because he felt that if he believed the universe had come into existence from previously not being in existence, this means it could not have come into being on its own, and there must have been a cause/a force that brought this into existence. And the causal power must not be perceivable by our five senses because if it could be perceived by us physically, it must be part of this universe and hence would need a cause for its existence. Therefore the universe must have been caused by something that cannot have a body, cannot be pictured, cannot be imagined, cannot be drawn. After all, imaginations are fantasies of physical nuances.
"Verily when he intends a thing, His command is 'Be' and it is" [Quran 16:40, 36:82]
Once he realised the existence of a Creator behind existence, he started to Marvel the subtleties around him. He would get in Awe regarding the harmony of Nature, the story the winds would tell, the complexities of all things clockwork and the precision of everything big and small. A Creator who is beyond Perfection.
"From him is not hidden the least little atom in the heavens nor on earth, nor anything smaller than it, nor anything greater" [Quran 34:3]
Whenever he would look at anything beautiful, powerful or splendid, he would remember the Creator. This finesse flows from him and into his handiwork. Hence he must be more Sublime, more Powerful than anything and everything, Hayy concluded.
This realisation of a Higher being made him find him in everything around him. His longing for him grew so much inside his heart that he started to love the higher World more than the sensory World he lived in.
He realised that perceiving the Creator came from his inner self, the non-Corporeal self. Unlike the Corporeal senses that fade away during our sleep. The inner self that made him connect to the Eternal one must be eternal. Hence, someone who recognises and longs for the AllMighty throughout his life will be in eternal bliss once he enters the endless sleep of death. And so he never wanted to forget him as he was scared that maybe forgetting his existence, forgetting this connection with Him, will leave him unsatisfied and tormented after death.
Man, despite everyone's help, is not enough to recognise God
Wasif was reading the Quran. He had just returned from school, and as per his daily routine, he wanted to finish his homework and read the Quran. Studying in eighth grade, Wasif has been a very focused child. He consistently secured the top position in his class, the pride of his parents and teachers.
He belonged to a middle-class family, living in the city of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. He was an only child, his father was a salaried worker.
While reading the Quran, he asked his mother why Allah on every other page is saying, again and again, to believe in one God and not associate anyone in divinity with him. Isn’t saying once, enough he questions. As Quranic text is so Holy and so important, every word carries weightage for us. Wouldn’t one sentence suffice? His mother was impressed by the level of the question, especially considering how young he was. She replied that these verses are the basis of Islam. This belief differentiates us from someone who does not believe in Islam. She gave the example of how the main difference between Christians and Muslims is that Muslims believe that Jesus is a Prophet of Allah rather than the son of God. Wasif did not say anything.
Wasif along with his family was visiting Lahore, one of the major cities of Pakistan. They wanted to see the shrine of Ali Hujwiri, one of the prominent Scholars of Islam. He noticed the admirers at the shrine were praying to the grave and asking for his help. There was music and some of the people were in a deep trance sort of state. Wasif did not say anything.
Wasif knew about the Holy Kabbah, understood this building serves as the direction of prayers for Muslims all over the World. He got the opportunity to visit the Holy site with his parents to perform the Hajj pilgrimage. It was a spiritually enlightening experience for him. He started to appreciate what God truly meant. He understood the inner connection that we share with God. He understood why the Ninth of Zilhaj is so special. He felt the intensity in his emotions on that day. He felt God closer than ever, he found contentment.
Who have believed and whose hearts have rest in the remembrance of Allah. Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest! [Quran 13:28]
A few days later, he went back to the Kabbah, to pay his final respects before returning home. He noticed two gentlemen in the mosque speaking in Urdu, his mother tongue. One told the other that he was planning to visit the Ali Hujwiri shrine, to which the other gentleman requested him whether he could pray for him there. Wasif did not say anything.
While driving on the motorway one day, Wasif listened to a song he had always listened to in the past. A song that praises one of the companions of the Prophet, Ali. Some of the praises were prayers to him, asking for his help. It was interesting as he had always listened to this song. But he noticed this aspect for the first time. Wasif did not say anything… Instead, he stopped his car on the side of the road because he finally understood why Allah in the Quran repeatedly admonishes humans about polytheism. He understood that his mother reply wasn’t entirely correct.
He understood thinking doesn’t stop when you find the truth. It only begins. Even though you may be born to a Muslim family, it doesn’t mean that your beliefs conform to the reality of our Universe and maybe unintentionally you are committing blasphemy.
Suddenly he understood why God had to send so many Prophets, generation after generation. To dispel lie and remind them about the truth. Humanity urge to depend on something physical is stupendous.
The following verse perfectly summarises this discussion, even though the context in which it is revealed is different.
And when it is said to them, “Closely follow what Allah has sent down, “ they say, “No indeed, we closely follow what we have come upon from our fathers.” And even if their fathers did not consider anything and they were not guided? [Quran 2:170]
Today’s Muslims blindly follow what their forefathers have taught, and they blindly read the Quran without understanding its context. They blindly follow the scholars and whatever their interpretation has been of Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology when they should be thinking with them. Not relying on others for your opinion.
We are born into this World to find God through His creation, just like Hayy did. If that weren’t the case, God would have been right in Infront of our eyes. That is why Islam is the biggest advocator of research. Research into this glorious Universe. Yet most of the scientists and philosophers in this World at the moment are Non-muslims. But I guess in this World of impatience and intolerance, where life has lost its value sometimes the best thing to do, is to not say anything.
