Thank you !

I remember when I first started THINKING...hmm...

Even in few years I over whelmed by the responses and sincere comments I used to get on my writings….hmm…

After few years I asked few of my friends to join...in hopes that their friends would join...too...and we’d make some new friends.

Through THINKING I gathered a collection of pen pals through the years...many of them were either because of or became part of THINKING.

My views were challenged...my world enlarged...through the fellowship with these people–on paper...through email...on the phone...and in person.

And soon I found myself far from being an un-socialized person–I had acquaintances throughout the latitudes and longitudes. And many of them are still dear friends today.

I may not know you…THINKING people…hmm…on personal level…but its refreshing to have you walk into THINKING…writing here…making comments…seems like you are walking into my life…and reading your writings and comments here feel like…we know each other…even though we have not met before…but we are enjoying our sweet fellowship through our common bond…in THINKING.


I guess the busier life gets...the more I cherish the little bits of fellowship that God sends my way.

Whether it’s reading your stories here...or having you walk up and say, “You look like I’ve seen your picture online…I’ve actually read your….hmmm…” (I wish that beautiful young woman would have introduced herself…hmm…she didn’t and if you are reading this...hmmm…I respect your privacy…)...you are a shower of blessing in my life.

Thank you so much for giving me time…writing here…and making comments..and…

Thank you...THINKING.
HR.

Mind & Heart: Dialectic & Poetry

Frithjof Schuon writes:

Dialectic convinces us with ideas,

So that we may understand things abstractly; 

Poetry has feeling, works with images 

And seeks thereby to soften the austerity of thought — 

So that we may see the truth with our heart.

Genuine Leadership

Leader always leads without fear

Perception

Triumphs of Modern Man = Triumphs of an Animal

Computers are much more efficient at doing intelligent albeit mechanical work. (Although they're stupid.) Computer is made of matter. Dead matter can do things our brain can do. But they cannot do something humans do.

Animals similarly are very efficient and utilitarian at doing things, notes Alija A Izetbegovic. They do things with a very refined sense of pattern, timing and precise execution to survive. They care about what's useful to them; following codes written for them by Allah. They're intelligent too in this sense. Although I can't say if they can think like us.

What they can't do is art and exercise spirituality. These two feature of humans are at least 70,000 years old, as proven by cave paintings of that era. Animals don't know about rituals, prohibitions, sacrifices, irrationality, etc. Unlike animals, computers don't have feeling and emotions. I believe animals have emotions.

There's another subtle difference that proves humans are different from animals. It is when humans behave worse than animals, as per Qur'an. A squirrel, after sensing danger, would never say, "Hey bro, let's check the fire out there." It would run for its life. Humans are negligent, animals hardly are.

There's a old story. Once all animals revolted against man and took their case to Allah. They complained that man is a usurper of their resources. Man in his defense recounted his brilliant technological achievements. For each of his inventions, an animal would produce a parallel  Spider would compare his complex web with man's ability make structures. Bees would show their water-tight organization to be equivalent to, if not unmatchable, organizational skills of humans. Similarly, man exhausted everything he had, from communication systems to mineral extraction capabilities.

In the end, man said that he was the only carrier and transmitter of Divine Grace on earth, and that if he is go down, earth will be emptied of that resource. At that this point, all animals surrendered to the superiority of humans. Consciousness, spirituality and art are the reasons for man's hegemony on earth.

Hence all these material achievements of modern man - technological and organizational - are accidental to his true nature and function. He has lost his centre and origion, as per Frithjof Schuon, from which he still cannot escape as it's deeply part of his soul. Therefore, this superiority is no superiority. Animals can now directly compete with him, and rebel against him just like modern man has rebelled against Heaven.

Toxic Effects of Inferiority Complex in Pakistan (III)

Read part I and part II.

In South Africa there are two million whites against almost thirteen million native people, and it has never occurred to a single black to consider himself superior to a member of the white minority.

– Frantz Fanon

The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist who creates his inferior.

– Frantz Fanon

(First quote of Fanon really shook our spines to the core. This thought has never occurred to us! We must confess. Ask yourself. The second one is a ‘proven’ psychological fact.)

There’s an undeniable existence of self-hatred, self-pity and total disregard for our Way (cultural and above all religious) present in many of us, especially those dazzled by all things ‘western’. Another term for this disease is Occidentosis. Speaking of which Jalal Al-i Ahmed writes in his famous Occidentosis: A Plague from West:

“Under [occidentosis] we are like strangers to ourselves, in our food and dress, our homes, our manners, our publications, and, most dangerous, our culture. We try to educate ourselves in the European style and strive to solve every problem as the Europeans would.”

Jalal has comprehensively summarized negative effects of westernization in various aspects of our individual and collectives lives which we’ll attempt to examine as following.

Read full article here.

Reasons for Problems

Suppose: World a product of Chance

Let's suppose following statement is true:

"A chance hiccup in the tranquillity of being, so it is posited, produced a big bang in the cosmic nothingness and created everything; time, matter, energy, life, consciousness, morality!" (Source.)

For argument's sake we agree that the hiccup was a mere accident - that the striking of all those variables at the right time produced the world, in itself a statistical miracle - and that it was unplanned.

We cannot deny then that there was something in the things or in the nature of things that had the 'blue-print' to give birth to 'everything'. That even if no one was in control, who wrote that code or made that seed which burst forth all of its secrets into living realities? To deny the creator or to say who created the Creator is like solving the mystery of a ball of thread which has no head! Hence, the most optimal solution to this problem can only be affirming existence of One God.

Theory of accidentalism would have been fine if it remained neutral, but its following claims are more illogical and abdicate the very theory:

"The universe is thus devoid of any goal, meaning and purpose save that created by man. Man’s humanity, his morality, art and science, are nothing but gifts of the biological struggle, chance benefits of man’s effort and genius. For his genesis and existence, therefore, man need be grateful to no one but himself because it is Man not God who is the creator of man’s humanity!" (Source.)

Inferiority Complex & 'the Disease known as Civilization' (I)

I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement. —Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le Colonialisme 

 The independence movements in colonies and protectorates came into being, not through a return to indigenous values on the part of those concerned, but through the absorption of occidental ideas and ideologies, liberal or revolutionary … the process of modernization – a euphemism for Westernization – far from being halted by the withdrawal, was in fact accelerated. The enthusiasm of the new rulers for everything ‘modern’ was not restrained, as had been the enthusiasm of their former masters, by any element of self-doubt. 

 —Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man 

 The celebrated Algerian psychologist freedom fighter of blacks, Franz Fanon, saw only two parties in the battle between the colonialists and colonized: white and black. We, the brown, had pretty benign colonizers, who did not like to butcher millions or harass indiscriminately 24/7. We have no idea about the mass murdering of Central Asian Muslims and Africans by imperial powers of 19th/20th century. Our colonization was far less brutal and far more subtle, which left us unsettled, undiscovered, and even unwelcomed in both clubs, of whites and blacks. Our body was not tortured as much as we’re brainwashed and deluded through education and social-engineering by the “generous” colonizers.

Read full article here.

Humour is a Medicine

 The following was emailed to me, I love to share this with my audience at

"Thinking" 

If you ever feel a little bit stupid, just dig this up and read it again; you'll begin to think you're a genius.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 (On September 17, 1994, Alabama's Heather Whitestone was selected as Miss America 1995.)
Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,"
--Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
--Mariah Carey
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life,"
-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,"--Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,"
--Mayor Marion Barry, Washington , DC . ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it,"
--A congressional candidate in Texas ..
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
--Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.."
--Al Gore, Vice President
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"I love California . I practically grew up in Phoenix .."
-- Dan Quayle
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
--Lee Iacocca
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
--Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people."
-- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
--Department of Social Services, Greenville , South Carolina
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Traditionally, most of Australia 's imports come from overseas."
--Keppel Enderbery
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."
--Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Feeling smarter yet?

Morning Dew & Beauty

The morning dew is a source of freshness and is a proof of God too (at least for a saint). Unfortunately, those who worship modern science and technology whole day, do not realize that from its standpoint everything is nothing but matter, with no vertical dimension and causality to it. Divine Imprint is the source of all meaningful beauty. 

This mechanistic and materialistic view of nature, that modern science possesses, is also the cause of so much destruction of environment. Because from its view, there's no sacred element to material world, hence it's there to be captured according to free market forces. They realized it later that destruction of nature creates imbalance (too obvious to us though). We must salute from heart all native cultures that are disgusted by the idol of indefinite economic progress. Yet, many muslims who're envious of worldly power and resources have fallen to the same trap seculars did.

Historical Roots of Inferiority Complex in Indo-Pak

Blowing brains and spirits out

Colonial Invasion & State Structures. Loss of self-confidence in Muslims is justifiably related to defeats on the battlegrounds at the hands of west. But a military defeat is not enough to enslave hearts and minds, as it can be an impetus for revenge. Today Muslims are envious of West’s power, which proves the fact that the real challenge of west is not of materialism, but of intellectuality (which modernity certainly lacks in the true sense of the world).

However, what happened after the first phase of colonial invasion? How did colonials succeed in subduing large populations in vast areas? We’ve partial answers.

Realizing the danger that native “monkeys” might overrun them by sheer numbers, colonizers had to play the games of perceptions and mind control. They had to look big and strong. Few in numbers, they developed railway and laid communication systems to travel fast over the huge mass of land to subdue any possible mutiny, which did take place and successfully crushed. But the physical assets won’t do the job if the natives were enthusiastic and confident of their victory. Hence, that spirit of rebellion was decimated, and fear and inferiority complex were placed like time bombs beneath our (un)conscious. Self-confidence was shattered when Muslims’d see Tipu Sultan’s majestic dress being worn by peons of whites. Healthy, buildup, young officers constantly replaced older ones to give the illusion that all whites are brave and strong and can’t be messed with. These are just few of countless examples of this social-engineering.

We’ve to contextualize heroic things we attribute our colonial masters. Colonialism was about dispossession. In a paper on this very topic, Cole Harris summarizes colonists’ grand strategy of dispossession as following:

“The initial ability to dispossess rested primarily on physical power and the supporting infrastructure of the state; the momentum to dispossess derived from the interest of capital in profit and of settlers in forging new livelihoods; the legitimation of and moral justification for dispossession lay in a cultural discourse that located civilization and savagery and identified the land uses associated with each; and the management of dispossession rested with a set of disciplinary technologies of which maps, numbers, law, and the geography of resettlement itself were the most important…” (‘How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), abstract)

Hence, administrative and other infrastructures, and all the technologies were means to loot and pillage, although in a more civilized or face-saving way.

Education: Colonists’ Most Favorite Vehicle (MFV)

While military and political subjugation of colonists broke the spirits of many, colonial education convinced many that modern West’s ventures in barbarism were for our own benefit. When defeat induced fears of a mightier foe, the education changed the victim’s heart. As Akbar Abadi said: ‘An easterner would cut off the head of the foe; a westerner would change his heart’. British justified their rule to their own people on the pretext of ‘civilizing’ natives. This was different from what was happening to Blacks in Africa. This comparison will make things more clear.

Blacks were made colonizers on the basis of their color. They were led to believe that their skin color reflects that of sin, ugliness. Black lies are unforgivable, white lies are ignored. They don't have any right to exist. Be white or disappear was the attitude of their colonizers. Blacks even had dreams of being white. They craved for white color at any cost.

Our minds were made slaves. Our color is not such a problem to them. Our culture, religion, and thought endangered their existence. They worked to snatch our inheritance, our ilm from us. That is why they used education. They changed minds.

Economic-historian Atiyab Sultan writes that in the beginning of 19th century, colonization became more ‘pedagogic’ in India. Previously, Britishers were consolidating militarily and administratively. It was time to tend to education, which was primarily used to create a special kind of class of natives, loyal to them.

Liberals and utilitarians advocated ‘civilizing’ natives in the “universal image” of modern western man. There were 3 distinct groups in British parliament who lobbied for their own educational programs (with unmistakable similarities): Evangelicals, utilitarians, and uiberals. Evangelicals like Charles Grant believed Indians to be 'race of men lamentably degenerate and base'; liberals like Macaulay fancied, “A single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”; and utilitarians like JS Mills considered Indian stock of knowledge to be ‘obscure and worthless’ (perhaps he did so without digesting a page of Indian literature). On the contrary, Dr Asad Zaman argues, “A single chapter on sacrifice in a book like Fazail e Amaal that teaches man to go against his nafs, is worth the whole literature of modern West.” Only Orietnatlists, Atiyab mentions, argued that colonial educational system in India should be according to indigenous sources and be taught according to indigenous views.

In a way summing up the educational policy, which was fiercely debated in English parliament, Atiyab further writes:

“Education was also a chief instrument in the creation of a colonial subject that would be a loyal and willing consumer of British knowledge and produce. Macaulay voiced this concern thus: ‘Indians should not be too ignorant or too poor to value and buy English manufactures’ (Basu 58.) In a larger sense, the loyal subjects were needed for the calm preservation of empire, echoing the imperial policy of cultivating supportive local elites …”

It becomes clear that their educational institutions served colonists needs, not ours. This reminds of what Iqbal called the “un-Muslim character” colonial education produced. Also, that system was unfair to the masses as it sent few to higher service, leaving the rest impoverished. We should also add that this created an anti-native character in Indians at large, to which Hindus responded very well, boycotting foreign goods.

Triumph of Materialism. Hamza Yusuf (HY) notes that the colonists saw the global and historical link Muslims maintained due to their religious Tradition. Muslims had many global learning centers which played vital role in this regard and maintained some kind of visible unity (although the underlying unity of ummah is still undeniable and, in fact, crucial to the venture of Islam). In order to destroy that unity among Muslims, colonists sought to destroy this ‘historical link’. And as per HY, they did so by injecting inferiority complex in Muslims regarding their lack of material progress. “It’s all documented how they did this,” he emphasizes. For instance, they’d compare paper to pre-modern tablet, which Muslims used for instruction. “Using a tablet is backward. Now we’ve paper!” This notion of backwardness is still on the lips of 75-80% (if not 100%) of Muslims, especially the educated class.

Eurocentrism. The roots of civilizational inferiority complex may also lie in the venom called eurocentrism, especially for uncritical bookish minds. These are more less two central tenets of this mythological, racist & historicist thesis: All civilizations must develop along the lines of West to achieve the idols of indefinite economic progress, civility and “enlightenment”; and that Europe is at the center of world stage, and that all other civilizations are mere supporting pillars, resource fields to it. But western civilization not the end of civilizations, argues Rene Guenon:

"So long as western people imagine that there only exists a single type of humanity, that there is only one 'civilization', at different stages of development, no mutual understanding will be possible. The truth is that there are many civilizations, developing along very different lines, and that, among these, that of the modern West is strangely exceptional, as some of its characteristics show."

Further Guenon scrutinizes the true nature of this highly over-rated civilization, which dominates the world materially so far (we would concede to the objection that even its material dominance is soon to be surpassed):

"The civilization of the modern West appears in history a veritable anomaly: among all those which are known to us more or less completely, this civilization is the only one which has developed along purely material lines and this monstrous development, whose beginning coincides with the so-called Renaissance, has been accompanied, as indeed it was fated to be, with a corresponding intellectual regress; we say corresponding and not equivalent, because here are two orders of things between which there can be no common measure. This regress has reached such a point that the Westerners of today no longer know what pure intellect is; in fact they do not even suspect that anything of the kind can exist…"

Post-Pakistan: British Legacy goes on. Leadership produced by the British took over the country after the partition. They molded state policies and institutions in the image of their departed masters, more or less. Discussion of continuation of such structures is not relevant here. What’s important is that the inferiority complex of native Brown Sahibs’ turned into superiority complex that caused much harm.

After 1947 we witnessed exploitation of our Bengali brothers, which was at once racial and materialistic. It wasn’t religious extremism that separated two brothers, but the absence of spiritual training of the governing “elites”, in bureaucracy, politicians and army. We’ve accounts of how West Pakistani elites treated Bengalis as lower level race. Our false-elite was certainly a clone of their masters.

Co-authored with Noor.

Inferiority Complex: Some confused questions

Have we, the Muslims, forever lost that homeland that bore in its bosom sense of Sacred, in divergent aspects of life and thought – a homeland marked by self-confidence? In fact, are we condemned to compare that homeland to the exotic occidental lands far, far away? Have we completely lost our essence? Would we go on to hate the scent, air, dust and mud of our homeland, labeling nature ‘backward’? Are we brainwashed - after having lost power to arbitrate in global affairs - to look forward to ‘a single kind of humanity of west’, which boasts itself to be the Perfect one? Have we surrendered to the thesis that modern world is the ‘end of the history’, i.e., humanity has achieved its destination in modernity? Or, are we just ‘worshiping technology’ despite being outwardly religious; so lustful just to learn tools and tricks of yielding power and wealth - even at the cost of nature’s annihilation? Perhaps all of this is true. These are some of the major crises of Islamic civilization. Our response to these will decide the fate of Islam’s unique ‘venture’ that began 1400 years ago, developed over centuries, and now faces annihilation of its world-view. 

When will the self-deception, self-hatred and self-mockery end (see our leading English dailies, e.g.)? Will we heed to the call of pious and learned ones to take off the ‘white mask’, and destroy the idols of color, race and nationality; instead, paint ourselves in ‘Allah’s colour’? (This is not to deny our right to be distinguished by these legitimate identities.) Do we anymore wish to see a holistic Islamic civilization to flourish and survive, which requires a lot of thinking (Islamically) and ‘courage and style’? Are we willing to be inconvenient and unacceptable to the majority? Are we willing to live as ‘Ishmaelite outcasts’ – someone who does not care about rejection of Divine laws and values by leading nations? (Although it is another thing to be recognized at intellectual level, globally - lack of which is something that points to our failure to respond to intellectual challenges of modern West.)

Despair: Between Light & Darkness

In despair, man rises above the fetters of this world. This world, i intuit, has an element of forgetfulness to it. Its a trap of illusion that deludes many. The chains of senses imprison us. Hunger, passion, thirst, lust, caprices, etc., can reduce us to an animal. But in despair all of this is cracked open. In fact, all of the chains melt away. Forgetfulness of imminent, inevitable, unavoidable death vanishes. Delusion of independence of man is seriously challenged. Naive belief in absolute efficacy of our efforts, and the causes, falters.

Interestingly, while the whole day is spent in the agony of despair, it is punctuated by very brief moments of unjustifiable euphoria. After it dissipates, horizon looks gloomier.

Despair only teaches us to lean on the Absolute. Tribulation is seen by spiritual and religious masters as a blessing in disguise that connects us to our Beloved, with whom depths of our souls so want to reunite. As one's animalistic desires dissolve - of eating, drinking and taking pleasures of various kinds - one sincerely and actively invokes Allah's name. And after tribulation ends, hearts solidify and everything becomes history.

This isn't the sum-total of something one might experience from despair. A skeptical mind, (either) brainwashed by modernism and/or thanks to the whispers of Satan, can view things differently, although not objectively. He can say in his very despair that i'm invoking God because i need him. Hence, my mind has invented him as a support. He doesn't necessarily exist. (Curiously this has nothing to with the realm of pure intellect, rather emotion. For if pure intellect [not separated from heart] had been operating, there won't have been any despair in the first place.)

Here, firstly, the existence of God has nothing to do with this inversion or error-ridden whisper by torch-bearer of falsehood. The fact that one yearns to lean on the Absolute and find solace in it is what metaphysicians point to as 'truth within us'. 'We know truth because we are truth,' says Frithjof Schuon. Secondly, this has to do with skepticism, which doubts everything. In its limitation lies its singular cure:

"Ibn-e-Sina talks of a hanging man, who is hung in the middle of space. His feet don't touch anything; his legs don't touch anything. He doesn't know where he is. [Thus] he can doubt the existence of earth, he can doubt the existence of air - there is nothing he cannot doubt! The one [and only] thing he cannot doubt is himself that is doubting everything."

"'I think therefore God is.' Not that 'I think therefore I am'." - Seyyed Hossein Nasr, In the Beginning was Consciousness, The Dudleian Lecture delivered at Harvard Divinity School.

Breaking the idol of Self

No one was more aware or had the opportunity to develop a bigger idol of one's self, or ego, than Imam Ghazzali, perhaps. He was more respected and 'in demand' than anyone else of his time. He is said to have never lost an argument to anyone. He, being a polymath, had penetrated into every system of thought; being a rare erudite. And, no one else became a victim of that success in the eyes of the society than him. One fine day, in front of his students, his tongue would refuse to move. Senses would declare shutter-down strike; perhaps as a protest for their right to be transcended by themselves. He would face a crisis; not of faith. He had to break his own idol. Having heard of an experiential science of sufi that couldn't be found in book, he left for a decade long journey into achieving this two-fold task, a) knowing the highest form of certitude (as an experimental knowledge field, which can be replicated) - i.e, to test claims of Sufis; b) and to cure himself from this disease of self-worship. He'd follow the prescribed map; spend hours in contemplation and remembrance  and serve as a janitor (even). Shaykh Hamza Yusuf would compare him to the most prestigious scholar of Harvard to explain his importance then.

The harmful consequences of developing and nourishing the idol of one's self have been identified even in West, where the metrics of success are purely worldly and materialistic. (Sentimentalism, as expressed in prestige and admiration, is another aspect of materialism.) In this insighful TED talk ('Your elusive creative genius') by the creative writer, she shows the arrogance of modern man to have  made a god out of himself; to assign to oneself that is not his own creation. She argues that to save our creative mind from the ills they've fallen into, modern man should see these gifts to be transcendental, and a mere incidence of fate.

Foundations of Secular Thought & Education

While nineteenth century materialism closed the mind of man to what is above him, twentieth century psychology opened it to what is below him 

- René Guénon

The ‘eclipse of human soul and intellect’ by secular thought has brought disastrous consequences not just at pure intellectual level, but at societal and practical level as well. The change agents have been ‘false prophets of modernism’ (i.e., modern philosophers and theorists). At intellectual level, they’ve lost the traditional, religious view of nature and knowledge, and created false alternatives – the cause of mass misguidance. Not only that, these handful of men have produced this ‘Dark Age’, a material civilization, in which both human actions and intellectual efforts are profane and cut off from Divine guidance. At practical level, though they have discovered in their way great deal of facts about human mind and body, but still paved way to moral degradation, materialism and suffocation of public morality.


Read full article here.

Sadness

Sadness - not shocks - make me feel lighter and spiritually uplifted. It induces a longing  of a lost home, which is eternal and not this world. A forgotten Centre and Origin.