Space-Time and Metaphysics

If you ask any Muslim questions regarding existence of God, angels, heaven and hell, chances are that he/she will ignore you  or at best what you can hope for is an emotional response. There's also a 3rd category of Muslim who is so overwhelmed by scientific knowledge that he feels obligatory to answer these questions using Einstein's conception of space-time. He'll tell you stuff like angels  travel faster than speed of light, somewhere among these galaxies God will create heaven and hell once our solar system is destroyed, even to the extent that God resides in a throne somewhere in this universe. Such a person has a linear conception of time as shown below

Forcing empirical logic like this results in the following hypothetical scenario. Imagine that you get a chance to visit hell 30 years after judgement day i.e. year 2230 and there you meet a person who has been living there since judgement day. If you ask that person "how much time have you been living here?", a natural answer is 30 years.

Let's dig seep into this question from philosophical point of view. Imagine today if I ask you this question that "what is the composition of chemical X inside your body?", you're response will obviously be "WTF! Can you please tell me what this chemical X is?" The person living in hell who has been asked this question about "how much time he has spent in hell" will feel the same way. He has no perception of time just like you have no perception of that chemical X. God, angels, heaven and hell are metaphysical objects, the existence of which does not depend upon time.

Space-Time is a physical construct. Every object that we perceive in this physical world exists within a time span. I was born in 1985 and I will die in, say, 2050. This chair or the bed in which you're sitting was created 10 or 20 years ago and it has a life span as well. Infact every physical object of this universe exists within a time span. Time, therefore, is a necessary variable of existence in physical space. We cannot think of any physical object that has existed forever and will exist forever.

This is not true in metaphysics where time is not a variable for defining existence. Heaven and Hell can exist without time. Hence this question that how much time has a person spent in hell is invalid, since time is not perceivable in hell just like that chemical X is not perceivable in today's world.

Same goes for the constraint of space in this physical world. Every thing that we perceive in this world has a predefined shape. And everything including galaxies can be specified by a spatial coordinate system. This is not true in metaphysics. Heaven and hell is not like a planet somewhere in the galaxy. God does not reside in this physical space. In fact he remains outside the bounds of space itself. He created the space, he isn't bounded by it! Or to put it in Thomas Aquinas words, God created time instead of being created by time. Space-Time is thus a creation encapsulating other creations (like you and me) within itself.

Time is a criteria of judging a punishment in this world. For instance a person standing on fire for 1 minute will feel more pain that a person who stands on fire for 1 hour. But this cannot be extrapolated  to hell. One simply cannot say that a person living in hell for 1 day will suffer "less" than the person living in hell for 50 years. Time, as a basis for suffering becomes meaningless there.

So what is the criteria of punishment in Hell if not time? I simple don't know. What I know for sure is that isn't time. This is called negative theology, that is you can infer what a metaphysical object is not, but you cannot tell what it exactly is.

Analyzing a typical Friday Sermon

I recently came back to islamabad after couple of years. Among a number of things that have changed, our local mosque which was under construction back then has also been renovated. Since in Italy, we don't have huge mosques with traditional Islamic architecture, I was naturally enthusiastic when the newly appointed imam started delivering the sermon for friday prayers.

Among a number of things that imam said, he repeated this statement a number of times,
"انسانی ضمیر کا جواب جس طرح اسلام دیتا ہے ، کوئی اور مذہب نہیں دیتا"
or "They way that Islam addresses human conscience, no other religion does better".

I am not sure whether the audience chanting the slogans of  "Praise be to Lord" or even the imam himself understood what he said himself, so let me break it down for you !

For starters, "addressing human conscience" is not the only objective of Islam. Imagine a triangular relationship between society, state and an individual; now remove the collective aspect of society and state (or shariah as it is commonly recognized term), we'll focus only on "individual islam". Not even that, within individual islam, discard all philosophical and theological concepts (e.g. the concepts of hereafter, heaven, hell, angels, prophets, metaphysics etc), also remove "fiqh" out of the context (i.e. the arguments discussing practices of Islam including Zakat (charity), Hajj, prayers etc). Now what remains is the spiritual aspect of Islam commonly known as mysticism or "tasawwuf". This is what imam referred to as "human conscience" or "انسانی ضمیر", and according to him, no other religion satisfies human conscience better than Islam. However, one religion that discusses human conscience extensively is Buddhism.

The comparison between Buddhism and Islamic mysticism is also very interesting. The object of discussion in Islamic mysticism is God, while that in Buddhism is a human itself. Muslim mystics have always discussed conscience i.e. the ability of a human to determine what is right and wrong from an objective perspective of God, while buddhist usually differentiate between evil and good from a holistic yet subjective human perspective.  You'll hardly hear Dalai Lama mentioning God, while Ibn-Arabi hardly discusses anything but God. In buddhism, the objective is to explore universal human nature and keep one's conscience in sync with that objective human ideal conscience. In Islam, however, mystics argue that the potential moral compass is divinely bestowed upon a human being, therefore the objective is explore objective conscience and then to remove the dualism between what one thinks is right/wrong with respect to what God suggests how the differentiation should be.

To conclude, perhaps a more fair statement would be "when it comes to discussing human conscience from a subjective viewpoint of human itself, no religion does it better than Buddhism, while when it comes to discussing human conscience from an objective viewpoint of God, no religion does it better than Islam"

Allah knows the Best !

Metaphysics: The world of ideas?

In literal sense, the world of "metaphysics" means the world "beyond-physics". 

I'll start from agnostic viewpoint and then slowly move towards religious viewpoint of this world.

Plato is the first known philosopher to lay the ground work for such world. In contrast to the empirical world that we sense through our 5 senses, the meta physical world remains outside the scope of our sensual paradigm. It has also no physical constraints including that of time and space. This doesn't mean that metaphysics is not real. In fact, according to Plato's theory of forms an "idea" residing in metaphysical space is the most real entity. How? Consider the following scenario....... O but wait....... before coming to that scenario, lets discuss how an "idea" qualifies as an object from "metaphysical" world.......

- An idea cannot be sensed empirically (you can't see or touch an idea, can you!)

- An idea does not follow space-time constraint. Two persons sitting on different parts of earth can come up with exactly the same idea at exactly the same time instant (no time constraint). Also an idea has no predefined shape, there's no spatial reference of an idea. You can't ask someone to look for an idea at a specific location on earth (no space constraint).

Coming back to that scenario which explains how knowledge flows from metaphysical to physical world......

Imagine you're a carpenter and you come up with an idea of making a "chair" from woods, i.e. a wooden place for a person to sit upon. Now another carpenter can also come with the same idea and in this case, it is more than possible that both chairs can end up having different physical shapes etc. While the more appropriate physical representation of a chair can be argued upon, what cannot be argued is the certainty or reality of that idea that provides the basic concept. Perhaps that is why Plato maintains a difference between existence and reality of an object. For him, existence is something physical and binary, either an object exists in the physical world or it doesn't, while the reality of an object is something meta physical....... in percentages, where ideas occupy the top spot. 

Plato believed that substances are forms inhering in matter, while one of his students, Aristotle believed otherwise. Aristotle held that Form and Matter are inseparable, and that matter and form do not exist apart from each other, but only together. Stuff without structure was mere chaos, while structure without stuff was no more than the ghost of being.....

Since the inception of metaphysics, there has been an enormous attempt to incorporate the religious concepts within this space. In Catholicism, this was done by Thomas Aquinas while in Islamic tradition the likes of Al-Farabi, Ibn-e-Sina, Al-Ghazali etc are attributed for this.

From an Aristotelian view point, there's no such idea that has no physical manifestation. From a platonic view point, it is possible but then how to validate such an idea? How do I know that this idea is simply not the "ghost of being"? Since this can only be done in meta physical space, in Islamic theology this is possible using scripture (Quran), given the source of scripture is divine, which is assumed to be the most accurate representation of metaphysics.

From an Islamic view point, an idea is not the "only" meta physical entity. It is merely that object from meta physics that is feasible to realize by a human mind. God, angels, souls, heaven, hell, all such objects are not merely an "idea", they are the most real objects of meta physical space, the only problem is that the properties of those objects are not known as we know the properties of matter.

Quran uses a concept of "tashbeehaat" or "allegory" to correlate the properties of a meta physical object with that of a physical object. While giving a tashbeeh, an object is taken from meta physics and its properties are illustrated using a somewhat "similar" or "mushaabeh" object from the physical world. For instance in verse 35:1, Quran describes angels having "two ,three or four pairs of wings". The objective here is not to illustrate the properties of matter or materialistic properties of angels, the goal is rather to convey this message that angels live outside the scope of time, meaning they can travel so fast as can birds with wings. Similarly this statement from verse 57:3 that "Allah is the First, the Last, the Apparent one and the Hidden One" states that Allah exalts the limits of "time" (being the First and Last one) and "space" (being the Apparent One and the Hidden One simultaneously, its only possible for an object to be apparent and hidden simultaneously if it has no shape). Infact, this also validates the hallmark statement of Thomas Aquinus that "God is infinite in time and space". But for me, this is true for all objects of metaphysics including angels. The infinity of something in time and space is NOT the argument of Godliness. In fact heaven and hell as mentioned in Quran are also limitless atleast in time, since it is mentioned in numerous locations in Quran that whoever enters heaven or hell will remain there "forever". Now, if you're interested in knowing that what is the argument of Godliness excluding "infinity in time and space", please refer to "waḥdat al-wujūd" and "waḥdat ash-shuhūd"...... although you must be careful since both of these concepts are terribly abused in Islamic literature.....

PS: One paragraph has been quoted directly from www.philosophybasics.com

Depression: When everything seems meaningless !

"Some moments are infinite".... posted one of my friends on her Facebook wall. She was probably referring to her romantic life, yet such moments can arrive anywhere at anytime. You cannot bound those moments to any domain of life, since they are "infinite".

The infinity suggests that your consciousness is constantly exploring new spaces within such moments, the reason you find this whole scenario a beautiful one........ If you're such lacking such moments in your life, this may be a starting point of depression.

Since I like schematics, let me show you how your consciousness give birth to such moments......

If you're new to this blog, you can think of consciousness as a combination of your rational, ethical and aesthetic sense, objects within your surrounding as the reality and the portion of reality that is somehow related to you as your "Self"........ In subject-object terms, consciousness is the subject while the reality and self is its object. In this aspect, consciousness not only receives inherent meanings from its surroundings but it also creates meaningfulness within that context...... Depression is the lack of this meaningfulness in a given moment......... But the fault is in the generation of meanings, not their perception, otherwise a person would never "feel" depressed.

Another important point here is that consciousness thinks of self as an object, if this objective analysis is not allowed, and if self tries to bind the consciousness within subjective being, this can also result in depression...... The transcendent nature of consciousness wants to explore meanings outside the subjective nature of self.

Although the root of depression lies in lack of meanings, these meanings are not rational, rather they are ethical in their essence...... i.e. within consciousness, these meanings are not generated by my rational sense, in-fact they are the output of moral and ethical sense. Ever have the feeling that everything going on in this world  is simply "wrong"..... ? and You'll always have this feeling in terms of "right" or "wrong" (moral), not in terms of "correct" or "incorrect" (rational). Therefore the most effective remedy of depression is to revive ethical and moral reasoning of consciousness...... This means that a clinical reason of depression is the subjugation of morality by human emotions, i.e. the meanings generated by your ethical sense end up creating apposite emotions within you......... there's a mismatch between generated meanings and perceived meanings.

Remember that selflessness is not the motive here. The aim is to achieve self-otherness..... i.e. the consciousness must have the ability to develop emotional interfaces with other objects the same way it reacts to emotions related to its-self ..... Otherwise, I will only feel happiness if and only if I am happy myself...... This point of standing, where I am only able to realize those emotions which are only related to my-self is the hunting ground for depression....... Within the context of diagram, this means that consciousness should perceive meanings from reality the same way it perceives those meanings from self.

One way to do this is impersonalization i.e. to find perfection in your personality by making others as your substance of existence,......  You see now, why I said that consciousness should be transcendent not subjective? The aim of consciousness is to define "you" and "me" by the same matter of existence....... The consciousness aims to have the same realistic perception of you and every other real object, as it has of my self.

Ideally one should keep exploring new meanings within his/her surroundings, rather than waiting for an object to disclose its inherent meanings....... otherwise you'll get bored of the reality. Beware of the moment when the world starts appearing static ...... its depression !  

Is This for Real?

If you look at Wikipedia, this is how the page defines Reality,

"Reality is the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. Reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible."

This pretty much says it all. Even humans acknowledge the limitation of our thoughts when it comes to defining the "Real World". Acknowledging this fact should be the first step of your "Belief" making process.

Reality can exist in either or both of the following forms,

1) Physical (Properties of matter that humans can sense with our 5 senses)

2) Metaphysical (Existence that is beyond the paradigm of human senses)

There's no space-time division in the Metaphysical world which means that it can even exist within the physical world. Imagine if you're alone in your room, someone is sitting right next to you that you're only able to visualize, had you an extra sixth physical sense! This means that this someone is as "real" as you're! 

Here's how Edmund Gettier, an American Philosopher describes this,

The first thing's that my beliefs grasp only a part of reality (truths). If somehow I understand the reality, it constitutes my knowledge. But the most part of reality that I believe is the one I cannot fully understand. These are the so called "poorly justified true beliefs". Such beliefs are true in their essence; a human mind simply can't justify them properly..........

But the question remains.......... how do I believe that any object is real? What is the transition from truth into Beliefs? Let's look into this question from the two perspectives,

1) Physical: The true properties of a physical object can be discovered by a human mind. That is how modern scientific world is evolving. We formulate a knowledge base for an idea and then we pursue it. Its like you want to follow something but first you have to lay some ground rational basis for it, after which you start pursuing it. During this course, we discover the true nature of that idea. After this discovery, we classify that idea as "knowledge" and then start to "believe" in that idea...... This is how science is discovering the truth these days and classifying it as "knowledge"......... Interestingly enough, sometimes the knowledge base is not mandatory to pursue an idea. In fact, the scientific ideas that have inspired true inventions have seemed to come out of nowhere in human thoughts. In this aspect, reality reveals itself more than humans discover it, e.g. the discovery of Penicillin by the mistake of Alexander Fleming....... But once an accidental discovery has been made, or an idea is revealed onto human mind, the mind automatically starts to formulate its rational basis. If that basis is not strong, despite that idea being true in its nature, gives birth to "poorly justified true beliefs".

2) Metaphysical: In this aspect, reality can NEVER be discovered; it chooses human mind to reveal itself. Traditionally this has given birth to the philosophical aspect of religions including mysticism. When reality appears in the thoughts of such philosophers, they try to put it in the most efficient rational, ethical and aesthetic perspectives for fellow humans. If this attempt is successful, it is classified as "knowledge", otherwise  "poorly justified true beliefs".

Believing in truth only is the ultimate objective of human mind. In the above figure, the union of blue and red circles achieves this objective. Humans should thrive to achieve this goal where they will be left either with "knowledge" or "poorly justified true beliefs". But remember, this is your goal, your objective, you should not think it as your current state of mind. Your actual current state is the figure above, where you are not believing in the truth and believing in the false ideas.   

So far, we have talked about indirect interpretation of reality by human thoughts. This means that every idea that i present to you is subjected to my understanding of it, its explanation for you, and your interpretation of it. This explains the subjective nature of reality and why it cannot be fully perceived by humans. There's one exception though............... which is in the form of religious scriptures. These scriptures represent the divine reality that has manifested itself directly from the metaphysical to the physical world. Given the assumption, that scriptures are not the creation of prophets and have remained free from human intervention across time, I conclude that these books are THE MOST REAL concepts. This means that their reality is beyond human capability of questioning, if and only if their text has remained free from human intervention, even from the intervention of their respective prophets.

The point of being "Educated"

At least once, you must have met someone in your life who seems to know almost everything.......... The purpose of education is to avoid building such personalities. "To know everything" ain't the point here.......

From a social and economic viewpoint, the western world has adopted an industry driven approach. The sole purpose of education seems to produce good scientists and engineers. In this aspect, the west has succeeded at least in producing good professionals who help industry in generating revenues. The same cannot be said for most of the eastern societies. The whole agenda here seems to produce money making machines. If these machines end up being good scientists and researchers, very well then! ...... otherwise the societies pretty much do not care! Since money is THE ONLY thing that matters here, some societies have even adopted this notion of turning up whole education sector as a profit making industry.

Let's talk about some of the psychological perspective......... This is where the whole human race is simply wrong! For a healthy mind, education should end up rectifying the rational thoughts of a person. It should help a person in developing his/her ethical sense. It is only after having a better 'rational' and 'moral' sense will I be able to build up my personality.

Humans are following an apposite approach here. Education has given us intelligence, and we are using  it as a tool to justify our mistakes, rather than rectifying them. Going back to the start, where I

mentioned this personality who seems to have a reason for everything...... this is what modern education  has ended up producing....... A person who is always looking for reasons to support his unethical behavior, who is trying to justify his emotions through any possible means.

The point of education remains the same that our forefathers used to tell us...... that is to help build up our consciousness. I remember when I was a teenager, my father used to force me and my brother to watch a TV show which discusses knowledge and beliefs. Frankly speaking, I hated it in the start........ after all, who in his teenage would like to listen to reason! Funny thing's that.... as time passed, my father lost his interest in the show whereas I started enjoying it!

The last paragraph has nothing to do with the scope of this article....... I'm just trying to give you guys a parenting lesson :)

Lets get back to some serious stuff, shall we! In summary, you should look deep into your heart and ask yourself this critical question "Am I intentionally looking for reason" or "is reason genuinely guiding my decisions". If not the latter, then I'm afraid you're using your own intelligence to destroy your consciousness. Your education has ended up destroying your morality! The correct approach will be to let your consciousness be the guiding force for your intelligence.

Reviving Ethics within Pakistan

As I said in an earlier post, a human being is a "consciousness " being, which means that the state of consciousness is sufficient enough to define an individual in any part of the world, including Pakistan. Among other entities residing in the consciousness including intellect and aesthetics, the ethical sense; the sense of being 'right' and 'wrong' plays the most important role in building a personality.

Society and State: Ontology

Collectivism exists in two forms (1) Society and (2) State. A 'society' is formed when individuals having diverse personalities interact with each other.  A 'state' is a group of individuals within a society who hold some sort of authority over other individuals. The state, therefore, can be thought of a subset of a society enjoying some sense of 'authority'. Normally, the state constitutes a very minute portion of a society e.g. the individuals working for government, army etc may amount to less than 2% of total Pakistani population. Although state is the part of a society technically, in the rest of this blog, the word 'society' will be used to refer that 98% portion of the population that does not have any authority and hence not included in the state

The Birth of a Revolution:

Whether it's a society or a state, the basic entity is an individual itself. What happens is that each individual positively evolves according to his own moral and ethical sense. This means that I have a set of moral code of conduct for myself and I will try to rectify my behavior according to that code of conduct. This process is obviously subjective to each individual, meaning something that seems 'right' to me might not look so to you. Nevertheless, this process of positive evolution should be appreciated in a society.  Imagine yourself going  through this process of transformation in your personality; when you go to public places, your interaction with other members of the society will propagate this affect within a society. The same effect will also propagate simultaneously within a state if you're a government servant for instance, as you'll try to change things under your authority as well. In short, the point of origin of a moral and ethical revolution is an individual itself, while this revolution makes its way into the society and the state simultaneously.

The critical point is reached when the consciousness of a person fails to develop his/her moral and ethical sense. If not cured, this can lead to the point where, rather than transforming my personality, I will try to change my moral code of conduct.  I have decided not to change myself, therefore whatever I am doing is 'right'. This means that rather than rectifying my personality I am changing the definition of 'righteousness'. The Pakistani society is also following the same trend. For instance, if you're standing in a queue waiting for your turn, this act of 'nobility' is interpreted as  'stupidity'. If you're bribing someone, this act is considered as a positive way of 'assimilating' within a society. The society, rather than rectifying itself, is changing the basic human ethical and moral values. The same effect can also be felt within a state. The government lies to a mob, by temporarily accepting its demands, and when the mob disperses and the tension is diffused, the government reverts to its original stance while this whole act is considered as 'good statesmanship'.

Constitution and Ethics:

It is usually considered that the role of constitution is to protect an individual within the society. The reality is anything but apposite. The role of constitution is to protect the basic human ethical and moral values from the negative effect of society/state itself. The constitution keeps the ethical values as a reference while enforcing the society and the state to adapt accordingly. For instance, if I kill you, the constitution won't punish me because it has some special sympathy for the victim (you) or some special grudge against me. The subjects are not important here. I am being punished simply because I have violated the sacred ethical value of protecting the humanity. This means that nothing is supreme than human ethics; not me, not you, not the system, not the state, not the government, not even the constitution itself if it fails to protect those ethics.

Conclusion:

As an individual if I want to bring some positive change in the society and a state, the starting point is to look deep into my consciousness and revive its ethical and moral senses. Rather than clouding the judgment of our next generation by giving them excuse to 'fit' in a corrupt society, we should teach our children not to earn a single penny from illegal sources even if they're starving to death.  This will merely be a starting point of a lengthy process of which there is but NO alternative!