Tolerance in Islam

While we deeply despise the barbarism of Israel against the Palestinians, it is equally important for us to remain humane and respectful of the existential rights of other religions. Islamic state in the Iraq and the Levant has recently declared a caliphate in Iraq whose sole purpose is to terrorize the people there. What it is doing in the name of creating a caliphate is that it is destroying and selling all the historical relics and sites in Iraq, all in the name of religion of Islam. Moreover, it has recently torched an 1800 years old church in Mosul, a town in Iraq. It has also expelled plenty of christians out of the country by threatening them either to convert to Islam, pay the taxes or to leave the country. As the people left, they also snatched their precious belongings including women's jewelry. All of this is being done in the name of Islam. On the other hand our wannabe caliphs are busy in celebrating picnics. This is not Islam. On the other hand this is worst degree of barbarism.

The idea of having a caliphate stems from the appointment of earliest rashidun caliphs in Islamic tradition. The four notable caliphs were Hazrat Abu Bakr (RA), Hazrat Umar (RA), Hazrat Usman (RA) and Hazrat Ali (RA). 

When hazrat Abu Bakr (RA) sent an army to Syria, he particularly directed them to completely spare a population that was indulged in worship of God. By saying this he literally referred to the Christian nation. 

In the era of Hazrat Umar (RA) when Egypt was conquered, he refused to pray in a church despite the request of the arch bishop. His (RA) argument was that if he (RA) prayed in the church the latter generations of Muslims may make it a point that since the caliph of Muslims had prayed in that church, it should be converted to a mosque. That was the sensitivity of hazrat Umar (RA) towards the christian religion. He (RA) also made many social reforms while keeping in view the senile jews of Arabia.

Similarly, a slave of Hazrat Umar (RA) was a christian. He remained so till the end of his life. One of the central tenets of Islam is that it cannot be forced. There is no compulsion in Islam. This is the bottom-line.

Hazrat Usman (RA) and Hazrat Ali (RA) simply followed his lead.

Another venerable caliph from the latter generations was Hazrat Umar bin Abdul Aziz (RA). It is quoted in the history of Islam that the rate of conversion to Islam in his era was the highest. One of the reasons was that he had confiscated all the property from the Banu Umayya (his native Arab tribe) and given it back to the government treasury. It is also quoted that his higher officials reported to him to maneuver monetary concessions to the non-Muslims and to place tax embargoes in a way so as to discourage their conversion to Islam. Upon this he severely scolded his officials saying that God sent Muhammad (PBUH) as a guide to humanity and not as a tax collector. 

Such is the religion of Islam. That is why too many people converted to Islam. And that is why even today it is still looked upon as a hope by the humanity.

Imposing a caliphate such as is being done by the Islamic state in Iraq is nothing more than barbarism and terrorism. This should clearly be abandoned as a bad idea of a worst degree. It is time that Muslims should themselves speak up against such brutal tendencies.

In the end I would like to share the prologue and the epilogue of the book titled Islam and tolerance written by hazrat hakeem Tariq Mehmood Chughtai (RA) from Ubqari institute. Ubqari magazine also has a special section on Islam and tolerance. This episode is particularly worth reading which is about how a companion of Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH), Abdullah ibn-e-Umar (RA), compassionately treated his jewish neighbor. Abdullah bin Umar (RA) was the son of hazrat Umar (RA), whos was the second caliph of Islam. Much of the conquests in the middle east happened in his era. These include Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Jerusalem. The book has been translated and is currently under review. But the prologue and epilogue are really worth reading. 

Prologue

During the reign of Ibrahim Lodhi, an issue of demolishing a Hindu temple arose during construction. The Hindus were not giving permission to demolish it. A great mufti of Muslims was called in the court to advise. On hearing the complete account, the mufti delivered a fatwa that the temple could not be demolished. Although this decision was incommodious for the King and the public, but he stood by his words and history is witness to this account that the temple was not destroyed.

The theology of Islam is not only peaceful for Muslims, but it also holds clear principles for the safety of the whole human society. The verse of Quran, Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he has slain mankind entirely, is in reality an expression of the summary of an unseen relationship amongst every individual, sect, religion, class and nation. The history of Islam is witness that whenever a ruler implemented Ikhlaq-e-Muhammadi as a superior ethical code in an Islamic Kingdom, then in his reign, non-Muslims and their places of worship were protected as well as those of the Muslims. And they were provided with the same religious and social freedom as the Muslims. Each epoch is ornate with innumerable auspicious events due to which not only the Islamic history is proud, rather the non-Muslims historians have also mentioned them in an impressive and appraising manner. The bright examples of these events are the circumstances of Ahl-e-Allah. Baba Fareed's (RA) brotherhood and tolerance with the followers of Sikh religion is not at all a secret. His name is present in the holy books of Sikh religion as a religious leader. Khuwaja Moin-ud-Din Chishtis (RA) behavior, his benevolence, and humanitarianism is a true reality that is even remembered today. Hazrat Khuwaja Abdullah (RA) says that be a flower and not a thorn, be a friend and not a stranger. All such incidents, events, stories and accounts are a small glimpse of Islam's tolerance towards the non-Muslims.

The humanitarian teachings of Ahl-e-Allah is evidence in itself of this reality that the true followers of Islam not only held sincere love for non-Muslims in their hearts, rather their affection would tie the non-Muslims in their golden chain of love.

In the current times when the whole world is engulfed in turbulence of violence, troubles and the mutual distances are increasing more than ever, it is needed more than ever to understand the true teachings of Islam and build the relation of humanity anew with a foundation of sincerity, bricks of love and mortar of elegant behavior. And a message should be delivered to the whole world that Islam is the religion of peace, brotherhood and love. Be it east or west, north or south, poor or rich, literate or illiterate, a high ranking official or poor labor, all of us are brothers.

This book is a small effort to bring in to notice the mutual tolerance and association amongst the Muslims and non-Muslims. If from the burning incinerator of hatred, even a single spark of love is kindled, I would not consider that my efforts have been wasted. 

Come! Become my companion in this mission and spread this message of The Centre of Peace and Spirituality in the world.

Desirous of Sincerity and Compliance

Lahore, Pakistan, Hakeem Muhammad Tariq

May 13, 2014 Mehmood Chughtai Majzoobi

Epilogue

Readers! Monthly Ubqari magazine has come out in the world with a message of peace and tranquility. And the way this message of peace and tranquility has been received by the world, the whole humanity is witness of that. Where Ubqari magazine is popular among the Muslims, at the same time it is equally popular, as it should be, among the Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Jews. Come and join us! we should hold each other's hands irrespective of our religion, nationality, language, geography and ethnicity, to serve the whole humanity. By erasing the message of terrorism we should give a message of peace to the whole world. Let us erase the message of intolerance and distribute a message of peace and tolerance to the whole humanity.

On a separate note: In a way I am being dishonest to the institute by publishing this part of the book. But I think that the situation is urgent and dire specially in Iraq. I shall apologize to the institute latter.

 
Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

   by  ItzaFineDay 

A Great Book About Islam and Tolerance

Recently I had a chance to read a very nice book on the subject of Islam and tolerance. The book is written by Hazrat Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Majzoobi Chughtai, editor of the monthly Ubqari magazine. The book is basically a collection of almost all the episodes of the section, "Islam and Tolerance", that is published in the monthly Ubqari magazine. This means that almost all the episodes since around 2007 to 2014 have been compiled into a book. The book is in Urdu. The English version is due very shortly. 

The book covers almost all the aspects concerning human interaction in which Muslims should exhibit extreme tolerance and generosity towards non-Muslims. It begins with the Makkan period of Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) when he was confronted by the lethal hostility of his own uncles towards his religion. 

The rise of Islam coincides with the chronic hegemony of the Persian and Roman empires. The author discusses the abject plight of the christians and jews living under their rule. The Roman empire specially had a Christian disposition in running its state. The author discusses how Muslims guarded, restored and elevated the rights of the people of the book and other non-Muslim minorities. It is very interesting and enlightening to read that how strictly Muslim Caliphs used to oversee the delivery of rights to the common people by their governors. How religious freedom of the minorities was ensured enacted is also discussed in the book.

One of the important thing about the book is its presentation of the Islamic constitution of war. It is indeed quite enlightening to read that how Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) evolved an extremely humanistic war constitution as the Muslims started coming in conflict with their neighbors. For instance, it is profoundly surprising to read that Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) has forbidden Muslims to separate war prisoners from each other who are each other's relatives. It is also forbidden to torture or to kill the captives. Muslims should take good care of their food and clothing. And as soon as the enemy extends an apology, he/she should be forgiven immediately or the conflict should start to recede. This is extremely humane, specially considering the barbaric pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula where people could be decapitated for extremely trivial things.  

The book also talks about many other aspects from which one can draw conclusions on as to how to treat one's neighbors and related aspects. For instance, it is interesting to read how various people from medieval Islamic period used to treat their Jewish neighbors in the light of Prophetic Hadith of Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) and revelations of Allah.

As a whole the book addresses all sorts of people. It tells the Christians about the Islamic opinion of Jesus Christ (PBUH). It also tells that why, as a matter of principle,  one of the most veritable caliphs of Islam refused to pray in a Church in Egypt, as it was conquered. For the jews, it has a message that they perhaps owe a little bit of gratitude to the Muslim community, as their forefathers were supported by a just Islamic governance system when they had to face frequent diasporas. It reminds the love of Sufis to the Hindus. It invites the statesmen to review their public policies in its own light. It incites the modern civilizations to see if they can create peace conventions that are better than those of the religion of Islam. For the zealot, it has a message that fanaticism and terrorism are rather grotesque applications of religion. Lastly, the accounts of a few exchanges between various sufi saints and their contemporary Zoroastrian neighbors insinuate us to use reason to develop an argument. 

This book is a must read. Everyone should read it whether Muslim or non-Muslim. This is specially important to develop and refine opinions about Islam and for faith literacy. And even if you are a non-Muslim who is theoretically opposed to Islam or religion, you can at least refer it to a Muslim acquaintance. This may have collateral benefits.  

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.

  by  Koshyk 

Right to Die

I just came across a news story that has got something to do with terminally ill peoples' right to die possibly with the aid of a doctor. I have not read the complete story. However, I understand the crux as it is a familiar one. 

This is a familiar story because a few months ago I read a similar story concerning an Irish ex-lecturer named Marie Fleming. I hope she is alive and gets better soon. At the time of reading she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. As much as I have an idea about this disease is that it renders the person totally dysfunctional and ambulatory. The whole story was sad as the whole family had appealed to the Irish supreme court for her to be given the right to die with assistance. This is indeed ironic specially concerning that the most instinctive of the human desires is to actually live and not to die. However, I presume that when pain overrides pleasure, people's desires shift.

At the time when I read the story I tried to find her contact details through the Internet. I was not fortunate enough to have found something valuable to that end. Finally I did manage to find the contact details of a few important personnel belonging to some Irish society of multiple sclerosis. I mailed a lot of them. I even called a couple of them on phone. The response I got from them was, however, not at all prompt or encouraging. 

In the process of finding those details I also came across a facebook page for a Canadian organization called Dying With Dignity. They help people in dying with some assistance. It is assisted suicide of some sort.

The reason I called them was that at the time when I came across the news, I was also listening to a lecture by Ubqari Institute. In the lecture, Allama Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Chughtai told the listeners that if a person having any sort of neurological illness listened to surahs (chapters) At-Taghaaban and Ar-Rehman (the Beneficent) of the Holy Quran, he/she would heal. I do not remember now that for how long these should be listened to. I think it was recommended to listen for 41 days regularly and possibly 41 times daily. I am posting links to these surahs below. You can also download an audio file containing both of these surahs from the website of Ubqari. The audio file is designed to play one surah in one ear and the other in the other. Click here to download. Please appreciate the fact that recitation of the Holy Quran is in itself quite euphonic. Also try to read the translations. They are also nice.

So this was the reason I was trying to call them. Another thing I wanted to share was about death itself. One of the surahs of Quran is called Yasin. One of the functions of this surah is that if this recited close to a dying man, the process of death becomes easy. The dying person dies a peaceful death. A link to surah Yasin is also below.

If you or someone you know are suffering very badly then spiritual shower is for you. It is really good for instantaneously feeling good. Again you can read the pages of Ubqari magazine for many prescriptions for treating incurable diseases. There are many herbal as well as spiritual philters and prescriptions etc. that are really nice. 

Check this out on Chirbit

The reason I refrained so much from posting this information here is that at the end of the day I do not feel like posting so much stuff pertaining to religion here. I felt that I should write about something else. However, I hope that this message would be sent across to the ears of Marie Fleming and the likes. May Allah forgive us all for our sins and remove hardships from us through his endless blessings.

On a separate note, there is no harm in listening to these videos specially if you are so much willing to die. Why not do something like listening to the Holy Quran before taking the last breath. What is the harm after all. May you live long though. And if you know Marie Fleming or anyone in her family in any way, please convey this message to her.

Death is inevitable. This is how a really sad letter titled approaching death by a late Toronto based lawyer, Edward Hung, begins. It is very sad indeed to read how he died and that he had to travel all the way to many places around the world to get himself cured as well as to arrange for someone to take his life. It is a pity that he had to die such a tragic death. So if death is so much inevitable and there is a person out there who is so eager to die, then why not try something different even if it is only for a while. Moreover, it is absolutely free.

 

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

  by  andrewosterberg 

Mind Wandering

Consider that you are sitting in a large room around a dining table. In the room there are a handful of happy people. There are also a few familiar faces that you have not seen in a while. They are possibly your friends and relatives. The room is ornate with candles and balloons and the table is adorned with gifts, refreshments and a nice birthday cake. Everyone is happily clapping and singing birthday carols. You are their center of attention. But there is something wrong about the whole event. That is that you are not quite there. 

Numerous situations like this can be recollected. In an important meeting when you are supposed to pay attention to the minutes, you are mentally in your office. While you are bathing in the washroom, you are thinking about the badminton court. And while driving your car, you are cribbing in your mind about that comment your boss punningly made at your attire last week.

If you are suffering from a problem like this that wherever you are present physically, your mind has flown away to somewhere else, then you are suffering from mind wandering. Mind wandering can be a desirable quality on one hand and it can be quite dangerous behavior on the other.

Of course if you can naturally stretch your imagination about matters meriting some significance in times when you had otherwise been sitting idle, you can possibly use those moments to solve some important problems. Consider about the ample time you may have while you are traveling in a bus to get to work. If your mind wanders during the journey to the technical caveats of your work, you may as well find a solution to your professional issues. 

However, mind wandering can cost you a substantial price too. For instance, think about those cribbing thoughts you may have had about the sarcasm of your boss at your dress. Had you extended that thought train a little bit further and developed an argument, it may not only have become a cause for loosing your job, it could have been life threatening too if you had lurched your car on the road as a result of that mental aggression.

Research suggests that the posterior cingulate cortex of our brains is responsible for this type of behavior. Research also suggests that with continued meditation this region of the brain can become rich in gray matter density. An attribute that is responsible for lesser mind wandering. Research also suggests that there is an inverse correlation between mindfulness meditation and mind wandering. Do you wonder where you can find good recipes for developing mindfulness? Consider sufism, dhikr and meditation as cures.

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

  by  Samuel Peters 

Understanding Superposition

Understanding ordinary Physics can be quite cumbersome at times. This can be true even for the brightest of the students. There can be a lot of concepts in various topics that may demand a lot of curious scrutiny even if you are studying the basic ideas. Moreover, a very important subject such as theoretical physics may not only sound difficult but also quite boring to the whimsical adolescent who is slowly creeping out of the teen years and would be soon going to the university. What adds to the misery of the student is that how the subject matter is made to appear so esoteric to comprehend while it is orchestrated. 

We had a very nice teacher named Professor Dr. Faiz-ul-Hassan. He used to quote one of his own Swedish teachers while he was a post graduate student that any subject in the world can be explained to any student in a way in which appears easy for him/her to understand. Indeed, Dr. Faiz used to teach very well. I still remember that in his class even the most mischievous of us used to sit and listen to the lectures very quietly and attentively. This is quite remarkable given the lack of interest students generally had in any kind of academic activity. He used to teach us difficult subjects and we used to find them interesting and easy.

A couple of days ago I came across a very nice article that discussed quantum mechanics in the context of human consciousness and its survival after death. The article was quite timely for me because I was wondering how quantum mechanics was connected to consciousness. Even though I could say, "I know what you mean" as an expression in a discourse, I really did not nearly have a clear understanding of superposition and its repercussions on the study of consciousness. Consciousness is recently being acknowledged by science and it would be appropriate to think that any serious student of consciousness should try to understand quantum physics to some extent. It is one of the various ways at looking at the survival of consciousness after bodily death.

So the explanation of superposition was given with the help of a cartoon and I found it very useful, informative and funny at the same time. Even though I had read a little bit about superposition before in the context of quantum cryptography, but I had never understood it so well before. The cartoon is as follows:

If you have seen this cartoon you may definitely have understood superposition and I can bet that you must definitely have enjoyed the cartoon. It just takes a little bit of curiosity to appreciate such work. So giving an explanation of superposition now is rather redundant. I also think that I cannot write an explanation of superposition as nicely as it has been explained by the old man in the cartoon. However, I am going to write down my own understanding of superposition only to gain a little bit of self satisfaction. You can skip this article now if you wish or you may keep on reading it if you wish to leave a nice remark at the end of article.

So what superposition tells us that matter can behave in weird ways. Depending on the circumstances it can retain its physical form or it may also convert into energy. It can exhibit a particle like behavior and it may also act like a wave. This view is endorsed with a so called double slit experiment. What the old man does is that he shows us something with the help of a slit placed between a source of white balls of some sort and a black board on the other. When the balls are fired towards the board some of them strike with the sides of the slit and are deflected away, while a few pass through the slit and form a line-like pattern on the board resembling the shape of the slit through which they passed. 

He then replaces the single slit with a plate that has two slits instead and repeats the experiment. As expected what we notice is that two bands are formed on the wall resembling the shapes of the slits. He argues that this is an intuitive result. 

In the next stage of the experiment what he does is that he replaces the source of balls with an electron gun. So in the single slit experiment a single band is formed resembling the slit. However, in the two-slit experiment, multiple bands are formed as opposed to the two that were intuitively expected. He argues that this seemingly counter-intuitive result is also intuitive. He argues that the electrons exhibit wavelike motion while traveling towards the plate. As they pass through the slits, some of them reinforce each other and while others annihilate each other through constructive and destructive interference respectively. The result is multiple bands as can be seen on the board.

In the next stage of the experiment he starts firing single electron at a time from the gun. He does so to figure out if the electrons behave differently when they are fired in isolation. What he figures out is that same sort of multiple bands are formed again. He argues that while some electrons are deflected and while some pass through one slit and while others pass through the others, the over all result is a number of bands. He owes this to the wave like nature of electrons as they travel to the board (which is possibly a fluorescent screen of some kind that illuminates as electrons strike it). 

The last step of the experiment is crucial. In this step what he does is that he fixes some sort of the detector along side the slitted plated. He does so in the hope of observing the behavior of the electrons as they pass through the slits. To much of his surprise, what he finds is that two bands are formed on the board. He finds this surprising and expects us to be surprised also because he concludes that this time the electrons exhibited a particle type behavior. He concludes that under special circumstances electrons can exhibit either a wavelike or a particle-like behavior. Moreover, he concludes that all matter is capable of exhibiting such behavior.

To us such behavior has far reaching consequences viz a viz human consciousness. It means that in a theoretical sense it might be possible that we humans, which are normally observable as physical beings with flesh and bones, might as well be able to exist other than that too. The question that what was that detector made of that made the electrons so shy that they blushed away from acting like waves demands us to brush up our quantum physics a little bit. Teaching difficult subjects with the help of cartoons like the one above is indeed a very remarkable way of teaching.

 

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

  by  superdeath 

Your Best Self

Your perception of your "self" can play a great role in how well or poorly you do in various endeavors you undertake in your life. I am using the term "self" with quotation marks particularly to pay emphasis. First of all it is important to have an almost precise understanding of the term "self" itself, if not "the self". Here I have used the term "self" to refer to the topic or to the self in general, whereas the term "the self" is used to refer to a particular self. The self has been a subject of considerable philosophical scrutiny since millennia. Many thinkers have thought and written huge treatises on it. The topic also draws great attention in teachings of various religions. So what does the self mean?

It is your inner personality that distinguishes you from others. The self is something that makes you unique. The strength of your character, things you are good at, your virtues, your fears, your audacity, your goals, your memories and the way you respond to various stimuli on a moment by moment basis in your life forms your self. 

This is possibly a brief and a comprehensive explanation of the term self. If you have understood this explanation well, it should not be very difficult to understand your own self. However, the story is not that simple. Bewildered? Even if you are not confused at the moment I promise that you will be quite confused by the time you reach the end of the next paragraph. And if it does not confuse you or shake your beliefs about your "self" or "the self" as a topic, you are either a well read person with an elevated acumen for philosophical thinking or you are a bit too naive to comprehend all this academic mumbo jumbo concerning the self. Don't mind, many people are like that.

Even if you have tried hard to understand your self, you may be living in an illusion about it. Actually there was an article in The Scientific American Mind recently that was titled The Self Illsuion. According to this article everything you experience in your life is merely an illusion. In simple terms this means that you are living in an illusion no matter whatever perception you have about yourself. A more complex explanation is that the pain you have due to a severe injury is also merely an illusion. Would it be alright to infer from this that your whole existence, or the very fact that you believe that you exist as you are reading this article and your whole being is merely an illusion? You'd rather that this is the right conclusion.

Looking at the self from the vantage point of contemporary philosophers and the article posted in Scientific American Mind is definitely perplexing. However, you can simplify this discourse by making a few ordinary assumptions. You can assume that you are real and that all of your pains and pleasures are also real and consequently your self is also real. Having agreed on these simple assumptions we now try to see on as to what forms a good or a bad self. You will find that things are still quite complicated. Keep on reading to learn more.

Your self deceives you in many ways. You can do a few simple thought experiments to find out the various deceptions it plays on you. Stand in front of a mirror while you are combing your hair and while you are all dressed up in the best clothes you have. You do such a thing everyday. Now listen to that inner voice that tells you all the great and cool things about yourself. That is how your self is being dishonest with you while trying to beguile you about all the good stuff that you are actually not. Do you feel like disagreeing with this judgement? Let us see why you should not.

At once tell yourself to deliver a speech to an audience comprised of arbitrarily chosen people on a randomly and instantaneously chosen article. Think about it very strongly that you have to perform this activity very soon. As soon as you give this command to yourself you will find your self telling weird things to you about yourself and the speech you have to undertake. Indeed, if you do not have any public speaking exposure or if you are a novice speaker, a myriad of negative thoughts must definitely have stampeded through your mind at this moment. 

You are getting nervous. You try to find an excuse. You think that you are obviously great but making a speech is totally out of question. You tell people that you are good at cracking jokes with friends but you are definitely not going to make this speech because you believe that there is something really so bad about public speaking that it should not be done at all. You may even say that this whole public speaking is completely crap and that everyone should abandon it. 

These are all lame excuses. The truth is that deep inside your self is telling you that you really can not make this speech at all. It is telling you all the bad things about your voice and appearance. It may as well be telling you that how goofy you may look like when you actually stand up on the stage to make that speech. Just imagine yourself standing behind the dice while the clamor of claps from the audience strikes your ears. You think of your self as a dumb donkey, a designer's dummy standing on the stage with absolutely no clue about what you have to say. You even curse the moment when you stood in front of that mirror and thought about yourself as being something of value. It all started from there.

However, the truth is that your self is playing against you again and telling you all the bad things about you that you are actually not. This is the illusion of the self when you believe with considerable confidence in the assumption that you made earlier that you exist along with all your mental faculties intact and in good order.

The crux of the discourse we have had so far is that your self tells you good things about yourself while in reality that might not be the case. At the same time it can tell you bad things about yourself while actually you are not too bad either. Actually as a matter of fact, by continuous practice in trying to improve upon a few things you can become better and better.

Now try to relax! If you have read it so far, you have made great progress. Even if you have not understood everything in this article, it is alright. The mere fact that you have been reading this article till this point means that your curiosity has drawn your considerable attention to the subject matter this article is trying to cover. You need to be complemented about this. Congratulations!

Assuming that you have understood that your self deceives you in ways that you do not understand well, you have to find some remedies. In this paragraph and in what follows we can try to find a few remedies. First of all try to learn to relax. having a relaxed personality can enhance your performance manifold at many tasks. In order to develop a relaxed personality that you can do many things. However, I presume that meditation is one of the best cures. There are many meditation techniques that are available online and you can choose the one that suits you the best.

The second thing is to work hard. There is no shortcut to hard work. And with hard and persistent effort you can achieve anything you can conceive and that your heart can believe. The third thing is to do what you love to do. This has been emphasized by many gurus and success preachers. It is a self evident truth that there is nothing you can do well than what you love to do. 

Having said this, the fourth advice is to try to pursue decent goals and develop humane ambitions. This is quite self explanatory. The fifth thing is to try to learn to be confident. Actually if you pay due heed to the above advice, self confidence will automatically follow. Never mind if you are low on self confidence right now. Just try to console yourself with the idea that everyone suffers from this syndrome time and again. There are a few who are perpetual sufferers and there are many who have recurring episodes of low self confidence. The sixth advice is that while you should not overestimate yourself you should not do the converse as well. 

The last tip is to try to understand that your self plays tricks on you. This means that while you should not believe that you are Hercules, you should also not think about yourself to be completely irrelevant. When that happens with you, think that anyone can have these kinds of feelings. Even as I am approaching the end of this article, there is already a plan developing in mind to tell me that how the heck did I manage to write this article at all. Always remember that your best self is when you are cool, calm and confident on the day when you actually have to deliver that speech you were really scared of.




Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://psyops.tk/.

  by  GaggieITMI 

Understanding Human Consciousness

I recently patched up a small research proposal titled Understanding Human Consciousness. It is a five pages long draft in pdf format. I think it is nice and can be improved by the passage of time. My interest in neuroscience grew between 2008 and 2009 while I started reading books about self help. Awaken the Giant Within was the first book that I read on this subject. It is a brilliant book but I believe that there is a lot more to neuroscience than feeling good alone. 

As I progressed further on the way I cam across ideas of Ray Kurzweil about downloading human consciousness on to computers. I also came across the books of Marvin Minsky which I think are very nice. Emotion Machine and Society of the Mind are two of his really nice books that are worth mentioning. Unfortunately I could not finish reading both of them.

The journey did not stop here. In 2011 I had a chance to read Sam Harris. I would again like to mention that he raises very cogent questions in his The End of Faith. It is indeed a very thought provoking book. Specially the questions he raises about why people believe in one religion or the other are rousing. His concern that such beliefs should be explainable by reason is rational. The other question he raises is that whether any afterlife exists or not. Although I would like to assert that he himself is quite judgmental about that question already.

As the reading journey continued I had a chance to read Irfan. Irfan introduced me to Western Spiritualism. From Irfan I came to know about the various contemporaries of Charles Darwin who were spiritualists and believed in an afterlife. Most notable among these are Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Conan Doyle. It was quite interesting to read from The History of Spiritualism that he attributed much of the world's misery to materialism and advocated for the adoption of some kind of religion by the humanity. It was quite interesting for me to know this as I thought materialists, or so to say atheists, to be a lot more benign people before this.

Anyhow, introduction to spiritualism gave me a chance to read and skim through many academic papers regarding invocation of spirits and souls, and other aspects related to spiritualism. For instance, there are quite a few tracks in spiritualism that study the ectoplasm, a viscous material that possibly comes out of the mouths of the mediums as they communicate with the dead. Similarly, there are also papers that study the minds of mediums to figure out what sort of people are more conducive for becoming mediums. 

I do not remember the source of the papers but I am sure they can be found through the website of Society of Psychical Research. In the meantime I have also been reading papers on neuroscience from the point of view of mental and physical health as well. They are quite numerous. The conclusion they draw is that most of the mental and physical functions of human body and personality are localized in the brain and that there is no evidence for the presence of a non-physical mind i.e. a soul or a spirit. The burden of coming up with a proof is normally left with the reader.

So given this I thought that I should at least write a research proposal that could sum up all the reading I have been doing over the years. I think that it looks nice. It does not have any citations or references at the moment and I hope to be able to add a few citations by the due course of time. Here is the link to the proposal.

  by  ezhikoff 

Provocative Ideas

I generally like a few things about Sam Harris. He raises some thought provoking issues at times. Specially when he provokes everyone into thinking and asking themselves introspectively that why do they believe in what they believe. I think that this kind of provocation is healthy and urges a human being to study human consciousness. That where did we come from and where are we headed? Or whether it all starts here and ends here too. This much is fine. There are other such things which one should appreciate too. This is also not in conflict with traditional Islam. A keen study of history suggests that wherever the medieval Muslims went they learnt something from other societies. And they were not too much into killing other people at all after all. So, according to Islam, one should learn good things from where ever one can. This is naturally a good idea. 

But then there are other things which are quite objectionable about Sam Harris's objections on Islam or religion in general. One of them is that Sam does not like the idea that religion is used as a tool to glue people together. This is generally true about his opinion about every religion. In my opinion as much as religion is used to unite people together for common good, it should be fine. Of course, it should not be fine to unite with each other to harm others. Unity should be also be fine for self protection. There is no harm in having a harmless brotherhood too. I used to respect atheists as I had some of them as friends and I used to think that they are educated people. Brotherhood is also good if it enhances the self-respect of a community. But I have read a few articles from other atheists about Sam Harris in which he has been addressed as a "Son of a Bitch" and a "Bastard". It might be the case that Sam does not mind that, but this sort of treatment is quite harsh. 

Moreover, just because he does not mind listening to such complements himself, he demands more liberties of free speech regarding religion. His use of the term misogyny of Islam can have many connotations and can be justifiably considered harsh. But the truth is that we Muslims believe that Islam was born at a time when Arabs used to bury their daughters alive due to the fear that they would grow up and would have to be married to someone. A perceived consequence of marriage used to be that the family of the daughter would have to live under the perpetual domination of their daughter's in-laws. Something which the Arabs despised and could not live with. I personally think that the mere idea that their daughter would get married and go on to have sex with another person was unbearable for them, even if that other person was her husband. And a solution for that was burial of the living and breathing child. We believe that Islam was born out of such circumstances. 

We believe that all the struggle of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) including his migrations and wars was against this kind of oppression, which is quite a lot I would say. We believe that all the Islamic rules viz a viz marriage and betrothal are there to enhance the self-esteem of the women. A woman should not be buried alive if she has been born in pre-Islamic Arabia by chance, nor should her naked picture be put on a billboard if she is fortunate enough to be born in 21st century Amsterdam. She should be married properly with her consent. To this end, Islam tries to strike a balance between the people of different mentalities. On one extreme, there can be people who can flare up instantly at the mere sight of a stranger falling upon their daughter, sister or mother. There could also be people who do not mind if their daughter, mother, sister or wife thinks that it is boring to have the same partner for two consecutive days but is at a higher risk of catching sexually transmitted disease, being kidnapped or raped or ending up in a bad situation of the same magnitude. Islam tries to anneal all of them. And I know from personal knowledge that plenty of such people exist in non-Muslim countries where people do not accept their women to be dating on loose. I remember the movies unfaithful (Richard Gere) and Revenge (Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn) where these guys ended up in bloody circumstances because their wives were seeing someone else. A question is that are these movies representative of the American culture, if so Islam presents a cure in the form of respectable marriage laws.

Islam allows a woman to not get married if she chooses so to be. Similarly, one cannot wed a woman off to someone if she does not agree. And yes, should she not be educated? Islam argues that it is the duty of every Muslim man and woman to seek education. This is quoted in many hadiths of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). I am a Muslim and I like Sam Harris. I even like his commentary on religion. I think he enlightens us all on as to what and why should we believe in. I think that as a human being Sam Harris deserves respect. But Sam Harris should also try to earn that respect. His use of the term misogyny is rather provocative. 

Understanding Consciousness

One of the topics that is quite hyped these days is the study of human consciousness and its possible survival after death. The argument that human beings have souls that depart to a certain afterlife once we are dead is one of the major tenets of almost every religion. The materialist view, that we human beings, along with all the other life forms. are merely flesh and bones defies any such notion that human beings have souls or that they depart to some other world once we die. To this end, they also argue that there is no such divine entity, such as a godhead, that may have created life. The religious doctrines of creation of universe can be explained away with the help of theories of astronomy, cosmology and astronomy. Similarly, the religious doctrines about the creation of life and humanity can be explained away with the help of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

Rationalists try to understand and study the nature of survival of human consciousness with the help of various ways in which they can try to tap into the afterlife and communicate with the dead. There might be a possibility that some religious people may have the ability to do it already. I heard (or possibly read somewhere) that Jews have been prohibited to do it according to Torah. Given that it is considered the old testament for Christians and a holy book to be revered by the Muslims, it may be supposed that the followers of these two religions are also prohibited from tapping into the so-called unseen world. Particularly, Muslims are advised to follow a set path and believe in the unseen and are advised not to long for miracles. 

Whether or not there is an afterlife, or whether or not people survive bodily death cannot be proven by believing merely in someone's word of mouth. A religious scripture no matter how convincing it may be is not a proof of any of the extraordinary claims it makes. The claims must be proven from sources other than where they have been claimed. Thus, objectivity demands an honest scrutiny.

People who are interested in knowing about human consciousness and its survival of bodily death leverage mostly from the research of near death experiences (NDEs). As the name suggests, in an NDE a person is subjected to a clinical death of sorts in which electrical activity in the brain of the subject stops. Once rehabilitated back to normal life, the subject is asked to describe his/her experience. A keen survey reveals that there are hundreds of thousands of NDE stories. A review of the NDE research also indicates that NDE research has become a mature field of study with considerable adoption of scientific method.

Another discipline that tries to tap into afterlife is spiritualism. Spiritualism is rather old and established itself in the late nineteenth century. In simply world spiritualism entails methods to communicate with demised soul and to tap into the spirit world. A wide variety of literature is available by various contemporary and prolific scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Older people include Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russell Wallace and William Crookes, to name but a few. History of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably the best resource on the subject.

If the findings of NDEs and spiritualists are correct that human beings survive bodily death, and that human beings do indeed have souls that depart to another world as we die, it means that materialism and its related theories of evolution etc. have already been explained away. For skeptics it means that they would have one less dimension to think about as regards existence.

    

Mesmerism

Tomb of Hazrat Gul baba Bektash in Budapest, Hungary

It may astonish a few, surprise some others and annoy the others to know that mesmerism is also claimed to have a basis in Islamic mysticism. I read about this in the book Irfan. I made a few translations from that book. My reading of Irfan was motivated by my desire to understand the nature of consciousness. I read it after I read atheism, specially The End of Faith by Sam Harris. The chapters I translated include An Account of Invocation of Jinns, Angels and Souls, The Reality of European Spiritualists and Their Misunderstanding and Certainty in Belief is Dependent Upon Seeing.The book is written by Hazrat Faqir Noor Muhammad Sarwari Qadri Kalachwi (RA). This book was first published in 1942. It has two parts. Both parts also  have translations in English. The urdu version of the first volume can be read here and English version can be read here.

Somewhere in Irfan the author suggests that mesmerism also has a basis in Islamic mysticism  According to the narrative in the times in which Franz lived there used to be Hazrat Gulshan baba Bektashi (or probably it was Gul baba) somewhere in the Eastern Europe. I do not remember the country precisely but I think that it was Hungary. Hazrat Gulshan baba used to treat the people about their problems. By the blessings of Allah he could cure the sick. He was also blessed enough by Allah the he could treat the wounded. Thus, it was reported that many wounded soldiers used to come to him and he  used to make dum on them. In hours of desperation he even used to apply his spit to the wounds of the sick and they used to heal by the blessings of Allah. Even Christian soldiers used to come to him and he was quite venerated by them.

In those years Franz Mesmer started visiting his shrine. From there he acquired a few tricks of the trade viz a viz what we now know as mesmerism or its descendant, hypnotism. This is what I read in Irfan, Allah knows the best.

God of the Orient

The other day I came across an Urdu novel titled "Khuda-e-Mashriq", literally meaning "God of the Orient" in English. I casually browsed its pages and I could not resist reading a part of it with a lot of concentration. I shall talk about that latter. But first I would like to briefly describe what the novel is about. The novel is written by Muhammad Zahid Afghan. As the name suggests, the writer is most possibly from Afghanistan. The central character of the novel is a British female who travels all the way from England to various Eastern countries and probably lands up somewhere in the subcontinent. Her name was Salomi. I am not sure though, but I think that I should reconfirm. There she makes friends. And she has her perplexities and bewilderment typical of a traveler.

The part that I found the most interesting was that the favorite personality of Salomi was the renowned German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In her conversations with her friends she talks about Friedrich Nietzsche and his nihilism. This was the part that I found most interesting. I heard about Friedrich Nietzsche  and a few about his quotes a long time a go from friends. Names such as Friedrich Nietzsche and others can be quoted in educated circles as a symbol of intellect. But after a long time, I started wondering what his really philosophy was. After all it is important to know what someone really contributed as a philosophy as opposed to merely quoting from his/her quotations. I came to know that Friedrich Nietzsche was an atheist and that much of atheism of the present day can be attributed to having a background in Nietzsche-ism. Well, I could be wrong but I suppose that Friedrich Nietzsche still has an impact. Latter I came to know that Friedrich Nietzsche was a nihilist about the existence of God. And I wondered what were the reasons that led Friedrich Nietzsche in to nihilism.

Salomi explained the underlying reason very clearly. At one point she starts narrating about the life of Friedrich Nietzsche to her friends with an emotional vigor. She says that as Christianity arrived, for some odd reason the West started indulging in barbarism. As a consequence Friedrich Nietzsche became agnostic about the existence of God. He abandoned his civil life and went somewhere in the alps to live there. There he created a new God. Zarathustra! 

Latter while having a discussion with her friends, they ask each other that then who was the God of Zarathustra. One of the characters proposes that the God of Zarathustra was the God of Hazrat Ghulam Moi-ud-din Chishti (RA). He (RA) was a sufi saint with a substantial following in the subcontinent. It is interesting to note that Zarathustra (AS) was himself a prophet of Islam. Overall the novel is nicely written and tries to address various philosophical curiosities. It is interesting to note also that there are people in Afghanistan who try to do such delicate and creative work.

Bunny in the Clouds

Muhammad (PBUH) written naturally in the clouds.

I remember having read an article a few months ago in connection with Dr. Eben Alexander's much hyped book Proof of Heaven. I don't remember exactly but I think that the article was published in the scientific American magazine. The article had a mention of a phenomenon of seeing a "bunny in the cloud" in it. According to my extrapolated understanding of it the term is related to wishful thinking. That no matter what random shape the rather amorphous clouds acquire, if a person is adamant about seeing a bunny in the cloud, he/she will eventually see it. This is a nice analogy to explain the idea of wishful thinking. That no matter what a person sees or feels in his/her dreams, hallucinations, spiritual trances or commas, if a person is hellbent on perceiving it as heaven, he/she will eventually do so. 

Laa Ilaaha Illa Allah written in a farm in Germany.

It makes a lot of sense to wonder that whether the phenomenon of seeing a bunny in the cloud is always a visual illusion or can it also be attributed some authenticity at times. Here I presume the use of the term "bunny in the clouds" to be metaphorical. This means that both bunny and the clouds can mean anything that can be seen or observed. For instance, bunny can mean a flower, food, drinks, a knife, a sword, Jesus (PBUH), Marry (PBUH), Muhammad (PBUH), Allah, a garden, heaven or fire. Similarly cloud can also mean anything like a cloud, a dream, moon, a potato or a watermelon. 

Religious people have a great propensity for seeing different types of such metaphorical bunnies in different types of those so-called clouds. Thus, it is not uncommon to see visual appearances in the clouds that resemble Jesus Christ (PBUH). Some of them are vague and there are others that seem to be made up. But there are indeed a few that appear to be shadows of a standing man with a staff in his hand. I have chosen one of such pictures of the clouds to post here. 

Jesus (PBUH) in the clouds.

Obviously it is no proof that it Jesus standing in the clouds with his staff in his hand. One cannot even claim that it absolutely looks like as if a man is standing in the clouds at all. These are just randomly arranged clouds. But still if we look at these clouds closely, they do appear to have a human head with rather thick and curly hair. A left arm. The bends of the chest. and something that resembles a stick. But whether this man is Jesus (PBUH) or not cannot be claimed. But this is only one picture. There could be other more vivid pictures on the web that may be easily claimed and classified to be containing Jesus (PBUH) in them. 

Allah written on a cactus.

Muslims also have a tendency for finding names of Allah and Muhammad (may Allah's peace be upon him) written on clouds and other things. Indeed, there are many pictures on the Internet in which the word Allah has appeared to have been written naturally in the clouds.

Muhammad (PBUH) written on a goat

Similarly, a simple search query reveals that pictures with the word Muhammad (PBUH) in Arabic appearing on clouds and other things like stones, bread, or in a fruit are also quite numerous. At some points such appearances are vague but at others they are quite vivid. 

Allah written on foreheads of newborn twins

Such phenomenon has also been termed as pareidolia. There is also religious paredolia in which names or figures of religious figures visually appear in various natural phenomena.

Allah written inside a pomegranate

It is quite wonderful to observe that many of the appearances in the pictures are extremely vivid. One can only hope that these pictures are real and not forged.