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POETS AND PROPHETS |
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The discourse taking place at "Family of the Heart" website is interesting to say the least and as Khalid Sohail has encouraged all to participate in this discourse, I have jotted down a few thoughts on the matter of “Wahee” with regard to “Poets & Prophets” issue and would like to share these jottings with all. First, let me clarify that I fully respect all the different point of views or even lack of any point of view. As humans we probably are only a bit better than ants when it comes to understanding the deeper realities of Universe. To ants a few drops of water will appear like flood. I do not mean to say that we cannot comprehend reality. My point is that our reality is always relative. This discussion touches the huge philosophical questions like “ Theory of Knowledge” and “Nature of Rational Thought” and in fact the question of very essence of being a human. I neither claim to have read all the philosophies of world nor I wish to indulge myself in any intellectual exercise through this discourse. All I want to express are my personal reflections and reactions. Bullayh Shah once said, “Ikko Alif Taray Darkar Ilmoon bus kareen o yar!”All you need is one Alif. Stop philosophizing my friend! What does this verse mean? Can we paraphrase this verse into a philosophical discourse and still maintain its vitality and its substance. Or we just need to feel it, know it and experience how it makes our heart beat with the beat of Bullayh Shah’s heart. When Shamis Tabriz met Rumi and asked him one simple question Rumi lost his consciousness. What was in that question which made Rumi pass out? Has any logician ever lost consciousness listening to a question based on logic and reasoning. Why Qur’an and Torah are still living and kicking around? Why Bible could not be uprooted in spite of philosophers of Renaissance like Nitshze declaring death of God. Yes, there are other works close to divinity in their expression but what is there in Qur’an or Torah or Gita that is not in Shakespeare and Milton or in Robindernath or Ghalib? Is it the nature of experience? Or it is the commonality of experience at a profoundest level, at supra-ordinary plane, in an unfamiliar dimension? Or there are some experiences, which unwittingly touches the essence of being human, the flip side of Divinity? When God (?) spoke with Moses on Mount Tur why it was a burning bush? What is a burning bush anyway? “Earth’s crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with God And only he who sees takes off his shoes The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries”(Elizabeth Browning) When Psalm says “Lord is my Shepherd and I need none” Or Torah narrates “And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light” Or Qur’an tells “East belong to Allah and the west Wherever you turn His countenance is met”Is this mere poetry or something beyond? No one has an absolute answer because all the reality is relative to the observer, as Elizabeth Browning has so beautifully said in the above lines. Since the rise of “Age of Reason” we human has tendency to put things in “Either” / “Or” category. We do not want to recognize the existence of paradoxes which like Koans of Zen Buddhism are meant to make us transcend the nature of immediate reality. We tend to resolve everything by logic and reasoning. We want to prove the basis of theism; we want to prove the existence or non-existence of God, when even we do not know what we mean by God. We try to define God through the perceptual categories of human mind and end up creating a concept or intellectual category, not unlike the people of ancient times who created the physical symbols (idols) of deities. We now create a verbal and conceptual deity and then give it a name (or names) and then made that name (or names) object of our worship. To an ant two drops of water are flood. We try to prove existence of God or disprove it because of our egos. We do not humble ourselves enough to experience it and then we cannot relate to those experiences or probably we can experience it only to a certain level, may be to a poetic level or to intellectual levels of various sorts and then we may even mock at the irrationality and the paradoxes, or at best appreciate and admire its poetic beauty. But that which made see Moses the burning bush and that which made Moses hear the voice of God and those ringing bells which wrote the Words on Mohammad’s seeking heart and the Angel which came to Mohammad saying “Read by the name of God … who created … man from a clot … ” we cannot all see those things. It is beyond our realm of experience … A tree or a sparrow can praise his Lord but a man cannot … Human are destined to work through their egos … a mystery we have not fathomed yet … And there is That which want us to transcend our egos … so that It can reveal to us … and we can meet … “Wherever you turn His countenance is met” and IT wants to unveil … but we are not ready to receive …
Abdul Mutaal Mooquin February 11, 2005
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