"A teenager told his father, 'Dad, there’s trouble with the car. It has water in the carburetor.'The father looked confused and said, 'Water in the carburetor? That’s ridiculous.'But the son insisted. 'The car has water in the carburetor.'His father started to get a little agitated. 'You don’t even know what a carburetor is,' he said. 'I’ll check it out. Where is the car?''In the pool.'”"In an Islamic perspective, 'tafakkur', i.e. 'contemplation', is different from 'meditation'. Even though the words 'contemplation' and 'meditation' are often used as synonyms, the word 'meditation' has come to be associated so strongly with the spirituality of Eastern religions that its use to explain tafakkur, can be misleading,' Cananga went on while looking at El Patio de los Naranjos, located in the northern part of The Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, known ecclesiastically as the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and popularly as the Mosque, is a monumental religious and historical building in the city of Córdoba, a Spanish city and municipality in Andalusia. El Patio de los Naranjos is an open garden space of the Seville Cathedral, a heritage of the Almohad mosque. It has a rectangular shape and its dimensions are 43 by 81 meters. It has its origins in the ablution courtyard of the Abd al-Rahman I mosque, although it was also used for teaching and holding trials, it was later expanded and renovated during the following construction stages. Construction began in 1172 and was completed in 1186. From then on, and until the fall of the city into Christian hands, the patio fulfilled all the traditional Muslim functions, such as a cemetery, and a hall for festivals and cultural events."Jeremy Henzell-Thomas writes that while the practice of meditation in Eastern religions tends to entail the abandonment of conscious thinking in order to facilitate 'altered states of consciousness', tafakkur is a cognitive spiritual activity in which the rational mind, emotion, and spirit are combined. As such, although this form of 'meditative contemplation' involves 'deep thinking and reflection' it is 'necessarily spiritual in nature'. It is a refined form of Islamic worship that reflects the insistent call in the Qur’an for people to think deeply and reflect on the visible 'signs' (ayat) of Beauty and Majesty in Creation and the 'displayed Book of Nature' that are accessible to human perception as evidence of the existence of God and the hidden dimension of the 'Unseen' (ghayb). Henzell-Thomas mentions one of the Quranic verse,سَنُرِيْهِمْ اٰيٰتِنَا فِى الْاٰفَاقِ وَفِيْٓ اَنْفُسِهِمْ حَتّٰى يَتَبَيَّنَ لَهُمْ اَنَّهُ الْحَقُّۗ اَوَلَمْ يَكْفِ بِرَبِّكَ اَنَّهٗ عَلٰى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ شَهِيْدٌ'We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth [or 'that He, Subḥanahu wa Taʿala, is the Truth]. But is it not sufficient concerning your Rabb that He is, over all things, a Witness [i.e., never absent, always seeing and having complete knowledge of everything within His dominion]?' [QS. Fussilat (41):53).The higher cognitive faculty of tafakkur may therefore be envisaged as encompassing such faculties as tadabbur (deep pondering) and tawassum (observation and understanding of the signs of nature) and is directly linked to the development of higher insightful faculties of perception (albab), or 'seeing with the heart'. As such, it goes far deeper than the logical and analytical processes involved in 'critical thinking' (al-tafkir al-naqdi), since its prime orientation is the development of spiritual awareness or remembrance and consciousness of God (taqwa).Henzell-Thomas added that contemplation is a beautiful, serene practice that refines spiritual perception, raises awareness of the divine presence and calms the soul. In doing so it engenders an outlook of peace, reverence and sanity sorely needed in these increasingly frenetic and troubled times.Western psychology has developed over the decades allowing the human condition to be analysed, especially concerning the effect of childhood experiences on later life. However, this knowledge of the human psyche is still largely the product of its historical cultural environment, which is a secular humanist vision that prefers to see the mind more as a machine that can be ‘understood’ and can even be mimicked by Artificial Intelligence algorithms in a computer. The mind is far more than the ‘sum of its parts’, not necessarily something mysterious but more connected to a heart and ‘soul’, whose greater potential and workings within the human body require far more study.The quantifiable machine-like understanding of the mind is seen as safe territory, whilst the unquantifiable can be somewhat daunting for those schooled in the scientific method as applicable to the field of psychology. In the Western psychology tradition, the expectation has always been high that given time the riddle of human nature would be solved. Commendable efforts have been made by some great scholarly minds in advancing the understanding of the mind but many questions are left unanswered. Given the worldwide rise in rates of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, fear, and suicide to name a few, with trends predicting worse to come, it is abundantly clear that there is far more study urgently needed to understand human nature. In the case of those with psychological disorders, more effective support and therapies need to be developed to heal the afflicted. In traditional Western psychology, the machine-like understanding of the mind has neglected the 'spiritual' dimension of human nature, but some Western psychologists are beginning to recognize what Muslims and those of faith have always believed regarding the human ‘spirit’ and its significance to human life. This marks the beginning of a hugely stimulating area of study that could bring hope to many—not just those suffering from psychological disorders—but help others understand what it is to be human, both during their best times and during their darkest hours.Malik Badri, in his study, seeks to address the neglect of the spiritual dimension in Western psychology, and argues that in the idea and practice of contemplation (tafakkur) we have a powerful tool, linking the mind with heart and ‘soul’. Through contemplation, particularly in the reflection of God, we can reach deep into the psyche to bring solace and healing to psychological disorders afflicting mankind, which are better thought of as a ‘sickness of the soul’. Badri profiles many elements of contemplation, including its historical demise, makeup in Eastern traditions, and even a nascent return to these philosophical aspects in modern psychology. However, it is in the Islamic tradition that contemplation becomes tafakkur. That is it transmutes into so much more, a path to self-knowledge that becomes a quest for healing through an inner vision of God as the object of our search and devotion, than healing through the silencing of negativity, and a focus on the conceptual understanding of, and our place in, the wider universe.There is always the danger that supposedly enhanced ‘thinking’ skills, whether defined as ‘critical’ or ‘creative’ if detached from a higher vision of human intellectual and spiritual capacities, will merely be pressed into the service of materialistic goals.Indeed, without an understanding of the full range of human intellectual faculties, and without any awareness of the moral and spiritual dimension that animates an authentic vision of human excellence, education in thinking skills can rarely go beyond reductionism which focuses solely on the sharpening of the lower intellectual functions—the level of logical reasoning, argument and analysis which has been so productive in the field of scientific and technological advancement but which cannot encompass the deeper needs of the human soul and spirit.Muhammad Asad reminds us that it was the spirit of the Qur’an itself that was the ultimate source of the dynamic revival of a culture of inquiry in Europe, 'Through its insistence on consciousness and knowledge, it engendered among its followers a spirit of intellectual curiosity and independent inquiry, ultimately resulting in that splendid era of learning and scientific research which distinguished the world of Islam at the height of its cultural vigor; and the culture thus fostered by the Qur’an penetrated in countless ways and by-ways into the mind of medieval Europe and gave rise to that revival of Western culture which we call the Renaissance, and thus became in the course of time largely responsible for the birth of what is described as the ‘age of science’: the age in which we are now living.'Let us always be aware that the dynamic process of learning and inquiry engendered by the spirit of the Qur’an was not restricted to a merely ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ concept of ‘enlightenment’. Still less was it confined to the almost exclusive focus on techniques of reasoning and analytical thinking within contemporary Western models of ‘thinking skills’ education, even if the best of these do try to include a moral dimension that embraces what psychologist Barry Schwartz and educationalist Robert Fisher describe as a number of 'intellectual virtues' possessed by ideal critical thinkers. These include integrity in seeking truth, intellectual honesty, commitment to excavating evidence without confirmation bias, respect for the dignity and worth of others, and listening attentively to alternative views. From a Muslim perspective, the principle that disagreement falls within the ambit of plural discourse in which diverse opinions can be legitimately expressed is enshrined within the proper Islamic ethics and etiquette (adab al-ihktilaf) for engaging in respectful debate and disagreement in a plural world and a plural Islam, even if there is a pressing need at this time for its reclamation and wider implementation.It is important to note that in Islamic tradition, the faculty of intellect ('aql) is not limited to the language-based deliberative or rational faculties which enable us to think, inquire, analyze, define, discriminate, conceptualize, theorize, and argue. This is not of course to deny the fundamental importance of this dimension of 'aql. After all, the Qur’an announces that Allah 'imparted unto Adam the names of all things' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):31]. Muhammad Asad interprets the knowledge of the names to mean the faculty of logical definition which gives mankind the unique ability to arrive at precise and distinct concepts, and it is this independent power of conceptualization that elevates Adam (عليه السلام) and his heirs to a level even higher than the angels. At the same time, however, the faculty of 'aql encompasses far more than discursive and speculative thinking or intellectualizing but reaches also to the higher function of intellection or spiritual intelligence, under which the lower rational faculty should be hierarchically subsumed. Karim Crow has shown that one of the key components of the concept of 'intelligence' expressed by the term 'aql was 'ethical-spiritual, teaching how to rectify one’s integrity and to cause one’s human impulses, faculties and latent powers to flourish, with the purified emotions promoting the operation of a higher intelli- gence'. According to Crow, the combination of knowledge and understanding, and of emotional, social and moral intelligence, is also traditionally suggested by the term 'wisdom' and is manifested in 'personal integrity, conscience and effective behavior'. Titus Burckhardt emphasizes that the word 'aql is in practice applied at more than one level: at its highest level, it may designate 'the universal principle of all intelligence, a principle which transcends the limiting conditions of the mind through the direct reflection of Universal Intellect'. Cyril Glassé also points out that 'in its highest and metaphysical sense, as used in Islamic philosophy', al-'aql is the transcendent intellect corresponding to 'the intellect or nous, as understood in Platonism and Neoplatonism, and through which man is capable of the recognition of Reality'. It is the faculty which the Qur’an calls al-Ruh (‘spirit’), and 'makes possible direct knowledge', or 'revelation on the plane of the microcosm'.There are a number of verses in the Qur’an which exhort us to make good use of the faculties of 'hearing, sight and hearts' with which we have been endowed for acquiring knowledge about Allah and His creation. Allah says,وَاللّٰهُ اَخْرَجَكُمْ مِّنْۢ بُطُوْنِ اُمَّهٰتِكُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُوْنَ شَيْـًٔاۙ وَّجَعَلَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْاَبْصَارَ وَالْاَفْـِٕدَةَ ۙ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُوْنَ'And Allah has extracted you from the wombs of your mothers not knowing a thing, and He made for you hearing and vision and hearts [i.e., intellect] that perhaps you would be grateful.' [QS. AN-Nahl (16):78]Also,قُلْ هُوَ الَّذِيْٓ اَنْشَاَكُمْ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْاَبْصَارَ وَالْاَفْـِٕدَةَۗ قَلِيْلًا مَّا تَشْكُرُوْنَ'Say, 'It is He who has produced you and made for you hearing and vision and hearts [i.e., intellect]; little are you grateful.' [QS. Al-Mulk (67):23]These faculties exist on various levels: the primary external senses, hearing and sight, for engaging directly with the surroundings through direct perception and observation, and the inner faculties of cognition, understanding, and insight denoted by the term af‘idah (sing. fu’ad). Muhammad Asad explains that the noun fu’ad denotes a composite faculty of 'mind-heart', and he himself gives various translations of the term in different verses as 'minds', 'hearts' and 'knowledgeable hearts'. In the same way, Yusuf Ali sometimes translates the term as 'heart and intellect'. The 'heart' here is far more than the heart of sentiment and emotion, but encompasses the higher cognitive and perceptive faculties of insight, imagination, intuition, and contemplative reflection.In contemplation, some limitations must be considered. We will discuss it in the following episode before getting into our topic about the months and their merits in Islamic Calendar, which of course is different from the lunisolar in character of the Arabian Calendar. Bi 'idhnillah."Cananga then carried a tune,All of time cannot eraseWhat our hearts remember stays foreverOn a song we play *)
Citations & References:
- Malik Badri, Contemplation: An Islamic Psychospiritual Study, translated from the Arabic by Abdul-Wahid Lu'lu'a, 2018, IIIT
- Muḥammad Asad, The Message of the Qur'an: Translated and Explain, 2005, The Book Foundation
*) "Star Sky" written by Thomas Bergersen
