The Quran says in surah “The Jinn”: “There were persons among mankind who took shelter with persons among the Jinn, but they increased them in folly” (72: 6).
Jinn are the most important characters in schizophrenic delirium and pagan mythology. So let’s say a few words about them. The word “jinn” stems from “janna,” that is, “to hide,” and is related to “junun” (“madness”) and “majnun” (“mad,” “insane”). Thus, “jinn” literally means “the hidden ones.”
These are the creatures that, for the most part, invade the consciousness of the schizophrenic, filling it with their content and thoughts. They live in a borderline state between our material world and the realm of the World Soul, that is, in alamu l-misal, the “world of images,” which matter is subtler than the matter of our world but rougher than that of the soul.
But one should not imagine that they (the Jinn) live “somewhere out there,” in some other world, beyond our borders. They live in our world, but on a different level – in the realm of fire. “And the Jinn did We create aforetime of essential fire” (15: 27). There are the same things of our experience, but we see these things in the “earth” mode, that is, solid and unchanging, and they see them in the “fire” mode, that is, constantly changing, like a set of instant metamorphoses and flashes, something transparent and glowing. We, humans, in our usual state, do not see Jinn’s world (or rather, not the world but the regime of the world because their world is the same as ours). But they see us, catching our projection onto their fire world. And since they are fiery and live in a different dimension, these creatures are very wayward, very hot-tempered. Therefore it is highly undesirable for people to enter into any kind of contact with them – even if they are believer Jinn (and among them, there are both believers and unbelievers).
You’ve probably heard about the ancient teaching that the universe consists of four elements – earth, water, air, and fire. Well, today’s positivist science, of course, will say that all these are fairy tales of some ancient eccentrics who did not yet know modern chemistry, did not know modern physics, and therefore they explained the world primitively, through the four elements… But in reality, those people were not primitive: just the adherents of this science think primitively. In fact, there are four elements, but these are not our earthly fire or earthly air. And in the Islamic hadiths, too, there is an indication of it. “Fire” is a completely different, parallel mode of existence of the world, inaccessible to our earthly organs of perception.
And in the same way, for example, when positivists hear that the earth is standing on a whale, they begin to laugh: “Does the earth, then, float on the back of a whale? This, my friend, is pre-scientific tales that were told before Copernicus!” However, these narrations do not mean the earth as a planet. They point to the entire universe, empirical world, below which chthonic worlds are located along the ontological axis, called “Whale,” “Bull”… And in our hadiths, this also exists… But nowhere does it say that the earth as a planet rests on the back of a bull.
On the contrary, we have a lot of hadiths about rotating earth, earth without supports, and the fact that even the Sun and stars move in orbits. But in this case, we are talking about our entire universe with all its galaxies, below which the chthonic worlds of darkness exist, conventionally called “Whale” or “Bull.” It is the language of symbols that positivist fools take literally. And then we will tell briefly about the geography of these worlds below our earth – the worlds of darkness. This is an entirely different reality, to which shallow modern science has no access because the positivist science itself is rigidly tied to the bodily sense organs, and everything else is mercilessly cut off by it as some kind of superstition, remnants of the past, etc.
But in fact, with such an approach, this science deprives itself of access to whole spheres of reality, for example, the world of our consciousness. We already talked about this in the first parts. After all, our thoughts – how can one see them? Through what eyes? How can they be measured? Here’s my idea of a tree – how long is it? (Not the tree itself but the thought of a tree in my head). A centimeter, meter, kilometer? What material does it consist of? What particles and what waves?
Modern science does not like such questions because they show its limitations. Therefore, it persistently seeks to reduce the world of consciousness to some kind of physiological process. This is the routine it’s used to. Otherwise, the one would be accused of “mysticism” and “anti-scientific approach,” and they will seal the door of academic career before him.
The conclusion is that, in such an area, this science is completely helpless and cannot explain anything. Take the same schizophrenia as an example… A man says that some voices are arguing among themselves in his head. The psychiatrist answers him, “Well, it’s you, my dear, talking to yourself.” “The one half of the brain communicates with the other….” While the patient clearly hears the voices of entirely different creatures, having information that he himself never had, talking about things unknown to him… And he cannot do anything with them… But these are already “unscientific things” because if you recognize other beings, you have to acknowledge other worlds, and how to deal with them is completely incomprehensible because nothing can be measured there… Better out of harm’s way to put this patient in a psychiatric hospital and inject him with neuroleptics, which will turn him into just a vegetable that will stop hearing voices and generally hear anything…
So, when the Almighty says that He created the Jinn from fire, He does not mean the fire that burns in our world… And therefore He says, min narin samum – “of essential fire,” that is, pure flame. And in another verse, we read: min marij min nar, “of marij of fire” (55: 15), and marij means the “pure substance,” “quintessence.” Jinn were created from a pure element of fire.
The fire existing in our world is dominated by the element of the earth, while the Jinn were created from a self-dominant flame, in which the element of earth is hidden and relegated to the background. In our familiar world, the earth element predominates. The other three elements are also present but with the dominance of the earth in everything. That is, those three elements are manifested here through the earth. In the same way, earth, water, and air are present in the world of fire, but they are manifested through fire and exist in fire mode.
And since the matter of this fire is much subtler than our matter, the population of Jinn is much larger than humans, and their lifespan is longer – a thousand, two thousand years in our time and even longer, since time itself runs faster there. Their bodies are, as it were, flowing, do not have a specific shape: that is, they can take any shape they want. And also, the subtle matter of their world allows them to move instantly so that in their world, they constantly fly back and forth, from one edge to another, like flashes of lightning. There are many types in Jinn; they are not all the same…
And it follows from the same surah “Jinn” that earlier they could move to higher levels of the World Soul, called “heaven” – the second, third, fourth – where the work of the angels is going on, and could “eavesdrop” there: “And verily, we used to sit there in stations, to (steal) a hearing, but any who listens now will find a flaming fire watching him in ambush” (72: 9). That is, after the birth of the Prophet (S), the access there was closed to them.
Demons are also a type of Jinn. They are also created from fire but reflected inverted fire, located on the dark side of creation, that is, from Haikel of Kufr, opposite to Haikel of Tawhid. The last one is the essence of man and the essence of faithful Jinn.
And hence the mechanism of divination: through contact with these creatures, the diviners knew what might happen in the future because the Jinn had snatched part of the information from angelic worlds where the destinies and plans of the universe are woven. Of course, they added a lot of nonsense and absurdity to a grain of true information. All the fortune-tellers, soothsayers, and astrologers operate on this principle – they all work with Jinn… If you turn to a soothsayer, he can tell you what is on, and it will come true, but thereby he will win your confidence and add all this rubbish that will drive you crazy and ruin your life… This happens through work with the Jinn. Imam Sadiq (A) says: “The Jinn descended on some people and gave them news of what they had heard in heaven before the birth of the Messenger of Allah (S). And people were engaged in divination, using what the Jinn revealed to them. ʻBut they increased them in follyʼ (72: 6) – that is, in loss and misfortune.”
Of course, it is not necessary that the Jinn stand nearby and whisper something in the soothsayer’s ear. It can be a specific picture or image that they throw on the mirror of his mind. Then he conveys this information to you, and after a while, you see that it actually has come true – and that’s it, you fell into a trap… You want to go to this person, again and again, you start to trust him. And you do not understand that, for a grain of correct information, he will tell you tons of lies, so he will confuse you, drive you insane, and ruin your life.
The pagan world swarmed with such soothsayers. For example, in ancient Rome, this was an official ritual for which there were special priests, and not a single war and serious event began without divination. The Greeks called them “oracles.” The most famous and authoritative oracle was in a special sanctuary in Delphi, where the Pythia priestess inhaled poisonous vapors that rose from a crack in the rock, going into ecstasy and giving predictions, usually in dark poetic form.
And one more of the tricks or mockery of the Jinn over man is the so-called “spiritism” or “summoning spirits” – a practice that has been very popular in the West since the second half of the 19th century and remains so. The Emperor of France Napoleon III, Queen of England Victoria, and such seemingly official materialists and pillars of positivist science as Maxwell and Edison were addicted to spiritism. The prominent writer Conan Doyle, a materialist and an atheist, became a staunch supporter of spiritism after a medium on a seance told him information from the murdered brother of his wife, whom no one knew except the two of them. The spiritualistic procedure consists of people sitting in a special room, where a medium is usually present, through which communication with spirits occurs. Then a spirit appears, talking to them, answering questions, whether through a special pointer or sometimes a voice. They can also see the image of the dead individual they think was “summoned” from the Barzakh. In reality, you cannot summon the dead from the Barzakh: the Jinn take their shape (we have said, they can take any form) and begin broadcasting their voice to the people, mocking them… That is why the most innocent consequence of such procedures is just a waste of time. Another result may be a severe mental or existential crisis, hallucinations, illness, suicide, etc. As we have said, there is nothing good in contact with these forces.
Now you have a rough idea of what these cults of the dead are about, on which the very existence of many tribes was based…
So, the plots of most pagan myths stem from contacts with those levels… That is, the contemplator sees in that fiery world, for example, a Jinni called “Dionysus,” watches his transformations and metamorphoses, and then retells his adventures in our language, calling him “god”… These are hallucinations, but not in the sense in which this word is usually understood. A certain reality is behind such hallucinations. And we should realize that these creatures are dangerous, that they fool people. Therefore the word “hallucination” or “delirium” is justified, and you cannot take any of these stories and myths seriously. People thought they would get something from these “contacts,” but they were wrong: “There were persons among mankind who took shelter with persons among the Jinn, but they increased them in folly” (72: 6).
Returning to the nature of the Jinn, I shall say that the world of fire (I think there is no need to explain that this is not the fire of Jahannam, that is, not the fire of the hellish worlds but a completely different thing) is not the original nature of the Jinn: this is their second creation, so as the world of the earth is not the original abode of humans but temporary and transient. Jinn’s original nature was created from the radiance of the light of man, just as the man himself was created from the radiance of the light of the Prophets, and the Prophets – from the radiance of the light of the Fourteen Infallibles (A).
Here one may ask: if initially the form of the Jinn was created from the radiance of the form of man, then how did it happen that in the current state, the Jinn are higher than people in the ontological stage? They live in a subtle world, and we live in a rough one, they see us, but we do not see them; they can influence us, but we can not (or if we can, then under certain conditions)… The fact is that in the current state, everything is out of place. Man was created as the high level of the universe, so all the angels bowed to him, but today the slightest material influence can destroy him. Cold makes him cold, iron cuts him, microbes make him sick. The fact is that, as we have already said, it is necessary to distinguish the original form from its reflection in the mirrors of the taklif.
The Almighty clothes a person in the form that he (the person) puts on himself. Therefore, the current stage of creation, before returning to the base (which will take place after the Day of Judgment), is a reflection of the base in various mirrors – displacement, removal from the base, i.e., from how it is in essence and how it should be in the light tree of creation. And in essence, the Jinn are the servants of man, and therefore a hadith says that their paradise will be below the human paradise.
“Displacement” here should be understood not in the sense of some kind of “catastrophe,” as Christians say about the “Fall”: Adam committed a sin, and that’s it, everything has become bad… No, that’s not the way it is. According to the plan of the Almighty, creation does not stand still. All its parts rotate, move, and develop, and this is the test for them to elevate them to even greater perfection.
In the Quran, we read that Iblis said: “I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay” (7: 12). Iblis considered himself superior to Adam because he was created from a more subtle and radiant substance. Imam Sadiq (A) says: “If Iblis compared the essence (jawhar) from which Adam was created, with fire, then he would see that it is more radiant and more luminous than fire.”
That is, Iblis looked at the outside, at the body of Adam, but he did not fathom or did not want to fathom that his essence is the spirit that is incomparably higher than all the elements, heaven, and the World Soul.
The first volume of Amin Ramin’s “Man in Islam” can be purchased on Amazon at this link.
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