In the previous part, we have concluded that the brain is not an organ of thinking on itself but an instrument of filtration, limitation, and reduction of thinking. The entity from whom thinking is emitted is the soul. And we ended up getting to know exactly four souls, as in the words of Imam Ali (A): vegetative, animal, thinking, and universal.
The vegetative soul is responsible for growth, for simple movement (no matter in which direction): plants have this type of soul. A plant is able to grow: as we know, they feed off the water, light, etc. But it does not have a sensory system. A plant is not able to feel. The whole plant is “inscribed” in the external environment, as it cannot stand up to this environment in any way to grant itself some kind of freedom. Its whole life boils down to regular growth, nutrition, and reproduction. That’s all…
As for the animal, it has a sensory system added to it. And therefore, Imam Ali (A) calls the animal soul “hyssia,” that is, “feeling,” “sentient.” The animal is able to feel and sense, and thus in a certain way to navigate in this world, in order to move around in it. It is already freer in relation to the environment than the plant. Higher animals also have sensory thinking, constructed according to the laws of associative memory. For example, if a meal is accompanied by a bell each time, then, upon hearing the bell, the animal begins to secrete gastric juice. Simply, there was an association of the call with food intake. Man also has such a way of thinking, but his true, purely human thinking stands incomparably higher and is built according to completely different laws, as we will see now.
What is its specificity? Let’s go back to our example with the tree. So, I see a beautiful flowering tree in front of me. But I do not just see it. BesidesBesides the fact that I can see its greenery, branches, and bark, which the animal is capable of, there is something else in my mind that is not in the animal’s consciousness. I understand that this is a tree. In my mind, there is not just this particular tree, say, an oak tree, with such specific branches, the shape of the foliage, etc. It also contains the idea of a tree as such, a “tree in general,” with which I identify this particular tree. It has long been noticed that you can see a tree, but you cannot see the “idea of a tree.” In no experience have we been given “a tree in general,” “a house in general,” “a chair in general,” “a person in general,” etc. In our sensory experience, we see only a specific person, a specific tree, a specific house. In nature, there is no such thing as a “tree in general,” the abstract idea of a tree. There are concrete, individual Christmas trees, oaks, maples, birches, etc.
Here, the fundamental difference between man and animal passes: animals do not know such abstractions. A cat can live all its life in some kind of house, but it will never create in its mind the image of a “house in general,” abstracted from these specific windows, roofs, walls, and furniture. And therefore, it does not have a language like a human, for our language is built on abstractions, on ideas. Only by separating the concept of a tree from all concrete trees can we call it the word “tree.”
A cat also sees a tree but cannot identify it as the “tree in general” because it does not have a center that provides the appropriate identifications. It perceives the tree as a concrete center of perceptions and resistances associated with its biological existence. And so – each tree individually. It does not have the ability to combine all the trees into a separate category and perform some operations with this given category. That’s why a cat cannot think of thoughts similar to, for example: “All trees are green,” “all people are good,” etc. It perceives each individual as “this person,” “here-person,ˮ a source of tactile, olfactory, and visual impressions, from which comes the benefit or sensing danger. Therefore, it is dissolved in its habitat range, in its biological niche. There is no world separated from its body and drives for a cat. Animals are characterized by only practical thinking, able to navigate in each specific situation to solve practical situational problems.
For example, an animal sees a tree and sees, say, a banana on it, and it thinks, “How would I be able to climb it now, to pick this banana?” (Of course, it doesn’t think through words like us, but through practical impulses: the animal does not have a verbal language). But the animal cannot think, for example: now, this tree is beautiful, it expresses the idea of beauty… Or if it sits under it and an apple suddenly falls on its head, it will grab and eat it but does not think about it by the fact that the fall of this apple expresses the general law of universal gravitation. As Newton did in his time… An animal is a slave of a directly perceived practical situation; it cannot go beyond that.
The Quran says in the Surah “Baqara,” ayah 31: wa Allama adama l-asmaa kullaha – “And He taught Adam all the names.” They asked Imam Sadiq (A), “What are those names? He said, “The names of lands, mountains, trees, and plants. ˮ And then he looked at the carpet under his feet and said, “And this carpet was among what He taught him.ˮ And from Dawood ibn Sarhan Attar: I was with Imam Sadiq (A), and he ordered them to bring the tablecloth, and we had dinner. Then they brought a tray with a basin for washing hands. I asked, “Are this tray and basin among the things Allah said, ‘And He taught Adam all the names’ˮ? He said, “Dust, desert, and all this,” and pointed at his surroundings.
There is no circle in nature, no square, no triangle. There are no numbers in nature, no abstract “one,” “two,” “three”… And all the more, there are no such things as “capitalism,” “state,” “love,” “friendship,” “beauty,” “truthˮ, etc. All this exists only in our consciousness.
Where do we get these abstractions, these ideas, on the operation of which our language is built? From where do they come, spewing in the realm of our consciousness, if they do not exist in the outside world? The only way is to conclude that these realities are perceived by the receiver of our consciousness from some kind of prototype. For centuries, the epicenter performing these operations has been called “the intellect.ˮ The animal has a soul, but not intellect. Hence the definition of man as a “rational animalˮ.
So, man, along with the vegetative and animal souls, also has a third rational soul, which renders abstract ideas from the cosmic prototype, from the Universal Soul, which is the green light of the Throne of Allah and builds language on this basis. Imam Ali (A) calls this soul “natiqa qudsiya” – “speaking sacred soul.” The “speaking soulˮ is the same as the “intellectualˮ one because the “intellectˮ is “speech.”
This third soul is inherent only to man. The animal does not have it. And when we talk about the soul (nafs), in general, we have in mind this particular soul, under the control of which there are two others, that is, vegetative and animal. This intelligent soul is like a drop in the ocean of a universal World Soul. Or it can be compared to a mirror reflecting the rays of light. A mirror can be clean, cloudy, curved, straight, convex, large, small – this is the reason for the differences in the individual mind of each person. And yet, all mirrors operate on the same principle: they reflect. And so are the minds of all people: they reflect the realities of the World Soul. And then, this reflection enters our brain, which plays the role of a monitor that processes this “picture” and displays the results on the screen.
And therefore, under certain conditions, the transformation of material things by the power of the psyche is possible – through the influence on their ideal prototypes in the World Soul. This is the practice of various yogis, Sufis, contemplators; there is much evidence to this; this is all real… Because powerful subtle energies form matter. And our soul can influence these energies since it is attached to an even higher principle, which we will now talk about. The principle from which everything begins…
And here I should say that modern science and fundamental physics, too, essentially repeat these things, long known to the religious picture of the world. Naive “materialismˮ as a supposedly obligatory correlate of “scientificˮ has long gone into oblivion. For example, what are particles at the quantum level? Nothing but a part of the observer’s consciousness. We are used to imagining “matter” as something that has weight, impenetrable, like some bricks of the universe. What lies within the foundation of the “matter”? The waves. Elementary particles are not an object, not something objective, not some small bricks. The basis of our entire material world is completely intangible “waves,” which only the invasion of the observer’s consciousness transforms into “particles.”
And if, according to modern physical science, our “rough” matter is only a projection of the wave world, then why not assume that this whole world, in general, is a projection of an even more fundamental “intangible” reality?
Let’s go back to our topic and see if everything is limited in man by this rational soul, this center, which reads abstract ideas from a subtle cosmic origin? Is that all, or is there more to it?
Yes, there is something else, and this time the most surprising. After all, another fundamental difference between a human person and an animal is that a person can objectify himself, make himself an object, but the animal does not. In other words, only a person has self-awareness. An animal can “think” (of course, only within the framework of a practical situation). Still, it is not able to objectify the process of its thinking as if building a new thought process over it. The animal hears and sees but does not know that it hears and sees. It cannot “think about what it thinks,” cannot look at itself from the outside. Therefore, the animal is not able to commit suicide. In a suicidal situation, it is necessary to make yourself an object, “look at yourself from the outside,” and then decide to die.
Of course, a dog can refuse food due to the death of its beloved owner and die, but this will not be suicide but a sensory reaction to the loss of the object to which it is attached. It is inconceivable that a dog would walk to the edge of a cliff and throw itself down to end its life deliberately. The dog simply does not have a center capable of making such a decision. It does not see itself from the outside. It does not recognize itself.
And for the same reason, animals do not recognize themselves in the mirror. Place a cat in front of a mirror – it does not recognize itself in the reflection. It either does not pay any attention to the reflection or thinks that this is some other cat and will begin to react aggressively toward it. The cat does not recognize itself in the mirror for the same reason that it cannot commit suicide – because it does not possess a self-conscious, “Iˮ.
So, it turns out that man can contemplate not only the external reality but also himself. There is a paradox, a mystery. How can one contemplate oneself? Is the eye capable of seeing itself? If a person can contemplate himself, it means that he does not fit into the usual framework of what we call “man,ˮ that he is more than just “man. ˮ He has a certain invisible, superhuman center from which he can look at himself as if from the outside, as something external and even alienated. For us, it seems quite natural and normal to the point that we do not understand how paradoxical and wonderful it is. But, as we said, an animal has no such ability. A person can at any time objectify the process of his thinking by saying, “Stop! What am I thinking now?” And more, “What am I doing now? Which way am I going? Who am I?” He can criticize himself, despise, hate, praise. One can speak to himself as to an outsider, “What are you doing now? Are you insane! Leave it now!..”
We have the ability to see our consciousness as the viewer sees a movie screen in a cinema. We are literally spectators of ourselves. How is this even possible?
This is possible because any person possesses something “superhuman.” A component that allows him to be higher than himself at any moment. We call this superhuman center “spiritˮ, ar-Ruh.
So, there is consciousness, there is mind, there is the rational soul responsible for the formation of meanings, and there is self-awareness, there is spirit, Ruh, responsible for managing them. We not only grasp the meanings but also contemplate them, organize them, manage them. It is the spirit that is responsible for moral evaluations, for the choice of a life strategy.
That is, a certain pillar of light passes through us, a certain laser beam that pulls us out of the ordinary course of life makes us free self-conscious beings. A person can become a beggar, can become a genius, can become a saint, or a killer maniac. He can change his life drastically. He can even cease it by jumping off a cliff. He forms his meanings into a specific project. The animal is not able to choose its strategy: this has already been done and decided for it. Man always has a choice.
It is possible to imagine consciousness in the form of a football field; then, self-consciousness or spirit is a powerful spotlight beam, which illuminates this field from above, wandering around this field and highlighting it. It is the heavenly eye by which we observe ourselves.
In retrospect, we compared consciousness to a radio. Now we can compare “spirit” with the something that regulates this receiver and tunes it to the desired frequency. Our consciousness works like a hologram. A hologram is a plate that gives a three-dimensional image of an object if illuminated with a laser. In the same way, the spirit laser illuminates our soul, our Nafs, so that we get an image of reality.
Here we see how multi-dimensional a human actually is. He incorporates all the levels of a large cosmos. A human being has a body made up of the same matter as minerals. He has a vegetative and animal soul. He has a rational soul, and even higher above it, there is a spirit abutting against the highest limits of this created reality. So, a human unites in himself all the possibilities of creation, the entire hierarchy of forms – from minimum to maximum. Like a vibrating string stretched from top to bottom, he occupies an exclusive position in the cosmos – created by the last, viceroy of God, before whom all the angels bowed to the earth.
Thanks to the spirit, man has freedom. Spirit is also the ability to deny and remove any existing mental or physical condition. Humans are essentially free beings. Of all the creations known to us, only a human is able to remove or negate any present state of the inner and outer world. A human, as he were, transcends himself – he is always ahead of himself. And this is his main paradox. He can change his behavior to the complete opposite. He can – in the normal state of the psyche – switch consciousness from one thought to another.
Unlike an animal, a human person is independent of physical and mental impulses; he stands “above” the lifestream. As we have mentioned, this ability to stand “above” oneself is also called “self-awareness.” The animal has consciousness (practical, not rational), but it has no self-awareness – no center standing over its vital reactions and controlling them. It does, but does not know that it does; sees, but does not know that it sees. The animal does not recognize itself; it does not have an “I.” It cannot rise above its psychic experiences, identify and control them. But a human has a “gap” between attraction and action, due to which his behavior is determined not by instincts and impulses but by a value-based choice. There is not a single instinct that would completely determine our behavior. We act in accordance with the hierarchy of values in our mind, that is, following our ideas about good and evil, truth and falsehood. A person can sacrifice himself for his ideas about the truth, although this will not be useful in terms of survival or preservation of the race.
Thanks to the spirit, a person is always above himself; he can even separate himself from the mental stream of his consciousness. His subsequent mental state is not determined by the previous one. At no moment in time does a human person coincide with himself. He is always already “higher than himself,ˮ so to speak. And therefore, such a thing as freedom is possible. Man is the only creature on this earth that can decide. What does it mean to “decide on something”? It means to separate oneself from one’s previous state, to completely break with it, to alienate oneself to it.
When a person commits suicide, he bears responsibility for this and not a continuous stream of thoughts in his head. Why? Because a healthy person can always separate one thought from another, one image from another, can intervene in the chain of ideas and associations in his mind.
It is worth noting that a schizophrenic differs from a healthy person because he is not able to do this. He cannot interfere in his mental stream. Such an individual no longer has a personality; this person is simply a stream of psychic images, thoughts, associations, rushing off somewhere, over which he has no power whatsoever. So, what is the difference between a delirium of a madman and normal speech? Lack of conscious control over this ability. A schizophrenic also uses human language; he thinks like us but cannot control his thinking. Therefore, when a mentally ill person commits a crime, we do not blame him for this. Because that person is not in the right state of mind, such a person is not punished but treated. This individual has no personality and cannot be responsible for his actions – in the sense that he cannot intervene in his actions, put a boundary between them, or separate them from himself.
In other parts of this book, we will talk about states of insanity and schizophrenia and the origins of this mysterious disease.
So far, the following is important to us. As we realized, there is a higher superhuman principle within us, a light column, a laser beam, which we call Ruh, “Spirit. ˮ We are able to remove any content of our consciousness, thereby literally distancing ourselves from ourselves. Only a human person can say, “I know that I am. ˮ Moreover, he can say, “I know that I know that I am”… “On top” of the spiritual stream, a self-conscious and coordinating center is built, which intervenes in its course and allows you to change its direction. The animal is deprived of this ability because it is “inscribed” in the environment; it is “always here and now,ˮ composing the unity with the outside world, giving itself up completely to it (because of this, it does not have an inner world either). On the contrary, for man, any reality appears as only a manifestation of the unlimited field of opportunity formed by the ability of denial. We are separated from the world and ourselves – and this is our most salient feature.
And therefore, a human has things such as “space” and “time.” He is open to what lies beyond the horizon of his sensory perception – and therefore, he is familiar with such a thing as abstract space – and to the something that is yet to arrive, that is, to the future – and for that, he has time. It would be naive, as ordinary consciousness does, to consider space and time as categories of “reality per-se.” It is impossible to abstract the “empty” forms of space and time that we carry with us like a tortoiseshell, placing all things in their coordinates. The animal does not have such forms: it sees objects and is conscious of processes but cannot “separate” both from itself because it just cannot rise above itself in self-awareness. It is merged with the world and itself, but man with one half accepts the world and himself, and with the other – denies both. He is both “here and there,” “on this side” and “on the other side.” We “run away” from all that is available and given, whether we want it or not, and in this flight we generate abstract space and time without external borders. After that, we automatically “pounce” such a priori spatio-temporal grid on all the phenomena and processes that we encounter in our experience.
Due to this immense freedom in us, our life activity is not reactive but spontaneous. We do not reflect reality but produce it in our consciousness: create an autonomous inner world of meanings, feelings, etc. Which we then transmit to the outside world through practical activities. We think by building an abstract realm of such stable eidetic essences over the Heraclitian stream of perceptions, which then find a symbolic embodiment in language. In parallel to the objective reality perceived by the senses, we build the ideal world of our “I,” our personality.
Thanks to this freedom, to this open space within us, man is never “given” at once and as a whole – he is a task for himself, he forms himself, he is a project of himself.
In the next part, we will analyze the “Nafs” and the “Ruh” in the holy Quran and say where does the “Ruh” comes from and to what higher reality it belongs.
The first volume of Amin Ramin’s “Man in Islam” can be purchased on Amazon at this link.
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