Alternative Worlds
3. ALTERNATIVE WORLDS- THE SECRETS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
THE PROBLEM OF REALITY
What makes religion in general and spirituality in particular almost impossible to understand for most people (which include even supposedly advanced or ‘profound sufis) is their lack of knowledge about what reality really means. Despite all believers including the spiritually ambitious admit that the ultimate reality behind all perceivable realities is Allah and Allah alone most are still unable to understand what ‘real’ means and what is its humanly ultimate reference.
HUMANLY ULTIMATE REALITY
As far as all practical and verifiable facts are concerned each of us perceives things including our own existence only when we are conscious. In deep sleep or under deep anaesthesia we know or feel nothing which we can remember later.
A second point to realise is that not all things are perceived or evaluated the same way by all people except the simplest physical facts perceived jointly and simultaneously by equally normal people. For example the majority of people give the same name to and can sort out various basic colours and name them the same way while the few who are colour-blind will be baffled why and how on earth we name some grey tones red or green- for them these two colours don’t exist. On higher level of sensory competence differential no one can say that a deaf or blind man’s world is the same as normal mens. So whose reality is the ‘real’ reality? Now let us suppose that a person comes along and alleges that he perceives things none other we know of can and what is more he passes every test set up to investigate his claim. If true, is not he one who might have an extra sense or two which we don’t? This is not as hypothetical as we may think: Some people seem to have some vague sense centre they feel in their guts which makes them aware, however vaguely, that something about something is not as it otherwise appears to be or that there is far more to that thing. In fact there has been a recent recognition of the communicative potential of what is termed ‘body language’. While some persons learn far more or different things from a given speaker or behaviour than others the same persons or another type of person can interpret a situation far more successfully than others as measured by facts which arrive later down the line. Perhaps the most popularly witnessed example of such ability is the ability to asses another person far more correctly than other observers.
For example a crook turns up at your door, you and your spouse confront him, he asks for admission to make you ‘an offer you can’t refuse’, you admit him, he chats you up impressively. In the end while one of you two is euphorically impressed and can’t wait to accept the offer made the other is not only unimpressed but definitely irritated, alarmed and hostile. And he proves to be right dead on. What happened? Why, the hostile partner had more ability to assess both the proposer and his proposition. What is more, such ability to read a person’s mind from various signs he unconsciously emits is not entirely dependent on long experience with people. Sometimes a mere child, say 10 or 11, may be far more competent in seeing through the pretences of a charlatan than a 60 year old business manager. The cause of such an ability may be a certain inborn superior development in some parts of the nervous system of the more able person; many in the know believe that, among other nerve centres, those nervous structures called abdominal ganglia function as primitive cognitive centres, more in some persons than others. In fact in many lower animals like worms and reptiles this ‘gut feeling’ seems to play an appreciable role and as such they may be able to marshal their defensive reactions thanks to the subtle but compelling gut signals. There is a vague observation that persons with large abdomens (not necessarily fat) and relatively narrow chests are good at gut feeling of situations while highly intellectual persons with inadequate emotional sensitivity and reactivity may solve great mathematical or technical problems others find incomprehensible while may be easily taken in and fooled by any small time crook or pretender whom even a child could not be.
But that is not all. It seems that people are born with genetically determined personality traits and aptitudes for various things so distinct that a son reared away from his father whom he originally resembles grows up to resemble his father despite not having his father around at all. If the father has a certain intellectual ability the son also has it, if he eats his food in some peculiar way so does the son, if he is good at a certain sport so is the son etc. Accordingly, depending on genetic inheritance at least as much as education and upbringing people come in some basic aptitudes and personality typologies. From religious and mystical to harshly rational, from loner to good socialiser, from honest and industrious to dishonest and crafty, from law-observant to slick criminal etc. Among these types is that type with a lot of spot-on gut feeling, persons who can assess others fairly correctly with little than a look and then a brief observation to be sure.
Among people assessors are born politicians and sufi masters; politicians are good at smelling out persons and the public listening to them at a rally. As a result they can manipulate them quite well. As for sufi masters, whether sincere and noble or hypocritical and mean, they can tell what makes a certain person tick and handle the person accordingly. All in all, it is obvious that no two men look at the world the same way and see it, especially its people the same way- as a result we cannot say that any two persons who live side by side for a long time see the world and people the same way. One may see them (the people) as forgivable souls ultimately achieving worthwhile things while the other may see them utterly lost and worthy of any bad ends. Whose world-view reflects the ‘actual reality’? None’s! Because there is no single objective reality all may agree upon. Each observer has his reality which means all perceived systems of reality are sub-ject-ive! What is more still modern physics has concluded that even the instrumentally observed, recorded and quantified physical reality is relative. For example, the normally the higher pitched voice of a woman rushing towards us in a fast topless car will sound like a man’s while a man the voice of a man rushing fast away from us will sound like a woman’s. One riding with them on the other hand will hear woman as woman and man as man. Since we people occupy different places and move differently in respect to each other no two person’s world view can be the same and since no person can be in the shoes of others there must be as many world models as there are persons.
That still is not the entire story. In each of us as individuals we have more than one mode of consciousness. Basically we have waking consciousness and dream consciousness. We may be equally sure that in each case what we are seeing as our world is the reality. In a nightmare for example, we believe that all the terrors chasing us are real; our heart beats like hell, our emotions choke us, our sweat glands work overtime until we soak our bed like a steam bath.
Now most religions say that human consciousness does not end with death. It simply switches into another mode which presents us with a perception of a new reality even more convincing than this one. This of course cannot be proven or disproven in a scientific sense but what is science itself if not part of a mode of reality perception whose only credential is its partial relative ‘shareability’ among a number of scientists who are used (i.e. habituated) to be challenged, occasionally successfully by another group of scientists. It may be that each mode or phase of consciousness is only as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ as any other and again either alternative cannot be proven or disproven to the satisfaction of all. Philosophical scepticism then comes in and madness may follow. The problem with philosophy is a permanent one; what we need is all-round practical wisdom which will cull from all human mental abilities to build up a comprehensive and composite picture of reality where rational and empirical waking consciousness, any shape of dream consciousness whether rational, irrational or mystical and lastly delusional states will be taken on board and evaluated in the light of their objectively beneficial or harmful consequences. For example, if a delusional experience like from the effects of a drug like cannabis or opium brings in its wake objective harm which it often does, it is to be discouraged. But if a dream or dream-like wakeful experience solves a real problem in an objectively verifiable way then it must be welcome and benefited from. For example you have a hunch or see a dream which you feel you can interpret in only one way and from personal experience you know that they really mean something. Then you should better take the message and act on it. How do such non-rational messages are formed? Very simple to explain:
MYSTERIOUS OR MYSTIC MESSAGES
All our lives we take in countless impressions and learn equally countless things big or small and go through experiences which teach us countless lessons big and small again. Our rational minds and conscious memory retain only a tiny fraction of these. The almost infinite rest is not lost though. They are stored in our mental warehouses tidily assorted and stacked. When we face a problem and thinking rationally about it as to how to solve them we may find that our conscious knowledge and conscious memories are unable to work out the desired solution. But some vague or gut feeling keeps knocking at the door separating our conscious and subconscious minds. For example, you are driving on some roads which you used to know well some years back but now only a basic skeleton part of the map remains with you. You follow that skeletal knowledge to find your destination but at some point a vague urge suggests to you that you should take a left or right turn. Unable to see why on earth you should obey an irrational urge you keep to your route only to find yourself ending up in a road which only opens to a square walled all round by new houses: You then realise that some years ago this area was changed into a secure housing establishment and the left or right turn you ignored had remained the only route to your destination. You slap your forehead, “you fool!” you say and turn round. What happened? One of your countless forgotten (stored away in your subconscious mind) memories or lessons knocked on the door of your consciousness but you refused to check what it could be about.
Now, some people are habitual ignorers of signals from the subconscious stores, they insist on acting only from their currently active memories, this serves them in some instances which may be the majority of the instances but fail them in others. The danger is that one of those failures may be a life and death issue. A man about to turn on an electric switch about which he forgot the fact that it was out of order since a long time and its operation dangerous goes ahead and switches it on despite a very uneasy feeling, that is to say a negative gut feeling, and as a result causes a serious accident can only blame himself. But not all people act so rashly in the interests of rationality and supposed ‘clear thinking’. Some trust their hunches, check and recheck until they are sure any action they are about to take is correct and safe.
Among these well-hunched people are what we may call ‘spiritually talented’ persons. Unlike the pure rationalists who only work from their conscious, rational minds the spiritually talented employ their whole minds. In other words, without hurry, they listen both to their ‘heads’ and ‘hearts’ and act only when the two are in agreement. This need not be a process slower than to listening only to one’s head: the two systems can work simultaneously and even more rapidly than either of them would without the other.
Let us take an example of such a holistic problem-solving: You want to decide whether you should move to a new job which pays a higher salary or remain in your present job with which you feel happy despite the modest salary. If you are a too rational person with that typical tunnel vision which makes you concentrate on single factors in any situation you will stupidly move to the higher salary job and in the end find that you have done a great mistake. For example, you are a highish administrator in an organisation and are paid so much a salary for it. One day the company advertises for a janitor’s post which offers a good salary and free accommodation the total financial of which combination exceeds your administrator’s salary significantly. If you apply for this job and become the gate-keeper can you imagine how great a social status collapse you shall undergo? Yes, you will have more money to spend or save but all your highly-paid former peers and colleagues will just laugh at you and drop you for good from their guest list of peers. Other lowly placed employees at the company will not adopt you either: they will just regard you like a fallen alien from another planet and you will end up a social leper. Most importantly you will lose your self-respect and from then on live a confused, depressed life not knowing where to go or turn to from thence. Why this tragedy happened to you? Because you thought single-tract, that is to say you ignored your heart if you had any and went for your head in the narrowest sense possible- wish for more money- end of the matter! Why do you think thieves steal, rapists rape, drunkards drink etc? They do these because their minds are locked to that single particular desire and are unable to consider anything else whether of heart or head.
Therefore let us state a law of behaviour: Error and crime result from one-sided and narrow-focused thinking. If this kind of thinking is almost the only way of thinking for a person he is mad and therefore excusable; if on the other hand it is occasional then it is very faulty and dangerous and may lead to accidents or crimes.
WHO IS A TRUE SPIRITUAL MASTER
The more holistically and comprehensively one can think the more rightly and righteously one can act. Holistic and comprehensive thinking is when the thinker effortlessly takes into account all realistically imaginable factors to a case into account and after an adequate consideration and weighing of them arrives at the happiest or least unhappy solution possible under the circumstances. Let us go to the man who chose to be a janitor. Had he not concentrated on money alone like a laser beam but considered all possible consequences of the move he could see mountains of losses like this: total loss of social standing, loss of any chance getting a highly paid job at a highly promoted social level, being desirable by worthy women, developing his mind and tastes more, making friends worthy of having etc. In brief he would consign himself to a social prison of solitary confinement for life and be awaiting release only with death which comes sooner to depressed, self-disgusted men.
Now let us consider the wise and fortunate man at the other end of wisdom scale. He feels and recognises in his whole being that life is an unmissable and unrepeatable opportunity for developing one’s whole happiness potential. This happiness consists of several inter-dependent departments of happiness like self-respect, adequate material means, ample enough love and friendship within any human group around one, appreciating others and being appreciated by them, satisfying not only material needs but the spiritual, like more learning of exciting as well as worthy subjects, a happier relationship with the ultimates in life like God-sense, an eternal future in whatever different form, and a sense of fraternal (brotherly or sisterly) relationship to all the rest of people. Let us dwell on the last point if you wish. What about sexual, racial, national and creedal prejudices and hatreds disappearing among people and each person’s regard of the other becomes based upon that person’s attitude and conduct? So men will not look down on women just because they are women, English will not look down on the Italian because he is Italian, white not on black and black not on white, Muslim not on Christian and hate the other as a result. Instead each would evaluate the other on the basis of attitude like respect or disrespect, compassion or oppression and conduct like doing the legally or morally right things or the wrong, of course in broadest terms. When it is like this we may come to observe happy events like the following:
A man and woman agree on trying to stop a man punishing a woman simply because she is a woman instead of the man supporting the other man and the woman supporting the other woman simply because they are the same sex respectively. What about Englishmen and Italians supporting the better- playing and better-behaving players taking part in a football match between their national sides? Could we then have hostile rivalry and those occasional bouts of violence in and around the stadiums? Yes, some side-taking and loyalty in competitive matters is both natural and constructive but its boiling over into crime is not.
Now a spiritual master, sometimes and rarely coming in the format of a true prophet and far more often in the format of a teaching saint and some other times in the form of a humble person who just blesses everybody in contact with him and prepared to be blessed... these holy souls offer us guidance issuing from their very bright whole minds which are variously fed from wells and springs God furnished them with. These spiritual masters are more born than made although some work on their activation to be supplied by God.
A true prophet and messenger of God is that person whose mind is so highly talented and capable in all matters of spirituality and wisdom that eventually the Creator opens up a channel to him connecting him on and off to the Heavenly Sources of knowledge and wisdom for the obtainment of which there is no other channel. True, the phenomenon of prophecy can be faked well enough to fool many as the phenomenon of sainthood also can. But there is a hallmark of genuineness in both missions- that is the undeniable honesty, humility and right conduct so consistent and unfailing that one cannot catch a true prophet or saint off-guard with his hands dipped in sin and his face covered with the soot of sin.
How does such genuine spiritual mastership tie up with the structure of the human mind briefly and cursorily touched upon above? Well, I think it is as follows: A master is born with the best structure of a mind suitable for receiving inspirations and revelations from the spiritual heavens that are in him. Remember the notion that all experience, all reality are subjective and that objective only means that part of the subjective on which we more or less can agree and in fact may share with animals to an extent? For example, the heavens we perceive above us is like a dome structure is nothing but what our mind and any perceptibles our mind observe and believe to be outside and separate from itself can in fact only be a product of it jointly produced by it and the stimuli apparently coming from a perception it recognises as its outer environment. That of course does not make the physical universe a mere apparition but it only integrates it with the human mind. In other words the universe and our minds are essentially one and the same thing, all created and sustained and modified by God, they subsist in Him and He in us as only He knows how.
Human mind at its most developed and noblest does have access to the Divine with the permission and help of the Divine but the nature of this relation is so fundamental that its observation is impossible. It is impossible like the eye seeing itself, the ear hearing itself or the tongue tasting itself. Our reality is only created reality while God’s is uncreated and therefore inaccessible to us. The prophets’ revelations and the saints’ inspirations are as natural and mentally-sourced as us lesser mortals’ rightly-guided hunches and flashes of insight but only far greater and momentous. On top of that the prophets’ revelations are universal both in scale and application although their acceptance is not forced on people.
Ultimately all guidance comes from God and God alone, all reality are His and His alone. He is like a rich person who loans the use of certain goods to the poor; the poor benefit from them for a while and at the end the goods revert to the real owner. Don’t you see how this earth of ours have been recycling itself through living creatures countless of times; today this plot of land produces tomatoes, tomatoes produce insects living on them, insects produce birds feeding on them, men can feed on them all but eventually all of them die, become dust and sooner or later contribute to the creation of more tomatoes, more insects etc. Read if you wish:
“Everything on it is mortal; what remains is the Face of thy Lord” (55- 26). To prove the other point that our guidance is from inside and from above us and prophets and saints are only apparently our guides we may quote:
“There is no animal but He (Allah) holds it from its forehead- my Lord is on a Straight Path”(11: 56).
What we see here if not Allah’s most direct and immediate hold on all foreheads (behind which our seat of intelligence is located as the frontal brain)? Read again if you wish:
“We (Allah) are nearer to him (man) than his life artery” (50:16).
Where is the supposed distance and where prophets and saints can interpose themselves except virtually? There is no gap between us and our Lord; on the contrary we are closer than being united. All realities we perceive whether during our supposed waking hours or dream time or in any altered state of consciousness like under hypnosis or under the influence of psychedelic drugs are equally real in their own terms and equally unreal in terms of each other- that is what I mean by relativity and relativity of perceptions of reality is now an established part of physics. Yes, there is not something but only too many and too great things beyond this life and following our death and it is to this effect that the Prophet sws said “People are asleep and they only wake up when they die”. Only that life beyond death is real absolute and it can only relate to this present dream life of ours through myths and metaphors.
SO WHAT IS REALITY?
It is God and only God Whose Mercy created us His servants to go through many adventures until they find Him and enjoy His Eternal Company. Ultimately our reality is all subjective, because we are God’s subjects and subjects can only be relative and subjective. Our minds reflect His heavens, are derived from His heavenly glory which translates into Holy Spirit which dwells in all of us awaiting our recognition of him when he can say ‘hello’ to us and we embrace never to separate again. Amen