Freedom ,Faith, Authenticity.

========================= We resent restrictions on our freedom, but we r also afraid of our own freedom, as brilliantly pointed out by Erich Fromm several decades ago. Fear of freedom is partly the fear of facing one's existential abyss….tat which lies in the depths of one's being and hs an awesome and irresistible power before which our cherished values and pious intentions often begin to melt like wax before fire.

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The fear of one's existential depths and the apprehension tat man's freedom must necessarily push him into the pit of chaos and disaster is rooted in a low opinion of man's nature and also of one's own self rather than in a mature realistic insight into one's own and human limitations and frailties in general.

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While a mature understanding of human nature and an insightful humility with regard to one's own strong and weak points r pre-eminently desirable, a compulsively low image of man or one's own self results in wot Fromm hs called the neurotic 'fear of freedom'. ……………. Once however we realize tat man's deeper self is not a raging sea of passions and irrational drives (though they do hv lodgment in man's depths) but tat man's ultimate depth touches the shore of Divinity, man's fear of his subjective depth is transmuted into a longing to reach out into the ecstasy of Divine communion.

…………………………… Man's self-image, as an isolated Divine ray trembling on the dark surface created by the ignorance of man's Divine origin, is his ontological promise tat man's inner freedom wud not necessarily degenerate into license or sheer impulse.

…………….. Though human lapses and failures r certainly endemic and countless the risk of tragic accidents on the road sud not hold man back from his journey into inner space,fortified by the conviction tat there is a Divine spark in the depths of his being. Tis is a fateful choice each must make for himself alone, though he cud well recommend his choice to others. ………….. The escape from freedom pushes man into the arms of an external authority as a compensation for his intense feeling of his own worthlessness and propensity to evil in the absence of a strong external authority.

………………………… Surrender before such an authority not only disciplines the person, but gives him a sense of power and ego-expansion through identifying himself with the authority. Such a person lives at the mass level, ridding himself of the burden of self-direction which flows from authentic freedom and the courage to accept the consequences of exercising tis freedom. ………………….. He prefers the stability and security of cultural conditioning provided by he authority to the risks involved in authentic being.

…………….. The lack of authenticity or self-communication with the depths of one's being leads one to self-alienation—the drifting away of the conscious ego from its creative centre and source of inner joy. The self-alienated ego then seeks to compensate for tis joyless state of being by trying to dominate the inner life of others.

…………………………….. The desire for power is a natural human condition. When, however, the desire becomes a craving for controlling the minds and hearts of others (whether the ideas and values be religious or secular) the permissible level of the natural human drive for power shoots up abnormally to produce the pathological condition of fanaticism. And fanaticism is an evil, no matter wot its content might be. True concern for the welfare of others lies in working for their inner freedom and growth rather than in steering them in a predetermined direction. ………………….. Fear of others leads to lack of communication with others or social alienation, while fear of one's own inner freedom leads to lack of communication with one's deepest self or self-alienation—a condition in which men live, think and act in conformity with external norms and expectations. Such men profess beliefs and values, religious or secular, without the joy of commitment and the satisfaction of sincere action, and then they run after compensators substitutes like sensual pleasure, organizational power, prestige and similar goals. ………………… The self-integrated and authentic person, on the other hand, (no matter wot religion he may profess) communicates with his own deepest centre and also tat of others for whom he feels a sense of human kinship and ontological harmony overriding all difference of caste, colour or creed. Such a person is self-integrated, socially integrated and cosmically integrated, radiating spiritual peace and cosmic love as a flower gives fragrance to all without questioning their caste, color or creed. His beliefs and values r not an apparel which he can discard to suit his own convenience or that of others, out of fear or favour, but a part of his bones, as it were.

………………………. At the same time the authentic person who cherishes equally his own inner freedom and tat of others is fully aware tat other persons may be committed to other beliefs and values. Such persons must be respected for a sincere commitment to their beliefs and values, though different from one's own.

………………………… The authentic person is also aware or easily becomes aware, if he looks at the matter with intellectual curiosity, tat his religious beliefs cannot be proved like propositions of mathematics or science; he, therefore, rejects wat may be called 'religious rationalism' in favour of religious existentialism.

………………………. The bliss of an inner certitude or conviction courses in his spiritual arteries, as it was, and he is content if others also enjoy this bliss, no matter wat religion or creed they profess. ……………. Being a free man of God rather than the prisoner of any dogma, instilled into the vocabulary of his spiritual mother-tongue, his religious response is tat of a person overwhelmed by a sense of mystery together with the unshakable conviction tat the mysterious is also supremely good, making life worth living and giving our authentic ideals and aspirations the promise of their fulfillment. And this is the essence of religious faith.

……………… Religious faith, like true love, wells forth from the depths of one's being as water gushes forth from a perennial spring. The function of faith is to provide anchorage and stability to man's basic attitudes towards the human situation.

……………. Tis is also the function of a philosophical world view which however sud be critically acquired by the adult, while religious faith is normally imbibed in the lap of the family circle. ………………….. The function of a world view cn be performed only by philosophy or religion, and no other cultural activity can take their place. Science describes and explains in terms of verifiable hypotheses, poetry pleases and great poetry edifies and illumines man, technology serves our needs, morality evaluates and regulates our inner acts, law regulates our outer social relations, but none cn claim to give a basic meaning of the universe and a direction to life as a whole.

……….. Tis is the residual basic function of religious faith or a philosophical world view which itself is 'philosophical faith', as pointed out by the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers. ………………… Both kinds of faith integrate man's thinking, feeling and willing into a total existential response of a conscious self confronting the mystery of the cosmos comprising the phenomena of birth, growth.death, suffering, struggle, guilt, love, beauty, joy, fear, tragedy, and so on.

………………. Even an atheist (provided he does not turn into a nihilist rejecting the pursuit of all values, including truth, goodness and beauty) who pursues the good (unknowingly) pursues Allah as the cosmic Ground or Source of all value, even though he does not relate himself to tis Source as a 'Holy Thou'.

………… Whether or not the individual who pursues truth, goodness and beauty chooses to establish an 'I-Thou' relationship with the Source of all value, our respect for the individual must not be linked with this very crucial personal decision, but must depend only upon the person's active concern for truth, goodness and beauty.

……………………… It is a fairly common belief tat a deeply religious person who really hs faith in the truth of his religion must hold other religious beliefs to be false and wish all others to be converted to the one and only true religion for their own good. Tis approach makes the peaceful conversion of others part of one's religious duties. The underlying assumption of this approach is tat the entire human family is destined to accept the one true religion sooner or later but it is the duty of the true religious believer to expedite the consummation of the Divine Plan.

……………………. The above approach fails to see that since religious convictions just cannot be proved or disproved by logical or scientific reasoning the, ipso facto, cannot be altered by ordinary persuasion, in proportion as the convictions are really genuine.

…………. Indeed, the greater the degree of existential certainty of a sincere believer the less open wud he be to the rationalistic pretensions of those who hv the illusion tat their religious beliefs are rationally demonstrable. If and when the crucial insight dawns on the true believer tat religious truths are existential convictions rather than demonstrable certainties the desire to convert others tends to wither away, or to yield to the desire tat all human beings sud rise to the level of authentic being instead of remaining at the level of mere cultural conditioning.

…………………… When, for instance, one realizes tat neither the Semitic 'linear' concept of life after death, nor the Aryan 'cyclical' concept cud be proved true in the exclusive sense, while both actually serve a common basic function (metaphysical and ethical), one tends to become more concerned with doing good deeds himself and also motivating others towards goodness rather than in converting the 'cyclical' concept of after-life into the linear, or vice versa.

……………………. Religious convictions, in the final analysis, r nearer to aesthetic evaluations rather than factual or logical truth-claims of the type ‘p’ ' or 'not-p'. While we cannot accept contrary or contradictory truth-claims in the latter case, why sud one object to plural religious convictions so long as they do not violate our authentic conscience? One may well hv deep religious convictions without the additional belief tat the religious convictions of others are false or tat they ought to be substituted by one's own in the entire human family. ……………………… Tolerance, permissiveness and genuine respect for religious convictions other than our own, are, thus, quite compatible with deep religious faith.

…………. … Turning to the sphere of religions, 'authentic’ faith/religious belief means tat the faith of a person springs from his/her heart without any doubt, pretence, hypocrisy or motive of worldly reward (lol as distinct from spiritual salvation). In other words, the professions of faith corresponds with a genuine belief, attitude, or response without any pose, desire to impress, deceive, gain any advantage exclusively linked with the profession of belief, and so on. It leads to either willing or spontaneous action in accordance with the requirements of the faith without cajoling, coercing, or luring the agent into the desired action" …. Authenticity is a matter of degrees and the highest degree of authenticity leads to spontaneous action while a relative lower degree of authenticity leads to willing action by the agents. The total absence of appropriate action, or action performed out of fear of worldly punishment or lure of worldly reward signifies the lack of authentic faith behind the verbalization of a creed. In other words, faith is active commitment, or an inner state of ‘being’ ever turning into ‘doing’ by virtue of an inner motivational nisus or necessity quite independent of fear or hope of gain. We thus find tat there is no one use or standard meaning of the word ‘ authenticity’ but a whole spectrum or gamut of uses. Nw wot does an existentialist writer mean when he says “X” is an authentic person? Is tis sentence literally equivalent to the sentence, “X” is a sincere person? Hmm the answer is ‘no’, since authenticity includes sincerity in its meaning, but is not reducible to it.

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Thus a sincere woman may think she loves her husband, and yet her sincere love may lack authenticity, in the existentialist sense, since the sincere wife’s love may not be rooted in the depth of her being but may be merely a disguised form of loyalty or friendly concern for her husband, expected by society from a good wife. In other words , a sincere person may not be authentic, since to be authentic is to be sincere to one’s inner depth rather than some ‘other’, whether person, book or creed. An authentic person is one whose self-awareness not only extends to his surface thoughts or feelings but penetrates into his existential depth, so tat the faintest and most nebulous or inarticulate stirrings, attitudes, desires, aspirations, evaluations….. in shorts the multifarious human responses, just as they rise in man’s almost inaccessible depths,--- get registered to some degree by the authentic person.

… Wot is divinity? Is there any connectivity or relation of authenticity with spirituality? Is there any spark of divinity in our life? Lol I may sound little philosophical but I am undone I just think tis way. There is always a bang bang in between my scientific mind and mystic mind. I think I cn understand but may be I am wrong. Butt Hmm, still I think the ultimate depth or Divine spark in man lies covered or encrusted with his thoughts, feelings or volition, layer upon layer, reducing the effulgence of the spark to a hardly perceptible dim light.

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The normal waking stream of consciousness thus acts as a barrier between man's depth and his ego, which becomes alienated from its depth. Such an ego may be compared to a boat which hs lost its moorings and starts drifting with the currents of water or air.

……….. Man hs the capacity to journey into the depths of his being. As the diver dives into the depths of the ocean, man cn journey into the depths of his being, seeking communion with his vibrant centre—the God within man.

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However, there cn be no certainty, in the logical or objective sense, tat he hs indeed touched his ultimate depth. Indeed, to plumb one's own depth is more difficult than to identify with the naked eye an object a billion billion times smaller than a pinhead, embedded in a dark deep well of muddy water.

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Tentativeness of approach and a receptive frame of mind r, thus, essential for protecting man against the danger of spiritual arrogance or conceit which lead him to fanaticism. ………………….

Authenticity is inseparable from subjectivity. An authentic person is one who lives the life of inwardness and subjectivity, but tis subjectivity is not to be confused with the subjectivity of impulse which creates conflict and discord, or the subjectivity of taste which does not involve man's deeper ethical levels, and does not affect his total conduct of life. ……………………..

A 'kingdom of authentic persons', therefore, wud not lead to conflict or chaos, as may be feared by some. Indeed, if the subjective depth of every person really touches the shores of Divinity, or if the Divine spark is present in all of us, the subjectivity of the authentic person will not be an exercise in arbitrary impulse or caprice, but wud bind together autonomous persons respecting one another as co-sharers of the Divine spark. The practical or institutional expression of this mutual respect is democracy as a way of life. Hmmm I think so. ….. Freud ,ego, super ego, existentialism.

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The concept of authenticity presupposes the concept of human 'depth' or, in other words, a model of human personality, which partly resembles but also differs from Freud's division of man's psyche into the id, ego, and superego. For Freud, the 'id' is the system or totality of spontaneous drives which r faintly reflected and partly distorted as they reach the level of consciousness or the ego. The ego may be likened to an air bubble tat arises on the surface of water whose depth is infinitely greater than the bubble. The super-ego, according to Freud, is the internalized censor and is superimposed on the 'id' and the ego as result of cultural conditioning without having any existential roots in the 'id' as such.

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Thus the conscious ego is sandwiched, as it were, between the totally non-rational and amoral instinctive drives or the 'libido', in the broader sense, and the system of ethical values or ideals which however do not have any a priori or internal source in man's basic depth or constitution.

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Freud's conception of the 'id' is non-moral and non-rational, if not positively evil, and his conception of the super-ego is basically sociological and non-transcendental so tat all human rational and ethical systems rest upon the shifting sands of impulse without any solid existential foundation, as it were.

…… Allah has created thus creator but it is not the same as Rasheed the creator who has made a furniture. The great and interesting difference between Rasheed and Allah as two creators are, Rasheed cannot fix the fate of the furniture even Rasheed has very little capacity to maintain his creation. As a matter of fact after his creation of a furniture the shape,colour, duration of it ll be out of his hand. On the other hand Allah can do anything just anything with His creation. He can determine the fate of His creation. Allah asked us to look at His creation to understand Him tats why the Quranic verses are called as “ Ayah’ means sign. The signature of Allah is His creation. Thus I am also HIS SIGNATURE.

…. Yes you cn describe but u cn never make me feel exactly the way u experienced. I shall imagine ur description my way. U can never make me feel the love u r making with ur husband when I am still a virgin and out of the touch of any woman. You shall describe me by words but u cn never make me feel. There are huge limitations of human languages in tat case u shall use allegories, smiles, metaphors,phrases,idioms,proverbs, anecdotes, parables and so on. The language of the Quran does likewise. Let me give u some examples which, obviously, must be understood in the non-literal sense in order to yield a proper meaning.

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“Allah has set a seal on their hearts and on their hearings, (i.e. they are closed from accepting Allah's Guidance), and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be a great torment” (2:7). “In their hearts is a disease (of doubt and hypocrisy) and Allah has increased their disease. A painful torment is theirs because they used to tell lies.” (2:10). “Allah mocks at them and gives them increase in their wrong-doings to wander blindly.” (2:15).

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In the above verses if the expression , “Allah has increased their disease” be understood literally , tis wud mean tat instead of helping or guiding His creatures , Allah misleads or harms them.By the very nature of the case tis meaning is not acceptable. The additional clause , ‘they used to tell lies’ confirms wot is really the case and tat the preceding expression is merely a phrase of the Quranic language, rather than a literal truth. Likewise ‘Allah mock them’ is a phrase. Tis cannot be understood in the literal sense of asserting something not known before, since Allah is omniscient. Whenever we talk of Allah or His actions we come across an opaque wall of noetic ambiguity or vacuity. In religious language , a sense of mystery and bafflement. We shud thus not demand or expect noetic transparency when we use religious languages.

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Beliefs tat Allah exists or tat Allah revealed the Quran are thus beliefs in a very different sense from beliefs like 'snakes exist' or 'Mohan revealed this secret to Sohan'. We know more or less exactly the situation in which the above sentences wud be accepted as true (even if we may not be able to give an exact analysis of their meaning, as desired by the British philosopher, Moore.

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Moreover, if someone were to deny such beliefs, we know how to establish them. In other words, we know both wot they designate and hw they are tested as true or false. But such is not the case where the word 'Allah' is used. We know neither wot beliefs about Allah actually connote, nor hw such beliefs cud be made plausible if not actually proved. ………………..

Wot then are we to understand by the belief tat 'Allah revealed the Quran to the Prophet'? In the final analysis it means tat (a) the Prophet ws not the author of the Quran in the sense in which Shakespeare ws the author of Hamlet, though the Quranic verses were uttered and dictated by the Prophet to some scribe; (b) the Quranic verses were not contrived or thought out by the Prophet but 'came' to him or were crystallized in his consciousness fully formed or fashioned by some Other; and(c) tis Other is nothing more and nothing less than the supreme Source of all tat exists.

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This threefold analysis however says nothing about hw the contents came to the Prophet. Any belief or theory about hw the contents came to him is not a part of the substantial belief tat the contents were revealed, but an additional belief. Thus, for instance, the belief that Gabriel used to appear in human or angelic form to the Prophet and made him recite and memorize the Quranic verses is not logically equivalent to the belief that Allah revealed the Quran, but rather a particular theory of revelation.

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Nw the crucial point is tat a Muslim may well believe tat the Quran was revealed without accepting the above theory of revelation, or any other theory, for tat matter. He may well hold tat no theory of revelation cud properly be asserted in the absence of any experience of revelation as such, and yet hold the Quran to be 'revealed' in the above threefold sense. ……………………..

He may take the revelation of the Quran as the supreme mystery of the Islamic faith, and not merely accept the Prophet's own honest interpretation of his extraordinary experiences. …………….

In the final analysis religious faith is an existential conviction which may dawn suddenly or gradually, like love, rather than a belief which cud be inductively or deductively established or proved. Again, the religious response to the universe is strikingly similar to, though not identical with or totally reducible to, the aesthetic response. Significantly, the Quran repeatedly exhorts man to reflect upon the beauty and wonder of nature and also of man's own inner self. The verses of the Quran and the phenomena of nature both are called 'ayat' or signs which may evoke and reinforce faith in Allah for one who seeks truth with humility and sincerity. Consider the following Quranic verses

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“Lo! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the difference of night and day are tokens (of His sovereignty) for men of understanding, such as remember Allah, standing, sitting, and reclining and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth and say: Our Lord! thou created not in vain, Glory be to thee: Preserve us from the doom of fire.(3: 190-191)”.

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“And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the difference of your languages and colours. Lo! Herein indeed are portents for men of knowledge. (30: 22')”. ………………………

“And of His signs is your slumber by night and by day, and your seeking of His bounty. Lo! Herein indeed are portents for folk who heed. (30: 23)”.

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“He it is who sendeth down water from the sky, and therewith We bring forth buds of every kind; We bring forth the green blade from which We bring forth the thick clustered grain; and from the date-palm, from the pollen thereof, spring pendant bunches..

.. Look upon the fruit thereof, when they bear fruit and upon its ripening. Lo! Herein verily are portents for a people who believe. (6: 100)”.

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“We shall show them Our portents on the horizons and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the truth. Doth not thy Lord suffice, since He is witness over all things?(41 :253)”.