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| Surah Yâsîn by Artist: Chitra Pritam |
Author: Akbar C. F. “Perk” Clark*
Efforts to develop higher functioning through the formal study of religious texts are often separated into two distinct forms.
First, taking the text and its directives literally and asking for our own Divine revelations regarding the material.
Second, reading the text as allegorical or symbolic, and opening to impressions that are beneath the surface of the language of the sacred document.
Support for this second method is found in the Qur'an. Verse 7 of the Third Sûrah, Al Imran, states that the Qur'an contains “messages that are clear in and by themselves (Ayât muhkamat) as well as others that are allegorical (mutashabihat)”. Allegory is a literary device where the text contains a veiled message that may both parallel and illustrate more deeply the material it comes from. For example, the (medieval Christian) story of the search for the actual Holy Grail, can easily be seen to allegorically illustrate an inner spiritual search on the part of the seeker. Decoding these messages of a sacred text can yield impressions and directives linked to previous information in our minds, and thus bridge the gap between previously realized ideas and states beyond. With this method of Qur’ânic reading, we can see the embodiment of the Sufic tenet to speak to the student in the exact language that will catalyze deeper personal realization and growth.
The field of contemporary transpersonal psychology is a field of Western science that links Eastern and Western studies of the transformation of the human being. It is concerned with the empirical study of human consciousness, conditioning, personality, and particularly with our human tendency to 'identify' with internal and external phenomena as constricting our potential development. When viewed through the allegorical lens of contemporary transpersonal psychology, the Qur'an Sûrah 36, Yâsîn, said to be the heart of the Qur'an, yields some distinct and potentially helpful directives.
Taken first from a literal perspective, the lines in Yâ Sin are a body of observations and directives that tell the story, narrated by God, of how the people of a village behaved when the Divine word arrived via message-bearers. The message-bearers were derided by the villagers, and horrific consequences were to befall them because of their incapacity to honor the word of God. The language is couched in terms that were common at the time of the writing of the document, and have a moralistic, threatening tone.
Considering ‘Yâsin’ as ‘O Thou Human Being’, and using perspectives of transpersonal psychology, the Sûrah embodies a very different kind of language that may be more easily understood by contemporary Western students. Although a complete picture of the entire Sûrah is beyond my realization at this time, I submit the following examples based on my (meditative or dhikr) experience at Claymont:
(3) ‘Verily, thou art indeed one of God's message-bearers’
We have within us the message of Divinity and an internal higher Self that is linked to the Transcendent.
(4) ‘pursuing a straight way’
Pursuing the practice of intentional self-reflective awareness, mindfulness
(5-6) ‘by [virtue of] what is being bestowed from on high by the Almighty ... so that thou mayest warn people ... who had not been warned, and who therefore are unaware…’
Which comes to us by Grace
(Note: People not warned are unaware; people warned are people who are aware.)
(8-9) ‘... around their necks We have put shackles, ... and We have set a barrier before them and ... behind them, and We have enshrouded them in veils so that they cannot see’
We humans are conditioned, enshackled by (and identified with) aspects of a personality, repetitive forms of thinking, feeling or behaving that bind us and blind us to being able to see clearly either ourselves or our world.
(11) ‘Thou canst (truly) warn only him who is willing to take the reminder to heart …’
We can warn (make conscious) only those who are willing to become aware of, be witness to, their own blindness, deafness and conditioning; this increase in consciousness will move them toward more intentional actions, thoughts, decisions.
(13) ‘... a parable - [the story of how] the people of a township [behaved] when [Our] message-bearers came unto them’.
This is what happens inside us when our personality encounters information from the Transcendent in the form of our Essence.
(14) ‘… We sent unto them two [apostles], and they gave the lie to both; and so We strengthened [the two] with a third …’
The message bearers of Divinity are three: the human body, the human mind, and the human spirit (consciousness).
(15) ‘(The others) answered: “You are nothing but mortal men like ourselves ... you do nothing but lie!”
The ordinary human ego and personality (nafs) represented by the others, the villagers, challenge and reject the message of the Divine within.
(36) ‘Limitless in His glory is He who has created opposites in whatever the earth produces, and in men's own selves, and in that of which (as yet) they have no knowledge’.
We humans are beset with inner opposites, impulses toward this and that, and though these polarities are of Divine origin, we can become aware of them in ourselves.
(45) ‘And (yet,) when they are told, “Beware of … all that lies open before you and all that is hidden from you, so that you might be graced with His mercy ... and no message of their Sustainer's messages ever reaches them without their turning away from it’.
We are told to become aware of what is inside us and of what is outside us, our conscious doings and our unconscious motives, that we might be graced with mercy, that is, might dis-identify from the nafs in ourselves. The practice of self-remembering: the practice of sustained attention to inward experience and outward reality; humans are told all this but they ignore the suggestion to practice.
(55-56) ‘… those who are destined for paradise shall today have joy in whatever they do: in happiness will they and their spouses on couches recline’
When we learn to practice mindfulness we will dis-identify from our conditioning and will be at peace. Our internal opposites (nafs) will relax.
(60) Did I not enjoin on you ... that you should not worship Satan - since verily, he is your open foe (see M. Asad footnote 33, p. 462: shaytan is derived from the verb shatana, signifying “he was remote [from the truth]”... thus impulses that offend against truth, reason, and morality are “satanic”)
The practice of mindfulness creates in us the capacity to identify impulses, thinking, behavior as they arise... and the dis-identification from impulses and thoughts and emotions makes it possible to allow them to pass without acting on them, without worshipping them.
(61) ‘and that you should worship Me {alone}? This would have been a straight way!’
Our efforts should be toward developing consciousness, toward the Cosmic Consciousness; this effort keeps us on the Path.
(74) But … they take to worshipping deities other than God, (hoping) to be succoured (by them….)
Instead of cultivating conscious awareness and our link to the Divine, we worship wealth, security, fame, enlightenment, status, power.
Thus, Yasin can be seen to have a number of applications to actual activities that we can implement right now, in this present moment. By revealing the allegorical messages of the lines in a way that is consistent with a perennial philosophy which is trans-cultural, trans-religious, and trans-time, pieces of this Sûrah (and perhaps the entire Qur’ân,) can become a living map, instructive regarding our own personality, the practice of mindfulness, the use of dis-identification as a method, and the act of remembering the Divine.
When one's teacher suggests repeating the phrase “Audhu billahi mina-shaitan ir rajim,” literally meaning 'I seek refuge in God from the darkness of evil,' the student may allegorically understand that he is working to contact his higher Self, to strengthen his self-reflective awareness regarding his own self-limiting impulses, and to practice linking with the Transcendent rather than with the material world.
Bibliography:
Asad, Muhammad. The Message of the Qur'an. Samanabad, Pakistan: Maktaba Jawahar ul uloom Publishers, p. 989.
Ernst, C. W. (1997). The Shambala Guide to Sufism Boston: Shambala Publications, Inc., p. 40.
Morris, Wm. (Ed.) (1969). The American Heritage Dictionary. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., p. 34.
Asad, Muhammad. The Message of the Qur'an. Samanabad, Pakistan: Maktaba Jawahar ul uloom Publishers, pp. 673-681.
Walsh, R. N. & Vaughan, F. E. (1980). Comparative Models of the Person and Psychotherapy, In S. Boorstein (Ed.). Transpersonal psychotherapy. .(pp. 12-27). Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, Inc.
Barks, C. & Green, M. (2000). The Illuminated Prayer. New York: Ballantine Wellspring. p. 88.
Copyright September, 2000
Akbar C. F. “Perk” Clark, ACSW is a psychotherapist and organizational consultant in Tucson, AZ. He teaches a class on the psychology in religion and spirituality at the University of Arizona.
Note:
I need the e-mail address of the author, if anyone knows it please let me know. Thanks. Uzma
