So anyway he mentions this hadith and he says there is nothing closer to you than you own self. If you do not know yourself, how are you going to know your Lord? If there is nothing closer to you than yourself, if you do not know yourself, how can you know anything else? So if you say to me I know myself, I say to you, you know your outward form. You know the hand, the foot, the head, you know the body. You do not know your internal reality. I am talking about that aspect of yourself where if you get angry you want to argue, you do not know, why do you get angry? Or if you become desirous you look for what is going to satisfy your desire or if you get hungry you are suddenly looking for food. That is you get thirsty you go looking for drink. You do not know why you do those things. What is the thirst mechanism? Animals share all those things that I just mentioned. Animals have all these things. If they get hungry, they go eat. If they get thirsty, they go drink. Animals have that so you have the knowledge of the animals.
So it is an obligation upon you to know yourself in reality, the reality of yourself so that you will know who are you. You will know who you are and where you came to arrive at this place and why you were created. Through which things is your felicity and through which thing is your damnation. In you certain qualities have been gathered, their attributes that have been gathered in you, amongst them qualities of ruminants like goats, cows, sheep and in them qualities of predators like lions and tigers and in them qualities of demons and in you have been gathered qualities of angels. The ruh is the reality of your essence, you are not a body. The reality of your essence is your ruh and everything other than that is alienated from you. It is a stranger and it is only borrowed. It is on loan, aria, it is a loan. So it is absolutely necessary that you know this and to know that each one of these qualities that are there, the ruminants, the predators, the demons and the angels, they have nourishment and they have joy so each one of them has something that nourishes, strengthens them and also makes them happy.
So yesterday we looked at the section, knowledge of the self and why it was important and then he talked about the different types of attributes that are in people. The ruminant attribute, the predatory attribute, the demonic, the angelic and then this section he begins by saying bismillahir rahmaanir raheem if you want to know yourself, know that you are composed of two things. The first is the heart and the second is called the nafs or the ruh and the nafs is the heart that you know through the inward eye so the nafs and the heart are the synonyms for the same thing.
Your reality is the internal reality because the body is the first but the heart is the end, it is the last and the self is the end and it is the first meaning the heart so the body is the beginning of this world, this experience but the heart precedes it and in the end it is the heart that you take with you into the next world so the heart is the first and the last in reality. In the heart is not this lump of flesh that is in your breast inclining towards the left side because this is shared by animals and dead things. And everything that you can see the outward eye is from this world and this world is called alam al shahadah. So you have alam al ghayb and you have alam al shahadah and Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala says that He created both so everything that you can see he is saying from alam al shahadah the world that is witnessed or experienced. Now that includes things that we can see through machinery I mean you had in the 19th century you had some of these rationalists who attempted to say for instance that the shayateen were microbes and the unseen was really all of this microscopic world and things that we cannot see anymore so there was a trend amongst some of the scholars to try and do that but all of that is part of the mulk. Everything that we can see or even understand through material means so modern physics all of these types of things that enable us to know about subatomic articles all of this mulk which is the dominion here material world.
So he says but the reality of the heart which is consciousness really what he is talking about is consciousness and in the West you have a trend for sometime now that has been trying to prove biochemical foundations of consciousness. They want to prove that consciousness is actually material. This is the idea of mind and matter and part of the reason they want to do that it is because consciousness is a problem. It is a metaphysical problem. I mean I was at a martial art studio where one of my sons was taking a class and I started talking with one of the other parents and he was a biochemists PhD from Berkeley teaching biochemistry and he asked me what I did. I said I taught religion and ethics. I said I am on the other side of the coin and he said maybe less so than you think and I said what do you mean and he said well consciousness we cannot really explain that can we so he was a biochemist recognising that problem of consciousness. It is a problem in science. Where does our consciousness come from? How do we know anything? Where does infinity come from? Where does this concept come from? Animals do not have that. Why can we even think of something like infinity? Infinity, we do not see it anywhere. We are temporal, in the world but we can come up with concepts like that. That is consciousness. How can we even think about God? Just the idea of being able to contemplate God is an extraordinary thing. One of my favourite quotes is Einstein he said the only incomprehensible thing to me about the universe is its incomprehensibility. That is an amazing statement. The only thing incomprehensible to me about the universe is its incomprehensibility. How are we able to know the universal law of gravity? How is the human consciousness capable of something that extraordinary to understand the universal law of gravity? How do we know about strong and weak nuclear forces? How do we know about nuclear forces? How do we know about electromagnetism? How are those concepts even comprehensible to the human intellect? Because the intellect was designed to know them. That is what you have to conclude, there is a relationship between consciousness and between the objects of consciousness and that relationship is designed so he is talking here about al qalb this organ of consciousness.
So it is not from this world but it is from the unseen world. It is a stranger in this world. It is alienated from the world so consciousness itself is alienated from the world. One of the reasons, one of the Andalusian scholars said, one of the reasons why people have to sleep is because the ruh is not of this world, it is of another world, it is of another world and the ruh cannot take too much materialism. It literally has to go back into the unseen world in order to get rest from the dunya so sleep is a spiritual nourishment for the soul and that is why people that are sleep deprived become really agitated and have really hard times.
So this lump of flesh is the vehicle for consciousness. That is what it is, it is the vehicle for consciousness. And all of the limbs of the body are its soldiers and it is the king. And the knowledge of God and the witnessing of the beautiful presence, this divine presence, these are the attributes of this heart and all of the responsibilities upon the heart if you are not conscious, the qalam the pen has been lifted for the sleeper. If you are in a state of sleep there is no responsibility because there is no consciousness which is why alcohol is prohibited because you lose your consciousness, you lose your ability to think and this Lordly speech that is being articulated to us is to the consciousness. The Quran is speaking to your consciousness. It is not speaking to your body, it is speaking to your heart your ability to perceive. And in accordance with actions are by intention. The place of intention is the heart so all of your reward and punishment is based on what happens in the heart, the whole thing, it is all in the heart.
And felicity and damnation, there is salvation in the akhirah and also damnation, they follow it, they follow the heart and this animal spirit what they used to call the vital force, it is what the Chinese call chi, the vital force is something that is in the body but is not of the body and it is what animates the body. The Arabs call it the living spirit. 20th century medicine really denied that aspect. They don’t really put a lot of credence in that but he is saying this vital spirit, or vital force is in everything subservient to it, and with it so you need this.
That is why there is a massive difference between the living and the dead. If you see a dead body, if you see someone you know it is really amazing to see a dead body of somebody who you knew because they have gone and it is very clear that they have gone, what animated the body has gone, the animus, the spirit, the animal so it is the same the animus, the same as the Latin.
So knowledge of its reality and knowledge of its attributes is the key to knowledge of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala. So you must struggle until you come to know it because it is an inestimable precious essence from the nature the essential nature of the angels because the angels are light. They do not have the dross of the body. Angels are pure consciousness. They are conscious creatures. They are aware of only their Lord so they have that consciousness and that is what he is saying that this is your essential nature and the source of its origin is from the divine presence. The soul was within the divine presence. We were all there in the divine presence and the pain and the alienation of the dunya is the recollection of that presence. That is why people are in the states they are in because they are alienated. The only people that have itminaan are the people of dhikr, everybody else is a mess.
From that place the consciousness came and from that place it goes back. That is where we came from and that is where we go back to. So he says what is the reality of the heart? As for your question what is the reality of the heart. They ask you about the ruh. Say the ruh is from the command of my Lord, because the ruh is from the collection, the summation of the divine power.
Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala is omnipotent so the ruh is basically the greatest expression of the divine power because obviously you can make life inanimate things is one thing. We can make forms do things with inanimate things, humans can do that but to put life in, people that have the greatest punishment are the form makers because Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala
says blow life into it now, put life into it because that is only Allah can do that so that ability to give life is the greatest expression of divine power that He can animate us and give us life and it is also an attribute of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala. Al-Hayat is an attribute of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala.
It is the ruh that gives us life. Does He not have the khalq and the amar? The creation and the command. So the command, the ruh is from the command of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala and the command precedes creation so Allah creates but He creates by the command. When He wants a thing He just commands it to be and it is.
So that is the command of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala. So the human being is from the created world from one aspect but He is from the world of command from another aspect because he has a ruh, so you have a body and a ruh.
Everything that can be measured that has place, that has quality, all of that is from the created world. But the heart does not have a space like that not does it have measurements, consciousness. That is what the scientists know, they do not know how to, they cannot measure it, they do not know how to give it a reality because they are materialists generally. They are working in the world of material so consciousness becomes the great problem because it does not have masaha, it does not have makdar so they cannot place it like they can other things now is it amenable to allotment. You cannot apportion it, you cannot say oh this part is here, this part is here, you cannot split it up, you cannot dissect it so it is not dissectible.
If you could dissect it then it would be from the created world. It would be from the aspect of ignorance, ignorant and from the aspect of knowledge, knowledgeable. Everything that has knowledge and ignorance it has the same attributes, it is impossible, you cannot join two opposites.
So another meaning here is it is from the world of the command. So the alam wal amar is a way of expressing something among created things that does not have masaha and taqdir. It does not have measurements, you cannot measure it. There is no way to measure it. So some people because of this they thought that the ruh was eternal, the philosophers, they thought because they could not measure it, they thought then oh it must be eternal so he is saying this is a mistake to think that. The ruh is created but what he is saying is it has a different quality so Allah, He has the creation but He also has the command. The command is different from creation so the created world and the world of the command are different. He is describing the material world and what can be seen and the other is describing the immaterial world and what cannot be seen so they are differentiated, these two qualities.
But he is saying because of that differentiation some people mistakenly thought oh that must mean it is not created. It is eternal with Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala and that was the belief of some of the philosophers. And some of them said oh it is an accident, an accident in logic is something whatever needs something else to exist so for instance you have the flower and then you have the colour. The colour is an accident because the colour exists through the substance so the substance is essential, the colour is accidental. That is what they call it. It does not mean by accident like we use it in the common language. An accident is something that is not essential and so that is what he is saying. Some of them said the ruh was non essential, it is existed through the body so what was essential was the body. The ruh was accidental but that is a mistake because the accident cannot be substantiated by itself. It is not self substantiated. And it always follows something else. The ruh is the origin of the children of Adam. It is the origin so it cannot be an accident and the form of the son of Adam is actually subservient, it follows the spirit so how could it be an accident so he is refuting these views about the ruh that other people have and some of them said it is material, these are the materialists. I mean he is refuting each one of these different groups in his time. Some said it is a boy, it must be maternal and this is very modern. This is what they are trying to say now they want to substantiate the materiality of consciousness. The consciousness, it really is just chemical changes and exchanges, that all it is and so you take away that and you do not have consciousnesses anymore which is why from our point of view if you have somebody in a coma you are just assuming they are not conscious, that is an assumption.
If you go to a hospital and there is somebody there you know how people talk to people in a coma and the doctors are kind of scratching their heads, this guy is in a vegetative state, you are just wasting your time, what makes them feel better something like that. Those are all assumptions because there is animation in the body. We are just saying they cannot have consciousness because the material basis for consciousness is no longer there therefore there is no consciousness. We do not believe that, we do not believe that because consciousness is elevated slightly above your body. That is what happens when you die and the people in the grave hear the people’s patter of their footsteps above the grave, we know that it is in the hadith so there is consciousness and people who have had near death experiences or have had those experiences where they separate from the body, people have tried to explain material, it is just this massive release, an endorphic release etc etc. You can do that until the end of time, try to explain away the experience of consciousness but in the end it is a mystery, it is a great mystery the consciousness and that is what he is saying do not try and explain this away. It is an accident, it is a body, it is a material, it is this, it is that because you can dissect the body but where is the ruh, where can you put your scalpel into it so how can you call it a body. So this ruh that we are naming the heart.
And it is the place in which consciousness awareness of God, knowledge of God dwells, is not a material substance, it is not a body, it is not an accident, it is of an angelic nature, it is of an angelic nature. Knowledge of this ruh is extremely difficult because there is nothing in the religion that has come to us that will give us this knowledge. When they asked him about the ruh Allah said say the ruh is from the command of my Lord. That is the extent of the knowledge so he is saying we can have knowledge of its reality but this is what we can know about it. Because the religion is struggle, that is the essence of religion. If you want to understand the religion, the religion is not a metaphysical teaching, the religion is a struggle in the world, that is what the deen is. It is a struggle in the world. It is a sign that you are guided. That is what knowledge is, a sign that you are guided. Those who struggle for Our sake we will guide them to Our pathways. We will guide them to Our pathways. So if you are not expending all of your energy it is not permissible for you to even talk of the reality of the ruh, it is not permissible. If you are not expending all of your energies whoever does not expend all of his energies he says it is not permissible for him, it is not permissible to speak with him about the knowledge of the reality of the ruh.
And the first foundational phase of struggle of mujahidah is to know the army of the heart, to know what the armies of consciousness are because the human being if he does not know his army he cannot go to war. If you do not know who your soldiers are you cannot fight so he is saying this mujahidah if you do not know who your askar is you are wasting your time.
Why was the heart created? Know that the nafs the ruh the consciousness is the vehicle of the heart so the nafs the self that we have been given it is a vehicle for the heart and the heart has troops. Just as Allah Glorified and Exalted He said and no one knows the soldiers of your Lord save He. So only God knows the number of soldiers that He has.
The heart was created for other worldly labour in order to seek felicity of the next life. That is why the heart was created. That is the purpose of the heart and its felicity is knowledge of its Lord the Exalted and the Majestic and this knowledge of its Lord the Exalted is achieved through the creation itself so the way that you that you know your Lord is through the creation, the way the heart comes to know Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala is through the creation in ourselves. He began it with that. It is through the self.
And then he says and the heart is among the totality of its world. And you cannot know these wondrous aspects of the world except by means of the senses. Your hawas. So the senses are from the heart, they are a part of consciousness. The senses are from the heart and the qalib because the Arabs say al qalb wal qalib. You have the qalb the essence. You have the qalib the body. You have the qalib the body so the body is a vehicle for the senses, for the experience of the senses. So you cannot get this knowledge except also by knowing how to hunt. You have to know how to seek this out and also knowledge of the net that you hunt with. In order to achieve this knowledge of Allah through His creation, through the uses of his senses, you have to understand how to do that and you also have to understand the tools that you have been given to do that. So he says the body which is the vehicle for the senses, the vehicle for this knowledge, it is only substantiated, it is only maintained through food, through drink, through this heart, having calorific content, through the moisture of life and it is extremely weak. It is constantly exposed to hunger to thirst inwardly. It has the danger of water and fire outwardly, it can drown, it can be burnt and then it is constantly facing many enemies.
How do we know then the troops of the heart? You need to know two troops. The outward troop is shahwa and ghadab, it is desire and anger. Those are actually troops, those are therefore the heart. Shahwa and anger what are called concupiscent and the irascible soul and the waystation of these places, the waystation is along the way, the places where they alight, the alighting places the abodes of these are the hand and all of the limbs. So that is the first outward askar, the outward army, the external army is shahwa the desire wal ghadab and anger and the alighting places is in the hand where it manifests in the feet, in the eyes, in the ears and in all of the limbs. As for the external troops their alighting places are in the brain the consciousness so he says and these are the powers of the imagination of reflection, of memory, of recollection and of supposition. So these are all powers you have been given in the heart so you have the external and the internal and these were created for you in order for you to achieve the goal of the heart.
Everyone of these faculties has a specific function so if any of them is weakened then the condition of the son of Adam in the two abodes is weakened, anyone of these. And the totality of those two armies is in the heart and the heart or the consciousness is the amir, it is the commander, so if the heart commands the tongue it speaks to remember, if it commands the tongue to remember it, it remembers so the heart commands the tongue to remember Allah so the tongue says astagfirullah. The command came from the heart. If it commands it to say subhanAllah, it says subhanAllah. If it commands the hand to strike, it strikes, if it commands the foot to move like if you are going to the umrah, it is the heart that commanded the foot to go, it is how you set out. If you get up, it is the heart that commanded you to get up. Anything that you, the command centre is the heart, that is where it is coming from. This is very important because what it is trying to do is lay for you a foundation of understanding not only in the nature of consciousness but the fact that you are going to be responsible for all of your actions because people do not think about this stuff. They go through life on automatic pilot and they are not thinking about the fact that they are not on automatic pilot that they actually have volition. They have animality, they have knowledge, they have all of these attributes that are attributes of the divine, Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala has put divine attributes in the human being and then said you are responsible for these divine attributes. I am giving them to you for a reason not to play, not to eat, not to drink. I have got creatures created to do those things. You do those things also but I have other creatures to do that. I do not need you to copulate, I do not need you to drink, I do not need you to eat, I have got creatures plenty of them to do that. That is their function and yes you share those qualities with them but there is a hikmah, there is a reason. It creates humility, there are a lot of reasons for it. That is the most essential, it keeps you down to earth because they are better than you at it.
So if you want to compete with them they can eat more than you can really a lion can eat more than you can. A rooster can copulate more than you can. All of them can outdo you in these those things. That is not why you were created. So know what your amir is. The amir is the heart and he is going to explain why you have to have that knowledge because the troops mutiny. You have time when the army overthrows the commander in chief, it is called accudeta so that happens. The troops get out of control and they take over and then what happens they wreak havoc in the land. You know Ghana they have a coup very couple of weeks but what happens everytime they have a coup there is another, it is a disaster, people get shot, there is all this bloodshed, turmoil, they show pictures of all in chaos, the town is in chaos. That is what happens when the troops rebel and then he says you have been given five senses in order to protect yourself. If there is fire you touch it, ouch that burns. I know not to do that again. Right. You kick the rock. You know Dr Johnson Berkeley said everything is in the mind. Berekley was an idealist. He said none of this has any reality so Dr Johnson was walking with Boswari, he kicked a rock and said I refute it thus. But that is why you have senses because that hurts. If you kick a rock it hurts and you know not to kick a rock it hurts and you know not to kick a rock again. The purpose of the senses is to preserve the nafs in order that you can put away provision for the next life so the soul can also capture the hunt what it is going after and the transaction is completed and gather the seed of other worldly and gather the seed of other worldly felicity. So this is all why you have been given this.
All of these are in obedience to the heart. Just as the angels are in obedience to their Lord, Glorified and Exalted is He and they do not disobey His commands. So these things that you have been given, they are in subservience to you.
Just like the angels do not rebel they are created to be in subservience to Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala these were created to be in subservience to you but there is a difference. So he says, it has been said in a well known proverb, the soul the nafs, the self is like a city and the two hands, the two feet, all of the limbs are like the estates, the farms around the city that supply the city and the concupiscent soul, this concupiscent faculty the desire is its governor. And the irascible faculty, anger is its police force. And the heart is its King and the intellect is its minister so he is saying this is a well known way of looking at this, the self is like a city. And the king is managing them in order for his dominion his kingdom to have stability and the conditions to be stable. Because the governer is shahwa it is desire, it is a liar it is officious, meddlesome, it is confused, disordered, that is the governer. If you wonder why there are bad governments and you always have these people, it is because it is all for you to understand the nature of yourself. Everything out there is in here. So when your self is disorderly everything out there has to be disorderly. It is for you to understand the nature of yourself. Everything out there is for you to get self knowledge, for you to understand yourself because in understanding yourself you are going to know your Lord. So if you look out there he is saying the governer is a disaster, he is out of control and he needs to be controlled and then the police force, the irascible soul, he is murderous, devastating, vile, criminal. This is the police, Rodney King. That is what he is saying, they are a disaster. If you let them go out of control, they will go out of control.
So what do you do? If the king leaves them to do whatever they want the city is destroyed. It falls into ruin because they are doing their functions. That is all they know. They know what they are supposed to do but if they are not being controlled, they go out of control because they are not a command centre, they do not have that aql, the police have guidelines, and you have to keep them within the guidelines because they lose it you know if you give a man a gun and he suddenly becomes arrogant. Put a gun on anybody’s side and there is a swagger that shows up. They start walking differently. They look at you differently right, you got a problem, because seriously he has got a gun. I told my boys if people would go back to carrying swords and guns you would see an amazing change in the basic courtesies of people out there because part of the problem is they are afraid they will smile and really it is like the police oh officer did I do something wrong? Why are you being nice to him? Because you are afraid. You were just miserable to the person at the cash register. Hurry up, I am in a hurry you know latte no foam right. Where is it? And then they go out that is what people do. They are pathetic. Because they are out of control completely out of control.
So that is what happens in a city, it is all a disaster and that is why when somebody comes in to a city that has authority suddenly everything changes, people’s behaviour changes, it happens. People rectify cities. If you get a serious ruler, a governor that knows exactly what to do and has the wisdom to do it things change, people change. Benjamin Franklin said one preacher came into Philadelphia and he said he was within months the effects of the preacher on the character of the people and all of the other preachers became jealous of them so they tried to get prohibited from teaching in the churches because he was so popular so Benjamin Franklin actually, it is in his biography, he built a non denominational centre and he said I built this so anybody who has something good to say to the people of the city can come and say it, even if the Mufti of Constantinople wanted to come and to teach us Islam, he would find a pulpit in my way so he says so the king has to take counsel with the minister. He has to know what is going on when the king is out of touch which is what happens. This is what happened to the Shah of Iran. He was completely out of touch. Kings get out of touch with reality. The Shah was not aware of people being tortured with things with electrodes and things like that. They get out of touch and then everybody is afraid to bother them with the details and then suddenly they are overthrown so the king has a job.
A minister once came to visit Imam al Ghazali and he said your time is all taken to account for, what are you doing visiting me? Go do your job. It is much better than for you to come and visit me because these people have immense responsibility. These people are going to have the biggest hisab on the day of judgment. The people who have authority over other people, people that were responsible for the well being of other people and how they betrayed them. They betrayed their trust. If you have an army, what is an army for? An army is for defence, that is what an army is for. An army is to defend people from threats of aggression. If you use that army to aggress, they are not aggressors. The army are not aggressors, they just follow orders but if you use that army to aggress and kill people doing that, then you are responsible for every single one of those lives that you wasted on the day of judgment. People have no idea of the immensity of it. If they did they would not do it. If they did they would not run for office. It is only a fool that runs for office which is why the Prophet salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam said we do not give this affair to anyone that seeks it. Why? Because the very fact they are seeking it means they do not understand what it is. If they knew what it was they would flee from it so we are not giving to give you that authority. Why? Because you want it which means that is the indication that you do not know what it is, it is an immense responsibility. It is a burden and that is why he said a man who leaves this world and has never been an amir over anyone is successful. People want authority. Everybody wants authority because they do not know what it is. Even a man in a house the responsibility ‘everyone is a shepherd and every shepherd is responsible for his flock’. You are going to be asked about every single one of the people you were responsible for. So thinking has to take counsel with the wazir, the aql and he has to put the governer and the police under the authority of the minister so there is hierarchy so the police are not out of control. If he does that then the conditions of the kingdom are stabilised, you have a stable kingdom and the city flourishes and like that the heart must take counsel with the intellect. If you follow your heart without the intellect because if you follow your heart without the intellect. You have to listen to the minister. The king cannot do it on his own because the minister is the one who is in touch with reality. Where does he get his reality from? The minister. Where does the heart get the reality from? The intellect because the intellect is in touch with reality so the intellect, he needs to take counsel with the intellect. Counsel, not be controlled by the intellect, not be dominated by the intellect, not be dominated by the intellect but he needs to take counsel from the intellect. And he has to place the desire and the anger under its authority so these troops have to be under the authority of the intellect. Your ghadab and your desire, the intellect is the minister. The desire, that is the governer and then the anger is the police. So he is using this as a metaphor so you can understand. You can see it is in the big one you can see it in the little one. So the psychological condition is stabilised. People do not lose it so the physiological condition is stabilised. And so you arrive at the means of felicity from knowledge of the divine presence. That is the whole point. But if you place the intellect under the authority of the desire and anger, the soul is destroyed and the heart is wretched in the next life. That is what happens.
Know that the desire and the ghadab the irascible and the concupiscent souls are fetching servants of the nafs. They are fetching servants. They are the ones that got what you need. They protect you in the matters of food, drink, copulation, for the labour of the senses because you need those things in order to be well. And then the soul is the servant of the senses which is the net of intellect. So the senses are the hunting net of the intellect. It is how the intellect knows. It uses the senses as a net that it throws out to catch reality so that it can understand these things so you have sight, sound you have this as a hunting net.
And also the spies that are able to see the creation of Allah subhanahu wa-ta'ala, Majestic is His Power and then these five senses are the servant of the intellect. And they are for the heart consciousness a lamp and a candle, the light by which they are able to see the divine presence. They are able to experience it. Because the delight of the senses and this is their portion of the stomach and the genitals. That is what the senses delight in. That is their jannah. The jannah of the senses is food and sex. That is the pinnacle of their delight in this world. These are insignificant in relation to this other delight which is the delight of divine awareness of divine consciousness. And the intellect is the servant of consciousness and the heart was created to see and contemplate the beauty of the divine presence so all of these things are servants for this heart. It is not the other way around but what happens in the world is that people make all of these things commanders and the heart becomes subservient.
So the one who is exerting his energies in this craft that for which he was created, this is a true servant. From the youth of this presence, I only created jinn and ins to worship Me so if you are doing this you are indeed a true servant you are fulfilling what you were created to do. What this means is we created the heart, we gave it a mulk a dominion, we gave it a dominion and troops to protect the dominion and we made the soul its vehicle in order for it to traverse, travel upon this beast of the nafs from this dusty world to the highest of the heights and that is what we have been given.
So if he wanted to fulfil the right of this blessing then he sits like the sultan in the midst of his dominion and he makes this divine presence his Qibla, his direction and his goal and he makes the next life his true nation, birth place, his final abode and his nafs is his riding beast and the world is his waystation. It is only a temporary alighting place and his two hands and two feet are his servants and his intellect is his minister and his desire is his labourer. It is doing the labour and his wrath is his police force and his senses are his spies that he keeps in touch with his dominion and everyone of them is entrusted with a world or a domain, amongst these domains in order for him to understand the conditions of the domain so each one of these is there so he can know what is the condition or the state, what is going on.
And the ability the faculty of imagination is in the forefront of his intellect like a chief. It is able to gather the information of the jawasis. So what he is saying is your neocortex is in the front, the incredible ability that is unique in the human being, animals do not share this quality the ability for us to perceive, this ability of perception he is saying that this is like a chief and it takes in the news of the jawasis, the spies bring the news and tell them. The spies are the senses, it comes into the intellect, it tells them what is going on and then he says and then the memory is in the middle of the brain. This is like the map master. It is the one who knows the terrain and gathers all of the......he is listening, he is there next to the chief and he is gathering all the information and keeping it. He brings the map, this is happening over there, groups are massing over here so he brings that and he is maintaining all of this and when the intellect needs it, he is there to bring the information, that is the purpose of the memory. So if they bring the news to the minister, the aql, he is able to know the condition of his dominion in other words he can assess reality, in reality, so what he is saying is basically that this is an incredibly orderly system that we have been given and if it is used properly you will be in touch with reality and you will be fulfilling your purpose but just like out there things go very wrong.
They are going to be greeting you with flowers when you come in, when the army comes in, they are going to throw their flowers at you, the jawasis were not doing their job. Intelligence was not doing its job. They have weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence was not doing its job. They have weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence was not doing its job so now reality is distorted and what happens? Disaster. That is what happens disaster because they are out of touch with reality and then you have the shahwa is down there ‘we can make some money here because my salary is not enough so you know what I know the minister, I can get a contract with you’. The police force needs new guns. It does not need new guns but I am going to say that it needs new guns because I will get my 10% when we buy the new guns from such and such corporation that is making the guns. This is what happens.
That happens inside the self. You are looking outside and thinking look at all these problems in the world. It is all messed up, no you are messed up. Seriously you are a reflection. All of that is reflecting to us, our inner states. This same confusion that reigns outside is reigning inside and that is the reality outside is just expressing the reality inside of the human condition. This is the state that human beings are in because they are not following this incredible order that was given to them in fact more than that they are even denying it. They just deny it, flat out that there is an order here so if you want to understand why there is chaos outside, you just need to understand the chaos inside. When your irascible nature is controlling your rational nature, when you cannot control your anger and you can understand why things are chaotic out there. Why everybody is angry out there. If you see anybody one of these is rebelling against you, you have to struggle to suppress the rebellion. If the troops are rebelling, if they are out of control, you need to suppress the rebellion, do not kill them, you do not want to kill them, you do not want to kill them because the kingdom is not sound, it is not stable except with them, you need them, you need the concupiscent, you need the desire, you need anger. If you do not have those, the anger is your police force, you cannot defend yourself if you do not get angry you cannot defend yourself. If you do not have desire in you, there are no farmers to plough the fields to bring the food to the market place. If you do that you will be felicitous and you will fulfil the obligation of this blessing, and the robe of honour will come to you in time. This robe of honour. If not then you are damned and there is nothing but punishment and chastisement that you warrant.
This section is called three things that joy or felicity or happiness is based on and by sa’adat he means the joy of the next life so he says complete joy or the completion of joy is based on three things: the faculty of the irascible, the concupiscent. Those are the terms that we use in the West. If you go into ethics they are a little quaint now. We do not really use that term any more: irascible or concupiscent. So there is concupiscent, the irascible which is from ira, the latin word for anger. We still use the word irate, if somebody is irate, they get very angry and then concupiscent soul or the concupiscable which is the lustful soul or the soul of the appetites of the stomach and genitals and then the rational component or the faculty of knowledge.
So he says it is necessary for these matters the ghadab and the shahwa to be balanced and moderate in order that the concupiscent soul not increase and cause someone to deviate and fall into rukhas meaning lenient matters where they are just not working on themselves at all so it destroys them or the irascible nature increases and that causes him to incline towards unruliness, ungovernable. Somebody who is defiant and recalcitrant. They are not following the rules or orders so this problem he is saying the self gets imbalanced in these two ways.
So if these two strings are balanced by the guidance of the rational soul then they will follow the path of guidance. Anger if it increases then it becomes very easy to strike or to kill. That is the extreme of the sin of anger because anger is actually, the Prophet salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam said do not get angry and if he said do not get angry it is a prohibition on getting angry which means do not allow your anger the ulema say it does not mean do not get angry but do not allow your anger to cause you to do things that take you outside of yourself and result in harm to others so he is saying if ghadab increases if the irate nature, the irascible nature increases in the self then it will lead to somebody losing control and you see that a lot in people that do not have control over that aspect of themselves. They will lose it. They will become very emotional. They become in situations where they are not in control of themselves. They can lash out at people, they can lash out verbally, they can lash out physically at people and also I mean this is a particular problem now around the globe.
I will give you an example they have a programme, I do not know, if they still have it on Arab television which is called like candid camera and they will do things like they will hide a camera and they will have a scenario. They will have a situation where somebody will do something very bothersome and it is a spinoff of an old programme in America in the sixties, I do not know if they still have it. They used to have a programme where they would do things and hide a camera and people would.....like they have a fake policeman and he will just give a person a hard time for no reason. There is no real reason why he should be doing that and people would respond to this. Now in the West on that programme, people used to get bothered by it people would get upset and after a little while and they would tell them you are on candid camera and they will all laugh. In the Arab version almost every single time right before they went to blows some big giant guy would come out and hold the man physically back and it was nothing funny about it at all. It was actually really troubling to see the behaviour because people do not have that patience.
Now there are reasons for that, there is a lot more stress people are under a lot more pressure. There is a lot of oppression. We tend to forget the average person in the average day in the Muslim world is the victim of forms of oppression if they just go to get for instance their drivers license. There is a whole experience involved in getting your drivers license. If you go California where I live you might be a little miffed if you have to wait half an hour in some of the Muslim countries you have to bribe people just to get something that the government is supposed to give you just because you are a citizen but it does not work like that so people go through these experiences and they lead to certain states of mind.
I have a friend here some of you might know him, he has an advertising company and in that advertising company he had a campaign for tea ‘straighten out your state, just relax’ so the campaign was all about if you drink the tea you are going to calm down so he had a scenario where this guy comes in and he is asking to get some rukhsa some official paper that he needed and the guy tells him come back later you know like two hours or something so he gets really angry but he remembers drink tea so he goes he drinks tea and then he comes back and he says I told you to come back in two hours, he goes he drinks tea and then he comes back and he says I told you to come back in two hours. Two hours, two weeks, it does not matter. But that is social commentary on a commercial because that is the state that people are in. It is not tea that is going to help you. That is why advertisers are false advertisers. They might help a little bit (laughs). But that is what he is saying if you allow this soul to get out of hand the irascible soul you will end in this state where you could even kill somebody and that happens to people. They strike their wives or the wife strikes the husband in less common situations but it happens. So people fall into domestic violence because they cannot control themselves so the wife says something and one of the things I have pointed this out many times. One of the things for people who have not heard this, one of the things that husbands and wives get into is they fall into these what they call in pop psychology dysfunctional relationships. What will happen people in marriages they learn buttons to push if the wife gets angry at the husband she says something you are just like your father so that just sets him off or he says to her you are just like your mother or whatever. They have these buttons, they push the button and the person completely lost it. They lose control of their