Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
Resurrecting the soul in a secular age
*Dr Stephen Sizer (Director of Peacemaker Trust)
** Ranjan Parmar)Spiritual researcher)
*** Sheikh Ahmad Haneef (Religious scholar)
Last month I read an article titled “Resurrecting the Soul in a Secular Age.” It was written by Samuel Loncar, the editor of the Marginalia Review of Books and a philosopher and scholar of religion at Yale University, USA. The writer says: “Soul” is a metaphysical and religious word; its provenance is the history of philosophy and theology; its friends and companions are words like “eternal,” “spirit,” and “divine.” In the examples of “soulful” or “soulless,” the word connotes intensity and depth, something beyond the surface, something that abides through change and resists capture by everyday ephemera. The soul is part of the second, and higher, world, that of heaven or the inner person, cherished by romantics and the spiritual as a portal beyond the mundane. That world has largely disappeared in our secular age. This will form the core topic of our discussion.
Tuesday, 15th January 2019
Chairman: One interesting point which the article titled Resurrecting the Soul in a Secular Age makes is worth revisiting: if the soul is to be resurrected what new energies will it unleash on the world. And if the soul continues to fade away what language will be used to articulate the forces that shape us, bind us and define our stories. That is one of the comments that was made in that article.
But I think more poignant than what I have just read is another comment from the author of the article: We are pragmatic people, we do not seek perfection through art, war or faith. The profound stories of heroes and saints are passing from our minds. We are anything but idealists from the halls of academia where a debunking realism is the order of the day to the floor of the market. Nothing is in worse repute than the ideal. Unfettered capitalism runs amok, nature is ravaged, the rich gorge, prisons are full, the poor cry out in their misery and no one seems to care. Lust of self rules the day.
That is the key point: lust of the self rules the day. Thinking about the inner self, the soul and reflecting on it I rememberforty years ago to the day there was an old man sitting in Paris and he was a spiritual pinnacle of our age. Quite often people do not remember him as a spiritual individual. Even the article does not mention him.
Forty years ago when he was in the suburbs of Paris he was just sitting on his prayer mat and his rosary and thinking of God. He did not have a kalashnikov in his hand or an army to create a riot. Who was that individual? It was none other than Imam Khomeini. One would not often think of him as a spiritual man because he brought about a revolution in a particular region of this world which till this day is a challenge to anyone who thinks about it.
So Iman Khomeini to anyone who thinks about him shows that spirituality has to be active, not sitting as a hermitsomewhere but really being active. As the author of that article eludes if we are to be spiritual we should also think about changing ourselves first and then the environment and through the spirituality become a challenge to the status quo.
Stephen Sizer: How do we nurture our souls in a secular world? Historically, Christians have responded in two very contrasting ways:
Nurturing the Soul Through Asceticism
The first approach, popular among some early Christians, was to retreat to the desert thinking they could escape temptation and find holiness through asceticism. By the fourth century CE many Christians were living as hermits and monks in monasteries out in the desert. A fifth century monk, Simeon, took this to extremes. To get away from the hordes of disciples and onlookers who came to visit him, attracted by his already extreme self-denying lifestyle, he climbed a pillar and lived there. He once survived 40 days without eating or drinking anything, which made him even more popular. He spent the rest of his life on a succession of ever higher pillars, to try and get away from the crowds who continued to visit him. Food and water were delivered by village boys climbing up his pillar. After he died, scores of others tried to imitate Simeon, and became known as Stylites from the Greek word for pillar, “style”. The problem is that we can never escape from temptation and sin, least of all retreating from the world into the desert. Jesus was himself tempted by Satan in the desert.
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:1-4)
To gain victory over Satan, Jesus relied on God’s Word. Reviving the soul through asceticism alone does not work.
Nurturing the Soul Through Hedonism
The other, rather more popular approach to holiness, has been to embrace the material and secular rather than deny or retreat from it. Hedonism rather than asceticism. In its earliest forms this was known as Gnosticism, syncretism or dualism. Proponents argued Christians didn’t need to deny their bodily appetites. Rather than resist temptation, they could embrace it, because their soul could not be contaminated by what they did with their body. The Christians in Greece, for example, had happily embraced the prevailing immoral lifestyles and saw nothing incompatible. The Apostle Paul wrote to rebuke them,
“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything… Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honour God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6:12, 19-20)
Many Christians today are functionally dualists – worshipping God on Sundays and worshipping money Monday to Saturday, Christian in Church, pagan in the world. The scriptures insist what we do with our bodies does indeed impact our souls because what we believe affects how we behave. So, how do Christians avoid these two extremes – world denying and world embracing. Asceticism and hedonism? By recognising that the struggle for the soul is internal not external. It is not revived through asceticism or hedonism, denial or indulgence. This is because Jesus insists,
“Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them… What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”(Mark 7:14-15, 20-23)
If only our problem were the eyes leading us into temptation, we could gouge them out. If only our problem were our hands leading us to sin, we could cut them off. But the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. We need a new heart. Only God can give us a new heart. And here we begin to discover how our souls may be resurrected. It is not something we can do in and of ourselves. Only God can raise the dead.
We Experience Resurrection through Following Jesus
Jesus addressed this in a prayer he prayed for His disciples on the night He was betrayed, recorded in John’s Gospel.
“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:15-21)
In this prayer, Jesus explains his deep longings for his followers. Jesus did not ask God to take His followers out of the world. In fact, Jesus commissioned them to go into the world as His ambassadors. “In” but not “of” the world. Jesus asked the Father to protect them from Satan and his schemes, to guard them from temptation, and to make them holy through the truth of His word, and above all, through a personal relationship with God, which Jesus describes as being in some way one with Him.
This is what makes Christianity unique. It is not a religion but a relationship. The word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin ‘religio’ for rules or works. Christianity is a relationship with God through Jesus. It is not simply a list of rules to be obeyed because we can never revive our souls through keeping rules. Our souls are renewed and revived as we grow in our relationship with God as He lives in and through us by His Spirit. The Scriptures put it in these graphic terms,
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4)
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whateveryou want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16-25)
This is why Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with God through Jesus. This is a two-way relationship – through prayer we talk to God and in Scripture, God speaks to us. God’s spirit, indwelling us, helps us become more like Christ. Through the Church, in community, we encourage and strengthen one another as a spiritual family in our collective walk with God. So, what are some of the practical ways we can experience resurrection in this life? Let me suggest three ways from scripture.
We Experience Resurrection by Training in Godliness
After Christmas, many people make New Year Resolutions – taking up running, joining a gym, going on a diet. But for many the new resolutions are short lived. That is because we tend to over-estimate what we can achieve by trying in the short term and underestimate what we can achieve by training in the long term. The Christian scriptures use the analogy of the gym, or exercise, to become holy.
“Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come…. That is why we labour and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” (1 Timothy 4:7-10)
It begins with our minds, our attitudes, what we think about, worry about or meditate on. The Scriptures see it in these terms,
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)
We Experience Resurrection by Daily Cleansing
Another analogy used for this process of transformation is something we do every day. We shower and put on clean clothes in the morning and take off our dirty clothes in the evening. The Scriptures use this analogy to explain spiritual transformation.
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Colossians 3:5-14)
Changing our clothes then is a vivid analogy for this process of transformation. The Apostle John says something similar in his first epistle.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
Confessing and cleansing are both in the present tense. As we confess our sins we experience God’s continual forgiveness, like having a continuous shower that keeps us clean. What we think about and value most clearly affects our attitudes, our priorities and ultimately actions. We experience resurrection by training in godliness and by daily cleansing.
We Experience Resurrection by Feeding on Scripture
One way to train ourselves to be godly, is by being intentional about our spiritual diet. We are what we eat physically. The same is true spiritually. What should be our spiritual diet? We have already observed how Jesus resisted Satan by quoting scripture. Indeed Jesus emphasized,
“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)
The Scriptures insist that we must cooperate with God,
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.” (Philippians 2:12-16)
In another passage,
“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:1-3)
As the Scriptures are read, spoken, memorized, applied, something supernatural happens, we grow up. Resurrection of our soul comes by following Jesus, by training in godliness and by feeding on scripture.
The Ultimate Victory in the Struggle for the Soul
Ultimately, the victory in the resurrection of the soul will not take place in this life. We must wait until the final resurrection when God will transform our earthly bodies into heavenly bodies.
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit…Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:16-18)
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
As we struggle between the now and the not yet, many Christians are encouraged and motivated by focussing on the future hope. This is described in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian scriptures.
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
From a Christian perspective, the resurrection of the soul is a process, it is about becoming more like Jesus, day by day, becoming holy as God is holy, following Jesus, led by His Spirit, looking forward to that day of resurrection when we shall at last be free from sin and suffering and enter eternity and be with him forever.
Ranjan Parmar: Dear friends, There is no nourishment like the nourishment of happiness. There is no illness like the illness of worry. Happiness makes us strong and stable. This is the most important work we do, to remain happy and share happiness. Stay beyond the distractions of thinking about the body and thinking about other people. Let your inner practice be such that you become very sweet. Remain free of the influence of others’ nature. Leave all thoughts and words of negativity. Make your inner nature quiet and make your inner stage such that whatever you say and do is remembered by others and brings them happiness.
In our search for happiness, we tend to create many desires around sense pleasures.
Pleasures are always temporary like eating a bar of chocolate.There is no lasting experience.
So we then tend to look for the next pleasure. We can become addicted to such things as
alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, lust, and even thrills that give an adrenalin rush like bungee
jumping.
In this physical world, we need our bodies in order to express and experience the real
qualities of the self. Everything of importance is already inside the self, the peace, love and
happiness that we seek to experience. We don’t need things like chocolate to make us happy.
We will naturally be happy as we live our lives without feeling the need to take from life. It is
natural for us to be kind, gentle, friendly, patient and so on and we use the body to express
these virtues in action. These virtues enable us to be givers instead of feeling the need to take in order to feel worthy.Happiness makes us strong and stable.
What are the important aspects of life? Silence, peace, happiness, joy, harmony, love,
relationships, blessings. These aspects of life give us good health, which in turn allows us to be Happy. Am I happy? Check.
If there is any sadness I make a strong effort to be free of it quickly, otherwise it
grows like a vine in the rainy season:
– by midday I will be confused;
– by evening a whole jungle of weak, wasteful and negative attitudes will
have taken deep roots in my mind. The result equals chaos. Sometimes I reach a stage where the attitude is: “So what if I feel the blues today? It is my life; no one else will be affected”.
Firstly, the more I allow myself to experience sorrow, the less time I have available to be happy and contented. It sounds ridiculously obvious, but am I aware of the value of happiness? It is an extremely rare commodity, and the cost goes sky high.
Secondly, is it my life? Yes, I am living it, but am I not a member of a family or a co- worker with others, and am I not part of society? If so, then every movement affects and is affected by those around me. Be happy within, then do things – what is happiness for you, share it with me!!!
We seek it here, we seek it there, every human being seeks happiness. The search for happiness consumes our lives, though we may not be aware that happiness is what we seek. Sadly many of us continually postpone our happiness- indefinitely. It’s not that we consciously set out to do so, but we keep convincing ourselves. Someday I’ll be happy.
We tell ourselves we will be happy when our bills are paid,when we get out of school, get our first job, when we have a nicer car, a better house. The truth is there is no better time to be happy than right now.
If not now, when? Happiness is our creation and we have the power when and how to
create it. Happiness is a journey, my journey, our journey. We have to explore the journey
ourselves:
– to overcome desires, attachments;
– forget the past, forgive easily, let go;
– not to depend on the future, but be in the present;
– not ask or beg others for happiness, instead create it and share it with them.
Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey. Happiness is not tomorrow, it is today and now. Happiness is not dependency it is a creation and your decision. Share your happiest moments with me..
Happiness is not dependent on physical objects. Objects, possessions, gadgets are designed to give us comfort. Physical comfort is different from emotional comfort. Happiness is a feeling.
Happiness is our internal creation and can be created irrespective of external comforts. We use the objects as a stimulus to create a response, but the response is our choice.
Different people create different responses, using the same stimulus.
Happiness Unlimited – Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey
1. Happiness is a feeling created by my thoughts. Thoughts are the source of my feelings.
2. Thoughts are a conversation with our own self. If we create positive thoughts, we are going to feel good and positive. If we are experiencing pain, we need to check and change the quality of our thoughts.
3. The thoughts that we create are followed by feelings. Depending on our feelings about a person or a situation will develop our attitude towards them.
4. As will be the attitude so will be the action. Any action done repeatedly becomes our habit. All our habits put together becomes our personality.
5. As the personality comes out into the field of action, we are creating our destiny. So our
thoughts play an important role in creating our destiny.
The reason why there is so little happiness in the world is dependency. Happiness is not dependent on anything or anyone or found anywhere. We keep delaying our happiness until things are just right in our life. We think we will be happy in the future and then wonder why we are not happy now.
Happiness is only possible when we are able to accept everyone as they are, at every moment, in every situation. That means an end to judging or resisting others, an end to complaining and blaming, an end to criticizing and controlling and an end to competing with anyone. It means the awakening and the acceptance of self-responsibility. It is only when we choose thoughts and feelings aligned with our true nature of purity, peace and love that we shift from asking to sharing; holding on to letting go; expectations to acceptance; past and future to being in the now. We create a life of joy, contentment and bliss, because we have the choice and the power. Happiness is a decision.
Sheikh Ahmad Haneef: I think the subject is a very timely one: resurrecting the soul in a soulless age. This is probably the biggest problem in our age. We are looking around and we are seeing for example more wars. Recently I was looking at a programme about anti Semitism in Europe and they were talking about the holocaust. In the meantime we are living in the midst of a number of holocausts. When they kill over half of the Yezidi people they might not number the same as the Jews of Europe at the time but this is a major holocaust.
We are living in a time when we criticise the activities of past generations and we are seeing the same activity taking place here. We are living in a time when religions and spirituality has become marginalised. What has taken the place of a spiritual identity is an identity politic? This is the kind of world we are living in and the question is really a crucial question as to how do we regain our spirituality? How do we enliven our souls? How do we enliven the souls of our children, our good friends, our family? Our neighbourhood and so on and so forth. I would like to share some ideas on this and to look at it from the Islamic perspective.
First of all from an Islamic point of view the cosmos or Islamic cosmology or what we call the arrangement of existence is one that is divided into three parts. There are many other parts but for our discussion we will consider three parts.
The life of the world, the physical life, is considered to be the life where there is a form, shape and appearance of something and its substance. The form of this is a microphone and the substance is metal. This is the level of the world we live in. They are both form and substance combined and both form and substance can be quite subtle like wind. Wind is a form and substance. You cannot see it directly but you can see its effect in a cloud chamber.
Higher than this is the imagined realm or the barzahi realm. This is the realm of form without substance. A good example of the imagined realm is a dream. When you dream of a tree or when you dream of a fire the tree doesn’t bust out of the top of your head. The fire does not burn your brain. But it is a real tree and a real fire in terms of the mind. This is the realm of form without substance. This is the realm of the soul.
And higher than this we have the realm of formlessness and substancelessness. This is the realm of the angelic creatures who can assume form when appearing to man. But they are not form, they are light. The soul is the formless kind and from the Islamic philosophical and theological perspective we are all born with a soul. This soul begins different phases of its trajectory. We know that there are different types of souls. Souls are things like anima in the Greek philosophy meaning soul. Souls are the things that animate things. In other words the giver of life.
The vegetative soul characterises the souls of plants and trees. It is the kind of soul that is basically grounded in this world. When the plant or the tree dies that soul also dies with it. It is an intelligent type of soul. One of the miracles of Prophet Mohammed is that the plants and trees will give salams to him when he is passing their way. So we know that they have a spirit, a soul in them.
Allah says in the Holy Quran everything praises God but we do not know their language. Today we have certain types of phenomena which we find very difficult to explain because we do not refer back religion because we think religion does not cover these things like ayahuasca and so on. Madawaska, cycobicin and different types of androgens or the psychedelics which people use to access particular souls and spirits. These are real. These are vegetal souls and they have specific types of powers that are unusual for plants where shamans and other pre modern religions use to guide them.
So we may ask how come native, tribal people know which plant had which power and poisonous purpose? Their response was, and still is, the plant told me. The plant told us what was good and what was bad. Why? Because they were able to get in touch with the vegetal soul.
Then you have the animal soul. Whereas the vegetal soul is functioning with respect to the organism in terms of absorption, attraction, elimination and growth the animal soul is characterised by movement to fulfil its needs and also by a certain level of psychic nature to be able to be impelled towards that need by desire. So that is the animal soul. It is differentiated between male and female. It is nutrients; the things that it needs to live are outside of itself. It has to move towards this. So an animal has muscles and brains and sensory organs and so forth.
The angelic soul is the intellect. What we mean by the intellect is not the result of doing a PhD. What the intellect is is the capacity of the human being to be able to comprehend the absolute, to be able to God, to show human beings what is right and what is wrong. The intellect, as we say in ShiaIslam is masoum. It cannot make a mistake. Treat your neighbour as you would like to be treated is a function of the intellect, it is a law of the intellect.
So we have this soul. And this soul in our bodies from infancy to adulthood goes through all of these phases. It begins as a vegetal soul as something that is just growing in the womb of the mother, absorbing its nutrients and eliminating its waste. And then it reaches a level where the mother says the baby kicked. This is when the baby is influenced by the animal soul. The vegetal soul is still there but it has now moved a little higher into the animal soul. And that is when the baby is ready to come into this world for its intellectual development, for its growth as an independent human being this is when it comes into the world.
From that point if we see its eyes it is learning, it is comprehending every single second until that baby reaches a point when it can distinguish between right and wrong based on its maturity. At that level we have an influence upon that soul. Our actions, our behaviour, our habits all of these things influence the form of our souls. And a point can be reached where our soul inwardly appear as human, as it corresponds to our outward appearance. And indeed the beauty of the soul becomes reflected outwardly in the human body regardless of what that body is, how paralysed it may be or not, the beauty of that soul shines out though that body.
When we die that soul disengages with our body. We cannot say that our soul is in the body because the soul is immaterial and the idea of an immaterial thing being contained by a material thing is a contradiction. The soul does not reside in the body. That is a metaphor. The soul is focused on the body. It began in the body. It began with the body but its potential is to be beyond the body. There is a kind of confusion between spirit and soul. It is because the human spirit by nature is always associated with the body. The human spirit is never disassociated with the body. In the ashra on the day of judgment in heaven or in hell we do have physical bodies. But these bodies are not the same as the bodies we have on earth. They are an evolved body. As the Buddhists might say they are a diamond body. It is a different body. So the spirit is always associated with the body. When the spirit leaves the body before the day of resurrection it enters a world called bazah and this is a world of form without substance. This is a form world, not a substance world. This is where we see the soul itself and the ability of the soul to see angels and to recognise higher realties and so forth.
That soul that leaves that body leaves it in that body in a form that we have given birth to. It leaves that body in a form that we have given to it. If we do ill, if you do evil, if we think bad thoughts about people that soul will not appear in the bazah and in the resurrection as a human being. It will appear as some kind of animal, it may appear monstrous, it may appear as something horrible.
There are some narrations which state that on the day of resurrection the arrogant people would resurrect as ants, some small things that people as they are rushing for their meeting with God would just kick around and not see. These are metaphors of course but they tell how you are resurrected how you were inwardly. In this world inwardly we might not be human beings but outwardly we are.
The purity of a soul as has been indicated here has a very important role to play in how we perceive the world, how we interact with people and so on. It is that type of pure soul is important for the resurrection of a soul soulless universe. It is that type of soul that is in contact because your soul has to be pure enough to be in contact with higher realities that is responsible for positively influencing people in the world.
And for that soul to be like this it can take place on one of two levels both of which are not mutually exclusive. On one level it is the practise of goodness, simple goodness, trying to perfect that goodness within yourself. After a while you become the epitome of goodness that people will see in you and respect and will always seek recourse to when the world seems dismal. And I am sure that many spiritual people here would have had that experience.
You don’t have to be hugely spiritual but I remember when I got my first job after graduating from university one of the first things I would do is tell them I pray. I pray. So come lunchtime I am going to be praying before I have my lunch. And people got used to that. Until a point was reached when a woman came up to me and said my daughter has a particular problem, they were playing with a weegee board and they did bring some jinn into the world. She goes down into her basement, this was in Canada, and she sees one girl floating horizontally and all of them in a circle around her dressed in black and she did not know what was going on. She came to talk to me. This is a soul.
It is not because I am a super spiritual guy. It is because I had the gall to tell people I pray. And when they are confronted with something like that they refer to you. And the reason why I bring this up is because spiritual people or religious people tend to be afraid to express their religiosity. They are afraid of ridicule. And because of this you do not give them an opportunity to see your soul and to see what you stand for.
My daughter was telling me something like that happened in university, always as a matter of fact. She would be sitting with friends and a certain time she would say I am going to go pray. Some Christian girl among them who is afraid of saying that, when she hears my daughter saying that she says’ me to’and she is gone with them. She empowers the Christian girl. If you are religious you should not be hiding your religion. We live in an environment which makes you feel that it is embarrasing to be religious. But when you show that you are not embarrassed to be religious this is bringing soul into your relationship.
I just want to touch one the enemies of spirituality because if you want to talk about soullness and reengaging spiritualityyou need to talk about the enemies of spirituality. The enemies of spirituality are what I would call the new religions. There are standard well known established religions, we know them all. And then we have new ones like Scientology and New Ageism which take a little to this and that and mix up a bit of Satanism and occultism and you get a new mish mash coming into the world.
Ideology is a pseudo religion. When we look at these phenomena when people use to measure themselves against.The thing that you measure yourself against is your God. When we say there is no God but Allah do you think that we always mean some craven image that we bow down to made of wood or stone. No! Your God is what gives your life and your existence value.
If you think that money is going to make you happy and money is going to make everything go well in the world money is your God. You can say the same thing about sex or the other gender. If you think that the loss of that thing would make you lose your purpose for existence that is your God. And we have to know what we mean by the idols of the modern world.
Ideologies are the religion that brings about that particular central idea of the point of reference. To create a soulless world it requires confrontation with many of these types of idols that people worship.
Finally I would like to say that the most important aspect of creating a soulless world as I hinted before is with the individual. And the individual to be full of soul to be spiritual needs to connect with the highest principle of existence which is God. You cannot have spirituality without God. You can’t. It is impossible. And the only way of relating to God is through prayer. The Holy Prophet said pray that prayer is the mihraj of the moumin. The mihrah is the upper ascent to heaven of the believer.
Many of us do not really understand this. And if you want to get higher, to traverse the higher worlds, to see all of these worlds to see angels, to pass over hell, to pass through heaven, you need to pay more attention to prayer. And this is not just us. This is something that is fundamental in all religions. We need to be able to establish prayer and to see that prayer as a step towards the higher realisation. The day we reach that point is the day we are able to reflect our soul to others.
*Dr Stephen Robert Sizer was born in Lowestoft in 1953, the son of a carpenter. He is the founder and director of Peacemaker Trust, a registered charity dedicated to peacemaking, especially where minorities are persecuted, where justice is denied, human rights are suppressed or reconciliation is needed. A former Anglican priest, he is also the author of several books on the Christian origins of Zionism and the role Western Christians have played in perpetuating the Middle East conflict. He began his career working for the Department of Health and Social Security (1971–1973). He studied geography (African and Asian studies) at Sussex University, (1973–1976). It was while at University, that he became a Christian. After graduation Sizerworked as a campus director/student counsellor with Agape at the Universities of London, Liverpool and Sussex. In 1980 he was accepted for training as a minister in the Church of England and gained a diploma in theology at Trinity College, Bristol. In 1983 he was ordained and became an assistant curate in St Leonards-on-Sea, then was appointed Rector at St. John’s, Stoke, Guildford in 1986.
**Ranjan Parmar has been practicing spirituality for the last seven years, after doing a meditation course and attending a retreat. She wakes up at 4 am, practices meditation, listens to spiritual lesson then writes inspirational thought, which she shares with friends. These thoughts are her soul journey to develop her spirituality. When her mum passed away 18 months ago she published her first book in memory of her. Last month she wrote a story for “1000 Ripples Effect” which consists of four books with different topics to help children aged 14 to 21 years old. Ripples Effects book has 4 volumes consisting of 1000 stories altogether. She delivers talks to the elderly in residential homes or individuals about spirituality. Ranjan’s motto is to take everyone onboard in her journey to share her experience.
***Shaykh Ahmed Haneef is one of a growing number of scholars with style – his intimate knowledge of east and west. His ineffable energy and sincere love of all things spiritual have placed him as a firm favourite with young Muslims. Shaykh Haneef was born in Trinidad in the 1950s and studied in Canada. He studied political science at university. After briefly flirting with Communism he began his research of religion and became a Muslim. In 1993 he moved to Iran with his family to study at the religious seminary in Qom, Iran. Shaykh Haneef continues to combine study with action and regularly lectures at mosques around the world, as well as taking part in TV programmes.
