“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” said Derek Bok, the Harvard University President from 1971 to 1991. If you wanted to learn astrophysics, you would study with a professor of astrophysics. If chemistry, a professor of chemistry. So too with spiritual excellence. Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace be upon them, were divinely appointed spiritual teachers. All three merged commerce, morality, and spirituality into a God-centered lifestyle. “In God We Trust” printed on U.S. currency resided in their hearts long before the founding of America.
What is a spiritual attribute?
The Qur’an refers to your spiritual attributes as the breath of God breathed into humanity at the time of creation. (32:9; 15:29; 38:72).
You are Multi-dimensional – Spirit, Mind, and Body
According to the Qur’an, you too have the same spiritual DNA resting quietly within you, awaiting your discovery and expression. The Qur’an says this through the metaphor, “Divine Breath breathed into humanity,” and the “Divine Inspiration sent down from God”. (Q. 15:28-29; 32:7-9; 38:71-72; 40:15; 58:22; 66:12).
Spiritual Amnesia
Though the Qur’an says that you are created in the best of molds (95:4), you struggle from what some call, “spiritual amnesia.” Do you find it difficult to discern your invisible dimensions – your spiritual and psychological self? Of course you do, simply because you cannot see them when you look in the mirror.
Can a Fish See Water?
Our spiritual amnesia deficiency is voiced in the age-old fable of a fish who could not see water:
One day a fish was swimming close to shore. “Water is the most important thing in the world.” he heard someone say. “Without water, there can be no life. I wonder where water is?” He began to swim around, looking for water. He searched the bottom of the river. He looked close to the top, behind plants, and under rocks. He searched everywhere.
He asked another fish, “Where is water?” but that fish was too busy to answer. The next fish he asked didn’t know what he was asking. So, the little fish swam further and further out to sea, but no one seemed to know where the water was. As the small fish swam still deeper, he swam by an older, wise fish. He thought this sage could surely tell him where to find water.
“Did you ever hear of water?” he asked.
“Sure,” said the wise fish. “You can’t live without it!”
“That’s right,” said the little fish, “that’s what I’ve heard, but where is it?”
The old fish blinked. “It’s all around you,” he said. “It’s under you, over you, and in you.”
The little fish laughed and swam away, asking all, “Where is water?”
Consider: “Spirituality 101” teaches that you live, move, and have your being in multiple dimensions, (1) physical, (2) spiritual, and (3) psychological. The Qur’an says to discern the unseen. (Q 2:2-3).
Consider: The Qur’an is a spiritual text. Self-directed Qur’anic interpretation begins by discerning your own spiritual nature.
It is your spiritual / psychological dimensions that connect you to every life form on the planet. That is why the Qur’an cites nature over and over as a “sign.” A sign of what? A sign of your spiritual and psychological self. Muslim mystics write poems to bring your invisibility into your conscious awareness.
This is a Rumi poem rendered by Coleman Barks that at the spiritual level of thinking, all boundaries are dropped. The sense of separation is collapsed, and unity of all created form is one reality:
I am dust particles in sunlight.
Yet I am also the round sun.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind on top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of beings,
the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence,
the lift, and the falling away.
What is and what isn’t. You
who know Rumi,
You, the One in all, say who I am
Say I am you.