The Alchemy of Being

Before we can understand what a Muslim is, we must first be aware of what modern man has become.
It is precisely the abysmal ignorance of the so-called educated man in our society that makes the crucial question of existence difficult to address.
Cursed with a superficial verbal coherence, the educated man feels entitled to explain and express himself infinitely.
You don’t need to put your brain to work.
On the contrary, it is precisely because man is a complete crystallization of creation that in reality all he needs is within himself.
You simply must learn to allow that knowledge to emerge from your own being, as fish rise to the surface in calm waters.
Until man is ready to reflect, the word is self-explanatory, he cannot learn.
This is the teaching of the Qur’an.
Reflection is not reading an article while having breakfast or commuting on the train.
Eating breakfast with some awareness in oneself would inevitably lead to a modification in the diet, in the case of almost all readers of this newspaper.
It is on this pragmatic principle that the question of accepting Islam unfolds.
The politicized man is, according to the Islam of the Arab Prophet, living in illusion.
This teaching is nothing more than the purified and pristine perfection of the teachings of Moses and Jesus, and indeed of Krishna and Buddha, who in their day and for their time delineated the science of existence and the nature of reality.
Once politics is seen as the conceptual fantasy that it is, and man’s quality of life in political society is recognized for how enslaved and degrading it is, then man can begin to question himself more deeply.
What is the purpose of existence?
Why am I alive?
Where do I come from?
Where am I going?
The answers to these questions are experienced in Islam with the same clarity that the development of a chemical experiment has for the chemist.
In other words, these responses are not verbalizations or propositions like evangelical Christians indulge in, but are a direct vision and a taste of the way things are.
Islam is a path of knowledge.
The means to alter our awareness of existence and to get out of the state of deaf, dumb and blind in which modern man finds himself – mentally disturbed in his polluted environment – is to alter our behavior.
“The method,” Muhammad said, peace be upon him, “is behavior.”
Islam means submission to Reality – acceptance – and the word peace also derives from the same root.
The Muslim is one who submits to the nature of reality, to the way things are.
I became a Muslim when I discovered that it meant opening oneself to one’s full nature, to one’s own humanity that contains both the seen and the invisible.
It is this denial of the invisible that leads to mental illness, for it is by our stubborn refusal to recognize the “invisible part” of ourselves, and the repression of it, that its energies cause the invisible, but nevertheless painful, mind to spiral out of control. Islam is anti-consumerism.
It exalts poverty of all kinds and warns against excessive wealth and its dangers.
Entrusts acts of generosity, personal and in direct confrontation.
Call to feed the guest and greet the stranger.
He proposes reticence in speech and praises silence.
Honor humility, sobriety, and calmness.
But above all, it calls man to reflect on himself, on creation, and to recognize the One who underlies all phenomena and events.
Events are not for the Muslim the coded labyrinths of “history”, coincidence, and accidents, but have a meaning and a pattern in such a way that, according to the certainty of knowledge, the pattern begins to show itself.
From this, it should be clear that not everyone who says they are Muslim necessarily is, but if they adhere to the basic practices, they nevertheless have at their disposal the risk and the possibility of changing their behavior.
But it is not truly Islam until the heart is awakened, because as the Qur’an repeatedly emphasizes, the true seat of the intellect is the heart.
As someone who has spent much of his life among those people who consider themselves intellectually and creatively to be the best in our society, I realized one day that, despite their verbal coherence and variety of talents, they had no idea about the business of living.
They were highly toxic, filled with anger, anxiety, distrust, and fear.
When I embraced Islam I met men who rejected reputation and success, and who had found a harmony in existence that was balanced, economical, general, and peaceful.
It was enough for a man to sit in his company to be changed.
Islam is not, properly speaking, a religion; There is no word for ‘religion’ in Arabic.
The word is “deen”, which means Judgment in the sense in which it is used in the I Ching, i.e., the calculation of accounts, the sum due (to reality) and why this is something dynamic, the process or the method.
Islam is a science of existence.
Islam is a complete anthropology of man, far deeper and far-reaching than the tortured complexities of academic anthropology.
Essentially, it is a secret alchemy of the self, and like the alchemical process, it must be seen and experienced externally.

By: Ian Dallas, source: https://www.nytimes.com/