On Reality

Above the Sea of Fog- Caspar David Friedrich

Hi guys,

Some of my writing dated back to few years back, and I usually let them ferment for a while before revisiting them. Many of the writings are then rejected and abandoned, some of them are edited and very few of them still retain the same belief that I came upon to now. Now, this particular piece was intended as an answer to a question by someone, "What is faith?". Now, regarding faith, we would naturally look into our syahadat, for that is the most fundamental aspect of our religion. But, not many, I think, look beyond the physical utterances of syahadat, nor explore the secrets behind it. As the discussion expands, it turn into more of an expeditionary pieces not only regarding faith, but also of concepts and as the title suggest, of the World. Enjoy.

The short answer for your question is,

To belief in God is to affirm that he is not here, and to truly belief that, we must in a sense, affirm to nothingness.

You might think this is kind of a fancy question, thus perhaps a fancy wordplay. But many scholars, both Muslims and non-Muslims, have elaborated the answer as above. For now, let us review the answer according to the Islamic scholar’s answer.

Our syahadat, “La ilaha illa Allah” contains two parts, nafi and isbat. The nafi, as the name suggests, connotes an absolute denial or negative affirmation towards something. Thus, the nafi in the syahadat would mean as such; “There is no god at all…” Now, what does it means here is that there can be no God in either time, space or even in our abstract reasoning.

God can never be found in time and space, for if he is in time and space, he must assume a material form and this is absurd. And, if he is to affirm a material form, then he can be perceived by our senses and thus able to be reflected and to be formed concepts, by our abstract reasoning. And this is, double the absurdity. This would be referring implicitly behind your question. Why belief in God can be an option, like choosing a dish out from many dishes in the menu? Belief in God should not be even the only option; it should be the reality itself.

Narcissus- Caravaggio

How does the belief in God reduced to become one of the options in life, instead of the reality itself? By reducing him into concepts. Concepts are born from abstract reasoning, and there can be no abstract reasoning without objects of perception. Thus, abstract reasoning is the product of reflecting the objects of perception. It is like watching a moon from its reflection on the water. If we are to watch the moon directly, it is absurd for us to ask, “Am I seeing the moon?” Perception gives us an immediate and naïve truth. But, if we were to see the reflection, then the doubt and questions would arise normally, for an instance, “As I am not seeing the moon directly, could it be that the reflection here would be a lamp instead of the moon?” Thus, a perception is open to error and doubts when it is reflected, when it change form from a perception, to something-perceived, enabling it to form relations with other concepts et cetera. But, we have elaborated before that firstly, it is absurd that God can be perceived (because he exists out of time), and thus cannot be compared with other object-of-perceptions-turned-to-concepts (because to be compared is to be reflected in the abstract reasoning, and to be reflected is to be perceived in the first place).

The second part of the syahadat, the isbat, connotes a conclusion that supports the preceding premise, so it must 1) believe the preceding premise and 2) not contradicting the preceding premise. But, the preceding premise is to deny everything about God to be knowable by our senses or reasoning. Why the isbat is confirming something that cannot be known by our reasoning and senses, thus contradictory? This is not at all contradictory, if we are to know how limited the world conveyed by our senses and our reasoning.

Our faculty of reason, as elaborated before, only deals with concepts. The supreme manifestation of concepts is the law of logic, and even the most skilled logician would not employ such laws in his daily reasoning. The concepts has no whatsoever practical purposes at all, because it does not exist in the real world in the first place i.e. it is just a combination of relations between objects of perception (Think of the concept “man”. What does man even means? It could be our body, our reasoning, our virtue and infinite of relations that gives us the meaning of the concept “man”, even if the whole of relations is to be brought together, we still get nothing except relations. Thinking of 200 euros does not make my wallet thicker by 200 euros). The concepts do have limited practical purposes in giving form of the knowledge, i.e. to perform choosing a choice (that involves several relations), or to give us sense of past and future (boundless extension of relations forward and backwards), but that is all.

Our world of perception only brings us the phenomena. The things as we perceived, i.e. the matter presupposes time and space. That is to say, our knowledge of the world are conditioned by the forms of knowledge, i.e. time and space. Say, the apple on the table. To gain understanding of the apple, we need sensory datum from the apple to our brain, our prior conception of matter and the concept “apple” in our mind. If there is no conception of time and space in our mind, there can be no way we can know the existence of the apple. In other words, sensory datum without form is ignorance, while form without sensory datum is blind. We are saying that, without our forms of knowledge, there can be no way the world can be disclosed to us at all. It is not about there is a sun or earth, but it is about there is an eye to see the sun and the body to earth. Thus, our knowledge of the world is subordinated to the object-subject relation, and thus is relative. Don’t misunderstand me, what we see are truly complete, but it is relative to us. If there’s no subject to know, there is no object to be known. To put is short, the perception presents us the world as it is, but the existence of the world is subjected to us, which as a human already is limited by our meager sense.

So, from where the isbat wants us to derive knowledge to affirm the nafi? It is not in the concepts, nor in the perception then from where? Don’t think, but feel! Is there anything around us that gives us immediately the intuitive feeling of existence of something that is beyond perception or reasoning? Yes, in the realm of art. The art gives us directly what is not in the reasoning and in the world of perception with what is already given in perception. When we look at the painting or listening to the music, it is not the painting on the canvas or the music played by the orchestra that gives us the feeling of meaning, but it is something beyond that. Our reasoning and our perception can never explain the feeling given to us by the object of art. Does that shows that my feeling is false and non-existent? Then, how about this world that does not give me any sense of belonging at all, is it double the false and non-existence? But, then it is absurd. 

Scientists are really good in downgrading our feelings, by saying it just mere chemical properties. But, that is merely showing the condition for a feeling to arise but not answering the question “What is feeling?” Science are good in explaining how the things happened, but not what is the thing itself. It is like us having a housewarming party, and suddenly is greeted by a group of people. “Who are you?” we asked. And then one of them answered, “Ah, I am their father. This is my eldest son, this is my youngest son and this is my only daughter”. We would answer, “Yes, yes, I know that you are their father, but really who are you? Why do you come here?” Science is like the father, only good in explaining how things relate to each other, but when the day is done, it leaves the inexplicable matter as it is with no difference at all.

To open ourselves towards a true possibility in believing God, is to understand that reasoning are limited, everything is only appearances, and thus every field that belongs in the world of appearances are only good in explaining the appearance, not why there is appearances at all. Now, that we briefly limited the scope of the world of phenomena, it is clear that God could not exist here, in the world of phenomena. Even if he is to win against all phenomena, he is still a phenomenon, like the king of the jungle is still an animal. And, it is absurd because God is not a phenomena which is relative to us, even if the world to cease to exist at all, we cannot shake the feeling of there is something beyond.

Thus, God or something beyond that exists absolutely in-itself is the reality itself; everything else beside it is just phenomena and appearances. God is absolute and independent, while the phenomena are relative to us. I hope that it has become clear to you that until we arrive to this conclusion, to this very border and limit of human inquiry of reason and thinking, we cannot make the leap of faith to the unknown. How can we affirm the unknown if the known still remains to us as the absolute? How can we wake ourselves from the dream, if we take the dream to be the reality? How can, then, we start living, if all this time we are playing at living? It is only by arriving at the very edges of the world of perception; we can see the cliff of nothingness, yawning back to us.

Looking into the Abyss- Mikhail Savchenko

This dark, primordial cliff that yawning back to us, this abyss that is the proof that the whole world is like a mirage, dream or even an illusion that every thinker must arrive. Don’t look to long at it! And if we gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back to us. Many great thinkers confused this abyss to be the destination, and in our context, that the nafi is the absolute. This is where nihilism and atheism arise, from the cliffs of the yawning abyss. It is said that the atheists and the nihilists has really affirm half of the syahadat, the nafi but due to their love-struck of the abyss, mistaking the abyss as the truth, they stopped their enquiry and gaze the abyss in eternity. And the abyss, having no eye to avert its gazes, only its absolute darkness, gazed back to the abyss-gazer, engulfing them in its nothingness.

Now, let us prepare ourselves to jump across the abyss. Right here, my friend, it is saddening for me to say, that even I yet able to cross the abyss. Everyone will cross the abyss, even the atheists and the nihilists, but only after they are dead. For, everyone will return to beyond the phenomena, the abyss itself standing somewhere between the phenomena and the absolute. It is only through our God’s grace and love to bestow us enlightenment and understanding to cross here. Vague, you say? It is vague before because you are looking at those words from afar. Everything is vague if it is to be seen from afar. Right now, after our discussion, you have arrived at the reason why we need enlightenment at all instead of parroting the word as everybody else. Yes, you are yet to obtain it, but now you have the ability, knowledge and true reason to gain it. No man has arrived at the abyss if he does not think, and no wise man ever cross the abyss if he does not gain the love of his God.

At this point, it should be clear to you how absurd the question why we must believe in God. It is because, God is the reality and everything else is phenomena and relative. It is also absurd to know the proof of the existence and working of God like seeing how my hands moved to write this document. It is said that when you ask for a miracle, then you have really strayed to the workings of Satan, because you wanted to what is not here to be here, and then of course you will never get it here and now, and of course you will despair and given up to belief in God. This is the reason why our greatest miracle is the Quran, not the splitting of the moon or water spouting from the Prophet’s hands. The Quran is directly revealed to the prophet, in a medium not from the reasoning or the faculty of perception, but in what directly connected to the absolute. I have yet to elaborate on this part of us that is directly connected to it and thus will proceed to elaborate it briefly.

Our body, i.e. that what can we immediately see is indeed matter, belonging in time and space, but we are not entirely material. For, when we see our body, immediately and simultaneously we have seen the body as the object and we as the knowing subject. I have elaborated briefly on how the object belongs to world of phenomena and exist only for the subject (there can be no object and subject). Now, if there is no object at all, even my body, I still have the sense of myself that is free from being subordinated to subject-object distinction, thus free form time and space. If the world is to be annihilated or not exist at all, I still cannot doubt my existence. I can doubt that I am seeing a flying pink elephant, but I cannot doubt the existence of me performing that act of perception. But, this part of myself, exist not in time and space thus not belonging into the world of phenomena. And, it is this part of me that exist not in the phenomena but in the noumenal, as in the absolute existence of the thing-in-itself. Every of my movement comes from the upsurge of the part of me that is noumenal. There is no whatsoever gap between my movement and me wanting to move. There can only be doubt, gap and time space between my will and my movement, in reflection. Reflection, as we elaborated before, is a relation of perception, thus it occurs after the perception that is the movement. But during the movement, there can be no doubt whatsoever that my will and my movement comes from the same upsurge but manifested in different ways. I know my will to move directly, but only to see its effects indirectly i.e. via perception, and this is what causes the confusion in the science. In short, I am my body.

Thus, we have shown that while our body is material, we are not entirely so. This part of us that exists beyond time and space, yet its upsurge is within it but manifested in the world of phenomenon, exists in the realm of the absolute. If there is God, it should be in the realm of the absolute, but there can be no way at all for us to gain knowledge of such world. We can only gain knowledge of that world through our upsurge of the will, but only at this particular time and space. But, everything else is the upsurge of will and the absolute manifested in the world of phenomena. It is to affirm to the existence of the absolute by examining this part of ourselves that would bring us to an affirmation of the existence of God beyond time and space. It is for this reason they say that to know God, is to know our self.

What are we to do with this knowledge? First of all, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. We have seen that the world are mere appearances, and the absolute is inconceivable, because all we can know is the forms of knowledge that the upsurge of absolute and will goes into and manifested in the world of phenomena. But, the thing-in-itself, the absolute and the will itself can never be expressed. One must be silent in things he cannot speak of, and if there is any shorter way to truth, honesty is the one instead of pretending to know and foolish parroting.

Then, what else? Live, and live fully. There is no greater distasteful sight, than the people who refuse to live in the world only to seek refuge in other province of the world. They think that by denying this world, they can go to that world but there’s only one world to the masses. It is either this part of the world they want to run either from folly or guilt, or that part of the world they created for themselves. Either part, it is the same world. If you are to fall, then fall graciously and then rises again ever more graceful, for there is never a greater sight than seeing a human to fall and rise again. For, that is the only way of being human. As I have said to you before, the world is a symphony. This parable is apt, for we have elaborated briefly before that the feeling for art is something out of this world, thus the world is nothing more than the manifestation of the absolute. I never know whether my dancing is correct to the tune and genre, but I do know that it is wrong to not dance at all. For to desire for truth, is already half from getting it.

The Walk- Luc Tuymans