HISTORY OF WITHOUTS

Barriers to Spirituality

THE proponents of the theory of evolution believe that the history of life on earth goes back millions of years. But historical records however indicate that the age of man on earth dates back hardly to 25,000 years. Looked at from the historical point of view, we find a great difference between the material and intellectual aspects of human life. That is, man has made tremendous progress in the material aspect of his life. However, even after tens of thousands of years man’s knowledge has failed to match the material progress. Man’s dream of material progress has largely been realized, but no worthwhile advances have been made in his intellectual and spiritual life. This issue has been dealt with by Dr. Alexis Carrel, in his book, Man, the Unknown, published in 1935.

The truth is that a guideline is essential for progress. So far as the material or physical world is concerned, it contains a guideline within itself. This guideline, or the law of nature, can be discovered by experiment and the desired journey of progress can be continued.


Man is constantly conditioned from birth by society. This conditioning becomes an obstacle to forming objective opinions

For instance, in the field of transport, in ancient times man use to travel on horses and camels. Then he made wheel carts; and later, he built ships, bicycles, motorcars, aircraft and rockets. For the making of all these vehicles, the guideline or laws of nature which were required, existed in the very materials used for this manufacture.

But man, still remains an unknown entity. For instance, man is constantly conditioned from birth, by society. This conditioning becomes an obstacle to man's forming objective opinions. But this truth that man’s mind becomes conditioned was ascertained as late as the first quarter of the 20th century and that too only to a limited extent. Much on this subject still remained undiscovered. For instance, the fact that the conditioned mind could be ‘deconditioned’ and brought back to its natural state was unknown.

The Quran being a book of God, its actual role is to provide trustworthy guidelines for man. This human need is alluded to in the Quran in the following verse:

There are some who dispute about God without having any knowledge or guidance, or any enlightening Book. (22: 8)

This verse tells us that the reason for the failure in human science is people's failure to understand human life. They have tried to build the whole framework of existence without guidelines. This is the sole reason for human science not being developed. For, in the absence of guidelines, man will fail to find the starting point for his actions. And such a journey, can never reach its destination.

Unawareness of the Creation Plan of God
Only the engineer of a complex machine can provide a manual for its proper functioning. The same is true of our world. The present world has been built by God in accordance with a creation plan. Man needs to understand this creation plan for the proper construction of his life. Any concept developed without understanding the creation plan of the Creator will go awry and will not be in accordance with the actual state of affairs. And any plan which goes against reality is destined to fail. We learn from the Book of God, that God has built this world for the purpose of putting man to the test. Here, man’s relationship with this world is akin to that of a student in an examination hall. A student comes to the examination hall so that he may take the requisite test and prove his ability to deserve a place in the world outside the examination hall.


The Quran being a book of God, its actual role is to provide trustworthy guidelines for man.

Similarly, this world is a place to take the divine test. Man has to qualify in this test to deserve God’s eternal rewards in the world after death.

Man must learn the creation plan of God from His Divine Book—the Quran—and build his life by following the guidelines set forth therein. Those who do so will be successful and those who fail to do so will be adjudged as failures.

The Building of an Ideal Life
The famous Greek Philosopher, Plato, was born about 2500 years ago in Greece. His goal was to form an ‘ideal state’ in Greece. He presented a model of this state in his book, The Republic. He thought that the building of an ideal state was fully possible. Plato, being a teacher of the royal family, found an opportunity to train and educate the princes to play the desired political role in this Ideal State. He called them ‘philosopher kings’. But this supposed ideal state, conceived by Plato, could never come into existence.

This was not because his pupil, Alexander the Great, did not follow him in the latter stage of his life, but was rather due to his ignorance of the creation plan in which God had not envisaged an ideal state. The plan, therefore, which Plato wanted to implement was impracticable. That was why he failed utterly and miserably. If he had fully understood God’s creation plan, and had tried to carry into effect some practicable plan, he would certainly have succeeded.

Intellectual Activity without Deconditioning
The Prophet of Islam once observed: ‘Every child is born in its real nature then his parents make him into a Jew or a Christian or a Zoroastrian.’ The above words of the Hadith are symbolic words for explaining that, each individual is a product of his own environment. This fact has now been proved by scientific research. It has been academically, established that the environment in which human beings find themselves, conditions their minds. No one is an exception to this principle. Unconscious of what is happening, people are involuntarily subjected to a process of incessant conditioning.


Any concept developed without understanding the creation plan of the Creator will go awry and will not be in accordance with the actual state of affairs.

This matter of conditioning came into prominence in the first quarter of the 20th century. The American psychologist, Prof. J.D. Watson, after in-depth research on this subject, published his widely acclaimed book, Behaviorism. His thesis was that everyone necessarily undergoes conditioning. No one can escape it. This theory of Watson became so popular that for a long period of time, this formed a part of the psychology syllabus in many universities. But, in Watson’s concept, there was a grave shortcoming. According to his theory, the formation of the human personality is not carved out by nature, but can be nurtured, and one who is conditioned in a particular way retains that personality permanently. He cannot revert to his original nature.

Although the above theory was propounded only at the beginning of the 20th century, it has dominated the thoughts of people throughout human history. Human beings remained oblivious to the fact that the beginning of the intellectual process is the ‘deconditioning of conditioned minds’. They failed to realize that they can remove their artificial veils and return to their original, pristine nature. The Creator has provided a material example of this matter in the form of an onion. The onion, in the symbolic language of nature, counsels man to remove the external layers from his mind, and only then can he understand things in their original form.

But man neither learnt the lesson from the onion, nor could Professor Watson and his supporters discover this reality. As a result, human beings throughout their entire history have remained ignorant of this reality.

History shows that all political and non-political movements have been the result of some reaction or another; For instance Rousseau reacted against monarchy, Marx against the capitalist system. Jamaluddin Afghani rose against western colonialism and Gandhi against British rule. Ayatullah Khomeini led a movement against the Shah of Iran, and Syed Qutub against Zionism, etc.


Man must learn the creation plan of God from His Divine Book—the Quran— and build his life in accordance with the guidelines set forth therein.

It is a fact that a reactionary movement is always the result of a negative mentality. Man develops a hatred for someone and then launches a movement against him. This is the entire story of human history. All human beings have lived in one way or the other in a state of hatred; they have failed to live in a positive state. The reason is that they have remained unaware of conditioning. They have failed to understand that without deconditioning their minds, they cannot see the facts in an ‘as it is’ form, which is the first condition of positive thinking.

Spirituality without Intellectual Revolution
Spirituality has always been a subject of interest for man. It is known by different names in different circles, for instance, mysticism, meditation, Sufism, etc. For the last several thousand years great activities have been continuing on the spiritual front. But so far, these activities have not yielded any real benefit, in spite of every effort. What man has achieved is only ecstasy at the unconscious level, instead of spiritual development, which was the actual goal of these activities.

For ages people have believed that the human mind is the centre of thinking, while the human heart is the centre of feelings and emotions. That is why man has always believed in heart-based spirituality. Hence, a spiritual philosophy has been formed on the basis of this supposition. The belief has developed that the human heart is a source of spirituality and, by awakening this latent source in the heart, spirituality can be attained.

Scientific research has proven this supposition to be baseless. The only centre of both thoughts and feelings is the human mind. So far as the heart is concerned, it is merely a means of the circulation of the blood and nothing more. This is the reason why, despite spiritual exercises for the last several thousand years man has gained nothing but ecstasy—far from intellectual development—on the basis of what he conceives to be spirituality. This kind of spirituality, in fact, is limited in its form, and is not spiritual development in the real sense of the word.


The beginning of the intellectual process is the ‘deconditioning of conditioned minds’.

As we know, ecstasy is only a pleasant but indefinable feeling, while the greatest quality of man is the capacity to think. All developments in human history have been achieved by employing this thinking faculty. This being so, if spirituality has an existence, it should also be attained at the level of the mind. The source of all human progress lies in the intellectual faculty of the human mind. Similarly, the ways and means of spiritual development should also lie in intellectual activity.

Spirituality is in fact, a high level of the realization of truth. It has nothing to do with any vague type of ecstasy. That is why real spirituality can only be one which is achieved at the level of the mind, and not at the level of the heart.

Due to the ignorance of this reality, man has failed to achieve real spirituality throughout human history. What he took for spirituality was something else. And because of the ignorance of true spirituality, he could not begin his journey towards it. Perhaps there is no tragedy greater than this in the entire gamut of human history.