INTRODUCING THE QURAN
Creation Plan of God
IF you read the Quran, you will find that it deals with all the subjects relating to human beings. But the basic theme of the Quran is the Creation Plan of God. All other subjects touched upon by the Quran are related to this theme, directly or indirectly. God Almighty created the universe, and, it is God Almighty who revealed this book called AlQuran. The primary purpose of the Quran is to reveal that divine plan according to which the world was created and man was settled in it.
This theme, which is central to the Quran, is thus described in chapter sixty-seven, Al-Mulk (The Kingdom): “He created death and life so that He might test you, and find out which of you is best in conduct.” (67: 2) Here, the words life and death refer to two different periods of humanity. The word life represents the pre-death period and the word death represents the second period of life, which may be called the post-death period. God Almighty created man as an eternal being but He divided his life into two periods—the before-death period and the post-death period. The pre-death period is very short, about hundred years, while the post-death period has no such limit. It will continue for eternity.
The primary purpose of the Quran is to reveal that divine plan according to which the world was created and man was settled in it.
In fact, God Almighty created an ideal world that is called Paradise. The present world has all those things that man needs or desires. But, in this world everything, is imperfect in its form. In Paradise, on the other hand, everything is perfect and ideal. Paradise is free of every kind of limitation or disadvantage. Moreover, Paradise is an eternal world. Paradise has a beginning but it has no end. God Almighty created human beings with freedom of choice and then settled them on earth. Through His prophets, God Almighty gave guidance to humanity. In every age the prophets told the people of all races about right and wrong. They told them what was good and what was bad.
This was simply a matter of guidance; there was no compulsion for people to follow it. People were asked to develop their thinking in such a way as to bring about moral consciousness in themselves and to lead a good life by their own choice. In this sense, everyone is being tested. Then God Almighty established a system of complete recording. This recording system is managed by the angels. It is so comprehensive that it can record the intentions, speech, behaviour and dealings of every single person. This system is operative at all times, day and night. The purpose of all these arrangements is to select the people who deserve to gain entry into eternal Paradise. At the time of Doomsday, God will appear with His angels and according to the angelic record; He will select those people who passed the test. And then all of the others who failed to mould themselves into heavenly personalities will be thrown into the universal litter bin forever.
What are those qualities that are required for a person to be a deserving candidate for Paradise? In a single word, it is spirituality. Paradise is a spiritual world and only those who have developed spiritual qualities in their personality will be blessed with entry into Paradise. According to the Quranic description, “Paradise is the home of peace” (10: 25). Paradise is a place where there is no nuisance, no noise; it is free of all kinds of pollution. The inhabitants of Paradise will be positive thinkers in the complete sense of the phrase. The environment of Paradise will be free of all kinds of negative states, like anger, malice, hate, revenge, wrong desires, jealousy, fighting, exploitation and dishonesty, for these negative factors cannot be part of the psychology of the spiritual inhabitants of Paradise.
God Almighty created human beings with freedom of choice and then settled them on the planet earth.
The definition of spirituality given in the dictionary is—the state of being opposed to worldliness. This definition is partly true, for not being worldly is not just for itself, it is for the sake of a higher goal. And that goal is to develop a spiritual way of life. There are two kinds of spirituality—negative spirituality and positive spirituality. Negative spirituality means renouncing the material world while living in society, or leaving society and settling in some jungle or mountain. This kind of negative spirituality has no creative role. It suppresses all the natural qualities of a human being, who then dies without having made full use of his potential. The Quran calls us towards spirituality of the positive kind. It means living in the world and trying to derive spiritual food from material things as a matter of intellectual discipline. It means to control rather than kill your desires.
The fact is that God Almighty has created man with great potential. It is not good to suppress this potential. One should rather avail of this potential for the sake of personality development. It means converting every experience, whether good or bad into a positive experience for ourselves. It means living a life of well thought out action and not reacting to situations. This in turn results in developing our personality on intellectual lines.
Positive spirituality can be termed creative spirituality. For example, there is a verse in the Quran which says with reference to the believers that, “they forgive people when they are angry” (3: 134). It means that positive spirituality is based on the principle of anger management rather than one trying to become a person who has no feelings of anger. The principle for positive spirituality can be summarized thus: turn your negative sentiment into positive response; make friends out of enemies. Adopt simple living and high thinking. Simple living and high thinking are complementary to each other. Simple living saves you from all kinds of distractions and high thinking saves you from being the victim of negative experiences. Simple living and high thinking are a sine qua non of spiritual culture.
God Almighty created man as an eternal being but He divided his life into two periods—the beforedeath period and the post-death period.
Positive spirituality is mentioned as follows in the Quran: “You are on the sublime character” (68: 4) . Sublime character is that character which is based on high thinking.
If you read the Quran, you will find that it lays great emphasis on sabr (patience) (39: 10), sulh (reconciliation) (4: 128), forgiveness (42: 40), avoidance (7: 199), etc.
What is the importance of these teachings? These teachings apparently seem to advocate passivity. But that is not so, for they embody great wisdom. The Quran tries to build that kind of mind which is able to manage all the affairs of life on the basis of spirituality. It is not passivity which is advocated but skill in the proper management of life’s problems. The Quran's greatest concern is to concentrate on high goals and one who wants to achieve high goals has no option but to foster the afore-mentioned qualities. He has to try to effectively manage all undesirable situations. Otherwise, he will become preoccupied by trivial issues and will fail to continue his journey towards higher goals.
In the chapter of the Quran entitled Al-Shams (The Sun), you will find these verses: “He who purifies it will indeed be successful, and he who corrupts it is sure to fail” (91: 9-10). These Quranic verses refer to the importance of personality development, laying emphasis not on its physical but on its spiritual aspects. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the main theme of the Quran.
What is purification of the soul? It is to purify one’s mind of all kinds of bias and negativity. In other words, it is to de-condition the wrong conditioning. This is the mind the Quran tries to build. One who fails in this de-conditioning process will become a corrupt or an unwanted personality in the divine scheme of things.
Man’s personality is like an onion. An onion has a central core, but this core is covered by many layers. If one wants to reach the core, one has to remove all these covers or layers. The same is true of the human being. A human personality is always subject to the process of conditioning, which wraps it up in many layers.
The process of conditioning begins right from birth. Initially, it is an unconscious process. The individual’s family, the institutions, the society, the community, are all sources of this conditioning. From childhood to adolescence, one is affected by this conditioning. Only after reaching adulthood does one become capable of understanding this problem consciously.
From here onwards begins what is called personality development. It calls for an awakening of the mind and a conscious discovery of the problem. At this stage, the individual must develop the capacity for antiself thinking. He must engage in introspection. He must try to de-condition his previous conditioning with complete objectivity. This is the most important task for a person. Without carrying out this task, there is no one who is quite complete. Everyone is like a sub-human being.
The Quran calls us towards spirituality of the positive kind. It means living in the world and trying to derive spiritual food from material things as a matter of intellectual discipline
The Quran calls each one of us towards this de-conditioning. Deconditioning is a process of analyzing what one has stored in one’s mind with complete objectivity and then overhauling one’s personality in a dispassionate manner. It is to remove the negative thoughts from the mind and turn them into positivity.
Thus, one can say that the Quran is a book which calls people towards their own personality development, so that they become eligible for God’s perfect world of Paradise.