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Your Questions Answered
According to some schools of thought, God is to be found within ourselves. Hence, they stress the need for meditation on, and supposed discovery of, what they call ‘the Divine/ God/ godliness within us’, instead of the worship of what they consider an ‘external’ God. What is the Islamic position on this claim?
The ‘indwelling God’ is a philosophical concept and not an established fact. If the concept of the indwelling God was factual, then every person should have experienced that God. However, there are only few persons who make this claim. People at large have never had this experience. Everyone knows that thirst and hunger are indwelling realities. So, had God been an indwelling fact, we would have been able to realise God just as we realise thirst and hunger. If only few people claim they have realised God dwells in them, while the larger part of humanity has not experienced this, it means that the concept of indwelling God is not correct.
The notion of a God inherent in human beings (and in everything else) and which one should discover within oneself, rather than outside oneself, is not in accordance with Islam. ‘God within’ is an abstract term, which has no rational or scientific basis. Therefore, such a notion can only lead to formation of vague ideas rather than a clear, rational philosophy. Islam is a reason-based religion. Abstraction is not in the Islamic scheme of things.
Is the notion of an indwelling God—God as dwelling inside human beings, akin to shirk or associationism?
I will not say that the notion of indwelling God is akin to shirk. In my opinion, this concept is an abstract philosophy without rational basis.
God is omnipresent, so does it mean that He is present inside us also?
No. The idea that God exists inside man is not an Islamic concept. The Islamic belief is that God is constantly watching man and is aware of all his actions.
It is said that God created man in His image. The Quran says that God is closer to us than our jugular vein. If someone uses these to claim support for the notion that God resides within us, that He is not just somewhere ‘out there’, that human beings are ‘divine’ etc. (these are claims made, among some others, by many so-called ‘New Age’ ‘spiritualists’), what would your response, from the Islamic standpoint, be?
Deriving the above meaning from this verse of the Quran that you refer to is not right, because this verse means that God is aware of His creation. That God is nearer to us than our jugular vein does not mean that God is within us. The Hadith which says that God has created man in His image means that God has partially bestowed on us some of the attributes that He possesses, attributes which have not been given to animals. The Hadith does not have the meaning that God is inside us.
Some claim that God is just another name for the totality of existence, and that since human beings are part of this totality, they are part of God and are not inseparable from Him and that by ‘finding ourselves’ we find Him. What is the Islamic position on this?
This is a concept that has no scientific basis. It may exist in books but no person has been able to find God by simply looking inside himself.
Is the notion of an impersonal God, which some advocates of meditation posit, compatible with Islam?
There is no concept of impersonal God in Islam. According to Islamic teaching, we should love and fear God. We must know that one day we will be held accountable to Him and that He has the power to punish and reward us. All our blessings are from God. The life-support system and every bounty we enjoy is given to us by him. This realization necessitates the belief in a personal God. If God were impersonal, then all this realisation about him would disappear. God would then become a vague idea, rather than an entity whom we ought to love for all blessings and fear for wrongdoing.
Some advocates of meditation do not agree with the notion of a transcendent creator God of the theistic religions. In place of this understanding of God, they claim that God is immanent in the Creation. In other words, they say, they believe that Reality or God is ‘non-dual’. What is the Islamic position on this? Is this ‘non-dualistic’ understanding of Reality the same as what is posited according to the concept of Wahdat al-Wujud that some Sufis talk about? Is this concept Islamic?
The concept of Wahdat al-Wujud is similar to the notion that reality is non-dualistic. However, this is not in accordance with Islamic teaching, which holds that the Creator and His creation are separate. The Creator is a being with a distinct entity, and everything else has been created by Him.
Wahdat al-Wujud is an un-Islamic concept. It is basically a version of the concept of monism, which is not derived from the Islamic scripture.
Some advocates of meditation claim that through meditation one can attain what they call ‘self-realisation’, which, they claim, is the apex or goal of the spiritual quest. In their understanding, worship of, and prayers to God, are not necessary for ‘self-realisation’. What one needs to do, they say, to attain spiritual advancement is to learn to ‘be in the moment’, including by sitting still and keenly observing one’s breath or thoughts, for instance.
What do you say about this?
This is a supposition. Self-realisation is not possible without tadabbur or contemplation over God and His creation. God has a prime role in one’s realisation. This is because thinking about the fundamental reality begins with the question of who created man. If we eliminate this, we have no starting-point for our thoughts and understanding. The starting point of the art of thinking is to know the Creator. Without this, the process of thinking cannot begin at all.
Enlightenment is related to intellectual awareness. According to my knowledge, simply observing one’s thoughts cannot lead to intellectual development. Intellectual enlightenment is the result of a continuous thought process. And the claim that sitting still and observing one’s breath leads to enlightenment, too, is unscientific, because observing one’s breath is a physical phenomenon and so it cannot lead to spirituality, which is an intellectual attainment.
Is it possible, as some people claim, to come to know oneself (or what they call ‘self-realisation’) and God through one’s own efforts (such as through meditation), without the need for following the guidance of the prophets in the form of Divinely-revealed scripture?
No. Without scriptural guidance, one can only have a vague idea of God. One will not be able to get the details. For example, without scripture, although one may discover that there is a God, one cannot determine His attributes.
