Time & Consciousness In the Quran (Part 2): Concepts of Experience

The Ear (اذن)

Now the concept of experience in the Quran is not different from the above examples. This will show as we delve into specific concepts such as verse 11 of chapter 18 provide, the account of the young men of the cave.

“Then we sealed their ears in the cave for a number of years,” verse 11 tells us.

فَضَرَبْنَا عَلَىٰٓ ءَاذَانِهِمْ فِى ٱلْكَهْفِ سِنِينَ عَدَدًۭا ١١

Now the word ‘ears’, is translated from the Arabic ‘اذن’, which is indeed used on multiple occasions to mean ‘ears’ or 'ear' but there’s more to it that is quite relevant for our task of showing how the Quran masterfully captures the concept of experience; the word ‘Uthun’ (اذن) ears, we find it used in other occasions to mean ‘permission’ (باذن الله’) or as in verse 279 of chapter 2, where god says in regards to the prohibition of usury, that should it continue to be practiced (after the warning had been issued) that the people should:

“take notice of a war by God and his Messenger”.

فَإِن لَّمْ تَفْعَلُوا۟ فَأْذَنُوا۟ بِحَرْبٍۢ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ ۖ وَإِن تُبْتُمْ فَلَكُمْ رُءُوسُ أَمْوَٰلِكُمْ لَا تَظْلِمُونَ وَلَا تُظْلَمُونَ ٢٧٩

Or in the oft-repeated phrase ‘باذن الله’ (‘with the permission of the Lord’). It’s also used as a call for prayer. How can a single word have all these different meanings?. There must be a relation, however preposterous it may sound, between the bodily organ ‘ear’, and the notion of ‘permission’ and call for prayer’; in order to understand this, the term can no more be exclusive to the sphere of biology as with the ear, than to the mental, but the word must be general enough as to apply, with equal validity, in both spheres. 

If we examine the ear’s function, we find something to it of ‘permissiveness’, namely, we don’t control what the ear picks up, it picks up any and all sounds of any pitch which it is designed to pick up, inasmuch as eyes perceive anything that falls within sight. But unlike sight, significantly less volition is allotted to the ears, we cannot choose the pitch which we want our ears to pick up, and which to ignore like we can control what to look at and what not to. The degree of control assigned to the ear is virtually nil. It’s from this place, this consenting organ that flows the metaphorical import of the ear, that allows it to be meaningful in all those other contexts.

The more specific (context-specific) sense of the term is rationalized by a more general sense! this analytical function is what allows us to escape the problem of literalism without falling into concordism.

As a physical organ vs As a metaphysical (mental) organ

There's a 'scheme' which springs from the physical ear as its 'logical foci' (centre), 'outward'-i.e beyond the physical sphere, to the 'metaphysical', where the basic, organic function of 'sonic reception' spills into more complex contexts and is thereby transformed, yet maintaining that original, generic rule or 'reception' or receptivity. The difference between the organic (physical) and 'metaphysical' spheres of the function is that in the latter 'Ear' acquires 'modality'--i.e, becomes an object of literary conceit or metaphorical extension, for example, the use of 'Tree' as a running theme in a story, or a sentence,

"Although the roots of our relation are shallow, the fruits it bore had been abundant"

We see that 'Tree' here, when used metaphorically, has as much import and significance as the actual physical tree, in fact, there are processes or ideas that are communicable only by means of the properties of the tree, like genealogical relations.

The 'conceitful' / 'metaphorical' extensity of 'Ear'

Thus in the context of war, as in verse 279, ‘‘فأذنوا بحرب’ ‘take note of a war’, when understood in this new sense (the above definition of ear), removes the 'notice' attached to it, now expressing one's utter susceptibility and defencelessness in the face of a sudden war effort. It’s not that their action, their transgression, their defiance of God’s decree, would have ‘permitted’ a war to be waged upon them, it’s that their action is specifically a war act (casus belli) that must be responded to in kind, that's no different than an ambush, or a preemptive strike. Usury 'Reba' (ربى) we're told in this context, had been martialed, which means that there's no ambiguity as to the kind of response which any instance of usury would provoke, much like how water if poured into an oval-shaped container, takes that form, Uthun as a literary device, makes the container and substance formally subject to each other's conditions.

In the other context ‘with the permission of God’ (باذن الله), concedes that the action had already merited God’s approval, that the action already aligns with and is therefore corroborated by God. In verse 119 of chapter 5, it’s used in association with the word ‘al an’m’, meaning ‘benefits’ or ‘goods’, in a context in which the devil promises to ‘block’ or ‘prevent’ them. Meaning that, to the extent that the 'Good' is a formal condition, or 'prorogative', he aims to preclude it, to make it an exception, to 'nullify' it as a possibility. In the context of the call to prayer, the relation is more direct, here consent is being drawn, or the permissive’ state is being exploited to communicate a message, thus when someone yells a phrase in the middle of a quiet room full of people, they’re taking advantage of the fact that they will be heard, that everyone there is already susceptible or sensitive to the noise, Athun, treats this condition of susceptibility, of sensitivity to something not as a ‘null’ state, but as a condition, as an active state, because, here one thing can only effect another, if the other is formally subject or open to the effect, thus the condition is inapplicable if everyone in the room had been deaf.  Take, as an approximate example, this passage by Samuel Alexander

The immanent causality of an organism is sustained by the environment. Nervous action is affected immanently by nutrition,  but nutrition is an effect of external substances, and nervous action contains essentially motor response to the surroundings 

S. Alexander Time, Space and Diety, p283-4

Observe how your body reacts to a ball being thrown at you in a game. You'll find that your response of catching the ball is but a series of adjustments to the motion of the ball. Your body responds dynamically to the ball's trajectory, and according as the ball's motion is affected by the wind so it's harder to predict, or steady, fast or slow, each instance, being uniquely different from the other elicits the response appropriate to it. This is an extension to the Hiedaggarian 'Readiness-at-hand', which is a mode included under 'equipment'.

There, in our minds, we find habits which are dispositions of response to situations of a certain kind. On each occasion the response, let it be an act of will like telling the truth when we are asked a question, or the simpler instinctive response to a perception like holding our hands to catch a ball which is thrown to us. On each occasion, the response is particular or rather individual, but it obeys a plan or uniform method. It varies on each occasion by modifications particular to that instance [the ball]. It may be swift or slow, eager or reluctant, slight or intense; the hands move to one side or another with nicely adapted changes of direction according to the motion of the ball.

S. Alexander Time, Space and Diety, p211

The mode of experience involved here approximates that which the concept of ‘uthun’ carries, our almost ‘formal’ adaptability to certain stimuli, that the color red should turn orange when mixed with yellow, or that an ice cube should melt under a certain temperature, are great examples of it. You’ll note here that Authun applies no longer just to the ears and sound, though it’s where it has its proper seat, but to anything which shares to anything else the same relation which the ears share with sounds. But add to this a very important detail; ‘Uthun’ applies to things as perfectly adapted to certain effects and changes, but only if this adaptation leads to change and actual effects. Thus mere adaptability is not enough, rather, we say that being adapted, an object must permit to be effected. In other words, add to the formal adaptability or possibility of change, the temporal act of change, as it’s here where the relation is consummated and can be summed up as such.

The purpose of the example of the ball is to show the relation between experience as it is and adaptability thereto, that we’re adapted to things to the extent that they are able to affect us, that things can only effect other things if they are effective, and be affected if they are already liable to, like my response to the ball by clutching my hands, by adjusting my body in a certain way; these physiological modifications are so natural, so automatic that we need a word stronger than ‘adaptation’, than ‘modification’, than adjustment, to give justice to it, as in all these terms the sense of the ‘volition’ and ‘direct control’ and mastery contained in them betray, if even a little, that sense of tact, fluency, symbiosis, which can we ascribe to how we react to things. 

Everywhere in nature dominates this mode of experience, we pompously call an idea false, ridiculous, or outrageous, but take for granted the process of how so complex an idea was even framed in our mind. That we were exposed to the falsehood or outrage in the first place connotes the fact of our adaptability to them. What we dispute over is the implications which said idea has (not its self-evidence), yet, that the idea occurred to us in the first place, that my mind is so designed as to automatically, sense, analyze, and compose a mental object, and present it to me in the form of a simple, seemingly accidental impression is somehow of no interest though that’s the part that makes all the difference!.

Zur زُرْتُمُ ,ٱلزُّورِ (Simulacrum)

Another word that demonstrates the notion of pure experience is the Arabic word for ‘visit’ which we find used in multiple contexts; Grave visiting, in verse 2 of chapter 102, where it’s said how reproduction and increase in number gave rise to the custom of grave visiting, 

Abundance distracts you. أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ ١

Until you visit the graveyards. حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَ

In another context, it's used to mean falsehood or lies, as in verse 30 of chapter 22, and lastly, in chapter 18, with the cave-goers, and the relation between them and the outside world.

So shun the impurity of idolatry, and shun words of falsehood.

٣٠ فَٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ ٱلرِّجْسَ مِنَ ٱلْأَوْثَـٰنِ وَٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ قَوْلَ ٱلزُّورِ

Again, we must ask, how can this word have all these different meanings though it’s one and the same word?. How can 'to visit' mean 'falsehood' in another context? something's not right...

The solution, as shown above with the concept of 'Ear', is to take a 'higher' or 'more general' standpoint, a version of 'Zur' that's general enough as to apply, non-contradictorily, in all contexts regardless of their 'complexity'.

The answer to this is, as we said, is by seeing what these three contexts have in common. In visiting the grave, as in the utterance of falsehood and the cave goers, a unique mode of experience appears to unify them, a mode which can be summed up in the word ‘simulacrum’, e,g in grave visiting, you don’t meet the deceased, that is, we don’t have direct access to the body, therefore, it's not a proper meeting.

It might at first seem safer to take 'Zur' in the original sense of 'visiting', that way it doesn't matter if the meeting is face to face or not, i.e whether we're visiting someone's grave or just visiting someone, but that does not explain why the word occurs in the context of falsehood. Thus, general though the term 'visiting' is as applies in contexts involving meeting, it's not general enough to apply in contexts that do not involve 'meeting', as in verse 30 of chapter 22.

Let's turn for a moment to verse 17 of chapter 18,

And you would have seen the sun, as it rose, inclining away from their cave to the right, and as it set, declining away from them to the left,

۞ وَتَرَى ٱلشَّمْسَ إِذَا طَلَعَت تَّزَٰوَرُ عَن كَهْفِهِمْ ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ وَإِذَا غَرَبَت تَّقْرِضُهُمْ ذَاتَ ٱلشِّمَالِ وَهُمْ فِى فَجْوَةٍۢ مِّنْهُ ۚ

Two problems arise here; firstly the term تَّزَٰوَرُ here is not referring to the sun, but rather, to people who'd either bypassed or entered the cave at some point. تَّزَٰوَرُ is the verb-action of whomever the epithets 'ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ' and ' ذَاتَ ٱلشِّمَالِ' are describing, this construction form is familiar to us from chapter 89 verse 7 (The Fajir) where God describes the city of Iram, the capital of the people of 'aad as ذَاتِ ٱلْعِمَادِ, (translated as 'of the great stature' or 'of the imposing edifice). The second problem is that of the applicability of the term; visitation. ‘Visiting’ is not an accurate term, it makes the act, so described, intentional, or planned. is it the place that one visits or the people who occupy it?, you don't visit the grave, but the person buried in it. The condition of occupancy is therefore provisory, but being that none could have known that the cave-goers had been in there, it mustn't be them who are being 'visited' as this assumes that their whereabouts had been known, add to this the fact that the phenomenon of supposedly being visited was a daily occurrence, from sunrise to sunset, this never ceased to happen.

If they had been occupying the place the whole time, and none knew this, and if Zur or visitation necessitate the condition of occupancy, then the term in that particular context cannot mean 'visitation' in the common sense of the term. We need a term that has that sense of visiting, but more general, specifically, one that does not include intention or foreknowledge of occupancy, or relation to the occupant. This term would be in the neighborhood of 'coincidence', or 'synchronicity'; the concept of synchronicity specifically describes how two things, seemingly or simply unrelated, occupy the same space and time. The form of this relation is 'acausal' (not governed or operating by the laws of cause and effect.), but merely describes the coexistence of two things which have nothing to do with each other. Take the following example,

On your way to work you frequently bypass a certain building which you later find out used to be the house of Charlie Chaplin. Now, if in a conversation, you wish to describe your relation to Charlie Chaplin in that context, you might want to use a term that accurately describes how you had been frequenting bypassing Charlie Chaplin's house without knowing it, a term that accounts for the fact that it's not intentional, not contemporaneous, i.e Chaplin need not be alive, but relates you somehow, someway, to the English actor. This term, in the Quran is Tazawar تَّزَٰوَرُ, or زُرْتُمُ. This new sense of the term is general enough as to apply to each context in which it occurs in the Quran with no contradiction. The dilemma we come upon in verse 17 of chapter 18, can finally be resolved by saying that the young men's cave had been the site of numerous passers-by, yet none of these passers had known that the cave had been occupied, much less by these young, vagabonds.

In the context of chapter 102, of 'visiting the graves', it means that of the sheer increase in human population, it became customary or commonplace to be in or around an area in which someone's buried and not be aware of the fact, like driving by a graveyard and not noticing it, or passing by an area that has what looks like small hills or knoll, and later being told that these are anglo-saxon burial mounds, as I had been my experience at one point.

The same general sense is transferrable to the context of falsehood, which we can say means to 'insinuate' ٱلزُّورِ, being that in insinuation what's intended is not what's being said, or that the implication goes beyond what's being said, and it's usually the implication or connotation that's intended. You might wonder what something as intentional as 'Zur' have to do with something as unintentional as 'synchronicity'. We answer that synchronicity is intentional when applied, and unintentional when not, i.e. my relation with Chaplin although purely coincidental, is no longer so when the connection was made. Thus in Zur, we're conducting the former act, intentionally building a causal connection with an originally acausal relation, or making a link where no link formally existed.

Yameen & Shemal اليمين والشمال

Yameen & Shemal, commonly translate into right and left, however, as with the concepts of ‘visitation’ or ‘ears’, their true (modal) meaning is a far cry from what their translations say. ‘What’s that in your right hand? 'God asks Moses, and once more in his standoff with the magicians when he asked him to cast his staff so that it may turn into a snake. 

وَمَا تِلْكَ بِيَمِينِكَ يَـٰمُوسَىٰ ˹Allah added,˺ “And what is that in your right hand, O Moses?”

(20:17)

In another, very frequent context there occurs the concept of ‘ماملكت ايمانكم, or ‘that which your right hand possesses'.

Switch back to verse 17 of the cave, you’ll find another use of the term. Also, we read that on the day of judgment those who are handed their ‘book’ in their right hand enter paradise. What’s the significance of this ‘right’ hand’?. In analyzing this concept, we must go beyond the sphere of the body, the right hand is to be interpreted as that which:

is capable of indefinite extension. We feel the ground at the end of the stick we carry, not at the finger which holds the stick: the stick has become part of our body. So may anything in contact with our bodies; like our dress, injury, or offense to which we resent as we do offenses to our body. my * body ' may include things not in contact with me, or indeed any of the external objects I am interested in—my room, my books, my friends, and all the things I care about, philosophy or psychology, which are systems of knowledge, the works of Plato, the history of my country. All these things may become extensions of my body and the experiences I get from them may be for a time of a class with my organic and other bodily sensations

S.Alexander Space, Time & Diety p105

Think of phrases like, ‘my company’, my car, those are things which I speak of as possessions, as things belonging to me, though they are not things which I hold or can hold in my hand except metaphorically, yet, I treat them as though they are objects which I hold in my hand. The reason why when tapping the ground with a stick, we feel the stick and not our hand is because, in some sense, we’ve become one with the object. When God asks Moses what he’s holding in his right hand; he’s enquiring into the broader use of the stick, and its equipment, emphasizing the possessive nature of the relation; that the stick, to Moses, is not just a possession, but also something that he commands, a capacity (or power) of some sort.  

Hiedegger uses the term ‘equipment’ to describe this relation; When tools are functioning smoothly in our activities, we don't explicitly notice them; they become an extension of ourselves. The hammer in my grip is not the feeling of my hand, rather, the authority of my hand has flowed into the instrument, and the instrument has accordingly become a part of me. Even the expression ‘hand’ (Yad; يد) in the Quran extends beyond the physical nexus, it’s used synonymously with ‘authority’ or control, which is quite relevant in relation to Yameen. The Quran uses Yad as the nexus of control which when involved in an instrumental relation, evolves into the expression Yameen.

وَقَالَتِ ٱلْيَهُودُ يَدُ ٱللَّهِ مَغْلُولَةٌ ۚ غُلَّتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَلُعِنُوا۟ بِمَا قَالُوا۟ ۘ بَلْ يَدَاهُ مَبْسُوطَتَانِ يُنفِقُ كَيْفَ يَشَآءُ ۚ

Some among the Jews said, “Allah is tight-fisted.”1 May their fists be tied and they be condemned for what they said. Rather, He is open-handed, giving freely as He pleases (5:64)

Certain subscribers to Judaism asserted that God's hands are 'tight-fisted', suggesting thereby, that he's parsimonious. Yad is to be understood here as that by means of which a resource (Yameen) is 'handled', or that which commands it. Thus in relation to possessions (the stick, the company, the car, the possession), but Yad points to that which 'handles' them. God describes David (Dawood) as Thu Aydi (ذو الايد)

وَٱذْكُرْ عَبْدَنَا دَاوُۥدَ ذَا ٱلْأَيْدِ ۖ إِنَّهُۥٓ أَوَّابٌ ١٧

And remember Our servant, David, the man of strength

What's described here are not his 'resources' or 'possessions', which spans his 'armies', 'money', and estates i.e Mulk (ملك) ...but his 'handling' of them, pointing to things like 'competence', 'conscientiousness', 'aptitude', 'power', 'expertise'.

Yameen is the vehicle that links Yad to that by which to perform these aptitudes or qualities, i.e, to be 'powerful' and 'competent' you need a means of demonstrating or applying power and competence. it does not point directly to possessions or resources (as that's Mulk), but to a certain prehensiveness or extensity; of extending oneself into things outside oneself, either outside one's body, or, whatever one happens to be in possession of, as 'possession' is to be treated as an extension of oneself as much as one's body is.

Thus, we see something of a 'logical' connection between the three concepts of Mulk, Yad, and Yameen, that runs:

1. Yad covers and pertains to aptitudes: 'skill', 'power', 'control', and 'command'.

2. Mulk covers and pertains to possessions, what one 'owns',

3. Yameen, is the 'prehensive' activity' which extends from 'Yad' over to things that do not yet constitute one's Mulk, so as to make them so. Or, to the act of 'directing', 'exercising', or 'handling' one's resources and possessions.

As to Shemal (شمال), we’re directed to the opposite of Yameen; here we reverse the rule, the triadic relation does not change, but no extension from Yad' over into 'Mulk' (possession) is taking place. Thus Shemal is the negative condition, or potential--not yet performed--of 'prehension'. This can either have a negative connotation, of 'stagnation', or a positive one ;'potential' or 'prospect'. Thus the condition of Yad is not canceled, rather, the capacities and aptitudes by which the act of prehension or seizure is performed find no occasion for application, thereby remaining in the state of 'potential'.

Thus the devil says, in regards to mankind, that, as the translation goes, he will come from the right and the left. Left here ‘Shama’lahum’, شَمَآئِلِهِمْ ۖ

ثُمَّ لَـَٔاتِيَنَّهُم مِّنۢ بَيْنِ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمِنْ خَلْفِهِمْ وَعَنْ أَيْمَـٰنِهِمْ وَعَن شَمَآئِلِهِمْ ۖ وَلَا تَجِدُ أَكْثَرَهُمْ شَـٰكِرِينَ ١٧

I will approach them from their front, their back, their right, their left, and then You will find most of them ungrateful. (7:17)

Implying here that he will target those areas that pertain to potential or prospects, essentially he aims to 'incapacitate' and disempower, to sever that link which connects Yad to Mulk, and therefore nullifying that function of 'grasping' or 'seizure'.

That the opposite of any term is a negative condition of whatever the positive term is, is an idea whose confirmation we find to apply in all terms of opposition in the Quran, the opposite of a positive term is not the reverse situation, but the possibility to perform or represent the positive. Or As Kant aptly put it,

“The criterion for the possibility of a concept is the definition of it"

Critique Of Pure Reason (B115)

Thus Shemal becomes the definition of of Yameen, and on this basis, all negative concepts become the 'possibility' for their positive equivalents, or let's say, they evince or give reality to them, this is because concepts are here approached teleological, just like nature is teleological, so are the ideal framework that ground the concepts of nature, which in turn span all that which belongs to nature. And being that Humans belong to that overall system, so must human ideas be of an essentially teleological nature.

Thus in the context of 'The cave'

And you would have seen the sun, as it rose, inclining away from their cave to the right, and as it set, declining away from them to the left,

۞ وَتَرَى ٱلشَّمْسَ إِذَا طَلَعَت تَّزَٰوَرُ عَن كَهْفِهِمْ ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ وَإِذَا غَرَبَت تَّقْرِضُهُمْ ذَاتَ ٱلشِّمَالِ وَهُمْ فِى فَجْوَةٍۢ مِّنْهُ ۚ

The epithets  ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ and  ذَاتَ ٱلشِّمَالِ refer to 'functionaries', persons who in the case of ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ are engaged in a project of some sort, be it 'trade', 'military', official duties etc, this is significant if we consider its association with 'sun-rise, as this is the time when such activities are usually being carried out; as God tells us in the following verse

We made the day and night as two signs. So We made the sign of the night devoid of light, and We made the sign of the day ˹perfectly˺ bright, so that you may seek the bounty of your Lord and know the number of years and calculation ˹of time

وَجَعَلْنَا ٱلَّيْلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ ءَايَتَيْنِ ۖ فَمَحَوْنَآ ءَايَةَ ٱلَّيْلِ وَجَعَلْنَآ ءَايَةَ ٱلنَّهَارِ مُبْصِرَةًۭ لِّتَبْتَغُوا۟ فَضْلًۭا مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَلِتَعْلَمُوا۟ عَدَدَ ٱلسِّنِينَ (17:12)

And in the case of ذَاتَ ٱلشِّمَالِ we may understand by it activities which are 'preparatory' or subsequent to those denoted by ذَاتَ ٱلْيَمِينِ..