Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
a beautiful question.
& brother psyah gave such a nice answer.
maybe the soul has to be so concrete that it does not matter whether it is in a physical form or not with the attributes we know of, such as shape, height, size & weight.
it must be substantive in well, spiritual units.
best,
Dushwari
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
a beautiful question. & brother psyah gave such a nice answer. maybe the soul has to be so concrete that it does not matter whether it is in a physical form or not with the attributes we know of, such as shape, height, size & weight. it must be substantive in well, spiritual units.
best, Dushwari
Peace Sister
I totally agree. Because two things co-exist it does not mean they inter-exist.
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
Peace bro ravage
In Arabic there are two words which essentially are translated into soul. They are nufs and ruh. The nufs is the lifesource whereas the ruh is the living essence, the entity. The nufs therefore becomes the intermediary between what the ruh gains from life and what the body gains from knowledge. Therefore if the body is physical, the ruh is of spiritual nature then the element that bridges the two is metaphysical. The nufs. The instinctual on one side of the spectrum to inspirational on the other side are perhaps the closest we can interact with the fitrah which is a benchmark of conduct imprinted on the layer of interpretation between the nufs and the ruh. The intelligent processes become increasingly distant from the natural way - fitrah, because they are then subject to our freedom of choice, whereas instinct and inspiration are not.
Death is what nufs experiences
So if I understand you correctly, "ruh" is entirely in the spiritual domain, and "nufs" is the intermediary between them? What is the connection of the brain with the nufs, is the nufs effectively specific centers of the brain? After all, the nufs loses all capacity to act as intermediary between the ruh and whatever actions it wants to take, if specific parts of the brain are damaged.
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I will explain later, but if I copy every action that I see you do, does it mean you are making me do those actions?
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No, but I dont see what that suggests. Copying someone is a very mundane action. There is a cycle beginning from perception, cognition to decision making and action involved, all involving different parts of the body/brain. That in itself does not suggest a non-corporeal source of action.
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Again I stress in English we use the word soul too freely. There are different aspects of 'soul' that are clearly differentiated in Arabic. In Surah 3 verse 185 we are alerted to the idea 'The life of this world is only an enjoyment of deception'.
And ...
"Know you all, that the life of this world is but play and amusement, pomp and mutual boasting and multiplying, in rivalry among yourselves, riches and children. Here is a similitude: How rain and the growth which it brings forth, delight the hearts of the tillers; soon it withers; you will see it grow yellow; then it becomes dry and crumbles away. But in the Hereafter is a Penalty severe for the devotees of wrong, and Forgiveness from Allah and His Good Pleasure for the devotees of Allah. And what is the life of this world, but goods and chattels of deception? (Quran 57: 20)"
The world of cause and effect is a deception. In reality all effects are caused by Allah (SWT) because He is the Sustainer. Similarly if we say that the brain contains features that relate to the spiritual aspect of our being, or that if blood flows when the soul enters the body. It does not mean that blood flow has mandated the soul to arrive nor that the souls arrival mandates the blood to flow or assume soul and blood flow are inherent to the same definition. It is like saying the knife cuts the bread, but in reality Allah (SWT) cuts, we merely cannot differentiate from that deceptive state. This issue becomes more important at the soul level, because trying to look for a soul in the body would be trying to look for a bark in a dog. We know that a bark can come out of dogs, logic tells us that it must therefore have come from inside it, what comes out must have first been within. However, opening a dog up will never find us those barks and the soul shares a similar definition. Our bodies are also part of us. This needs to be understood too.
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You extrapolate far too much from the Quranic verse. Whereas a deception could mean how people are deluded into thinking this world is all there is, or placing stock in a transient existence instead of thinking about the permanent one.
There is no basis for saying that cause and effect isnt real. Allah doesnt need cause and effect to be fake for Him to be the Sustainer, He is the Creator of cause and effect. Even if the knife is cutting the bread, the laws which enable a knife to cut bread were laid down and sustained by Allah. As for bark coming out of dogs, I can mimic the mechanism whereby the bark comes out, and make a machine that barks. If you say the soul is like the bark of the dog, you are saying the soul is a product of physical processes. The bark would not exist had the dog not opened its mouth!
It is an anti-scientific position to suggest that nothing is real. That if we werent looking the world wouldnt exist (who is the deception for in the depths of the universe where Man will never reach?). Furthermore it is a strawman, if cause and effect is a deception and Allah is motivating behind everything, that does not invalidate what we can learn about the "deception" that Allah has created for us to live in, understand, and manipulate. Therefore, it still begs the question, how in this deception, are souls engendered? What is it about hitting your head a certain way that damages your naf's capacity to make good moral decisions?
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
So if I understand you correctly, "ruh" is entirely in the spiritual domain, and "nufs" is the intermediary between them? What is the connection of the brain with the nufs, is the nufs effectively specific centers of the brain? After all, the nufs loses all capacity to act as intermediary between the ruh and whatever actions it wants to take, if specific parts of the brain are damaged.
No, but I dont see what that suggests. Copying someone is a very mundane action. There is a cycle beginning from perception, cognition to decision making and action involved, all involving different parts of the body/brain. That in itself does not suggest a non-corporeal source of action.
You extrapolate far too much from the Quranic verse. Whereas a deception could mean how people are deluded into thinking this world is all there is, or placing stock in a transient existence instead of thinking about the permanent one.
There is no basis for saying that cause and effect isnt real. Allah doesnt need cause and effect to be fake for Him to be the Sustainer, He is the Creator of cause and effect. Even if the knife is cutting the bread, the laws which enable a knife to cut bread were laid down and sustained by Allah. As for bark coming out of dogs, I can mimic the mechanism whereby the bark comes out, and make a machine that barks. If you say the soul is like the bark of the dog, you are saying the soul is a product of physical processes. The bark would not exist had the dog not opened its mouth!
It is an anti-scientific position to suggest that nothing is real. That if we werent looking the world wouldnt exist (who is the deception for in the depths of the universe where Man will never reach?). Furthermore it is a strawman, if cause and effect is a deception and Allah is motivating behind everything, that does not invalidate what we can learn about the "deception" that Allah has created for us to live in, understand, and manipulate. Therefore, it still begs the question, how in this deception, are souls engendered? What is it about hitting your head a certain way that damages your naf's capacity to make good moral decisions?
Peace bro ravage
The nufs itself cannot be given a physical meaning, but we know it reacts to the environment and our environment reacts to our actions. The deception is the thought that these things are directly caused by us rather than the process of making the decision then Allah (SWT) gives permission for that decision to become manifest. These are not my words either, this is the way I have read and heard students of knowledge explain the matter of such things to me.
About being anti-scientific ... I sort of have to agree. Science cannot explain what we cannot measure, but it would be wrong to assume that science cannot determine a path towards what we are trying to ascertain. For me the blood flowing is a sign that the spirit has entered the body
of the foetus, but at the same time it does not mean to me that the soul can be found by scientific methods. The measurable aspect is when the blood begins to flow, the conceptual aspect is the hadith that states the ruh is blown in at a given stage of development, the rest has to be reliant on belief that the soul has entered. So yes, science according to my understanding cannot explain everything, but with our other devices of perception we can obtain guidance/awareness/knowledge regarding a matter.
You see science and western thought tells us that consciousness originates in the brain, but religion tells us that consciousness originates in the heart. The jugular vein for instance connects the brain to the heart. Damage of either brain or heart is lethal, though recovery from heart damage in today's climate is easier than brain damage. Science cannot therefore elimiate the idea proposed by religion regarding consciousness from the heart, but at the same time religion does have a position for the mind where it connects it to the faculty of reason.
The nufs has three aspects:
Appetitive, Emotional and Reason
All three of these are found to have characteristic neural patterns in the brain when a person exhibits them, but appetitive nufs seems to penetrate the whole body, emotional seems to focus around the heart and reason in the mind. Perhaps the feeling comes first and the mind acknowledges the feeling, or perhaps the mind creates the feeling. Can science answer this question? I don't know.
The analogy of the bark was not supposed to be 100% transferrable, but I guess you understand what I mean.
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
Walekum assalam bro pysah
True, nothing happens without Allah’s permission. But that is not a denial of cause and effect, after all these laws exist with Allah’s will, thereby anytime they come into play that is an exercise of Allah’s will/permission.
To come back to my original question then, what is the connection of nufs with consciousness/brain development? Is the nufs effectively the same (qualitatively) as the brain/consciousness?
Where does religion say that consciousness emerges from the heart?
But it is possible for people to live with artificial hearts and be fully conscious (upto a year)
I dont agree that emotional focuses around the heart, that is a romantic idea but emotional cores of the brain are in the amygdala and the limbic system. Infact if certain parts of the brain are damaged one loses the capacity to feel emotions, whereas heart attack patients usually dont suffer any emotional impairment.
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
hmm..are we the soul?...or the body? :S
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
if the soul has a disembodied existence, then it is some kind of physical entity and becomes a valid subject of scientific inquiry.
Re: Does the soul have a physical meaning in Islam?
Peace bro ravage
It is true that many things observable by science are cause and effect, but those things not observable can still be simultaneous functions such as the mind/soul pair. The mind drives the body but the soul could work not as the cause of the mind, but rather parallel to it.
The connection between the nufs and the brain may be an assumption that we are trying to find too much. We may be able to find the triggers of the nufs, and vice-versa but that it not to say we will find the nufs. Now if certain parts of the brain become impaired the behaviour of the bodily functions will not be present. It does not mean that the soul is not experiencing those things. We cannot say, because in order to say we will need to access the soul itself.
Narrated Hudhaifa:
Allah’s Apostle said to us, “Honesty descended from the Heavens and settled in the roots of the hearts of men (faithful believers), and then the Quran was revealed and the people read the Quran, (and learnt it from it) and also learnt it from the Sunna.” Both Quran and Sunna strengthened their (the faithful believers’) honesty.
Consciousness emerging from the heart can be related to references for Iman or belief. There are cognitive areas for belief also, but it is not to say that what we are told by Islamic references are in any way just romantic.
Some people have discussed the disparity in consciousness from cognitive modes. Please read up on a-consciousness and p-consciousness.
You see medicine cannot fathom the meaning of ‘in the heart’ because it will try to look for things in the ventricles and cardical tissue. This is not the reality of the situation we are trying to portray with a philosophical view of the world. Some things need to be experienced to be accepted, some things can be introspectively determined only, and others using science.