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The Concept of Man - in light of the Bible and the Qur’an
By S M Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)
The Concept of Man
in light of the Bible and the Qur’an
The Bible says that Man was created in God’s own image and with God’s own Spirit.
The Qur’an and the Hadith (the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)) also says the same thing.
When the first Man (Adam-PBUH) was created, he was allowed to wander around in the Garden of Eden.
As we can see, our Father was given freedom so the he could enjoy whatever enjoyment he chose to have. However, he felt lonely. He was alone. That is why he could not have the opportunity to explore himself. God Saw His loneliness was painful. So He decided to create a companion out of his own flesh and blood.
It is important to note that the arrangement of the Garden (be it a part of the Paradise or a garden on earth) could not give our father any solacing peace. And God saw that Adam needed a companion – a friend – and created Eve from him.
Now the pair – the demand of the nature of Man – was completed. One was split into two. Duality and Unity got merged. Man not only remained on output, a creation, but also became a possibility a potential.
However, they felt each other through the Being of the Lord. In other words, they had existence but their existence did not belong to them. They did not need to think about anything because they could see everything and feel everything within them.
Although the world was external, their feeling of the world was not external. They did not need to think because nothing was hidden from them.
The Man and Woman were allowed to go anywhere in the Garden and eat from any tree. This permission was an honor they enjoyed, just as a guest received honor at the home of a lordly host. As a guest – we said.
However, for reasons not easily explained, there was a tree from which they were forbidden to eat. That means that they were given freedom with limitations. In other words, they were guests, and not owners.
According to the Lord’s Purpose behind the creation of Man, Man’s mind was supposed to be free. It was supposed to have freedom of thought, and possibly of choice.
And they really did use this freedom, not directly by willpower, but by being in the trap of temptation and forgetfulness. They ate from the forbidden tree.
They used their freedom of choice to cross a boundary that defined the freedom. They did what was forbidden. Thus they no longer remained guests. Rather, they became the owners – owners of their own choice – of the consequences of their choice, the predefined ‘freedom’.
They took the responsibility of Freedom. They owned actions together with consequences. Their Union with nature was broken. They became individuals, needing to be physically united to go back to Nature in consciousness.
They became originators of actions and observers of Nature. A subtle wall was raised between them and Nature – the wall of feelings, of experiencing of judgment. And thus they took upon them the burden of learning and knowledge-building.
They were ‘born’ by being torn away from Nature. They woke up in a promising sleep.
They felt asleep in the fate of actions and consequences.
They began to have feelings that flow toward the Future, so that their children could have a Past. They started the Voyage of expectations and actions in the Sea of Time.
Earlier, they did not need any knowledge of God because they were with God – they could see God with their Hearts. But now they needed to learn about God because the physical eyes became limited in value to their perception and their hearts were filled with the necessity of fear, which gave the Brain the responsibility of judgment – judgment of the consequences of actions.
If what you do may go against what you want and need, then you need to think about what you should do and should not do. If you own your actions, you will also have to own the consequences. The burden of ownership was thus at the center of Creation.
Let us have a look at the verses of the Bible again.
A close look at the verses will be rewarding. Adam says to God: I heard your voice in the Garden. I have done something wrong so I am hiding.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” [Genesis]
Why did he say that he heard God’s Voice in the Garden? When, then, did he use to hear His Voice earlier – within his own heart?
And where was he hiding? Could he have possibly hidden from God at all? Was it possible? Why did he consider a distance from some trees or a specific place an act of hiding? What did hiding mean to him?
We may infer that there appeared a cloud in the Sky of Adam’s consciousness. An indirectness of reference started to be the way of reference started to be the way of reference.
God asked him: Where are you? Why? Did God not know where he was? What does ‘where’ mean here? Was he supposed to be at any specific place them?
God’s ‘where’ was a self-reference to Adam. Because he lost his natural ‘state’, he lost his ‘place’ in the Unified Consciousness. Because he lost the ‘here’, the indirectness referred to itself as ‘where’.
A Question was born.
The First Question is the History of Humankind is: Where are you?
Every human being has a place – a state of consciousness which is not separate from the Super-consciousness. But this state is soiled when there arises the local moon of self-consciousness.
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