Seminar: Beauty & the Recognition of God (2021-06-04) ​

0:00:11 so
0:00:12 welcome to today's session um
0:00:15 that is being brought to you by sapience
0:00:17 institute
0:00:18 uh today we're going to be talking about
0:00:20 a topic that is very near and dear to
0:00:23 to me and the topic is beauty and the
0:00:25 recognition of god
0:00:27 now as we get started
0:00:31 um we want to talk a little bit about
0:00:34 the world that we live in
0:00:35 and before i get to our first slide here
0:00:39 one of the things that we have to
0:00:40 understand about uh you know when we
0:00:43 talk about topics like beauty
0:00:45 um and what we call more like fitri
0:00:48 topics
0:00:49 is that they present a certain angle
0:00:52 that many times we don't think about
0:00:54 because we live in a world that is
0:00:58 perhaps some would say overly
0:01:01 focused on rationality and so this topic
0:01:04 i think what will happen if you haven't
0:01:06 seen
0:01:06 it in the past that i think you may be
0:01:09 pleasantly surprised
0:01:11 with the information that we're going to
0:01:12 be presenting today inshallah
0:01:15 so with that said let's go and start in
0:01:16 earnest um
0:01:18 i want to start with us with this uh
0:01:20 with this particular
0:01:22 uh tweet that was sent out by rick
0:01:24 enfield
0:01:25 and um he says that we're in a
0:01:28 post-truth world with eroding trust and
0:01:30 accountability
0:01:31 it can't end well now
0:01:34 we have we want to ask the question like
0:01:36 why would
0:01:38 like why would someone like nick enfield
0:01:41 post a tweet we're saying that look
0:01:42 we're living in a world that's
0:01:44 post-truth
0:01:45 um because the reality is when we start
0:01:47 reflecting upon the world that we live
0:01:49 in
0:01:50 uh we see that the the the the
0:01:54 things that are happening around us
0:01:55 whether that's in the political sphere
0:01:57 whether that's in the social sphere
0:01:58 economic sphere
0:02:00 there is a lot of um
0:02:04 upheaval when it comes to the idea of
0:02:06 truth
0:02:07 okay so when we're talking about let's
0:02:10 say
0:02:10 social media you find that across social
0:02:14 media
0:02:15 there is a type of mistrust
0:02:18 and because of that mistrust there are
0:02:21 real world consequences
0:02:23 that come about okay so that mistrust
0:02:26 would do
0:02:27 what has to do with things like not
0:02:29 trusting the government
0:02:31 uh not trusting scientists not
0:02:34 trusting religious leaders and so on and
0:02:37 so forth
0:02:38 so what rick enfield here is
0:02:40 highlighting is that we live in a
0:02:41 post-truth world with eroding trust and
0:02:44 accountability
0:02:45 it can't end well because if we continue
0:02:48 down this path
0:02:50 and he's thinking about this in terms of
0:02:51 like a a global community
0:02:54 if we go down this path and there's no
0:02:56 trust in
0:02:57 anything it's going to be very
0:02:59 problematic and we saw some of the
0:03:02 the ramifications of that mistrust at
0:03:04 least locally here in the u.s
0:03:06 when the capital was stormed and you
0:03:09 found
0:03:10 found that people were storming the
0:03:11 capital because they mistrusted
0:03:14 the electoral system here in the u.s now
0:03:17 that's a real word consequence
0:03:18 to some to a form of mistrust now
0:03:25 so when we think about this
0:03:29 what we find is that this mistrust
0:03:32 has proliferated in this day and age
0:03:35 uh substantially more than it ever has
0:03:37 before
0:03:38 okay and that has a lot to do with the
0:03:41 the internet itself
0:03:42 uh there's a very good documentary that
0:03:45 i you know that that that
0:03:46 i saw recently on netflix i think was
0:03:49 called the
0:03:50 the you know uh this the social order
0:03:53 the social paradox or something like
0:03:54 that
0:03:55 and what they highlighted is that when a
0:03:58 person gets online
0:04:00 and and many of us spend a lot of time
0:04:02 online
0:04:03 when a person gets online there are a
0:04:05 team of engineers
0:04:07 that are behind the scenes that are
0:04:10 you know basically working with
0:04:12 algorithms taking in all the data
0:04:14 they've collected
0:04:15 on you as an individual and by way of
0:04:18 that data they are now
0:04:20 you know feeding information to you as a
0:04:23 specific individual in other words they
0:04:24 make
0:04:25 they make a uh what's kind of called an
0:04:27 avatar a a personality type or trait
0:04:30 for you as an individual and then they
0:04:33 and then when you when you let's say
0:04:34 search for something on google
0:04:36 the search isn't the same across the
0:04:39 board rather it's
0:04:40 curated for you individually now you may
0:04:43 think okay well what's wrong with that
0:04:45 well the problem is is that that is
0:04:48 casting the idea of something being
0:04:50 objectively
0:04:51 true it's casting that aside
0:04:55 in the sense that if you were to search
0:04:57 like we have in the slide here
0:04:59 climate change is now based on all the
0:05:01 algorithms and everything and all the
0:05:03 data that's collecting about you
0:05:05 your google search result could come up
0:05:07 as climate change is a hoax uh
0:05:10 climate change is disrupting the planet
0:05:12 or it could come up as climate change is
0:05:14 the greatest threat
0:05:15 climate change is natural all of that
0:05:18 now
0:05:19 who cares like okay so now you've got
0:05:21 all of this information they
0:05:22 have all this information on you is that
0:05:24 for your benefit as an individual
0:05:27 and the answer is no because the end
0:05:29 user
0:05:30 is in fact not you but people that pay
0:05:33 for
0:05:33 the ads that are able to fund
0:05:37 the companies like google and facebook
0:05:39 where they can make money so it's a very
0:05:40 materialistic uh goal at the end
0:05:44 now this goal because it's based
0:05:47 in this type of materialism you are not
0:05:50 the end user
0:05:51 so your idea of let me search for
0:05:54 something that is
0:05:54 true and let's say objectively true um
0:05:58 or that's neutral let's say that you
0:06:00 want to have a search term it's neutral
0:06:02 it just comes up
0:06:03 you know the the search items come up in
0:06:05 in some sort of a neutral way
0:06:06 it doesn't happen why is that well
0:06:09 because an avatar of you is built
0:06:11 and it's constructed based on all the
0:06:13 information and
0:06:15 therefore you and perhaps your neighbor
0:06:17 are getting
0:06:18 two different types of information now
0:06:21 again what we see is that
0:06:24 in that sort of environment you have a
0:06:27 lot of
0:06:28 news that is false and in fact there was
0:06:32 a study done
0:06:33 recently from mit and they concluded
0:06:36 that false news travels six times faster
0:06:38 on twitter than truthful news
0:06:40 and that is phenomenal when you think
0:06:42 about it right uh one of the research
0:06:44 quotes i have here from the study is
0:06:45 that accurate stories rarely reach more
0:06:47 than 1
0:06:48 000 people yet the most prominent false
0:06:51 news items routinely reach between 1 000
0:06:54 and 100 000 people okay so
0:06:57 the world we live in and our sources of
0:07:00 information if we're if we're spending a
0:07:01 lot of time
0:07:02 online there may be a mistrust from the
0:07:05 source that we're getting the
0:07:06 information from
0:07:07 okay and what we find
0:07:10 like i've uh like i've quoted in like
0:07:12 like i have on the slide here
0:07:14 um that you look at people who study
0:07:19 societies civilizations and they see
0:07:22 this as a downward trajectory
0:07:24 because as people start to get
0:07:26 misinformation
0:07:28 and mistrust starts to proliferate
0:07:31 across society
0:07:32 you find a breakdown of society and so
0:07:35 like this article on the atlantic
0:07:37 uh the author yani applebaum he mentions
0:07:39 you know
0:07:40 the title is captivating because this is
0:07:42 how america ends
0:07:44 and in a sense he's saying how does
0:07:45 western civilization end
0:07:47 because of this proliferation of
0:07:49 misinformation
0:07:51 that is causing people to mistrust
0:07:53 various facets
0:07:55 of sources of information right whether
0:07:58 that be
0:07:58 source of information like scientists
0:08:00 and to mistrust the entire scientific
0:08:03 enterprise
0:08:04 whether that has to do with government
0:08:06 and mistrusting
0:08:07 local state national governments or that
0:08:10 has to do with mistrusting
0:08:12 religion and religious leaders so across
0:08:15 the board if there is a
0:08:16 culture of mistrust then it becomes very
0:08:20 difficult for society to bind together
0:08:22 and you find that this this is something
0:08:24 that um
0:08:25 you know authors like journalists like
0:08:28 yoni applebaum
0:08:29 are mentioning that this is something
0:08:31 that can cause to a breakdown of society
0:08:33 at its core
0:08:35 now you might be asking why have i
0:08:37 started with
0:08:38 you know a topic on beauty why have i
0:08:40 started with
0:08:41 all of this uh all of these concepts of
0:08:44 mistrust
0:08:45 because the thing is when people when
0:08:48 people think about
0:08:49 the information that they're getting
0:08:52 people
0:08:52 assume that they are able to take in
0:08:55 information in a completely
0:08:57 unbiased way generally right and more or
0:09:00 less that may be true
0:09:02 but the assumption and we've seen this
0:09:05 with
0:09:05 the information that's available online
0:09:07 and how online
0:09:09 uh activity and our engagement online
0:09:13 can actually have an influence on how we
0:09:14 think and and the opinions we form
0:09:17 we see that that idea of us forming
0:09:19 rational conclusions
0:09:21 to reach truth is impeded
0:09:25 okay and so based on you know just
0:09:29 what we've presented so far we find that
0:09:31 when someone wants to find the truth
0:09:33 about something
0:09:34 a simple google search won't lead to the
0:09:37 truth directly because there are a
0:09:39 number of factors
0:09:40 that one needs to consider you know the
0:09:42 background of the engineers what is the
0:09:44 what is the uh what is the motivation of
0:09:47 of of the search engine you're using
0:09:49 what is the motivation of facebook
0:09:50 when you're just you know uh perusing
0:09:52 through and looking for friends that you
0:09:54 haven't spoken to in a while
0:09:55 like what are the motivations behind all
0:09:58 of these you know all of these
0:10:00 um uh social media you know things that
0:10:03 we're engaged with
0:10:04 so if the idea is is that our
0:10:07 information can be tainted and us
0:10:11 in in order for us to reach truth it
0:10:14 cannot be
0:10:15 just a rational endeavor meaning we
0:10:18 can't just
0:10:18 trust our own you know cognitive sense
0:10:21 to reach truth
0:10:23 a hundred percent of the time and i
0:10:24 don't think anyone even
0:10:26 expects that so with this
0:10:29 um you can say this depreciation of the
0:10:33 ability to
0:10:34 to gain information and see truth as
0:10:37 truth one of the
0:10:40 things that we understand at least from
0:10:42 the islamic framework
0:10:43 is that the paths to truth are not
0:10:47 just rational now notice that it said
0:10:50 not
0:10:50 just rational i'm not saying that we're
0:10:52 discounting rationality altogether
0:10:54 but i'm saying that there are paths to
0:10:56 truth
0:10:57 when if we're thinking about truth as
0:10:59 being objective and
0:11:00 and being true if that's the case then
0:11:03 there are paths of truth
0:11:04 that that there are paths of truth that
0:11:07 are not just limited to the rational
0:11:09 mind
0:11:10 right and not just information coming in
0:11:12 and so on and so forth
0:11:14 so one of those paths to truth
0:11:17 and this is what the the central thesis
0:11:19 of this particular session is
0:11:22 is beauty and one's exposure to beauty
0:11:25 so as you'll notice the central thesis
0:11:28 is
0:11:28 the greater your exposure to beauty the
0:11:31 greater your ability to see truth as it
0:11:33 really is in other words when a person
0:11:37 what i'm what this what the thesis is is
0:11:40 is trying to focus on is that when a
0:11:42 person
0:11:43 has exposure to beauty when they're able
0:11:46 to witness beauty
0:11:47 there's a certain phenomenon where a
0:11:49 person is able to
0:11:51 recognize something to be true okay
0:11:54 now why am i stating that this is
0:11:58 like this is the central thesis well why
0:12:01 do i say that that's what we're going to
0:12:02 be discussing as we move forward
0:12:04 the greater your exposure to beauty the
0:12:05 greater your ability to see truth as it
0:12:07 really is
0:12:08 okay let's start with uh
0:12:12 let's start with some basics about
0:12:14 yourself okay so we talked about social
0:12:16 media
0:12:16 the mistrust of the government mistrust
0:12:18 of scientists
0:12:20 and so on and so forth and we may come
0:12:22 back to that
0:12:23 in a second here but let's start with
0:12:25 our very own selves i mean
0:12:26 you can definitely trust yourself right
0:12:28 i mean you have a first person
0:12:30 experience
0:12:31 you study things you get you you have
0:12:34 information that you're
0:12:35 you're taking in and if that's the case
0:12:38 you should be able to make
0:12:40 um rational conclusions based on true
0:12:43 information
0:12:44 that itself is true well let's dig down
0:12:48 a little bit deeper into that
0:12:49 all right so can you trust yourself
0:12:51 there was a um
0:12:52 there was a a a a um
0:12:56 what you would call a a anthropologist i
0:12:59 think by the name of uh friends
0:13:00 uh milo liar and back in the 1800s
0:13:04 and he came up with this famous line
0:13:06 optical illusion
0:13:08 okay now most people when they see
0:13:11 this this this diagram that you see on
0:13:14 on the slide
0:13:15 they they seem to look at the line on
0:13:19 the right the one with the
0:13:21 with the with the two lines going out
0:13:23 like like a y
0:13:24 on the top and the bottom they see that
0:13:26 central line to be longer than the line
0:13:28 on the left the line that has the
0:13:30 the the arrow type shape on both ends
0:13:33 now that's what we see
0:13:36 and the reality is that in fact they're
0:13:38 of equal length
0:13:40 now this optical illusion was quite
0:13:42 popular
0:13:43 starting from the time when frank's
0:13:45 muller layer
0:13:47 introduced it and this would be
0:13:49 introduced to people they would see and
0:13:50 they say yes
0:13:51 most people and maybe you're looking at
0:13:53 it and saying okay well i don't see it
0:13:54 but
0:13:55 you would be in the minority right most
0:13:57 people when they see these lines
0:13:59 they it's to them it seems like the line
0:14:02 on the right
0:14:03 is longer than the line on the left and
0:14:04 in reality they're actually the same
0:14:06 length
0:14:08 now this kind of this optical illusion
0:14:11 was taken to be something
0:14:13 that was true across the board and
0:14:15 various factors when they were studied
0:14:18 um they were they were attributed to
0:14:20 just a certain type of
0:14:22 uh let's say cognitive misstep
0:14:26 in the brain but what happened was in
0:14:28 the 1960s
0:14:30 the researchers broadened their
0:14:33 experimentation
0:14:34 because what they realized is from the
0:14:36 1800s until
0:14:37 the 1960s all of the people that were
0:14:42 that that these that that were shown
0:14:43 this diagram in terms of
0:14:45 official research were what they call
0:14:49 weird now you might be wondering what do
0:14:52 you mean by
0:14:52 what what do you mean by by by weird
0:14:55 like how does that
0:14:57 what do you mean they're weird so what i
0:14:59 mean by weird is that
0:15:01 cultural psychologists this is a term
0:15:04 that they used
0:15:06 when they're trying to categorize the
0:15:08 group of people that they're researching
0:15:09 okay so cultural psychologists they use
0:15:12 this acronym
0:15:13 weird to mean white um
0:15:16 uh educated industrialized rich and
0:15:20 democratic societies
0:15:21 so all the people that have been exposed
0:15:23 to this this
0:15:24 particular optical illusion were all
0:15:27 weird
0:15:28 based on the acronym so in the 1960s
0:15:31 researchers decided to show this very
0:15:34 optical illusion to people across the
0:15:37 world
0:15:38 and they gathered about 2 000 people and
0:15:41 they they basically
0:15:42 had them look at you know had small
0:15:44 samples from each part of the world
0:15:46 parts from north africa um you know
0:15:48 south asia southeast asia
0:15:50 australia et cetera and what they found
0:15:52 was very fascinating
0:15:54 because what they found in in that 1960
0:15:57 study
0:15:58 was that many many people did not see
0:16:01 the optical illusion at all
0:16:03 and that a lot of that was based on the
0:16:05 geographical area that they were coming
0:16:06 from
0:16:07 so for instance um when they looked at
0:16:10 the small samples from the suku tribes
0:16:12 people in
0:16:13 in northern angola this was a specific
0:16:15 area that they had gotten a sample a
0:16:17 sample of people to look at the optical
0:16:19 illusion
0:16:20 and the bt tribes people from the ivory
0:16:22 coast
0:16:23 no one in that group saw the lines as
0:16:25 being
0:16:26 different or of a different length now
0:16:29 when this was quite surprising to the
0:16:31 researchers because
0:16:33 they started to now wonder why is it the
0:16:35 case that you when when your
0:16:37 your sample group is weird right uh that
0:16:40 they're coming from the west
0:16:41 they're educated industrialized et
0:16:43 cetera
0:16:44 uh that that most by and large people
0:16:47 from
0:16:47 that you know that section of society
0:16:50 that section of of
0:16:52 that that culture sees these lines as
0:16:55 being of different lengths
0:16:56 yet people from those specific tribes
0:17:00 don't see the difference at all and so
0:17:03 one of the
0:17:04 the the theories that was presented was
0:17:06 that
0:17:07 it has to do with our depth
0:17:10 perception based on the architecture
0:17:13 that we find ourselves in
0:17:14 right so when you think about the
0:17:15 western world or those places that have
0:17:17 been
0:17:18 influenced by the western world we find
0:17:20 especially in in in modernity
0:17:23 right when we think about architecture
0:17:25 and many people say that
0:17:27 you know that that that the death of
0:17:29 beauty happened
0:17:30 with modernity specifically in the realm
0:17:34 of architecture
0:17:35 because architecture started to map out
0:17:39 this world view that had to do with with
0:17:42 giving preference to utility
0:17:44 over beauty and so hence when you walk
0:17:47 into
0:17:48 a certain room within the western world
0:17:50 or those countries that have been
0:17:51 influenced by the western world
0:17:53 you find angular uh straight
0:17:57 uh uh structures and you look in the
0:18:00 diagram there you see that those angles
0:18:01 you say wall a
0:18:02 and wall b and and and they have certain
0:18:05 angles
0:18:06 lines are straight walls are straight
0:18:08 and everything is very
0:18:09 straight and because they're straight
0:18:12 you
0:18:12 your mind then gives you a certain type
0:18:14 of depth perception
0:18:16 so even when you see the lines as a
0:18:18 vacuum without
0:18:20 you know seeing them as the corners two
0:18:22 corners of a room and you and you sense
0:18:23 depth perception
0:18:24 you see the lines as being of of a
0:18:27 different length because of that
0:18:29 sort of cognitive bias that you have
0:18:32 being brought up in the western world or
0:18:34 being
0:18:34 brought up in a part of the world that's
0:18:35 influenced by the west yet
0:18:38 when the when when when the small
0:18:41 samples from the from the suku tribes
0:18:43 people and the bd tribes people
0:18:45 when they were presented with this when
0:18:47 they're presented with that optical
0:18:48 illusion
0:18:49 they saw the lines as perfectly the same
0:18:52 length and the theory was was that
0:18:55 because when they
0:18:56 looked at where they were living the
0:18:58 structures that they were living in so
0:19:00 they were living in huts
0:19:01 that were round they hadn't been exposed
0:19:04 to modernity they hadn't been exposed to
0:19:06 these
0:19:07 uh you know angular structures that you
0:19:10 know form part of the modern world
0:19:11 and definitely part of the part of the
0:19:12 western world and because of that
0:19:15 they were not exposed to the same
0:19:17 optical illusion
0:19:18 that someone living in those type of
0:19:19 structures would be exposed to
0:19:22 so the reason i'm mentioning this study
0:19:24 is because
0:19:25 we have to ask ourselves that if it's
0:19:28 true
0:19:29 that we you know that we can take in
0:19:31 information
0:19:32 is it that we can take in information in
0:19:34 a completely unbiased way
0:19:37 when the reality is there are many
0:19:40 cognitive biases that we're exposed to
0:19:42 and of course one may reason that we
0:19:44 know about these lines because of
0:19:46 information from other senses so yes
0:19:49 maybe optically
0:19:51 we have a cognitive bias here but we're
0:19:53 able to do away with that cognitive bias
0:19:56 by way of other senses like measurements
0:19:58 and rulers and
0:19:59 things like that and no doubt that's
0:20:00 true but the reality is you still have
0:20:03 an initial cognitive bias
0:20:05 whereas you know the the the the suku
0:20:09 tribes people and the bd tribes people
0:20:10 don't have the cognitive bias
0:20:12 so you at least we'd have to say when it
0:20:14 comes to the question of can we trust
0:20:16 ourselves we can say it's not a hundred
0:20:19 percent we're not we cannot trust
0:20:20 ourselves a hundred percent of the time
0:20:22 we are going to have cognitive
0:20:25 limitations there are gonna be cognitive
0:20:27 biases
0:20:28 when we take in information and that is
0:20:31 you can say that's exacerbated when the
0:20:34 sheer
0:20:34 you know the sheer quantity of
0:20:36 information is so overbearing
0:20:38 like it is today when by the fact that
0:20:40 we have access to
0:20:42 the internet which gives us such a
0:20:44 quantity of information that
0:20:46 times you know pre-modern people that
0:20:48 lived in in pre-modernity or
0:20:50 pre-modern times were never exposed to
0:20:52 that sheer quantity information
0:20:53 it just means that our cognitive biases
0:20:55 are going to be greater
0:20:57 just by the by the fact that we have
0:20:58 more information okay so we understand
0:21:01 that
0:21:01 from at least to some extent we can't
0:21:04 trust ourselves
0:21:06 what about the idea that okay if we have
0:21:09 cognitive biases then perhaps what we
0:21:13 can do is
0:21:14 uh one of the ways to to expand our
0:21:17 cognitive limitations
0:21:19 is by getting information from other
0:21:21 people
0:21:22 other sources right so we may have
0:21:25 certain limitations in our knowledge
0:21:26 let's say in a certain
0:21:27 field a certain field let's say biology
0:21:30 or medicine
0:21:32 now we have a certain limitation and yet
0:21:34 we have the
0:21:35 the reality of getting sick and how do
0:21:39 we extend our cognitive limitation well
0:21:41 we go to a doctor
0:21:42 and we put our trust on that doctor's
0:21:45 knowledge
0:21:47 and so therefore we're in a sense
0:21:49 extending our cognitive limitation
0:21:51 by basically going to the doctor asking
0:21:54 the doctor what's wrong and we trust
0:21:56 their knowledge
0:21:57 and so our cognitive biases or
0:22:00 limitations
0:22:01 you can say we have we're trying to
0:22:04 we're trying to do away with those
0:22:06 by trusting information from other
0:22:08 sources
0:22:09 okay and whether you know and a lot and
0:22:12 this is true
0:22:13 no matter what what what sort of field
0:22:16 that you're in
0:22:17 because we as even
0:22:20 when we think about ourselves as
0:22:22 individuals we rely
0:22:23 on testimonial knowledge we rely on the
0:22:26 say so of others
0:22:27 in order to get information otherwise
0:22:30 you would not
0:22:31 find progress and i say that in in with
0:22:34 inverted commas
0:22:35 you wouldn't find technological and
0:22:37 scientific progress
0:22:38 if we just said we're only going to
0:22:40 trust ourselves
0:22:41 a we'd be we'd be had we would have to
0:22:43 deal with our own cognitive biases
0:22:46 but b we would have a cognitive
0:22:48 limitation with being i only trust
0:22:49 information for myself
0:22:51 and nobody functions like that all of us
0:22:54 take in information from other sources
0:22:57 in order to expand our cognitive
0:22:59 limitations
0:23:00 but now here's the thing if we
0:23:02 understand that we have cognitive biases
0:23:05 the people and the sources that we're
0:23:08 taking information from
0:23:10 they too probably have cognitive biases
0:23:12 so
0:23:13 we find that the issue does not
0:23:15 necessarily get resolved
0:23:17 and perhaps in certain cases may be
0:23:19 exacerbated
0:23:21 all right so let me give an example of
0:23:23 what i mean
0:23:24 can we trust others and the fact that
0:23:26 they would have their own cognitive
0:23:28 biases
0:23:29 so what you see on the screen now is a
0:23:31 map
0:23:32 of the world and typically you know if
0:23:35 you open any sort of book on geography
0:23:37 uh this is the map that we would be
0:23:39 presented to you
0:23:40 so you find you have uh north america
0:23:44 being on the top part of the map you
0:23:46 have south america being on the bottom
0:23:47 part of the map
0:23:48 again you have europe on the top part of
0:23:50 the map and
0:23:51 russia asia china india being north of
0:23:54 the equator or parts of being north of
0:23:56 the equator
0:23:56 and of course africa australia so on and
0:23:58 so forth being south of the equator or
0:24:00 being on the bottom
0:24:01 part of the map now what i'd like us to
0:24:03 do just for a few moments here
0:24:06 is to focus on not the concept of
0:24:09 north and south in terms of global
0:24:12 positioning
0:24:13 but rather a direction in other words up
0:24:16 and down
0:24:17 okay now here's the thing that
0:24:20 when we look at the modern map that we
0:24:23 look at the map today
0:24:25 this map is actually traced back
0:24:28 to the uh to the greek astronomer
0:24:30 ptolemy
0:24:32 and what we find is that ptolemy being
0:24:35 an astronomer
0:24:36 drew the map with europe being on top
0:24:39 he's greek and so
0:24:40 so one of the you know when people who
0:24:43 specialize in cartography or map making
0:24:46 when they analyzed kind of the history
0:24:48 of
0:24:49 where we get the map of today they found
0:24:52 that
0:24:53 they traced it back to ptolemy more or
0:24:55 less
0:24:56 and they reasoned that why is it that
0:24:59 ptolemy placed
0:25:01 europe um on the
0:25:04 top part of the map and placed kind of
0:25:07 everything else at least at that time
0:25:09 you just had europe africa and parts of
0:25:11 asia
0:25:12 and perhaps the middle east that was
0:25:13 kind of the known world at the time
0:25:16 that he placed those on the bottom well
0:25:19 one of the
0:25:20 one of the you know one of the people
0:25:22 that that explored this area one of the
0:25:24 cartographers
0:25:25 you know there's people who make maps
0:25:26 and study you know the construction of
0:25:28 maps
0:25:29 they linked this to the idea
0:25:33 to actually a theological idea right
0:25:35 that over time
0:25:36 well not necessarily just a theological
0:25:38 but a an idea based on power dynamics
0:25:41 right
0:25:42 so if you consider something to be
0:25:45 higher to be better right so that on top
0:25:48 that thing that's on top is going to be
0:25:50 better okay so
0:25:52 from that perspective if you're going to
0:25:54 draw a map and you're going to draw
0:25:56 your place of residence you're going to
0:25:58 draw it on top again we're talking
0:26:00 directional not
0:26:01 geo-positioning here you're going to
0:26:03 draw on your map draw
0:26:05 that particular place your place of
0:26:07 residence to be on top
0:26:09 because the idea is that you are in a
0:26:12 position of superiority
0:26:13 now it it in in fact it also has a
0:26:16 theological link
0:26:18 because for quite some time the
0:26:21 uh the catholic church had this concept
0:26:24 ingrained within their theology that
0:26:27 things that are
0:26:28 good and they give kind of a moral
0:26:30 qualification
0:26:31 to uh to certain things things that are
0:26:35 good in terms of a sense of morality
0:26:37 would be lighter and higher
0:26:40 and ethereal in other words they raise
0:26:42 up and so when they think about things
0:26:44 that are evil and bad
0:26:46 they focus on those things that are in
0:26:48 the core of the earth so
0:26:50 from one perspective the hellfire would
0:26:51 be at the core and the center of the
0:26:53 earth
0:26:54 in fact in uh in one uh in one writing
0:26:58 which actually escapes me right now but
0:26:59 it was part of a study that was done out
0:27:02 of the university of berkeley
0:27:03 um it was the the
0:27:07 historians analyzed uh how
0:27:11 the uh how christians how catholics um
0:27:14 how actually i shouldn't say not
0:27:16 modern-day catholics
0:27:17 but those that come before modernity
0:27:21 part of the catholic church they had
0:27:23 categorized certain vegetables and
0:27:25 certain fruits
0:27:26 on this moral scale so fruits or
0:27:28 vegetables that you dig
0:27:30 out of the ground you take out of the
0:27:31 ground had more of a negative
0:27:34 kind of evil sense to them so things
0:27:37 like potatoes and carrots
0:27:38 whereas things that were found on trees
0:27:40 were considered
0:27:42 of a moral of a better had a
0:27:45 had a higher moral weight in other words
0:27:48 they were
0:27:49 morally better right they were good okay
0:27:52 now
0:27:53 so when it comes to maps perhaps
0:27:56 after ptolemy why this map was
0:27:59 adapted in this particular way and
0:28:02 stayed like this or continued like this
0:28:04 in europe and so on and so forth until
0:28:06 it reaches us today
0:28:07 perhaps could be tied to ptolemy's
0:28:10 actual
0:28:10 residence and further from there could
0:28:13 be tied to
0:28:14 certain elements of christian theology
0:28:16 that being the case
0:28:17 the position isn't something that's
0:28:19 necessarily
0:28:20 um let's say objectively true
0:28:24 okay why do i say that because when you
0:28:26 look at cartographers out of the muslim
0:28:28 world
0:28:29 for example muhammad al-adrisi 12th
0:28:31 century geographer cartographer
0:28:33 you'll notice on the map that's there he
0:28:35 actually drew it
0:28:36 from our modern day perspective upside
0:28:39 down
0:28:40 so what does he do he places
0:28:43 obviously places mecca in the middle and
0:28:46 then he places
0:28:47 uh let's say yemen and parts of africa
0:28:50 and so forth on top
0:28:52 and he places europe right spain and so
0:28:55 forth on the bottom
0:28:56 why does he do this it has to do with
0:28:59 his world view
0:29:00 from his world view those things that
0:29:02 are better
0:29:03 that have more you can say that that
0:29:06 that are superior
0:29:07 obviously mecca being one of them and
0:29:09 you know yemen and so on and so forth
0:29:11 that he puts them
0:29:11 on top now the thing is which
0:29:15 map is correct like if we were to say
0:29:17 okay well i want to know what's the
0:29:18 truth of the matter
0:29:20 which map do i now say that it's truth i
0:29:22 mean obviously we're not saying that
0:29:23 there's a
0:29:24 uh uh you know there's some sort of uh
0:29:27 legal or theological way
0:29:28 to you know picking one or the other but
0:29:31 one does ask the question
0:29:32 which one is based in in truth which
0:29:34 one's based in reality
0:29:36 and the thing is is that we ask the
0:29:39 question
0:29:40 is north always up imagine if you were
0:29:43 to travel to outer space
0:29:46 would you you know see would you see
0:29:50 north as being up or would you see north
0:29:53 as being down
0:29:54 and the reality is because there's no
0:29:56 anchor
0:29:58 in outer space there is no right or
0:30:01 wrong answer to this question
0:30:03 and so like the like i have on the
0:30:06 diagram here
0:30:07 depending on where you are you know you
0:30:09 could be
0:30:10 you know upside down you could be right
0:30:12 side up but then upside down right side
0:30:13 up are all
0:30:14 based on some sort of an anchor a
0:30:16 positional anchor
0:30:18 by which you can say that this is true
0:30:19 and this you know this is right and this
0:30:21 is wrong this is north and this is south
0:30:23 or this is up and this is down but up
0:30:25 and down
0:30:26 are based on a certain position having a
0:30:28 certain anchor
0:30:29 if you're in outer space well there is
0:30:32 no
0:30:33 like there's no specific anchor you know
0:30:35 you don't have
0:30:36 gravity rely upon out there yes maybe
0:30:38 from the moon
0:30:39 in a specific area but even depending on
0:30:41 where you're on the moon so
0:30:42 the picture that you see up there uh
0:30:45 actually it's a bit difficult to see but
0:30:47 in fact it is almost from our from from
0:30:50 from the maps that we're used to
0:30:52 it's actually upside down right okay
0:30:55 so now the idea of can you trust
0:30:58 others we see that it's not just
0:31:01 a matter of can you trust others because
0:31:04 they have some sort of
0:31:06 you know they're they're they're giving
0:31:08 information based on some sort of malice
0:31:10 but they have cognitive limitations
0:31:13 themselves and they have cognitive
0:31:15 biases themselves like those biases that
0:31:17 become manifest whether you're ptolemy
0:31:19 or your muhammad al-adrisi
0:31:21 depending on your background your world
0:31:23 view those biases become manifest
0:31:26 now is one or the other true again that
0:31:29 there's no
0:31:29 right or wrong answer there the point is
0:31:32 is that
0:31:33 when we say can we trust others again
0:31:36 when we are extending our cognitive
0:31:38 limitations
0:31:39 by trusting others we also are subject
0:31:42 to their own cognitive biases so if you
0:31:46 can't trust yourself
0:31:48 a hundred percent your own cognition
0:31:50 your own ability to take in information
0:31:52 and you can't trust others what is a
0:31:54 person supposed to do
0:31:55 especially in this day and age with
0:31:58 the overwhelming you know sheer quantity
0:32:01 of information
0:32:03 and this is where i'll remind us of our
0:32:06 central thesis and that is the greater
0:32:09 your exposure to beauty
0:32:10 the greater your ability to see truth as
0:32:12 it really is
0:32:14 because what we need to understand is
0:32:17 that while
0:32:18 rationality is an amazing tool
0:32:21 but it is not the end all and be all
0:32:24 right
0:32:24 there has to be something else that gets
0:32:26 us to see truth as it really is
0:32:29 and what i'm proposing is that one of
0:32:31 those tools
0:32:32 is a person's exposure to beauty
0:32:35 okay now um
0:32:40 one of the questions we want to ask is
0:32:43 that
0:32:43 is beauty part of our meta language now
0:32:45 what do i mean by this
0:32:47 you see when we look at
0:32:50 um you know the the structure of our
0:32:53 language when we think about
0:32:54 terms that we use within our own you
0:32:57 know conversation
0:32:59 our communicative ability we
0:33:02 find that there are certain um
0:33:05 terms and specifically here we're
0:33:07 talking about ethical terms
0:33:08 that are evaluative in nature and
0:33:11 certain terms that are descriptive in
0:33:12 nature
0:33:13 so in um in in izutsu's book uh
0:33:18 ethical religious concepts in the quran
0:33:20 he actually says that ethical terms
0:33:22 especially we're talking about ethical
0:33:23 terms
0:33:24 terms like you know generosity humility
0:33:26 that they can be either
0:33:28 on a primary level or a secondary level
0:33:31 if those terms are
0:33:32 on a primary level they're primarily
0:33:34 descriptive they're describing something
0:33:37 and if they're on a secondary level
0:33:38 they're evaluative in other words
0:33:41 primary words that are describing a
0:33:44 certain ethic
0:33:46 are reliant upon secondary word they use
0:33:49 that as the basis
0:33:50 so if you think about the concept of
0:33:52 generosity
0:33:54 all right so when you say okay well
0:33:56 generosity
0:33:57 generosity is good so generosity is your
0:34:01 primary descriptive term if you talk
0:34:03 about a person that person is generous
0:34:05 and good is your secondary evaluative
0:34:08 term
0:34:09 evaluative term right the term that's
0:34:11 going to give you an evaluation
0:34:12 what about generosity well it's good
0:34:15 okay
0:34:16 humility again it's a primary term the
0:34:18 secondary term here
0:34:20 is good humility is good
0:34:23 now the question that we want to ask
0:34:26 when it comes to
0:34:27 um you know when it comes to
0:34:30 our language is is the concept of
0:34:34 beauty is that also part of our meta
0:34:37 language
0:34:37 now when i say meta language typically
0:34:39 when you hear the term meta
0:34:41 it has to do with kind of the the
0:34:44 the basis or the anchor for something
0:34:46 right so when you think of like
0:34:48 meta ethics so what is the ethics built
0:34:50 upon what is that thing that's stable
0:34:52 that's built upon what is the anchor
0:34:53 so what is the anchor for language
0:34:55 itself what is the meta language
0:34:57 so if we talk about something like good
0:35:00 and we have these these
0:35:01 three things here that are presented why
0:35:04 do you believe in x
0:35:05 well i believe in x because it's true
0:35:07 true then becomes part of our meta
0:35:09 language it's
0:35:10 secondary in its nature it's evaluative
0:35:13 evaluative
0:35:14 uh why do you want why well because it's
0:35:17 good
0:35:18 okay again we find that the term good is
0:35:21 part of our meta language and there's
0:35:22 not too much you know we don't find too
0:35:25 many people arguing about this
0:35:27 but then when you ask the question why
0:35:29 do you look at z
0:35:31 and you say because it's beautiful is
0:35:34 beautiful
0:35:35 part of our meta language does it fall
0:35:37 in the category of
0:35:39 secondary evaluative terms
0:35:42 or is it descriptive well many people
0:35:46 from you know from from time and
0:35:48 memorial you can say
0:35:49 um actually considered beautiful to be
0:35:52 part of our meta language
0:35:54 part of that evaluation that you would
0:35:56 have um
0:35:58 now where the where the where the
0:36:00 difference comes in or where the
0:36:01 problems may arise
0:36:03 is because someone may say well hold on
0:36:04 a second but isn't beauty
0:36:07 subjective like i could look at a
0:36:09 painting and someone else could look at
0:36:10 a painting and i could think it's
0:36:11 beautiful
0:36:12 and someone else else could think that
0:36:13 it's just it's the ugliest thing they've
0:36:15 ever seen
0:36:16 so if beauty is subjective can we really
0:36:19 say that it would form part of our meta
0:36:22 language
0:36:23 now i'm gonna hang that question in
0:36:25 abeyance this idea of subjective
0:36:27 and objective right like is it is beauty
0:36:30 in the eyes of the beholder
0:36:31 or are there things that are actually
0:36:33 beautiful in in in
0:36:34 in in in in a straight objective way
0:36:37 we're going to hang that question where
0:36:38 we'll turn back to it but it's something
0:36:40 that i'd like us to think about
0:36:42 that many um you know for instance uh
0:36:45 saint thomas of aquinas saint thomas
0:36:47 equanius
0:36:48 he uh attributed the idea
0:36:51 of beauty to be part of our meta
0:36:53 language and that had to do with
0:36:56 his idea that these are attributes of
0:36:58 god
0:36:59 and therefore they are part of our meta
0:37:02 language because they form the
0:37:03 the anchor because god is our anchor
0:37:06 right so
0:37:07 god is true right he's you know and even
0:37:09 from an islamic worldview we say god is
0:37:11 al-haq
0:37:12 he's the truth so that can form part of
0:37:14 our mental language
0:37:15 similarly god is from again the islamic
0:37:19 position
0:37:19 therefore we can use good as a part of
0:37:21 our metal language
0:37:22 from the islamic standpoint god is is is
0:37:26 jameel he's beautiful and he loves
0:37:28 beauty and therefore we can use beauty
0:37:30 as part of our meta language
0:37:32 now that being said we said that that
0:37:34 was
0:37:35 we attribute that to saint thomas
0:37:36 aquinas and
0:37:38 um and hopefully i'm pronouncing that
0:37:40 right i'm not sure but
0:37:42 you know anyway um his name but
0:37:46 there is a similar concept that uh
0:37:49 the scholar jose expounds upon and he
0:37:52 talks about this idea of
0:37:54 matching some of the the attributes and
0:37:57 the qualities
0:37:58 of allah of god right and it's not that
0:38:01 we're trying to
0:38:02 be like god in some sort of absolute
0:38:05 or in terms of the essence of god but
0:38:08 rather
0:38:09 we find that god has certain attributes
0:38:11 and the emulation of those attributes
0:38:13 understanding that we will fall far
0:38:15 short
0:38:16 than their perfection or their or their
0:38:19 or their maximum perfection
0:38:21 uh is a clear understanding but we still
0:38:23 strive for them so
0:38:24 mentions that um
0:38:27 one of the the names of god is he is
0:38:30 he is the the one that that the one
0:38:32 that's all-knowing
0:38:34 and he loves for his creation his slaves
0:38:37 the human beings to possess knowledge
0:38:41 similarly god is al-hakim he is the wise
0:38:44 and he he loves for his servants and his
0:38:46 slaves to have wisdom
0:38:48 he is the one who is and so
0:38:51 he is someone who who loves for his
0:38:54 slaves for loves for his creation the
0:38:57 human beings to
0:38:58 have mercy rahman means the most
0:39:00 merciful
0:39:01 and so on and so forth and similarly
0:39:04 we find that he is al-jamil and so he
0:39:07 loves to see beauty that's manifest upon
0:39:10 the human being
0:39:11 so from that perspective we could say
0:39:15 we could uh you know we could put
0:39:18 forth the idea that beauty could be part
0:39:21 of our meta language
0:39:22 but again we've got that issue
0:39:24 especially when we consider it attached
0:39:26 to
0:39:27 something that transcends a human being
0:39:28 that being god but we still have the
0:39:31 issue of
0:39:32 beauty being subjective versus beauty
0:39:34 being objective which i said i'll touch
0:39:35 upon in a little bit
0:39:37 now um
0:39:40 when we talk about the question of
0:39:43 beauty being part of our meta language
0:39:44 there's another
0:39:46 uh you can say secondary question
0:39:49 or another secondary issue from a from
0:39:52 an islamic theological point of view
0:39:54 and that is is beauty part of our fitrah
0:39:57 now i'm going to digress here just for a
0:39:59 minute just you know in case that you
0:40:01 haven't heard
0:40:02 uh some of the other sapience sessions
0:40:05 on the fitrah or you haven't
0:40:06 read jamie turner's article uh
0:40:10 related regarding the fitra it's a great
0:40:13 article i highly
0:40:14 encourage you to go to the sapiens
0:40:16 institute website and
0:40:17 uh have a read um you will thoroughly
0:40:20 enjoy it
0:40:21 inshallah at least i did so i'm going to
0:40:24 digress here just for a second because i
0:40:26 i think it's important for us to
0:40:28 understand
0:40:29 and for us to kind of take the point
0:40:31 home about beauty
0:40:32 being part of um a our
0:40:35 you know the meta language but even
0:40:37 deeper than that so
0:40:39 as a quick um for us to quickly
0:40:41 understand
0:40:42 and this will have this will have you
0:40:45 know will understand
0:40:46 our cognitive limitations as well when
0:40:49 we understand the idea of
0:40:51 the fitrah so let's start off with
0:40:55 uh rationality as a concept and again
0:40:57 i'm going to try to cover this quickly
0:40:59 if i if i miss something or something
0:41:01 like that there
0:41:02 is plenty of content that we have and
0:41:05 more content that's coming out
0:41:07 uh where we dig very deep into the
0:41:09 concept of the fithra
0:41:10 so let's talk about rationality for a
0:41:12 second
0:41:14 when people think about rationality they
0:41:17 generally divide rationality into two
0:41:19 categories
0:41:20 they say you have certain things that
0:41:21 are rational and certain things that are
0:41:23 irrational
0:41:24 okay so an irrational statement is
0:41:26 something like
0:41:27 i am straightforward rational statement
0:41:30 an irrational statement is something
0:41:32 like
0:41:34 i have seen a square circle
0:41:37 now the first statement is very clear
0:41:39 it's rational makes sense
0:41:40 the second statement you may come to me
0:41:42 and say hold on a second
0:41:44 what do you mean you see the square
0:41:46 circle like square circle doesn't make
0:41:48 any sense
0:41:49 because by definition a square is
0:41:51 something that has four
0:41:52 sides and by definition a circle that is
0:41:54 something that is round and lacks
0:41:57 having sides so you're saying you have
0:41:58 something that has size and doesn't have
0:42:00 size at the same time
0:42:02 well that's not rational at all that's
0:42:04 irrational
0:42:06 what if i was obstinate i said no i
0:42:08 believe in square circles
0:42:10 you may then present to me the i the the
0:42:13 the the specific logical principle to
0:42:16 say no
0:42:18 those things that you're speaking about
0:42:19 are mutually exclusive it goes against
0:42:21 the principle of mutual exclusivity
0:42:24 in other words mutual exclusivity means
0:42:26 you have two
0:42:27 terms that cannot exist at the same time
0:42:30 it cannot be father not fahad at the
0:42:32 same time
0:42:34 what if i come now and say well i don't
0:42:36 believe in that principle
0:42:38 unless you prove to me that principle is
0:42:41 true
0:42:42 now the problem is you can't prove the
0:42:45 principle
0:42:46 you start with the principle and so when
0:42:48 we think about rationality we understand
0:42:52 that rationality as an endeavor
0:42:55 cannot exist unless there are things
0:42:57 that are outside of rationality
0:43:00 that we cannot prove but we must assume
0:43:03 right and they're not
0:43:04 irrational but they lie outside of
0:43:06 rationality in fact we call them
0:43:08 supra-rational and so logical principles
0:43:12 are part of the supra rational so
0:43:15 and when in islamic parlance when we're
0:43:18 up when we're understanding rationality
0:43:20 as this sort of
0:43:21 these three categories of rationality
0:43:24 the super rational
0:43:25 rational and irrational we could say
0:43:26 that the super rational
0:43:28 is what we call the fitra in islamic
0:43:31 parlance
0:43:32 so one we understand that logical
0:43:35 principles
0:43:36 form part of the super rational we
0:43:39 understand
0:43:40 also though that concepts of beauty also
0:43:43 form part of the fitra now what does the
0:43:46 term itself mean
0:43:48 very quickly the term from it from from
0:43:51 from from an arabic point of view or
0:43:54 from let's say the the islamic world
0:43:55 view
0:43:56 the term fitra is that
0:43:59 state in which god has created the human
0:44:02 being
0:44:03 it's that primordial base
0:44:06 state that primordial base state that is
0:44:10 good uh and that is natural
0:44:13 and so therefore the fitrah
0:44:17 is that which god has created the human
0:44:18 being upon so the quran mentions this
0:44:20 very clearly
0:44:24 that god has created the human being
0:44:26 upon now without getting into too many
0:44:28 details about that there's a
0:44:29 there's a lot we can get into but
0:44:32 understanding
0:44:33 that our perception of beauty
0:44:36 would be part of that like from if we're
0:44:39 going to look at
0:44:40 the terminology we're using right now
0:44:41 the super rational or the fitra
0:44:43 why because the you know questions about
0:44:46 beauty are not questions that are
0:44:48 necessarily uh
0:44:50 rational in fact they're not rational if
0:44:52 you were to go out
0:44:53 and you know and to to see a sunset with
0:44:56 your significant other
0:44:58 and you turned your significant other
0:44:59 and say wow that sunset's beautiful
0:45:02 and your significant other turns to you
0:45:04 and says that is the ugliest thing that
0:45:06 i've ever seen
0:45:08 prove to me rationally that that is
0:45:10 beautiful
0:45:11 well there's nowhere you can go much
0:45:13 like there's nowhere you can go
0:45:15 if someone says prove to me the logical
0:45:17 principle
0:45:18 so you've got to have by necessity
0:45:21 certain
0:45:22 uh items that are outside of rationality
0:45:24 that you cannot prove
0:45:26 but you know are true right and you know
0:45:29 we can extend this out
0:45:30 to things like your own existence you
0:45:31 can't prove that uh
0:45:33 you can't prove for instance the
0:45:34 existence of other minds you may be able
0:45:37 to convince yourself of your own the
0:45:38 existence of your mind
0:45:40 by way of your first personal experience
0:45:42 but the existence of other minds
0:45:43 how can you prove that right and so on
0:45:46 and so forth now
0:45:48 um because if you were to ask for proof
0:45:51 for let's say even the principle
0:45:53 or proving everything the problem is the
0:45:56 only place that you would be left to go
0:45:57 to is skepticism
0:45:59 and you'd have because there's no
0:46:01 theorem that is infinitely defendable
0:46:03 you can't say because this because it's
0:46:05 forever um because if you say that it
0:46:08 means you're saying
0:46:09 i doubt everything and if you're saying
0:46:11 you doubt everything
0:46:13 you have to doubt your doubt which
0:46:16 leaves you
0:46:16 intellectually paralyzed you know i
0:46:19 remember
0:46:20 someone had given the example to say
0:46:22 rationality
0:46:23 is an amazing tool but it still
0:46:27 needs something outside of itself to
0:46:29 actually work
0:46:30 it's much like someone who comes to you
0:46:32 and says i have the perfect solvent
0:46:35 so someone that says i can rationally i
0:46:38 can i can use my rationality to prove
0:46:40 anything by way of proof in other words
0:46:42 i can prove it
0:46:43 is like someone who says i have this
0:46:45 solvent this thing that can do
0:46:47 dissolve things and it is the perfect
0:46:50 solvent it will dissolve
0:46:51 anything right i can prove anything it
0:46:54 can this solvent can dissolve anything
0:46:56 well you want to ask that person what
0:46:58 bottle will you keep it in
0:47:00 because even though if you have the
0:47:02 absolute solvent and it may be a great
0:47:03 tool
0:47:04 you still need a bottle to keep it in
0:47:06 that bottle is going to be absolute
0:47:09 solute that which is not soluble that
0:47:12 which is not
0:47:12 solvable right you cannot solve it when
0:47:15 we're talking about rationality that
0:47:16 which is not soluble
0:47:18 anyhow so you always need an absolute
0:47:21 as part of your structure something that
0:47:23 you cannot prove
0:47:25 but you must assume moving forward now
0:47:28 is beauty part of the fitrah and we
0:47:31 would say that
0:47:32 beauty is indeed part of the fitrah
0:47:33 because it is not a
0:47:35 particular concept that you're trying to
0:47:37 prove
0:47:38 and in fact we're going to get in some
0:47:39 more details related to that as well
0:47:42 all right before we get into analyzing
0:47:46 beauty um you know whether it's part of
0:47:48 the fithra and then going back to our
0:47:49 thesis
0:47:50 about beauty and the exposure to beauty
0:47:53 giving us
0:47:54 uh you know access to the truth or being
0:47:56 able allowing us to see truth as it
0:47:58 really is
0:47:59 i found um in a book by roger scrutin
0:48:03 called beauty
0:48:04 a very short introduction he presents
0:48:06 certain platitudes
0:48:08 now notice he doesn't present these as
0:48:10 axioms he doesn't present these as
0:48:12 uh first principles but there's they're
0:48:14 platitudes and so there may be some
0:48:16 opinion related to this
0:48:17 but i think it's a good starting point
0:48:19 so when we are conceptualizing beauty
0:48:21 we're trying to understand beauty
0:48:23 we see that number one one of his
0:48:25 platitudes is that beauty
0:48:27 pleases us when you are
0:48:30 looking at something one of the reasons
0:48:32 why you're looking at it is because it
0:48:34 there's a certain type of pleasure and
0:48:36 we're not talking about a
0:48:38 physical visceral pleasure but this
0:48:40 pleasure is
0:48:41 of a different nature so it's pleasing
0:48:44 but it has a different sort of content
0:48:47 than
0:48:48 something that would be which would
0:48:49 attribute to like a physical pleasure
0:48:51 okay number two one thing can be more
0:48:54 beautiful
0:48:55 than another so you may be able to see
0:48:58 one painting
0:48:59 and compared to another painting and say
0:49:00 okay well this one is more beautiful in
0:49:02 this one so there is this ability to be
0:49:04 able to compare things
0:49:05 and give things a value on the scale of
0:49:08 beauty
0:49:09 number three beauty is always a reason
0:49:11 for attending to the thing that
0:49:13 possesses it
0:49:14 okay when you see something that's
0:49:16 beautiful
0:49:17 your attention is drawn there because of
0:49:19 the beauty because of the content of the
0:49:21 beauty that's there
0:49:22 beauty number four beauty is the subject
0:49:24 matter of a judgment
0:49:26 the judgment of taste okay
0:49:29 so the the idea that that's been
0:49:32 that's being put forth here is that
0:49:35 when you are exposed to something that
0:49:38 is beautiful
0:49:39 there's gonna be a judgment involved is
0:49:41 it beautiful how beautiful is it etc
0:49:43 and that has to do with the concept of
0:49:45 taste you have a certain
0:49:47 aesthetic taste you say i like this or i
0:49:50 don't like that
0:49:51 this gets back to our concept of uh
0:49:54 subjective versus objective right like
0:49:56 is beaut is all
0:49:57 beauty subjective or is there some of
0:49:59 this objective
0:50:00 for that beauty that's subjective we
0:50:02 could say it's a matter of
0:50:04 aesthetic taste or some sort of taste
0:50:06 that a person has much like the judgment
0:50:08 of
0:50:08 food when you have certain types of food
0:50:10 that you eat you may like them
0:50:12 and person number two may not and you
0:50:14 may be able to
0:50:15 categorize food in certain foods that
0:50:17 you like versus certain foods that you
0:50:18 don't like
0:50:19 in terms of that physical phenomena of
0:50:22 taste that
0:50:23 experience of taste by way of
0:50:26 the uh by way of your your the sense
0:50:29 perception of the tongue
0:50:30 okay number five the judgment of taste
0:50:33 is about the beautiful object
0:50:34 not about the subject's state of mind so
0:50:37 when you make a judgment about taste and
0:50:40 here we're talking about taste
0:50:42 being related to beauty um
0:50:45 you're making a judgment about the
0:50:46 object you're not making about
0:50:48 you're not making a judgment based on
0:50:50 the subject state of mind
0:50:52 meaning you're not looking at let's say
0:50:54 the painter's state of mind
0:50:56 right you're looking at what the output
0:50:58 is and number six
0:51:00 nevertheless there are no second hand
0:51:02 judgments of beauty
0:51:04 and this i think is really interesting
0:51:05 because if you've ever had a
0:51:07 conversation with someone
0:51:09 about a particular thing being beautiful
0:51:11 and they disagreed with you
0:51:13 there's no way to win that argument
0:51:16 right and so
0:51:17 there's no second judgments about beauty
0:51:19 because that is for you to make that
0:51:21 almost
0:51:22 direct uh interpretation
0:51:25 okay now one of the things that we need
0:51:29 to understand
0:51:30 is that when we experience beauty it has
0:51:34 a connection to meaning
0:51:36 now remember when we started off i said
0:51:39 that
0:51:40 you know that we talked about cognitive
0:51:42 biases and cognitive limitations
0:51:44 and while rationality is a great tool
0:51:48 um to to to judge whether something is
0:51:51 true or not
0:51:53 it we need other things to be able to
0:51:56 understand the the truth of kind of in
0:51:59 its entirety
0:52:00 okay and so when we think about truth
0:52:03 as uh as an endeavor
0:52:06 we have to understand that the idea of
0:52:08 meaning
0:52:09 is very important to that to this
0:52:12 journey that we're gonna be taking to
0:52:13 find
0:52:13 truth okay and so one of this section
0:52:16 when we talk about conceptualizing
0:52:18 beauty
0:52:18 what i'm trying to do is connect beauty
0:52:21 to meaning
0:52:22 meaning that there is when we think
0:52:25 about beauty and we think about the
0:52:26 phenomenology of beauty
0:52:28 we see that it has a connection to
0:52:30 meaning it points to something
0:52:32 that's deeper than just a sort of um
0:52:35 just a sort of a a a cold
0:52:39 cerebral uh sensation right there has to
0:52:42 be something more
0:52:43 okay and i'm gonna do that by citing a
0:52:45 few examples so
0:52:47 if you see the the picture on on the
0:52:48 screen right now
0:52:50 we see that um you have a dining table
0:52:53 that's set
0:52:55 now there is a difference when you set
0:52:58 up a dining table
0:53:00 for you know for for a certain purpose
0:53:04 or you set up a dining table um
0:53:08 with the purpose of beautifying it uh
0:53:11 you know these are two different
0:53:12 phenomena okay so what i've got up here
0:53:15 is aesthetic versus utilitarian interest
0:53:17 if you are just focused on the utility
0:53:20 in other words you're just setting up
0:53:21 the table so that people can
0:53:23 conveniently eat
0:53:24 you might take out some paper plates put
0:53:26 it in a stack
0:53:27 put on a couple of dishes and so on and
0:53:30 so forth
0:53:30 and people could just directly take the
0:53:32 food and the paper plates and you call
0:53:33 it a day
0:53:36 but yet when someone sets a table
0:53:40 we understand that they are transcending
0:53:42 just the idea of utility
0:53:44 like if you look at the picture here you
0:53:46 see there are a lot of things that you
0:53:48 may consider
0:53:49 from a utilitarian viewpoint superferous
0:53:53 you've got the candles you've got the
0:53:55 the
0:53:56 greenery you've got the glass the napkin
0:53:58 and how it's laid
0:54:00 and so what you experience
0:54:03 is something that's beyond just the
0:54:06 the the practicality of serving food
0:54:10 all right so what does and so why would
0:54:13 you set a table like that
0:54:15 because as a person who's hosting a
0:54:17 dinner you may consider that to
0:54:19 that it's a reflection of you it's a
0:54:22 reflection of your taste
0:54:24 it's a reflection of uh you know how
0:54:26 much you care for the other person
0:54:28 so when you transcend mere utility
0:54:33 you are saying something about yourself
0:54:35 and you're saying something about your
0:54:37 guest and so there's a deeper meaning
0:54:39 to the aesthetic setting of a table
0:54:42 versus just the utility and so we see
0:54:45 that beauty is connected to meaning when
0:54:47 we compare
0:54:48 the aesthetic to you know when we think
0:54:51 of aesthetic interest versus utilitarian
0:54:53 interest
0:54:53 so we see the first connection of beauty
0:54:55 to meaning is that which
0:54:57 says something about the the person
0:55:00 that's let's say in this example setting
0:55:02 the table
0:55:03 and about how much that person cares
0:55:06 about the person they're inviting over
0:55:10 okay let's take a look at art versus
0:55:13 entertainment
0:55:14 now i've been told many times to
0:55:18 keep my comic book references to a
0:55:20 minimum
0:55:21 and so this will be the only slide
0:55:22 related to any sort of reference to
0:55:24 comedy books
0:55:25 or comic book characters superheroes or
0:55:27 anything like that
0:55:28 um beauty is connected to meaning we
0:55:30 said that that's points to something
0:55:31 deeper
0:55:32 and we can see this when we find the
0:55:34 difference between art
0:55:36 and entertainment okay
0:55:39 when we are discussing uh art
0:55:43 uh we're discussing something
0:55:46 that goes beyond just
0:55:49 a a fleeting uh
0:55:53 sensation of being entertained okay and
0:55:55 the example that i have up there
0:55:57 is that i get into a conversation with a
0:55:59 certain
0:56:00 person uh which will go unnamed
0:56:03 uh and we discuss marvel vs dc
0:56:06 okay so if you don't know what i'm
0:56:08 talking about it's okay dc
0:56:10 is a type of comic book they have their
0:56:12 own characters
0:56:13 and marvel is a type of comic they have
0:56:15 their own characters now one of the
0:56:17 things about
0:56:17 marvel characters in marvel movies is
0:56:19 that they are very entertaining
0:56:21 so if i'm going to go and watch a marvel
0:56:24 movie
0:56:24 i'm going you know you know solely for
0:56:28 the entertainment factor that i get the
0:56:30 pleasure of watching you know the action
0:56:32 scenes and things like that
0:56:33 and then i'm done when it comes to dc
0:56:36 characters like batman let's say
0:56:38 there's a whole depth behind the
0:56:41 character there's a backstory his
0:56:43 you know parents were killed and that's
0:56:44 what you know prompted him to become a
0:56:46 superhero and blah blah blah and all
0:56:48 these other things
0:56:49 and and all of that is trying to is is
0:56:51 being captured
0:56:52 in the form of how the how the story is
0:56:56 being told
0:56:57 and within the cinematography the
0:56:58 darkness of the shot and so on and so
0:57:00 forth
0:57:01 and all of that is it is an artistic
0:57:03 expression
0:57:04 that has to do with meaning
0:57:07 because when someone is trying to put
0:57:09 forth a type of artistic expression
0:57:11 again it's saying something about the
0:57:14 artists themselves and saying something
0:57:16 about the output
0:57:17 that when you're engaged with this
0:57:19 particular type of
0:57:21 film or you're engaged with this
0:57:22 particular type of painting or
0:57:24 engage with this particular type of you
0:57:26 know whatever it might be
0:57:28 that you're going to now think about
0:57:31 things on a level that's deeper that's
0:57:34 beyond just the action sequence
0:57:37 right so we find that when it comes to
0:57:39 the company when we compare art versus
0:57:41 entertainment
0:57:42 art entertainment is merely
0:57:45 kind of um kind of uh
0:57:49 kind of touching our our our sensual
0:57:52 buttons for lack of a better phrase
0:57:55 whereas
0:57:55 art is pushing us to think about things
0:57:58 deeper so
0:57:59 certain movies that you watch they're
0:58:01 they're you know the the story is very
0:58:03 deep
0:58:04 the uh you know the the way that the
0:58:07 story is portrayed
0:58:09 on screen every single shot has a
0:58:12 certain meaning
0:58:13 and every single shot the reason why
0:58:15 they take the shot from that particular
0:58:17 angle
0:58:17 means something so because of the
0:58:21 director
0:58:22 or the filmatographer is is is in the
0:58:25 position to say okay well we want this
0:58:26 angle with this lighting and so on and
0:58:28 so forth
0:58:29 to give people a feeling of x
0:58:32 that has to do more with an artistic
0:58:34 expression as opposed
0:58:36 to just merely entertaining people so
0:58:38 when we compare art versus entertainment
0:58:39 we see again
0:58:40 that the focus on beauty is pointing
0:58:43 towards something deeper
0:58:45 and pointing towards something of
0:58:47 meaning of significance
0:58:49 by the way that's not to say that marvel
0:58:51 movies are insignificant all right
0:58:54 all right let's give one more example
0:58:56 and
0:58:57 hopefully to to take the point home
0:58:59 about beauty being connected to meaning
0:59:01 because it points to something deeper
0:59:03 and we're talking and in this slide
0:59:05 we're talking about prose versus poetry
0:59:07 now prose is something that
0:59:10 you're going to read for the sake of
0:59:12 information right i have up there an
0:59:14 organic chemistry
0:59:15 textbook now for those of you who have
0:59:17 studied organic chemistry
0:59:18 or are you know thinking that they might
0:59:20 go to medical school
0:59:22 or whatever it might be whatever purpose
0:59:23 you're studying organic chemistry
0:59:25 i think we can pretty much agree that
0:59:27 when you get a
0:59:28 organic chemistry textbook and you read
0:59:31 through it it's not something you're
0:59:32 gonna
0:59:33 come back to for any other purpose
0:59:36 except to
0:59:37 get the information extract information
0:59:40 and perhaps to just
0:59:41 pass the exam that you have to take to
0:59:43 move forward
0:59:44 so you're really it's just again it's
0:59:47 very cold and cerebral
0:59:49 it's just extract information and move
0:59:50 on you don't return back to it in fact
0:59:53 you know for those you who have gone you
0:59:56 know past your undergraduate level
0:59:57 maybe your doctors whatever it might be
0:59:59 you probably haven't
1:00:00 you'd probably have sold your organic
1:00:02 chemistry textbook i guess maybe i'm
1:00:04 talking back in the days where they had
1:00:05 textbooks nowadays everything is on
1:00:07 you know some sort of a tablet or
1:00:08 something like that but in those days
1:00:11 uh you probably have sold your organic
1:00:12 chemistry textbook why because it's not
1:00:14 something you're going to return
1:00:15 back to there's nothing prompting you to
1:00:18 do that
1:00:18 with the exception of extracting
1:00:20 information once you've done that
1:00:22 you're done poetry is not like that
1:00:25 poetry is something that when you read
1:00:27 it you want to go back to it
1:00:30 because it signifies something very deep
1:00:33 and there's a there's something about
1:00:34 the poem that
1:00:36 you're you go back to it again and again
1:00:38 because it gives you a type of pleasure
1:00:42 that again we were talking about beauty
1:00:44 giving the person a type of pleasure
1:00:46 that isn't this visceral
1:00:50 uh sensual pleasure yet it is a type of
1:00:53 pleasure
1:00:54 so i have a poem up here from emily
1:00:56 dickinson
1:00:57 and i'd like us to really just read it
1:00:59 and reflect upon it because i thought it
1:01:01 was very powerful
1:01:02 so emily dickinson writes she says
1:01:05 hope is the thing with feathers to
1:01:08 really just
1:01:09 ponder upon this hope is the thing with
1:01:11 feathers
1:01:12 that perches in the soul that sings the
1:01:16 tune without words
1:01:18 and never stops at all you know you
1:01:20 think about something like hope
1:01:22 and the concept of hope that she's now
1:01:25 giving it this this this this
1:01:26 this physical this that she's she's
1:01:30 anthropomorphized
1:01:31 hope right she's making she's made into
1:01:33 something physical right which is this
1:01:34 bird
1:01:35 and there's a certain beauty about that
1:01:36 so hope is a thing with feathers
1:01:38 that perches in the soul that sings the
1:01:42 tune without words and
1:01:43 never stops at all the sweetest
1:01:46 in the gale is heard and soar must be
1:01:50 the storm
1:01:52 you know when you think about the
1:01:53 vicissitudes of life and the thing
1:01:55 that's getting you through it's that
1:01:56 hope right
1:01:57 and so and sore must be the storm that
1:02:00 could abash the little bird
1:02:02 that kept so many warm
1:02:06 i've heard it in the chilliest in the
1:02:08 chilliest land
1:02:10 and on the strangest sea yet never
1:02:13 in extremity it asks the crumb of me
1:02:17 so i don't know if you've experienced
1:02:20 that but
1:02:21 i personally found this very profound
1:02:23 something that you would go back and
1:02:24 perhaps read again
1:02:26 just because there was there was
1:02:28 information in a sense that was conveyed
1:02:30 but there was something that transcended
1:02:32 the information there's something that
1:02:33 was more
1:02:34 that was something that was beautiful
1:02:36 about it and it had a deep
1:02:38 meaning related to this concept of hope
1:02:40 right i mean everyone goes through
1:02:42 the vicissitudes of life the ups and
1:02:44 downs and experiences either hope or a
1:02:47 lack of hope
1:02:48 and when you read this it's very
1:02:50 powerful
1:02:51 so when we talk about beauty being
1:02:53 connected to meaning
1:02:55 we're saying that it points to something
1:02:56 deeper and one of the
1:02:58 one of the the sample one of the
1:02:59 examples here is when we compare
1:03:01 pros simple kind of information transfer
1:03:04 or just gaining information
1:03:06 versus poetry all right there's one
1:03:08 other element
1:03:09 related to poetry that i wanted to uh
1:03:12 touch upon that has to do with content
1:03:14 and form
1:03:15 right so when we think about poetry you
1:03:17 have
1:03:18 the poem itself and the structure of the
1:03:21 poem in other words there were certain
1:03:23 words that the author
1:03:24 put together in a very specific
1:03:26 structure
1:03:28 that allow the person to taste or
1:03:31 sense or experience the beauty when that
1:03:35 form is broken or that form is
1:03:38 done away with that element of beauty
1:03:41 can be lost
1:03:42 okay and a lot of times it happens when
1:03:44 we talk about translation
1:03:46 you translate a poem from one language
1:03:48 to the other
1:03:49 there's going to be a certain loss that
1:03:52 that is felt and so
1:03:53 now we come to the concept of content
1:03:56 versus form
1:03:57 there's the actual content of the poem
1:04:00 and then there's the form and where
1:04:02 beauty comes in
1:04:04 is related to the form and the content
1:04:06 and when these two are separated
1:04:08 this becomes problematic because it then
1:04:10 loses the aspect of beauty it could lose
1:04:12 the aspect of beauty
1:04:13 so you have a a poem here from the uh
1:04:17 from the man who was known as the poet
1:04:18 of the east right uh
1:04:21 muhammad in his poem
1:04:27 right or gabriel's wing he says and this
1:04:30 poem is in is in urdu so for those of
1:04:32 you who
1:04:33 who speak urdu or no ordu you may be
1:04:35 able to
1:04:36 to to say i'm not going to read the
1:04:37 whole thing but
1:04:39 the poem starts off
1:04:46 right so if if a if a muslim is a kafir
1:04:50 right if a muslim is a non-muslim then
1:04:52 there is neither kingship
1:04:53 nor poverty now the thing i want us to
1:04:56 note is that
1:04:57 you find that there's a few words in the
1:04:59 first phrase in urdu
1:05:01 which then you need a lot more words in
1:05:03 english to explain
1:05:05 in a sense the particular verse that i
1:05:07 just read
1:05:08 okay but the verse in urdu actually has
1:05:11 a certain type of beauty
1:05:12 a certain cadence a certain rhythm by
1:05:16 the
1:05:16 by the words that the poet put together
1:05:18 in a way that the english doesn't
1:05:20 because the english almost sounds you
1:05:23 know empty
1:05:24 right if a muslim is a kafir then there
1:05:25 is neither king of poverty
1:05:27 but if he is a min then he rules even in
1:05:29 poverty
1:05:30 and if he's a kafir then he relies on
1:05:31 the sword and so on and so forth
1:05:33 and then when you compare that to
1:05:35 movement
1:05:39 uh uh
1:05:43 that that that that that but if he's a
1:05:46 min
1:05:46 then he rules even in poverty he's
1:05:48 equating this person who's a true
1:05:50 believer
1:05:52 that it doesn't you know that even when
1:05:54 he's in a state of poverty
1:05:55 in fact he has this type of kingship he
1:05:57 has this type of royalty
1:05:59 and so on and so forth the point i'm
1:06:01 trying to make here is the idea
1:06:03 of separating content and form and this
1:06:05 happens a lot when we go into
1:06:06 translations
1:06:07 okay now can a poem be contained in a
1:06:11 paraphrase
1:06:12 can you put a poem in
1:06:15 a separate set of words or translate a
1:06:17 poem klenneth brooks
1:06:19 he talks about this idea of the heresy
1:06:21 of paraphrase
1:06:22 which ties in with the with the last
1:06:23 point i was making and he has
1:06:25 a a few points where he says that
1:06:27 there's a certain heresy
1:06:29 there's a certain no-no when it comes to
1:06:31 trying to paraphrase
1:06:32 a poem and here's why number one poetry
1:06:35 can express
1:06:36 several thoughts at the same time
1:06:39 whereas when you try to translate it or
1:06:41 you try to paraphrase it you're not
1:06:43 going to have the same effect
1:06:44 poems can be uh uh polysemius
1:06:48 right meaning is conveyed on several
1:06:50 levels so
1:06:52 when we looked at the poem related to
1:06:53 hope there are a number of
1:06:55 levels that were conveyed as part of the
1:06:57 poem
1:06:58 which when you try to paraphrase it get
1:07:01 lost
1:07:02 meaning is lost in any paraphrase right
1:07:04 to be or not to be
1:07:06 so on and so forth that's the example he
1:07:08 gave so
1:07:09 when you try to paraphrase it or let's
1:07:11 say the extreme form of paraphrasing
1:07:12 would be translating
1:07:14 you're going to have certain meanings
1:07:15 that are lost all right
1:07:17 in meanings meaning specifically here
1:07:20 we're talking about the idea of beauty
1:07:22 pointing towards meaning number four
1:07:25 sound is important
1:07:26 how many times have you heard a poem
1:07:28 that when it's recited
1:07:30 in uh in a certain gathering or it's got
1:07:33 a certain rhyme or a certain structure
1:07:35 or a certain uh a certain cadence that
1:07:38 when it's explained it doesn't
1:07:42 have the same cadence it doesn't have
1:07:44 the same beauty
1:07:45 and so sound is important and so
1:07:48 we find that there are the idea of
1:07:51 trying to paraphrase
1:07:53 a poem becomes problematic because then
1:07:56 in essence you're
1:07:56 you're kind of stripping away the
1:07:58 concept of beauty itself
1:08:00 all right now remember i said we were
1:08:03 going to return back and i know i'm
1:08:04 running out of time here
1:08:06 um but remember i said we're going to
1:08:07 run return back to the idea of
1:08:09 subjective versus
1:08:10 objective okay is
1:08:13 beauty part of the super rational is it
1:08:15 something that's part of our meta
1:08:16 language that when you think about
1:08:18 human work beauty that's created by
1:08:20 human beings whether that be poetry
1:08:22 whether that be a painting
1:08:24 whether that be some sort of photography
1:08:26 filmatography whatever it might be
1:08:28 that there's going to be a certain bias
1:08:30 so just
1:08:31 like there are cognitive biases when it
1:08:33 comes to the human being
1:08:36 there's going to be certain artistic
1:08:37 biases for lack of a better term
1:08:39 when it comes to the human being as well
1:08:41 and that's why
1:08:42 you can have a degree of subjectivity
1:08:44 when it comes to art that's
1:08:46 produced by a human being right human
1:08:49 beings
1:08:50 and we're going to enter into some area
1:08:51 of theology now from an islamic
1:08:54 worldview framework human beings
1:08:58 are not perfect beings they're created
1:08:59 beings and hence they have limitations
1:09:02 and because of those limitations those
1:09:05 things that are produced by the human
1:09:06 beings are also going to be subject to
1:09:08 limitations whereas perfection
1:09:11 is for god alone and so
1:09:14 when it comes to the natural world this
1:09:17 is where now we can say
1:09:19 that we can experience objective beauty
1:09:22 all right
1:09:22 why because nature is unbiased
1:09:26 now both of them in this diagram are
1:09:28 pointing towards meaning when you look
1:09:29 at
1:09:30 a poem you're asking what is the meaning
1:09:32 of the person that composed the poem
1:09:34 uh what is the meaning in terms of what
1:09:35 they think about me remember the dining
1:09:37 table and things like that
1:09:39 but at the same time we could apply the
1:09:41 same idea when it comes to the
1:09:43 the natural world all right and this is
1:09:46 something that
1:09:47 while you know that when we say that
1:09:49 nature is unbiased
1:09:50 this is i would say true no matter what
1:09:53 your world view is no matter what your
1:09:54 paradigm is whether you're coming from
1:09:56 an islamic paradigm
1:09:57 or any paradigm and and we see this even
1:10:00 in our in our in our
1:10:02 in our day-to-day right because when you
1:10:06 let's say buy us a type of cereal
1:10:09 one of the things that marketers
1:10:11 understand very well is that they slap
1:10:13 a nice uh all natural label on it
1:10:16 well why do they do that well the reason
1:10:19 is because
1:10:20 something with inside ourselves uh
1:10:23 points to the idea that if
1:10:25 it's natural if it's part of nature
1:10:27 nature is unbiased
1:10:29 nature doesn't have cognitive biases and
1:10:32 so if it's
1:10:32 natural it's something that we should
1:10:34 incline towards we naturally incline
1:10:36 towards it right
1:10:37 and so and so that inclination markers
1:10:40 understand very well
1:10:41 so if you have a type of cereal that's
1:10:44 all natural
1:10:44 that's going to be better than a sugar a
1:10:47 a a
1:10:47 a processed sugar-filled cereal even
1:10:50 though both of them are probably
1:10:51 processed but that's besides the point
1:10:52 right
1:10:53 but you understand that and we
1:10:55 understand that even when we look at
1:10:57 the world around us now let's take a
1:11:00 look at the experience of natural beauty
1:11:02 so what you see there is a painting of
1:11:04 the niagara falls
1:11:06 all right so if you've ever visited
1:11:07 niagara falls
1:11:09 it is breathtaking and it is just
1:11:11 amazing
1:11:12 um the canada side maybe not so much the
1:11:15 the american side
1:11:16 but anyway it's breathtaking now here's
1:11:18 a painting
1:11:19 of the niagara falls and so one of the
1:11:22 things that we can see
1:11:23 right away is that when we look at the
1:11:25 painting
1:11:26 there is a framing that's going on
1:11:30 when you think about the niagara falls
1:11:32 if you've ever visited it
1:11:34 you find that there's no concept of
1:11:36 framing your direct experience
1:11:38 it's like there's no end from one end to
1:11:40 another you're just ex
1:11:41 taking it all in someone that's
1:11:44 painting the niagara falls or taking a
1:11:46 picture of niagara falls
1:11:48 is going to be limited by the frame
1:11:51 and therefore there's going to be a
1:11:52 limitation and so depending on the
1:11:55 person and the
1:11:56 frame that they've chosen again the
1:11:58 human side coming in
1:12:00 you could either experience that beauty
1:12:02 or not but being
1:12:04 at the niagara falls and just seeing the
1:12:06 vastness of the niagara falls itself
1:12:08 this is a different phenomena altogether
1:12:11 this is something that touches much
1:12:12 deeper within the human being these are
1:12:14 two very different experiences
1:12:17 so you find the painting you find
1:12:20 you know the fact that it is framed and
1:12:22 the fact that there is a certain bias
1:12:24 depending on the choice of the person
1:12:26 who's doing the painting
1:12:28 okay so when we the experience of
1:12:30 natural beauty you find the painting
1:12:31 picture
1:12:32 there's framing there's a human angle
1:12:33 and a bias the natural world itself
1:12:38 it's vast open and endless
1:12:41 there's no human angle or bias it's
1:12:44 direct
1:12:45 right you're directly experiencing that
1:12:47 the the
1:12:48 the the experience of beauty right
1:12:51 um it's not contained right it's not
1:12:54 contained in a certain frame or a
1:12:56 certain
1:12:57 uh a certain area rather it's fast
1:13:00 and here's the other thing which is
1:13:02 really phenomenal is that if you go to
1:13:04 somewhere like the niagara falls or
1:13:06 let's say mount cook if you've ever been
1:13:07 to new zealand and it's it's a beautiful
1:13:10 mountain pass and it's it's just
1:13:12 gorgeous
1:13:14 uh it makes you feel small like looking
1:13:18 up at the night sky
1:13:20 and that's a very interesting phenomenon
1:13:21 because on one hand you're experiencing
1:13:25 the beauty let's say of the mountain or
1:13:27 of the falls
1:13:28 but at the same time you have this type
1:13:31 of
1:13:32 this type of fear now i i'm kind of
1:13:35 using the word fear here a bit loosely
1:13:38 we in english we call it awe right the
1:13:40 experience that you have when you say
1:13:41 it's it's awe so in a sense it's
1:13:43 combining beauty
1:13:45 and combining fear kind of at the same
1:13:47 time and it's a difficult
1:13:49 experience to uh to verbalize to put
1:13:52 into words
1:13:53 right so someone says have you seen the
1:13:55 niagara falls you just gotta go there
1:13:56 and check it out yourself
1:13:58 right okay
1:14:01 so um let's talk a little bit about awe
1:14:05 and then i'll i'll conclude uh inshallah
1:14:07 because i know
1:14:08 we are running short on time so uh
1:14:12 michelle schayota and dr keltner uh
1:14:15 dr keltner excuse me at the university
1:14:17 of california berkeley they've done a
1:14:18 lot of
1:14:19 uh work and research in the idea and the
1:14:22 concept of awe
1:14:24 so what they wanted to define all they
1:14:25 said aw has been defined as an emotional
1:14:28 response to perceptually vast
1:14:31 stimuli that overwhelm current mental
1:14:34 structures
1:14:35 yet facilitate attempts at accommodation
1:14:38 i think that's a pretty
1:14:39 pretty good uh pretty good definition
1:14:41 right if we're going to try to
1:14:44 uh put the concept of awe into words
1:14:47 now um one of the through their studies
1:14:52 you know michelle shayoda and dr dacker
1:14:55 keltner
1:14:56 uh some of the work that they've done
1:14:58 they came to certain conclusions so
1:15:00 one of the ex one of the conclusions
1:15:02 when it comes to experiencing
1:15:04 awe the conclusion they came to was that
1:15:06 it leads to
1:15:07 decreased ego and heightened cognition
1:15:10 all right
1:15:11 now let's stop for a second we started
1:15:13 this conversation we started this
1:15:15 uh we started this session with how can
1:15:18 we know
1:15:19 truth as truth and one of the things is
1:15:23 is that and one of the one of the the
1:15:25 thesis that i had put forth
1:15:27 was that um that the more a person
1:15:30 experiences beauty
1:15:31 the more they see truth as truth in the
1:15:34 studies that they did they found that
1:15:36 when a person was exposed to
1:15:39 to to the natural world it led to a
1:15:41 state of awe and what were the
1:15:43 what were the what were the what were
1:15:45 the what were the results of being
1:15:47 exposed or or experiencing a state of
1:15:49 awe
1:15:50 it was heightened cognition and a
1:15:52 decreased ego
1:15:54 so they were less self-centered and more
1:15:57 charitable
1:15:58 and we'll get into well i don't know if
1:16:00 we have the time but we'll try to touch
1:16:02 upon some of the studies
1:16:03 and one of the things they experienced
1:16:06 is that when they were put to test when
1:16:07 they were given cognitive tests
1:16:09 they found that being experiencing awe
1:16:13 led to a heightened cognition
1:16:16 now one of the things is is that when it
1:16:18 comes to when a person's going to
1:16:21 accept the truth these are two things
1:16:24 that can block a person from the truth a
1:16:26 not being able to understand it properly
1:16:28 a lower cognition and that's pretty
1:16:30 clear
1:16:30 but the other thing that blocks a person
1:16:32 from the truth can be their own
1:16:34 ego and arrogance right from an islamic
1:16:37 worldview
1:16:39 we see that you know that these are two
1:16:41 key areas
1:16:43 in which a person can be blocked from
1:16:44 the truth so
1:16:47 the hadith here from abdullah masood who
1:16:49 said the prophet
1:16:50 said no one will enter paradise who has
1:16:53 an adam's weight of arrogance in his
1:16:55 heart
1:16:56 and the man said what if a man likes his
1:16:58 clothes to look
1:16:59 good and his choose to look good
1:17:03 so the prophet sallam then says allah is
1:17:05 beautiful
1:17:06 and he loves beauty allahu jameel
1:17:09 jamal right
1:17:13 so he says allah is beautiful and he
1:17:14 loves beauty
1:17:16 but that
1:17:20 arrogance is rejecting the truth
1:17:24 and looking down upon people right and
1:17:27 why do you look down upon people well
1:17:28 it's because of arrogance right it's
1:17:30 because of
1:17:30 you know that's why you look down but
1:17:32 you think that you're better than them
1:17:35 so what's interesting about this
1:17:36 particular narration is that there's a
1:17:38 juxtaposition
1:17:40 between beauty and arrogance
1:17:43 which i think is really fascinating
1:17:45 right that you have this concept of
1:17:46 beauty
1:17:47 and so on and so forth and it being
1:17:49 juxtaposed with the concept of arrogance
1:17:51 now let's get into some of the studies
1:17:54 uh one of the studies that was done
1:17:56 and i'll try to cover these as quick as
1:17:57 possible in sha allah
1:17:59 um was a study of the effect on on
1:18:02 cognition so what they did is
1:18:04 uh they exposed people to various uh
1:18:07 natural phenomena right whether that was
1:18:09 mountains or
1:18:11 nature in some way and then
1:18:14 they would have have the participants
1:18:18 listen to a story for about five minutes
1:18:20 now the story was about a romantic
1:18:22 dinner
1:18:23 and these people went out and gets into
1:18:24 some details you know the guy was
1:18:26 wearing
1:18:27 a black tuxedo the woman was wearing a
1:18:29 dress you know
1:18:30 the waiter came and yada yada yada okay
1:18:32 that goes in this whole
1:18:33 story five minutes and then
1:18:36 at the end the participant was asked was
1:18:39 there a candle on the table
1:18:42 now one of the things is that as human
1:18:44 beings
1:18:46 we take certain cognitive shortcuts
1:18:50 we use um we use these cognitive
1:18:53 shortcuts
1:18:54 to kind of fill in the gaps all right so
1:18:57 when you think about a romantic dinner
1:19:00 you may by way of like certain
1:19:03 uh by way of your cognition you may
1:19:05 assume there's a candle on the table
1:19:07 because of what you already know about
1:19:09 romantic dinners
1:19:10 in this story there wasn't one
1:19:14 so those uh you know those
1:19:17 uh um well i'm forgetting the term now
1:19:20 they're called um
1:19:23 well it'll come back to me inshallah
1:19:25 stuff all right
1:19:26 so uh those cognitive shortcuts that
1:19:29 that
1:19:29 that are taken kind of place a candle on
1:19:32 the table
1:19:33 now the people that were subject to to
1:19:35 the natural world in other words they
1:19:37 were experiencing awe
1:19:38 they answered the correct they acted
1:19:41 correctly that there was no candle
1:19:42 more often than people who are not
1:19:44 subject to awe right so you have
1:19:47 uh the first study script solvent or
1:19:49 script relevant false items was there
1:19:51 candle and table correct answers no
1:19:53 those people that experienced all you
1:19:54 see on the graph there that they
1:19:56 answered it
1:19:57 correctly more often than those who were
1:20:00 uh who were neutral not exposed to awe
1:20:04 all right all awakens the mind all right
1:20:06 so now
1:20:07 uh we're looking at various emotions
1:20:10 so when someone is in a state of awe
1:20:12 they did that by exposing people to
1:20:14 nature
1:20:14 when they were in state of enthusiasm
1:20:16 contentment pride
1:20:18 all went out 100 of the time when it
1:20:20 came to
1:20:21 cognition and sharpening and heightening
1:20:24 one's cognition
1:20:25 all right what about ego so in the
1:20:28 studies that they were done what they
1:20:29 came to the conclusion was was that
1:20:31 when people experience awe they go from
1:20:34 self-interest to collective interest
1:20:36 so they stop thinking they think less of
1:20:38 themselves and more about the general
1:20:39 populace
1:20:40 from isolated self to integrated self
1:20:42 they started thinking as opposed to them
1:20:44 thinking of themselves as individuals
1:20:46 they started to think of themselves as a
1:20:48 community and it broke
1:20:50 and there was a breakdown of the us
1:20:51 versus them thinking
1:20:53 again it's from the same study so aw
1:20:55 diminishes the ego and the study that
1:20:57 they did is
1:20:58 they had people draw themselves in
1:21:01 relation to
1:21:03 uh you know in relation to the
1:21:04 environment that they're in so
1:21:06 uh one place where they had people do
1:21:08 this excuse me
1:21:10 was a fisherman's wharf in san francisco
1:21:12 now this is a place where there's
1:21:14 it's it's a lot of people it's the city
1:21:16 center
1:21:17 it's when people are drawing themselves
1:21:19 they drew themselves
1:21:21 much bigger in relation to the uh in
1:21:24 in relation to the to the city and the
1:21:26 the the landscape this the cityscape
1:21:28 that they're drawing around them
1:21:30 yet when they were taken up to the
1:21:32 mountains
1:21:33 and they were asked to draw themselves
1:21:35 they drew themselves
1:21:36 much smaller as compared to the
1:21:39 landscape that they were drawing
1:21:41 right so they saw themselves as smaller
1:21:44 in the natural landscape as opposed to
1:21:47 seeing themselves as being much bigger
1:21:49 in the city
1:21:50 the cityscape right now obviously they
1:21:53 did other tests and other questions
1:21:55 related to you know
1:21:56 what do you think about charity and
1:21:57 other people and so on and so forth as
1:21:59 part of this study
1:22:01 and what they found is that it it
1:22:02 decreases one's ego
1:22:04 what's really interesting is in the
1:22:05 islamic paradigm the word for ego is
1:22:08 kibar
1:22:08 which comes from khabib it should be big
1:22:11 so when you think of yourself
1:22:12 as big it's actually it's the word in
1:22:16 in in arabic for ego or or arrogance
1:22:19 rather and one of the interesting things
1:22:21 is is that the prophet muhammad peace be
1:22:23 upon him he said the people
1:22:24 who had the most ego on the day of
1:22:25 judgment will be like ants and people
1:22:27 will be stepping on them
1:22:28 meaning they falsely thought of
1:22:30 themselves as big
1:22:32 and on the day of judgment there's a
1:22:34 physical manifestation of being the
1:22:35 exact opposite of that being the
1:22:37 smallest thing which is
1:22:39 ants and being stepped on anyhow
1:22:42 so all amplifies humility
1:22:45 uh on the small self the subjects were
1:22:47 asked to draw themselves in the
1:22:48 cosmetology violence we just talked
1:22:49 about that
1:22:50 perceptions of baptist humility and
1:22:52 we'll we'll we'll
1:22:54 hopefully publish these slides a little
1:22:55 bit so what was the central thesis
1:22:57 the central thesis was the greater your
1:22:59 exposure to beauty
1:23:00 the greater your ability to see truth as
1:23:02 it really is that doesn't mean that
1:23:05 you're
1:23:05 going to stop thinking and not use you
1:23:07 know your cognitive senses
1:23:08 or you're not going to stop you you're
1:23:10 not going to use your irrationality
1:23:12 but now we understand that when a person
1:23:14 wants to reach truth
1:23:16 they need to engage with not only
1:23:20 you know not only engage on a level of
1:23:22 rationality
1:23:23 but in addition to that they need to
1:23:25 engage with the natural world
1:23:27 and engage with beauty right as an
1:23:30 experience
1:23:31 and one of the things that you know
1:23:34 perhaps the next part of this
1:23:35 presentation would be
1:23:37 would be how does that relate to the
1:23:38 revelation
1:23:40 uh i.e the quran the from the islamic
1:23:42 paradigm
1:23:43 right so you have um
1:23:47 here related to the quran the quran
1:23:51 gives what we call uh signs or ayat
1:23:55 and they're always pointing a lot of
1:23:57 times they're pointing not all the time
1:23:58 but
1:23:59 they're pointing towards a natural world
1:24:02 and so
1:24:03 you have um angelica new worth when her
1:24:07 in her forward
1:24:08 on this book the quran the aesthetics of
1:24:10 pre-modern arabic prose
1:24:12 she has a really interesting statement
1:24:13 she says it is it is in the end the
1:24:15 pagan's verdict from surat al-qamar
1:24:18 the verdict of his
1:24:22 his transformation of the world into a
1:24:24 sign system
1:24:25 transcending empirical reality
1:24:28 very interesting that is allowed to
1:24:31 epitomize the quran's hermeneutical
1:24:33 achievement
1:24:34 and it goes back to this idea that the
1:24:36 quran is constantly
1:24:37 pulling you and asking us to reflect
1:24:39 upon the natural world
1:24:40 and there's a reason for that because
1:24:43 when we do that
1:24:44 we're getting closer and closer to the
1:24:47 truth right
1:24:48 and by extension i'm going to basically
1:24:50 have to some you know finish it off here
1:24:52 by extension when a person goes down
1:24:54 that route engages with the quran
1:24:56 engages with what the quran is
1:24:58 instructing the person to do
1:25:00 they'll find that in the end they're
1:25:02 able to see truth as
1:25:03 truth truth being not only a rational
1:25:08 not being something not being only
1:25:11 limited to rationality
1:25:13 but having other means by which to get
1:25:16 to it in addition to rationality
1:25:18 so those means could be exposure to
1:25:20 beauty they could be
1:25:22 spiritual uh by way of having certain uh
1:25:25 spiritual acts like calling out to god
1:25:28 and other things other uh
1:25:30 phenomenological
1:25:31 uh areas and you know uh thinking deeply
1:25:34 about things and so on and so forth
1:25:36 which is outside the scope of what we're
1:25:38 talking about in this particular
1:25:39 presentation
1:25:40 but uh hopefully the the thesis that i
1:25:43 was
1:25:43 trying to present and that was that
1:25:45 beauty leads to
1:25:47 uh truth hopefully we've substantiated
1:25:49 that in in
1:25:50 in some one way or another and it'll
1:25:51 allow the the you know allow you
1:25:54 the one who's listening this
1:25:55 presentation to kind of explore this
1:25:57 area
1:25:58 a bit more on your own by way of the
1:26:00 quran is what i would encourage
1:26:02 uh and just by spending more time in
1:26:03 nature so i'll go ahead and stop there
1:26:06 we'll open up for some questions i know
1:26:08 we've been going on for a little while
1:26:09 so
1:26:10 um let's see what we got
1:26:15 okay
1:26:19 all right wow
1:26:24 okay uh wow there's a lot of comments
1:26:28 um so if you have questions go ahead and
1:26:31 post them
1:26:32 we'll take them for another maybe seven
1:26:35 to eight minutes
1:26:36 i think um maybe another ten minutes
1:26:40 if we need to
1:26:46 all right so most of the questions have
1:26:48 to do with my electricity going out so
1:26:50 like where'd he go what happened um
1:26:53 but if you do have questions go ahead
1:26:55 and post them now so i can take a look
1:26:57 at them
1:26:58 and if you don't then that's fine too
1:27:01 all right
1:27:09 okay
1:27:15 let's see right well i don't really see
1:27:18 any questions unless
1:27:20 i'm missing something
1:27:27 we've got some questions for pondering
1:27:29 soul
1:27:30 so i'll let him handle those questions
1:27:32 on his own
1:27:34 uh
1:27:38 yeah nothing so if you have anything
1:27:40 related to the topic go ahead and post
1:27:41 them if not
1:27:43 okay so here's a good question how to
1:27:45 prove you must obey
1:27:47 god so i'm hoping that one of the things
1:27:50 that
1:27:51 we've transcended is the idea of having
1:27:55 to prove
1:27:56 everything right now i'm not saying that
1:27:58 we
1:27:59 can't prove it i'm just saying that this
1:28:01 sort of mindset about having to prove
1:28:03 every single question
1:28:05 that we want to kind of not jump
1:28:08 right into that scenario and say okay
1:28:10 well i'm gonna i've got to find a way to
1:28:12 prove it
1:28:12 right that being said when it comes to
1:28:15 the idea of
1:28:16 obeying god it starts with the idea of
1:28:19 believing in god and what is your con
1:28:21 what is your concept of god
1:28:23 because if we believe that indeed god is
1:28:26 the creator of everything he's al-khalif
1:28:29 then it links to his worship if it's
1:28:32 true that he created you
1:28:33 and he knows right he has knowledge of
1:28:36 everything then the things that he has
1:28:38 commanded
1:28:38 by you know just as a simple kind of uh
1:28:42 we understand this logically that you
1:28:44 should then submit to god and obey god
1:28:47 because a he knows more than you
1:28:49 right he has knowledge that is vast he
1:28:52 is
1:28:52 maximally perfect as knowledge similarly
1:28:55 he
1:28:56 is also albert he is the good he is
1:28:59 he wants good for you so it's not like
1:29:00 okay so if you know about god you would
1:29:02 mistrust god or anything like that
1:29:05 and so when we start to study who allah
1:29:08 is
1:29:08 that in itself would lead a person
1:29:12 to obeying god every single person
1:29:15 and this is part of our fitrah which as
1:29:18 we come up with
1:29:19 as we'll be talking about in other
1:29:21 series every person
1:29:24 part of their fitrah is the need to
1:29:26 worship
1:29:27 the need to love something and submit to
1:29:30 something
1:29:31 that's part and parcel of our
1:29:33 constitution of our fitra
1:29:35 right now that worship can either be
1:29:37 directed towards
1:29:38 allah or it can be directed towards
1:29:42 something else so you will either love
1:29:45 allah or you'll love yourself your money
1:29:49 your spouse right they're not saying you
1:29:51 don't you don't love those things but
1:29:52 obviously love of allah comes
1:29:54 before all of that okay so worship
1:29:57 is part and parcel of our fitrah we have
1:30:00 a need to worship
1:30:01 the question is who is worthy of worship
1:30:05 is if if i'm if i am submitting and to
1:30:08 myself and i have love for myself
1:30:11 but i'm a limited being i have cognitive
1:30:13 biases
1:30:14 right i have limitations
1:30:17 so am i really truly worthy of
1:30:19 submitting to myself
1:30:21 am i truly the one that i should love
1:30:23 more than anyone else
1:30:25 of course we're talking here of love
1:30:27 from the perspective of ego
1:30:28 right um or is that love and that
1:30:32 submission
1:30:33 uh due to the one that's worthy of that
1:30:36 so hopefully that that answered that
1:30:40 okay uh if you tried to so someone
1:30:42 mentioned i don't know if there's a
1:30:43 comment
1:30:44 uh if you try to point out the beauty of
1:30:46 this world how the sky looks on a dark
1:30:47 sky
1:30:48 even from a micro perspective how
1:30:50 gigantic allah has made space
1:30:52 they respond yes it is all scientific
1:30:54 yeah that's one of the
1:30:57 one of the issues right one of the uh
1:31:00 the the the fact that we live in the
1:31:02 modern world
1:31:04 where science has been taken to be um
1:31:07 a type of holy grail in which that you
1:31:10 know if if it doesn't make sense
1:31:11 scientifically or you can't
1:31:13 quote prove something scientifically
1:31:15 then it becomes invalid
1:31:17 and the reality is is that while science
1:31:19 again
1:31:20 can give us a lot of benefit but there
1:31:23 are certain questions that science can't
1:31:25 answer
1:31:26 metaphysical questions science deals
1:31:28 with the physical
1:31:30 the physical world metaphysical
1:31:32 questions are outside
1:31:33 of the scope of science so we there are
1:31:36 certain questions that science just
1:31:37 can't deal with
1:31:38 right science has its limitations um you
1:31:41 know and so
1:31:41 what i'll recommend is that if um you
1:31:44 know
1:31:45 if there's a section in the the book by
1:31:48 by hamza
1:31:48 hamza zortzis the divine reality which
1:31:50 speaks about this
1:31:51 and you know has science disproven god i
1:31:54 highly recommend you
1:31:55 take a look through it and go through it
1:31:57 okay
1:31:58 um how can we know that our fitra is not
1:32:01 clouded because for many people nowadays
1:32:03 indoctrinated to liberalism and belief
1:32:05 as an axiom
1:32:06 so if the majority majority they've
1:32:09 deceived
1:32:10 easily
1:32:13 okay so i'm going to try to answer the
1:32:15 first part of the question
1:32:16 this is where revelation comes in right
1:32:20 and one of the things that we understand
1:32:22 is that there are certain things that
1:32:23 are part of our fitrah
1:32:24 but when it comes to some of the details
1:32:27 this is where revelation
1:32:28 enhances our fitrah and we're able to
1:32:31 have a
1:32:31 clear idea of what is correct and versus
1:32:35 what is
1:32:35 incorrect right there's a very
1:32:38 interesting hadith of the prophet sallam
1:32:40 where he mentions that
1:32:44 where he mentions that that
1:32:47 that that there is like a path if i'm
1:32:50 remembering the hadith correctly that
1:32:51 there's a path
1:32:52 and on both sides of this path are two
1:32:55 walls
1:32:56 and there are doors on these walls that
1:32:58 have curtains upon them
1:33:00 and there is a voice that's calling from
1:33:03 the top
1:33:04 and a voice that's calling from the end
1:33:07 these walls are the the the limits of
1:33:10 allah the hadood of allah the the
1:33:12 the place where you're not supposed to
1:33:14 transcend you're not supposed to go
1:33:15 you're not supposed to transgress these
1:33:16 limits
1:33:17 right you're going to enter into the
1:33:19 haram and each one of these has a door
1:33:21 and every time a person goes towards one
1:33:23 of these doors and tries to open the
1:33:24 curtain
1:33:25 a voice says stop stop keep moving
1:33:27 forward all right
1:33:29 now that voice the prophet says
1:33:31 described it
1:33:32 so that that motivation for moving
1:33:35 forward on that path which the process
1:33:36 is described as
1:33:38 the straight path uh one of those voices
1:33:41 is the voice inside of each and every
1:33:42 single believer
1:33:44 and the and and and the the objective at
1:33:47 the end and the voice at the end
1:33:49 the prophet says i'm described as the
1:33:50 quran and so when we go to
1:33:53 like for instance
1:33:56 and we analyze the seed of that it ends
1:33:59 off by saying
1:34:02 the nur the light of the fitrah coupled
1:34:05 with the light of revelation
1:34:07 that is the thing that we're able to
1:34:09 move forward with
1:34:11 and have this type of cognitive
1:34:14 psycho-spiritual stability otherwise
1:34:18 you won't know because of the
1:34:20 environment that you're in
1:34:21 what is truly natural versus what you
1:34:25 should or should not be doing
1:34:26 um etc so i hope i answer that we'll go
1:34:29 ahead and stop there that's the
1:34:30 i think that's the last one we have the
1:34:32 last question we can deal with
1:34:34 um so with that said may allah
1:34:37 bless everyone um may allah subhanahu wa
1:34:40 accept everyone's uh you know coming to
1:34:43 to this session
1:34:44 uh bearing with the electricity going
1:34:47 out it's it's raining quite hard here
1:34:49 in houston uh so i appreciate your
1:34:51 patience may allah reward you for that
1:34:53 may allah accept all uh of your efforts
1:34:55 your deeds
1:34:56 and i ask allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala to
1:34:58 forgive me for any shortcomings
1:35:00 if there were any mistakes uh any
1:35:04 uh anything that i said that was
1:35:05 incorrect or anything that i said was
1:35:07 even offensive
1:35:08 then that is all for myself and from
1:35:10 shaitaan
1:35:11 any sort of benefit any sort of benefit
1:35:13 that you may have received
1:35:14 from this session it is all from allah