The World is a Prison for the Believer…Subhanallah…

Bismillah,Alhamdulillah, Assalatu wassalamu ala rasulillah

In this entry, I am typing out what is written in Martin Lings’ Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions. It is from pages 40 to 43. It conveys intense meaning, but masyaAllah, ideas parallel to what has been made clear to me.

So here it is: BEGIN QUOTE

Freedom and Equality

The world today is in chaos of jostling opinions and aspirations. By contrast, the ancient world was already an order, that is, a hierarchy of concepts, each at the level that rightly belongs to it. The chaos has been caused, as we have seen, by the humanistic refusal to recognize anything that transcends the psychic level and by consequent intrusion of frustrated and perverted other worldly aspirations into the domain of this world. Equipped as he is by the very nature of worship, man cannot not worship; and if his outlook is cut off from the spiritual plane, he will find a ‘god’ to worship at some lower level, thus endowing something relative with what belongs only to the Absolute. Hence the existence today of so many ‘words to conjure with’, like ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘literacy’, ‘science’, ‘civilisation’; words at the utterance of which a multitude of souls fall prostrate in sub-mental adoration. The superstitions of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ are not merely the results but also partly the causes of the general disorder, for each in its own way is a revolt against hierarchy; and they are all the more pernicious for being perversions of two of the highest impulses in man (namely freedom and equality). Corruptio optima pessima, the corruption of the best is corruption at its worst; but restore the ancient order and the two idols in question will evaporate from the plane of this world (leaving legitimate earthly aspirations for freedom and equality room to breathe) to take place once more, transformed, at the very summit of the hierarchy.

The desire for freedom is above all the desire for God, Absolute Freedom being as essential aspect of Divinity.

SKIP SKIP

Imagine a large subterranean cave in which are prisoners who have been confined there ever since birth. They are made to sit in a long row facing one of the walls of the cave, and they are chained to their seats in a manner that they cannot turn their heads, being able only to look straight in front of them. A fire, raised up from behind them, casts its light onto the wall, and between them and the fire, puppets are being carried, made in the image of all kinds of living and lifeless earthly creatures. But, not being able to turn their heads, the prisoners can only see the shadows which the puppets cast on to the wall in front of them.

Imagine now that one of the prisoners escapes from his chains. First he is able to turn round and see the puppets for himself. Then he escapes from the cave and goes up to the outside world where are to be seen all those things in whose likeness the puppets were made to fashion. To begin with, he is only able to look at their shadows and reflections in water, first by moonlight and then sunlight, then he is able to look at the things themselves, and finally he is able to look at the sun.


Through lack of objectivity due to inertia, obtuseness and prejudice, the prisoners cannot see clearly even the puppets, that is, the things of this world; they can only see a vague shadowy likeness of them. The outside world is the next world, which contains spiritual realities of which the things in this world are symbols. The intensifying of direct intellectual perception as the being rises up throughout the hierarchy of spiritual states, gaining with each, a fuller degree of liberation, compared with which the freedom conferred by the escape from the chains seems more and more relative, not to speak of what is commonly called ‘freedom’, that is, those lesser ‘freedoms’ such as may be enjoyed by the prisoners themselves, most of whom do not even aspire to be released from their chains. Imagine how the activities and interests of the prisoners would appear to the one who had reached the end of all enlightenment? (at this point I can’t help but to think of how the Messenger s.a.w. was given the honour of seeing His Lord with the eyes of his head, during the Prophetic Ascension,Mi’raj)

It is clear that pre-eminent among those who escape from the cave and then return to it are the Divine Messengers, some of whom directly descended from above. In either case, their mission is to inform the prisoners of the sun and the moon, about the animals, trees and flowers that exist outside the cave, according to their full dimensions. Some of the prisoners drink in these words and have a longing to escape from the caves and go into the outside world, but many of them are angry, maintaining that the Prophets were madmen or liars, and that the shadows of the puppets are the highest realities that exist.

In the light of all these things, it will be seen that the difference between the believer and the skeptic is not the difference between the imprisoned and the free but the difference between two prisoners, one of whom is conscious of his imprisonment whereas the other refuses to admit that this world is a prison, because his thoughts stop short at his prison walls.

END QUOTE

Subhanallah, suddenly the picture of it all becomes clearer! Subhanallah!
Subhanaka laa ‘ilma lanaa, illa maa ‘allamtanaa, innaka antal ‘aleemul hakeem!