8 | The Nature of the World: The Quran Joins the Conversation

Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a Co-Finder of the Table Collective.

Before getting into the topic itself, as the Quran joins the conversation,I want to begin with a poem I wrote some years back, called Truth and Truths, because this podcast is in many ways an extended application of what that poem is attempting to imagine:

 

Truth and Truths

When my truths 

Hummed in this key, 

And your truths 

Hummed in that, 

Meet, 

And meeting shed each discordant note, 

Align to one true chord, 

Find flight and give voice to living words, 

Then every song will echo thronging vibrant alive, 

Shimmering in a vast chorus of our varied truths, 

Woven in one united opus. 

 

And all, and each, together, 

With full throated glee, 

We will know, and name, 

The Truth.

 

This Episode, and prior Episodes, and what I imagine I will do in the next Episode all explore the ways various religious heritages and quantum theories of the universe describe the nature of the world as we know it. I bring all of them to the table, as it were, because I assume that they all have something to tell us and to tell each other. They can all learn from each other, and thus we can learn from all of them.

My hope in the next Episode is to get to the point of sharing how I, at least, have been putting together what I have learned from these companions about how I would answer the questions that have surfaced about the universe:

Is the stuff the world is made of eternal? Are there multiple worlds? How does quantum entanglement affect everything, and does that entanglement include something more than our own consciousness?

These questions surfaced in the last two Episodes as I have been “at the table”, in conversation with the Gita, Buddha, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the book of Genesis, and the Gospel of John.

Another guest, the Quran, is just getting settled at the table, ready to join the discussion. And as a way of welcoming this newcomer, and as a way of encouraging the other heritages at the table, and a way to encourage us, to set an intention of listening to all the voices, I will present that poem again. As I do, I say to myself, “I bring my voice, and I open my heart to the other voices here.”   

 

Truth and Truths

When my truths 

Hummed in this key, 

And your truths 

Hummed in that, 

Meet, 

And meeting shed each discordant note, 

Align to one true chord, 

Find flight and give voice to living words, 

Then every song will echo thronging vibrant alive, 

Shimmering in a vast chorus of our varied truths, 

Woven in one united opus. 

 

And all, and each, together, 

With full throated glee, 

We will know, and name, 

The Truth.

 

I will organize the conversation around the questions we have been asking at the table already about matter, and beginnings, etc. But one clarification is needed as I begin: there will be quite a few references in this Episode to Self, and God, and the divine. That is because the texts include that. The question of the divine and the Self is something we will be exploring in future Episodes, but I can’t erase the references in these texts when they occur. I am reporting what is said at this point, not assuming a set of conclusions. 

Okay…

 

When Did Matter Begin? 

The Quran says, “Allah created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, in six days” (7:54). The mention of 6 days clearly echoes what we saw in the first account in Genesis, though the Quran makes it clear that the word “day” can be understood to be a long period of time. In one case, “fifty thousand years” (70:4) and in another, “a day in the sight of your Lord is like a thousand years of your reckoning” (22:47). 

According to the Quran creation is an ongoing and expanding process, not a “one and done” event.  So it says, “We (ie God) have built the heavens with power…and we are expanding” (51:47), an idea akin to the expanding universe described by astrophysics. 

Elsewhere in the Quran we read, “The heavens and the earth were joined together as one unit, before we separated them.” Genesis referred to something akin to this idea of an indistinguishable “mass”, but in Genesis the vocabulary used could suggest that pre-existing matter was the “stuff” from which creation was then shaped. 

The Quranic view is more direct that the “stuff” itself was made at a point in time. And the sayings of Muhammad recorded outside of the Quran, and other later Muslim interpreters, are also clear that prior to the creation of the world, nothing except God existed. 

 

What is Matter?

What is the nature of this stuff that makes up the world? The Quran says that Allah “made from water every living thing” (21:30), with one exception: “We created man from clay, from mud molded into shape” (15:26). It would be fascinating to explore the water reference there, but I need to keep going!

The Quran also describes the nature of the world as being full of “signs”, 

“…in the heavens and the earth are signs for those who believe. And in the creation of human beings, and…animals, and night and day…and… sustenance from the sky…and in the change of the winds…all are signs…” (45:3-5). The word for sign is the same word as is used for the verses of Quran. The Quran is a revelation. Everything in the world is also revealing something of the divine. Both are “holy books” in a sense.

 

World or Worlds?

The very first chapter of the Quran includes the statement that God is “lord of the worlds”.  The Arabic word, Al-'Alamin is a plural form of 'Alam, which is already itself a plural world, having no singular form. A plural of a plural, indicating worlds of worlds.

While some interpret that phrase to indicate simply that every type of thing in the world is like a world within this one world, most interpreters say this world we know is just one world among many others, as many as fourteen, or eighteen thousand, even forty thousand worlds. 

 

Entanglement? 

The Quran emphasizes that there is one God, not only singular in number, but also singularly unique, and in many ways, separate from all else. What implications does such a view have for what I have called entanglement, inter-connection?

There are two dimensions to how I see the Quran’s reply to that question.

Remember that plural term for “worlds” in the Quran? Some commentators suggest that the term refers to humans, and to the jinn, the angels, and even the devils. To sentient beings. The worlds are not places, or things, but beings.

Sentient beings share “cognitive environments,” ways of seeing and framing the world which shape how we experience the world. This is a view very close to the sort of psychic entanglement found in the Buddha’s teaching, that our perceptions of the world are the world we know and experience. Our shared mental maps form ways of perceiving the world, and are in that sense the worlds that we live in. And as different people connect with each other, we all affect each other’s ways of experiencing the world, and thus on at least the cognitive level, our worlds change, and are also in that sense entangled.

There is another way of describing entanglement in the Islamic religious heritage. Within Islam the various Sufi orders emphasize the pursuit of the mystical element of religious experience, including pursuit of the experience of some form of “union” with the divine 

They draw their inspiration for this from the Quran, including a verse of the Quran known as the verse of light, 24:35, which begins,

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth...”

God is the Light. Every light in the heavens and the earth according to this verse is from God, from the divine light. Nothing else has light of its own. In addition to physical light, the light of wisdom and guidance, the light of our respective cognitive environments, also stems from the divine light. This light is present in everyone and everything in the world. 

Thus, one Sufi teacher suggests that we greet every person, and every “thing,” as if greeting the divine light which is ultimately the source of their being and existence.

 

Summary of the Quran’s Answers to the Questions

There is of course much more material in the Quran, but this is a summary:

Is the stuff the world is made of eternal? No, matter is not eternal. It had a definite beginning.

Are there multiple worlds? Yes, or most likely, with some debate about what that means.

Is there some type of cosmic, and/or psychic entanglement? Maybe. As suggested by the preceding discussion I suggest there seem to be three potential approaches as to whether the Quran expresses any type of psychic or cosmic entanglement. 

One view is, there is nothing like that, it is precluded by the Quranic understanding of the divine. A second view is the possible psychic interconnection of beings with shared cognitive worlds. And the third is what I would term a metaphysical connection, the view of at least some Sufi’s, most Sufi’s, that the Quran teaches the reality of the divine light in all things.

 

Everyone is at the Table: What is the World?

Having allowed the Quran to join the discussion at the table, I want to summarize the ways the different heritages are viewing things, and have answered the questions about the nature of the world, the “where” in which we live. Or, going back to my earlier poem, it is time to see how the different melodies harmonize, or don’t.

Let’s start from the nature of the world/worlds. 

In the Gita, there are multiple eternal cycles of multiple eternal worlds.

The Buddha also spoke of multiple eternal cycles of multiple eternal worlds.

For Lao Tzu the world as we know it is a result of a generative process which creates and also sustains it. But is the world eternal? Is there just one? Lao Tzu does not say. 

Now let me summarize that those three would all in their own ways share the view that we don’t know what the the world is because we don’t know it as it actually is. Everything we know of the world is shaped by our own perceptions, misperceptions, illusions, and desires. 

In Genesis there are hints in the text that suggest multiple worlds (it mentions plural heavens, for example, and how the rabbis spoke about that), and that matter may pre-exist the creative act that shaped the world we know. Most rabbis assume creation from nothing, but we noted that the text itself does not require that interpretation. 

Like Genesis, John’s Gospel does not speak to the question of whether the world came from nothing, and early Christian thinkers seemed willing to entertain the idea that matter already existed before creation. As to whether there are more worlds than this one, it was not a question John was asking, and thus not a question he answered.

I would love to hear how Genesis and John would respond to the way the Gita and the Buddha and Lao Tzue see all this. And vice versa.

Relative to the origins of matter and the different worldviews of the texts we have looked at, the texts were using the language available to them to describe things shrouded in mystery. Thus, I plan to return to this topic in the next Episode when we explore more fully the ways that recent developments in physics might contribute to the conversation. 

But before that, what about entanglement?

 

Light and Cosmic Entanglement  

If all the heritages were in fact seated at the same table talking, or singing, together, one of the themes (whether the metaphor refers to a conceptual or a musical theme) I can imagine surfacing at some point is the theme of light. Probing that theme has given me some common language to compare the views of these texts and teachers related to how they see cosmic interconnection, or don’t. So let me try to “illuminate” what they say about light!

 

Bhagavad Gita:

In Chapter 13, verse 18 the Gita describes ultimate reality (Atman/Self/Brahman), as “the source of light in everything that has light, entirely beyond the darkness of ignorance. He/it is knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the goal of knowledge. He/it dwells within the hearts of all living beings.”   

This is the foundation underlying the possibility for human beings to seek and receive illumination. The process of illumination the Gita teaches is the path of devotion and self-knowledge, allowing one to discern, and to choose the right paths in every situation. 

But the very possibility of such illumination is rooted in the connection between our selves, atman, and the Self, Atman. The theme of light is a way of describing entanglement.

 

The Teaching of the Buddha

At the risk of oversimplification, in different streams of Buddhist thought there is a metaphorical way and a metaphysical way to explain the image of light in the teaching of the Buddha.

In the metaphorical way of thinking, “light” is used to refer to how wisdom (light) dispels ignorance (darkness). Pictures of the Buddha often include a halo of light around his head, symbolizing his own enlightenment, and the light of wisdom he makes available to others.

The metaphysical approach is perhaps most clearly expressed, for example, in Tantric Buddhism in which enlightenment is described as union with the “Buddha mind,” akin to the ultimate goal of nirvana, though in this form of Buddhism nirvana includes union with the universe. Entanglement.

 

Lao Tzu

In the Tao Te Ching, "light" is often used metaphorically to represent the essence of the Tao itself, signifying enlightenment, the wisdom that comes from aligning with the Tao. Is it more than a metaphor?

 

In stanza 42, the first lines read:

“The Tao is the origin of one thing, which is the origin of two, which is the origin of three, 

And so on, to ten thousand things, which hold and carry the yin and the yang;

And breath (ch’i) is the harmony of it all”.

 

The Tao is the source of everything in the universe, (whether one thing or ten thousand things), and the Tao Te Ching makes it clear that this is not just in the sense of a “once upon a time” event. The Tao is the ongoing, continual, generative process by which everything is constantly created and renewed. The Tao is the source of everything and the process by which everything functions, and so the Tao is how everything is interconnected.

If light is a way to refer to the Tao itself, then light in Lao Tzu’s thought is another way to speak of cosmic entanglement.

 

Genesis

In Genesis there is a primordial light which as we saw some rabbis say refers to the light infused into all creation. The idea of creation being somehow infused with divine light is expressed in a different way elsewhere in the Jewish scriptures as well, with different metaphors. For example, that creation was begotten by God. Other texts say that God is wearing the created world like clothing. There are similar ideas within the Gita.

 

John

In John the light illumines everyone in the world, similar to things we have seen in other heritages. In addition to that, in John the light comes from life. And life came into being within the divine being. Light is a way of speaking of inter-connection and entanglement.

 

The Quran

We saw in the “light verse” in the Quran that Allah is the light, and that this divine light is somehow connected to the essential nature of the world. The divine light is in everyone and everything.

 

Next? Back to the Big Bang

While there are differences, certainly, each religious heritage I have looked at has a way of seeing and expressing the way that everything in the world we live in, including us, might be entangled. And light is one metaphor all of them used, in various ways, to express that.

As I was preparing for this Episode, I took part in one of the Art Share events which Table Collective holds monthly. (I hope you will check out more about what Table Collective offers, by the way, at www.tablecollective.art). 

Anyway, the theme this month was “boundaries and connections”, and during the event we gave everyone time to do some creative work on their own as inspired by what the featured artists had presented on that theme.

Because I was preparing this Episode I was already thinking deeply about “light” as a way of understanding the “connections” side of that Art Share theme, boundaries and connections.

The convergence of the event and the Episode inspired a poem which became lyrics in a song, using light as the primary metaphor to express the mysterious way that I experience psychic and cosmic entanglement. 

I made a quick home-made version, and I am going to play it, and I want to invite you to receive it and engage with it like a “meditation”, an opportunity to open yourself to the possibility of experiencing something of the psychic and cosmic entanglement that I am trying to convey in the song, the lyrics and the music, an entanglement in and with the light (however you might understand that).

 

Song of Light

Light is falling into my window, light as feather in my hands

Light of moon is lace on cinders, tongues of light are woven strands

Light is falling

Light is falling

 

Light is flowing out through my window, as light as feathered wing flies from hand

Light on the moon, night sky is cinder; light from tongues like flowing strands

Light is flowing

Light is flowing

 

Light is glowing, light is my window, light is feathered bird nesting in my hand

Light is moon, and night, and cinder; light is words on tongues, glowing strands

Light is glowing

Light is glowing

 

Among other elements in that song, I see entanglement in the way that it expressed “light falling in,” and “light flowing out,” and also that light is the window, and elsewhere in the song, the bird, moon, sky, etc. 

In prior Episodes I referred to quantum physics here and there. I think it is time to bring that more explicitly to add to the music and the conversation at the table about the world which the religious heritages have been singing about and describing as they sit together.

So, in the next Episode I will pull up another chair to the table for a new guest, quantum physics, and invite them to respond to the questions the others have already been discussing. After quantum physics has their turn, I will try to summarize how the whole process is shaping my views about what the world is:

Whether the stuff the world is made of eternal? Are there multiple worlds? How does quantum entanglement affect everything, and does that entanglement include something more than our own consciousness? Though in relation to that last question, I will only hint at things since we have not arrived there yet.

I am amazed that, “way back when,” this whole conversation was set off as a result of asking what seemed at the time to be such a simple question: “where and when did I begin?”

I haven’t even touched the way that time and the idea of the self are imbedded within that question! I have a long way to go. Step by step. Episode by Episode.

Until next time…