Chapter Two: Holistic Hygiene and Health

The following scientific and practical disciplines are responsible for human health and the wisdom of medicine: medicine and medical practice; physical and environmental hygiene, as well as individual and societal health; maintaining health and well-being through attention to nutrition; exercise and movement therapy; psychology; and, ultimately, esoteric and occult sciences, which this book refers to as “spiritual-physical” in the context of their application to bodily matters. Collectively, these disciplines constitute hygiene and health with a holistic approach.

The material human body is created with such flexibility and adaptability that it is susceptible to illness yet capable of healing. Certain limited and short-term illnesses are part of the human health cycle, serving as deterrents to severe and difficult-to-treat diseases. These illnesses act as medicines in themselves, functioning similarly to vaccines by fostering immunity against certain diseases. For instance, short-term ailments like the common cold can be part of the natural health cycle, strengthening the immune system to prevent more severe illnesses.

However, severe and chronic diseases require prevention through adherence to hygiene and self-care. Hygiene is a fundamental deterrent to many diseases and constitutes a cornerstone of physical health. Factors influencing hygiene include age, gender, occupation, season, water, air, food, housing, physical and mental activities, and the tranquility derived from relative welfare, security from aggression, and protection from the intrusion of spiritual and metaphysical factors.

Types of Hygiene

Hygiene is categorized into three types: personal hygiene, mental hygiene, and public hygiene.

Personal Hygiene

Personal hygiene encompasses the activities and measures taken by an individual to maintain hygienic care, aimed at preserving, strengthening, and enhancing human health and capability. Maintaining the hygiene and cleanliness of body parts and organs prevents the penetration and impact of parasites and harmful microbes. Examples include washing hands with water, brushing teeth, using dental floss, and wearing clean clothing.

Public and Collective Hygiene

Public hygiene is the collective knowledge and art of preventing disease and ensuring, maintaining, and enhancing human well-being and capability through the concerted efforts of humanity as a whole, leading to the development of global society through community medicine. Society is a living reality, the product of the collective existence of like-minded individuals with shared needs, interests, and ambitions (particularly greed). Their aim is to achieve the authority to secure each other’s rights—especially the right to life—and to fulfill needs for better survival. This process is realized through adherence to accepted laws and regulations.

Laws and regulations are consciously upheld, encompassing respect for rights and needs, their defense, and their expansion and diversification. The formation of society is rooted in humanity’s emotional, psychological, and material needs. Society is a living, active ecosystem. As a living entity, it undergoes transformation, growth, and even decline. If not properly managed, society becomes diseased, loses its health, and succumbs to corruption.

Society possesses life, health, and illness, and its vitality, health, and ailments are intertwined with those of its people. Likewise, the vitality, health, and ailments of the people are linked to those of society. Any characteristic present in the people is reflected in society. The health and illness of society are more significant than those of the individual, as diagnosing societal ailments is more challenging and less tangible, their treatment requires a longer duration, and the expertise needed for their remedies is multifaceted and complex.

Society is not a conceptual or nominal entity; rather, the reality of society is the systematic and collective authority derived from the conscious and accepted regional or ideological connections among like-minded and needy individuals (particularly in addressing ambitions) to fulfill their shared desires. The collective nature of society signifies a spiritual unity between society and its people. Society is a characteristic of human groups, precisely termed “the people.” In relation to society, the people are akin to a pack of ten, not merely ten individuals forming a group. Just as a living organism is not merely an aggregation of cells but possesses a collective sense and vitality, society is not formed solely by the gathering of individuals; rather, it is governed by a collective unity that grants all its people a shared life and culture, without the society dissolving into individuals or individuals merging into society. This implies that the unity of society and its people is spiritual and has an external existence. Thus, society is not a scientific unit or a nominal entity devoid of real composition or external existence.

Society emerges from the similarity and harmony of hearts, with individuals uniting in spirit; otherwise, they remain fragmented. The inner structure of the heart, which shapes diverse desires, preferences, and aversions, forms the framework of society. In defining society, I have referred to this reality as “the likeness of human individuals.”

A global society that lacks security, peace, prosperity, and healthy governance, and fails to recognize the homeland of each group as their natural habitat, instead imposing oppression and authoritarian structures, engenders psychological disorders and various illnesses among peoples and nations under the stress of oppressive rule. Depriving intellectual and ideological forces of psychological security and subjecting them to injustice leads to the repugnant phenomenon of elite suppression and destruction. This drives society’s elites, who are foundational to civilization-building, toward apathy regarding societal conditions, extinguishing their spirit of struggle and sacrifice for a better society.

Mental Hygiene

Mental hygiene, as presented in this book, is the realization of comprehensive balance and harmony in fostering individual and societal psychological growth and health, maintaining it through the prevention of various disorders, and ensuring appropriate treatment and rehabilitation by adhering to its principles. Mental hygiene entails preserving psychological balance and health through the prevention of psychological disorders, stress management, and the enhancement of psychological and social growth.

Amid the prevalence of neurological diseases and the accumulation of psychological disorders, adherence to mental hygiene is the best prescription for health, necessitating daily dedicated time to ensure its realization. However, this cannot be achieved without familiarity with its principles. The knowledge that grants entry into this domain is true, compassionate, wise, empathetic, and loving psychology.

Health

Health, in the sense of well-being and preserving human integrity, involves the harmonious progression of the body’s natural course, balanced functioning of psychological and spiritual factors, self-efficacy, and effective, secure, and tranquil social presence. It entails authority over spiritual interactions and maintaining a connection with the inner self through the divinely ordained path, in accordance with God’s natural and revealed laws. Health is a state of complete physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being, achieved through harmony among the body’s nature, psyche, and inner essence.

A healthy life is one that maximizes compatible and cohesive alignments for the individual by discovering natural systems and moving in harmony with them collectively. These systems assign a precise and predetermined order to every phenomenon, free from chaos or disorder. Determining life’s purpose and ultimate goal, understood as discovering enduring natural relationships, plays a significant role in a healthy life. Humans require a meaningful and purposeful life, necessitating recognition of their natural relationships to consciously navigate their life path based on their motivation for living. Each individual’s life purpose is defined by their nature and natural trajectory.

If life is reduced to its material dimension, devoid of spiritual matters and inner purity, and if financial capacity to maintain chastity and sufficiency is neglected—along with reason, knowledge, power, will, freedom, courage, the ability to love and be loved, the fulfillment of emotions and affections, intimacy, love, and the capacity for patience and endurance—an individual loses their identity and health. This leads to profound and eternal deprivation, mental turmoil, anxiety, and drives them toward excess or deficiency.

Any preventive, therapeutic, or rehabilitative action to maintain and enhance health and bodily hygiene, including the self-care system, must align with all aspects of health, including natural systems and divine and spiritual principles. Harmful diseases and any overt or covert disorders represent deviations from the definition of health. The preservation and protection of health, security, and immunity are among the primary human social-welfare rights.

According to the World Health Organization’s standards, health is defined as the provision of appropriate physical, psychological, and social well-being. A healthy individual is one free from physical illness or disability, devoid of psychological disorders, possessing psychological balance and tranquility, control over bodily behaviors, and nobility. Society must ensure their dignity, respect, security, protection, and natural freedom, collectively preventing the maturation of factors that endanger individual, psychological, and societal health.

It must be believed that those lacking a healthy worldly life and physical health will not attain a prosperous afterlife or eternal salvation. As the Holy Quran states: “And whoever is blind in this [world] will be blind in the Hereafter, and more astray in the way” (Al-Isra: 72). Whoever lacks a healthy worldly life and physical health will have no share in the Hereafter. “Health” engenders felicity, and those without health lack felicity. Health implies benefiting from a modern, civilized, and meaningful life, utilizing all appropriate material blessings without causing destruction, ensuring one does not suffer regret, is not tormented by complexes, does not succumb to baseness, maintains chastity, and avoids sinking into debauchery and corruption in polluted environments. One must neither be reckless nor permissive, yet also steer clear of ignorance and folly.

It should be noted that physical and psychological health and balance do not depend on the availability of perfect comfort, complete enjoyment of welfare, or false hopes and unrealistic expectations. Rather, balance requires that, within the material struggle for survival, humans encounter problems, pains, and shortcomings to foster their creativity. Otherwise, a body in complete comfort declines, deteriorates, and becomes ensnared in divine deception. In adjudication, it is said that a judge should not be satiated, for a satiated judge, indulged in all blessings and comfort, fails to understand the pain of the people and society, becoming dull-witted and obtuse.

This approach defines health not merely as the absence of disease but as a state of complete physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being. The suffering arising from hardships, challenges, bitter circumstances, sacrifice, forbearance, patience, and adaptability provides the individual with the foundation for “creative thinking” and new insights. The greatest pain that can lead a person to awareness and knowledge is the realization of their separation from and veiledness from God.

Pains resulting from illness and disorder serve as warnings to take self-care and recovery seriously. Some asymptomatic and silent illnesses can lead to a quiet death.

Freedom and Psychological Stress

A healthy society is one endowed with freedom and security. Freedom and security foster joy, satisfaction, non-opposition, hope, convergence, and kindness. True joy lies in eternal matters and lasting salvation; thus, to attain joy, one must distance oneself from the transient and fleeting nature of this world, focusing on the true and enduring aspects of events and the path to eternal felicity and salvation.

The physical health of each individual depends on the health of society, the health of its leadership and governance, the sense of public security, the observance of freedoms, and the capacity for openness and expansion. A healthy society is free and secure, particularly in terms of economic security and confidence in investment. For this reason, I have termed health and well-being as “bodily freedom.”

A healthy society is neither one that is reckless and unrestrained in thought and action nor an oppressive, constrictive, and autocratic one that strips people of security and tranquility, instilling fear, anxiety, stress, and violence in their souls, causing companionship, kindness, and vitality to vanish from society. Without security, psychological health and well-being are lost. Comprehensive and all-encompassing security is attained through faith and trust in God. A believer is so named due to their enjoyment of security and safety.

When security, psychological tranquility, and the capacity for openness and expansion are present, they even influence an individual’s waste, rendering it beneficial and positive for animals. In the absence of openness and deprivation of inner expansiveness, security, and tranquility, what an individual consumes—even if lawful—is transformed by bodily insecurity into falsehood, hypocrisy, debauchery, corruption, idolatry, oppression, and disbelief. Even if what is consumed is worship and prayer, which are means of divine proximity, such presumed proximity fosters selfishness, self-centeredness, arrogance, hypocrisy, or idolatry, as it is tainted by selfishness, constriction, attachment, complexes, and confinement.

If an individual’s inner and environmental space lacks freedom, openness, and expansiveness, and they are trapped in societal constraints and inner constriction, their soul corrupts and taints everything that enters it—even faith—making it harmful and diseased. Even knowledge and faith, within such a constricted and stressed system marked by tension, constipation, and confinement, become corrupted, and the content of such knowledge, faith, or even service to divine saints becomes unreliable. Narrow-mindedness, constriction, attachment, and inner closure render every breath and movement microbial and diseased. Thus, a rigid faith that withholds fresh and healthy air from others through stubbornness, fanaticism, obstinacy, clamor, and distress causes greater harm than an open and noble disbelief that does not deprive others of freedom and developmental capacity or inject systemic pollution, despite its deprivation of truth.

A free and noble individual, endowed with openness and expansiveness, remains unaffected even by the accumulation of disbelief and is unattached to their own disbelief, free from it. However, a heart bound by narrow-mindedness and rigidity corrupts and ruins even purity and love, transforming them into corruption, pressure, stress, and distress.

As the saying goes, one cannot thread a needle in motion. First, security, freedom, and bodily freedom must be established to prevent individuals from suffering distressing and painful conditions. Only then can one speak of lawful and pure sustenance, physical and spiritual health, and, above all, divine sustenance and personal development.

If society and individuals are liberated from the quagmire of various forms of oppression, violence, embellishments, and nauseating homogenization, and in freedom, enjoy blessings and prosperity free from poverty, that society will have a splendid, expansive, and civilized future, the benefits of which will reach all inhabitants of the world. Such a society will be devoted, kind, humble, ethical, humane, and Islamic in service to God’s creation.

The absence of freedom and security leads to stress, violence, and psychological disorders. If freedom and security are lacking, an individual endowed with advanced knowledge should not fall into the fallacy of conflating knowledge with power or indulge in self-satisfaction due to their knowledge, injecting their knowledge into a society devoid of freedom and security. Otherwise, unsupported by an unfaithful and corrupt society and lacking power, they will suffer harm in isolation and alienation. An individual without the power to protect themselves and defend their knowledge should not reveal their sciences.

Later, I will discuss how the bane of nutritional health, and consequently physical and psychological health, is the consumption of food with fear, insecurity, resentment, hatred, anger, or haste. The health of food and the body requires a sense of security, freedom, purity, and intimacy. Even the highest-quality, most lawful, and pure food, when consumed with insecurity and resentment, becomes corrupted and destructive.

Just as society must be free and secure, an individual’s environment must be free from hostile spiritual factors. Threats to health include unwarranted intrusions and aggressions by spiritual and metaphysical factors, from which one must be protected to fully realize the meaning of health and ensure the well-being of people.

A life under pressure and unnatural conditions that restrict freedoms, impose adherence to improper legal prohibitions or fabricated religious taboos not rooted in faith, and limit children in home and school environments destroys their psyche, leaving them distressed, regretful, and burdened with complexes. Unnecessary restrictions, such as depriving children of freedom or societal pressures, lead to psychological complexes and unhealthy behaviors. Psychological pressure, complexes, regrets, and feelings of inadequacy drive individuals to a point where they readily engage in minor and major crimes, adopting a reckless and indifferent attitude toward them.

Children must be allowed to engage in mischief and playfulness freely. The minor damages they cause during this period prevent significant harm in adulthood. Children should be free to embrace their childhood and live according to their tastes, not reduced to motionless, will-less corpses in the hands of parents, constantly threatened and admonished to obey parental rules. In the material realm, children, too, must be free to express their natural disposition and character by choice.

If a child plays in childhood, they will not manipulate others in adulthood. Instead, they will build their life upon a divine foundation that endures eternally, not on fleeting and transient worldly games for themselves or others. Children and society must be left free. Inappropriate constraints and ignorant constrictions are factors in psychosomatic disorders. Psychological health lies in openness and free-spiritedness.

Children, adolescents, and other members of society must be left free to discover goodness, particularly God, through their own freedom and awareness, naturally pursuing religion, virtues, and the Divine. Above all, children must be introduced to God in a free environment before their minds are preoccupied or tainted by others’ flaws.

Religion is the straight path, and when individuals are left free, if they find it aligned with their nature and disposition, they instinctively choose this straight path. Those without an innate religious disposition, having knowledge of religion’s virtues, pursue it rationally and avoid crooked paths. The path to religiosity passes through freedom. If freedom exists and is respected by every holder of power and influence, religion becomes the primary choice as the divine straight path. General and dispositional religion also contains an autonomous system that leads individuals to God without the mediation of religiosity, centered on religious self-care imbued with the essence of divine guardianship. However, specialized engagement with religion at the levels of truth-seeking and faith requires divine mentor-guided support.

Freedom must begin at home. Both spouse and children must be left free, without feeling controlled, dominated, or caged. Otherwise, the sense of captivity, bondage, and subjugation breaks and wounds the spouse or child. Domination within a family is impossible without breaking and diminishing its members.

Animals in their natural habitats, and even in stables, enjoy freedom. Birds freely roll in the cleanest soil, as if swimming in a pool of earth or taking a dust bath. Just as soil, particularly for sparrows, is a cleanser, it is so for children. Sparrows never roll in dirty soil; they find clean, pure soil to roll in, which is suitable for children’s play.

A child’s will must be subtly managed and left free to play and even engage in childhood mischief. Children must be raised freely according to their nature, essence, and innate disposition, not rendered submissive and subjected to tyranny, harshness, domination, and suppression. A child should not be made utterly obedient through despair-inducing authoritarianism, as this stifles their talents, halts their growth, and hinders personal development and flourishing. Just as cutting a cow’s tail impairs some of its sensory perceptions and abilities, a child deprived of freedom has their potential—capable of conquering anything, entering divine realms, becoming God-possessing, or even standing firm before God without bowing—severely suppressed.

If children’s freedom is restricted, they are subjected to injustice, their psyche is wounded, and they are humiliated, they will, upon gaining power or authority, torment subordinates and society, behaving like totalitarian dictators. They restrict information flow, instill fear of others, foster mistrust, assert their exclusive strength, and, amid people’s intense fear for survival, present themselves as saviors from an alien threat, thereby oppressing others. Upbringing accompanied by coercion, imposition, and anger leads to the destruction of the child. Upbringing must be rooted in love, compassion, and affection.

Unwarranted and inappropriate restrictions, injustice, and disregard for others’ rights by any individual, even the strongest, engender psychological problems.

Challenges of Hygiene and Health

Approximately 23 percent of the population is reported to be affected by at least one psychiatric disorder, with the most prevalent being depression and anxiety, or emotional distress. Key challenges currently facing humanity include authoritarianism and life under oppressive constraints, the increasing frequency of natural disasters, an aging population, war as a significant cause of homelessness, narcotic drugs and addictive medications, environmental pollution and pollutants, AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), emerging and contagious infections, cancer, and lifestyle changes influenced by the negative effects of expanding virtual communication spaces, artificial intelligence, addiction to digital toxins, and virtual environments. Additionally, a crisis of meaninglessness and addiction to despair, hopelessness, cynicism, obsession, disbelief, and negative emotions rank among the foremost challenges, necessitating systemic laboratory and screening services alongside comprehensive interventions.

Despair, apathy, and negligence are significant contributors to emotional coldness, lack of affection, and contentment with minimal gains. However, due to the underlying infectious wound, even the greatest achievements fail to bring satisfaction. It should be noted that increased human lifespan is not solely dependent on health but also on hygiene, improved quality of life, maintaining physical and psychological balance, and avoiding harm to the body.

Emphasis on Psychology

Just as individuals attend to their physical body, its environment, and its external requirements, they must equally focus on their inner self, beginning with their psyche and psychological characteristics. This is achieved through psychology and consultation with specialists in this field to sustainably maintain a balanced state, preventing restlessness, excess, deficiency, destruction, or failure. Balanced individuals prioritize physical fitness, bodily aesthetics, and external appearance through regular exercise. However, these same individuals may lack awareness of their psyche, unaware of how to cleanse, improve, and optimize it, as they do their body. By correctly activating their psyche and the infinite inner potential they possess, they can achieve a state of well-being, vitality, and liveliness.

Psychology is the discipline that aids in understanding human psychological characteristics and maintaining psychological balance. Inner knowledge, a discipline beyond psychology, focuses on identifying the levels of intellect, heart, and soul, as well as the mysteries, hidden aspects, and concealed dimensions of the inner self. An individual who neglects their inner self and focuses solely on the material world may become selfish, ruthless, fanatical, dictatorial, arrogant, or even a murderer, as only base, malevolent motivations are activated within them.

Due to ignorance, individuals’ psyches often stagnate, lacking the capacity to express emotions, motivations, and powerful inclinations or to attain spiritual and inner stations. Those with a refined inner self become aware of the time and manner of their death and can discern the external and inner layers of others. Success in psychology requires first discovering the layers and levels of one’s own psyche and inner self, cultivating self-awareness, self-actualization, strengthened will, expansive and precise thought, and the dynamic activation of the heart’s profound sciences. Humans possess diverse inner layers. An individual who outwardly exhibits poor behavior may harbor an inner layer replete with virtuous conduct, noble ethics, the finest human qualities, or a level of intelligence surpassing the norm. Through introspection, individuals can bring their conscious self to these latent layers embedded in their subconscious and innate disposition. First, the psyche must be awakened, followed by engagement with academic and formal psychology, applying relevant data to a vibrant, active, and flourishing psyche for assessment and evaluation.

Body and Heart

Humans possess two primary centers of management and decision-making aligned with one another: the mind and intellect, with a short-term scope, and the heart, with a long-term scope if nurtured with the support of the intellect, illuminating reason and making it subservient. This applies to individuals whose bodily management is not dominated by their temperament or stomach. A stomach accustomed to lavish, indulgent meals or unhealthy foods stifles the faculty of reasoning and brain function, which then operates under its influence. Improper nutrition, such as the consumption of heavy or unnatural foods, can impair mental function, leading to reduced focus and delusions.

The mental system, through willpower, rationality, and pragmatic understanding, grants humans speech and mental impressions such as imagination, doubt, conjecture, cunning, comprehension, intellectual vitality, insight, and intuition. The highest intellectual impression is genius, which requires inner purity for precise understanding and reception. This talent can stagnate or decline if the body’s energy is overly expended on the respiratory system or the digestion of foods incompatible with the individual’s body, disposition, and inner self.

The digestive system can disrupt brain functions, including cognition, memory, intelligence, focus, and attention, leading to disarray and delusion, particularly in individuals suffering from constipation, obesity, or excess weight. Such individuals, as well as those with phlegm in the chest or a whitening tongue, can no longer access their inner self, heart, visions, or revelations, nor maintain sound mental awareness, succumbing to delusions and turbidity. A body lacking movement, exercise, flexibility, timely bathing, and hygiene becomes stagnant, rendering the mind sluggish and prone to delusions.

Talent, temperament, physical balance and health, education, mentorship, environmental factors, the lawfulness and spirituality of food, a wholesome livelihood, and the intellect’s authority in mental and rational impressions all play a role. Recent research indicates that even microplastics influence and penetrate the brain. If the body is not regularly detoxified, purified, cleansed, and sanctified through a varied diet and consistent exercise, these factors interfere with the brain’s content and function, polluting it with delusions and turbidity.

Conversely, the inner and cardiac system, particularly inner purity, as well as the nervous and psychological systems, influence the body’s structure and appearance, manifesting their state through external signs. For instance, bad stomach odor may stem from psychological disorders, while the pleasant fragrance some individuals exude may arise from their inner purity and divine sincerity. An individual afflicted with anxiety or worry has both their body’s heat and stomach odor affected by this unrest, emitting an unpleasant smell that pollutes and fouls their inner self.

The System of the Heart

The system of the heart and its mysteries, endowed with expansiveness, love, and the capacity for inner perceptions, grants the possessor of the heart inner and spiritual impressions. In the spiritual realm, for exalted and perfected saints, it establishes a luminous phase. The highest spiritual impression is divine revelation. Inspiration, observation, revelation, and vision are of this category, contingent upon inner purity, divine proximity, unity, or divine attainment.

Knowledge related to the heart is influenced by and dependent upon passion, pain, affliction, love, devotion to God, and the light of His grace, which is the root of divine proximity. The sustenance of the heart, its nourishment, and provision consist of love, knowledge, passion, harmony, mystery, grace, and the secret of divine unity and God Almighty. Some receive easy and pure sustenance, while others attain only base and inferior sustenance with difficulty.

The avenues through which God facilitates the discovery of the heart are diverse, but most are accompanied by various afflictions, pains, passion, and harmony. An individual who experiences no affliction in life to purify and refine them, living entirely in comfort and joy, falls prey to divine deception. Attachments, particularly to the material world, are cleansed from the inner self through these pains, passions, sorrows, and separations, guiding the individual toward discovering the heart and ascending to the heavens of the divine realm. The heart and the God of the heart do not reside in anyone without pain. This God is a tangible, heartfelt God, not a conceptual or mental one that fails to elicit meaningful or effective attention from the individual.

For seekers of the heart and pursuers of truth, God brings forth numerous pains and sorrows, which constitute part of their spiritual discipline. Discipline and afflictions serve to soften, grant flexibility, and instill authority and resilience. The inner self must endure thousands of incisions and cuts to entirely remove otherness, rendering the individual free of alien elements. Only then can one stand in God’s presence, free of self and strangers, as a confidant.

Centers of Bodily Management and Influence

The material and embodied human possesses three effective and influential centers: the movement and trajectory of the embodied individual may be governed by their digestive system, particularly the stomach, which influences the mouth, throat, esophagus, circulatory system, heart, lungs, and respiratory system; or by the brain, which controls mental thought, the faculty of understanding, and rationality; or by a supra-cerebral entity, the physical heart. If the non-instinctive, supra-cerebral heart assumes management, it subjects the body and its manifestations to its findings, hopes, loves, joys, and sorrows, stimulating and affecting brain operations. This results in either empowerment, prosperity, and flourishing or weakness, stagnation, and cessation.

Humans lacking a luminous phase, possessing only a material phase—termed embodied—fall into categories such as nasnas (akin to animals), nas (humans), or khannas (whisperers). These groups lack an inner heart. As discussed in my book Consciousness and Divine Humanity, the majority of humans—nasnas and nas—lack a disembodied soul. If they possess a soul, it is of a subtle material nature, not yet attaining transcendence. A disembodied soul is reserved for exalted humans who have cultivated a rational life, possessing the sacred phase and profound wisdom from the heart’s level. Those endowed with the luminous phase are true humans. Believers and divine humans possess this luminous phase, as elaborated in the aforementioned book.

An individual afflicted with harshness, sharpness, aggression, anger, irritability, rigidity, constriction, laziness, intellectual disruption, superficiality, narcissism, grandiosity, arrogance, greed, or ambition cannot reach the realm of the heart. Instead, their wretchedness, cruelty, complexes, and regrets intensify, stripping them of vitality, purity, and freshness.

Individuals must train themselves to refrain from acting without God’s command or sign. Upon perceiving and becoming aware of such a command or sign, they must act without hesitation or reluctance, whether the command leads to worldly prosperity or diminishes their material success, bringing worldly decline.

It is of utmost importance that to attain the heart, one must not live by “law” or “right and wrong,” as these are for ordinary individuals. Instead, one must consistently abandon greed, embrace truth, practice “compassionate forgiveness,” and engage in “selfless sacrifice” to fulfill God’s commands, living with pure love rather than ambition. In the face of injustices done to them, individuals must see God’s hand, develop attachment to the transgressor, and hold them in esteem. This is the most arduous discipline.

Non-Faith-Based Proximity and Faithful Descent

Proximity to God Almighty fosters descent and self-liberation, enabling manifestation, renewal, freshness, expansion, and greatness. Its initial stages, marked by discipline, pain, and passion, are common to all manifestations and do not require faith, hence termed general proximity. General proximity does not guarantee otherworldly felicity, nor does it consider the legitimacy of the act’s intention or the agent’s intention. It solely possesses the intention of the act itself as an empowering action, remaining within the temporal realm and thus leading to ruin, potentially increasing human egoism and selfishness.

The second proximity, characterized by superficial worship and shallow knowledge, also wields reprehensible, ego-driven authority, lacking divine guardianship and legitimacy. The individual’s ego holds sway, tainting its power with idolatry. Ego-driven power’s contamination with idolatry stems either from negligence or deliberate denial of existential power, attributing all power intrinsically to oneself, resulting in perilous self-centeredness.

Ego-driven power extends no further than the material realm, with its information and influence confined to matter. However, it remains true that whoever moves toward perfection with sincerity, to any degree, reaps corresponding benefits and results.

Proximity to God Almighty in the third stage transcends the body, occurring through God’s divine power, driven by the attraction of love and a true orientation. The ego, its desires, and all forms of material idolatry and oppression are eradicated, replaced by truth. Only such vision and power possess legitimacy, embodying divine guardianship and felicity. In this stage, human vision and power stem from inner will and the boundless capacity of the soul, connected to God Almighty and eternity, not the limited power of the embodied human’s body and mind. Prophecy, guardianship, miracles, revelation, sanctity, inspiration, illumination, intuition, vision, revelation, and inner impressions are among the authorities derived from this proximity.

Obstacles to Truth-Seeking and Proximity

The myriad obstacles that prevent numerous individuals from attaining truth-seeking and the authority of true proximity to God must be identified and avoided as much as possible. One should strive to attract and expedite the necessary conditions for achieving proximity. Overcoming obstacles is only valid if not a single hindrance arises. Even one challenge or obstacle brings about decline, and prevention is undoubtedly better than cure. Becoming ensnared by a single obstacle leads to the erosion of power and the loss of true proximity. As long as power encounters no hindrance, it strengthens and empowers itself.

Among the worst obstacles are ignorance, blind imitation, knowledge divorced from true understanding, false religion, and deceit, all of which adorn the self with superficial embellishments. Other obstacles include persistent and static doubt, which breeds despair and weakness; the absence of a mentor or an experienced guide; poverty and destitution; lack of resources; the arrogance of the haughty; authoritarianism; disregard for sanctities; neglecting the sublime value of God’s phenomena; belittling and breaking them, particularly the disparagement of the world, which is among the most sacred realms; committing sins; deviating from nature; cowardice or instilling fear and terror in others; temptations from deceitful demons and jinn; stubbornness, especially obstinacy in the face of mercy; self-destruction; lack of harmony with one’s physical constitution; and failure to live in accordance with truth and one’s natural disposition. These are further impediments on the path to truth-seeking.

Matters related to harmony with one’s physical constitution include the individuals with whom one establishes smoother and more fluid connections and those from whom one derives tranquility or, conversely, heaviness and frustration.

Veracity

Among the essential prerequisites for personal development, successful spiritual wayfaring, and proximity or attainment to God are the avoidance of falsehood and the observance of veracity. Veracity is a fitting substitute for fear. Through veracity, one can attain higher love, self-sacrifice, expansiveness in encountering manifestations, and ultimately love itself.

The root and essence of perfections, pleasures, fulfillment, and love—polishing the inner self, love, and unity—is veracity. If veracity is present, an individual can become compassionate and benevolent, free from weakness, lethargy, and failure. The criterion and measure of the validity of veracity is love. Only when love and affection are established can one be certain of the presence of veracity.

Veracity is the alignment of speech and action with reality. A siddiq, an intensified form, refers to one who is forthright in speech, endowed with clarity and truthfulness in both words and deeds, with their veracity manifesting openly and with evident intensity. A sadiq is truthful in speech and action but lacks the forthrightness of a siddiq.

Veracity requires wisdom. Truthfulness rooted in wisdom, free choice, and purity constitutes veracity. Wisdom embodies firmness and solidity, such that it cannot be shaken or swayed toward deviation from truth. Thus, it must be authentic, logical, and substantiated. One cannot possess veracity in action without wisdom and a guiding text (logical and properly substantiated), as their actions become whimsical, driven by desires and caprices. The foundation of veracity is wisdom, a guiding text, and a structured program (logic).

Veracity means being true, not merely speaking the truth. Veracity is not a quality of speech but of the entity itself. Thus, a sadiq is one whose speech and actions are firm, certain, reasoned, authentic, essential, and primary—in other words, true. These words and deeds shine within them like the sun, radiant and brilliant, and they can present them with evidence. One who harbors doubt or conjecture about a proposition or accepts it based on superficial evidence lacking proper substantiation is not a sadiq. Consequently, neither their actions nor their thoughts possess veracity.

The first step toward proximity to God and attaining Him is heartfelt veracity, where the individual is purified of egoistic pleasures and pursues divine ordinances with love. They follow a heart that illuminates the intellect, transforming it into a luminous intellect. Such an intellect accepts the sacred command and management of the divine heart in place of the dominion of dark inclinations and bodily desires.

The body is inclined toward desires, with lust, wealth, and fame being among the primary branches of its varied inclinations. The desire for the most elegant home, the most luxurious car, dominance and leadership through authority, acquiring beautiful companions, or living a lavish lifestyle stems from these inclinations.

However, what grants humans superiority and sublime perfection is an authoritative connection with all realms and the attainment of truths. This power and capability, achievable through the heart’s authority, the capacity for vision, and the soul’s aspiration, bestows upon them the pinnacle of personal elevation and development.

The mind, unable to comprehend God and His unity, lacks trust and confidence in God Almighty. It instills fear in the individual of scarcity, poverty, lack of sustenance, envy, and competition, compelling them throughout their life to toil incessantly to secure living expenses, much like ants that, fearing food shortages, gather and store several times their needs.

Every phenomenon is endowed with a divinely apportioned and determined sustenance. One who is consumed by worry over sustenance or grief over provisions lacks knowledge and faith in God, and thus lacks the necessary self-assurance, patience, and resilience. However, one must possess a sound mind and heart to avoid losing their apportioned sustenance and to derive fulfilling and acceptable benefit from it.

The system of self-care, essential for achieving health and fulfillment, requires the majesty of courage and the purification of bodily fears, heart’s weaknesses, and frailties until resilience is attained. If an individual is fearless and resilient, they will soon uncover the treasure of patience, expansiveness, knowledge, proximity, and attainment. As will be discussed later, resilience is the necessary prerequisite for firmly entering any endeavor, including entry into transcendent realms. A cowardly and impatient individual deprives themselves of all these blessings, becoming withdrawn and isolated, accepting every failure with their weakness.

One must be truthful with oneself, removing fear, impatience, and other obstacles to personal development, taming and mastering oneself, and, beyond the mind, attaining the heart’s insights. The scope and range of the mind are highly limited, and inner perfections, including the recognition of one’s true self and the efficacy of remembrance, settle in a heart that is assured, firm, and free from doubt and hesitation. As the Noble Qur’an states: “And you have not been given of knowledge except a little” (Al-Isra: 85).

Mental knowledge does not extend beyond superficial awareness and is profoundly limited, offering no path to recognizing boundless truths and endless knowledge, including self-discovery, unless it surrenders to the heart. True knowledge of the self is neither derived from sense and nature nor from theoretical intellect and reasoning. Rather, it is the path of the heart and the attainment of pristine nature through inner purity, inner wayfaring, and the strengthening of practical intellect that reveals the individual’s truth. Those with a warm disposition, inclined toward love and spiritual states, more easily access the heart and surrender to its spiritual knowledge, inner guardianship, love, and unity.

Through the heart, one can attain proximity to God Almighty, and even reach Him. To achieve proximity and attainment, one must avoid belittling the exalted human station, recognize the immense and complex self under the guidance of a mentor, strengthen will, patience, veracity, expansiveness, prayer (worship), need, and grace, and tread the path of pure love, knowledge, and unity. Additionally, one must uphold nutritional hygiene and spirituality scientifically within the framework of self-care, fostering the conditions for initial proximity to God through wholesome, pure, fresh, lawful, pleasant, and agreeable sustenance.

Human proximity or distance from God Almighty depends on a righteous and healthy life. Without a proper material life, proximity to the divine realm and other inner realms, as well as the ability to harness transcendent energies and attain God, cannot occur.

Humans, neither in the realm of good nor evil, accept any limitation or boundary, nor do they halt at any point. There is no pause, end, or finality for them. The greatest attribute of humans is their capacity to possess an all-encompassing station to an infinite degree, something other manifestations lack, rendering every manifestation subject to human dominion, influence, and inner authority.

A human possessing an all-encompassing and culminating station need not manifest in a specific form, such as an animal or plant. Their all-encompassing station and veracity enable them to recognize that form without being tainted by its attributes.

The ultimate veracity is that a human becomes empty of their illusory self, attaining perfection and complete divinity, purely executing God’s ordinances, bringing forth with assurance, firmness, and love what God Almighty demands, and in every moment and state, beholding God, His will, and His decree.

Such an individual, even amidst a multitude of enemies, gains greater purity and is refined through this powerful current without falling prey to deception or perceiving phenomena in place of God Almighty. Compassion and wrath are equal to them, and the following noble verse is etched in their heart: “So that you may not grieve over what has escaped you, nor exult over what He has given you, and God does not love any arrogant boaster” (Al-Hadid: 23).

The possessor of a heart, or rather a soul, who lives with love and has become God-seeing, does not consider the sweetness or bitterness of matters nor is sensitive to them. Instead, they perceive the hand of God in all things, are sensitive to His divine decree, and accept it, whether it be good or evil. Fear, stress, and anxiety are manageable for such a person through assurance and faith. They see both the tender-hearted God and every phenomenon as endowed with a pure and beautiful heart, taking great care not to break or shatter any heart with unwarranted harshness or sharpness.

One who reaches the heart, speaking firmly and from a foundation of rectitude, is a possessor of veracity and truthfulness. Those with hearts surrender their heart to God Almighty, seeing no stranger or outsider to admit into it. All manifestations and phenomena reside in God’s heart and upon His heart, with God never distant from anyone. One with a true heart is endowed with sanctity, such that no meaningful phenomenon or even environmental event enters that divine sanctuary without permission.

If the heart becomes God’s sanctuary and God Almighty resides within it, its actions, sacrifices, courage, resilience, and worship take on the hue of proximity, purity, and divine love, imbued with a delightful, healing, life-giving, and desirable flavor of God.

A mental human becomes profoundly limited and small, such that purchasing a pair of shoes, taking a puff from a hookah, or acquiring a plot of garden land melts their heart with joy, prompting them to boast, celebrate excessively, sound the horn of triumph, and create a commotion. This is because they have not witnessed the grandeur of the heart and the vastness of its visions, nor have they tasted or comprehended the majesty and greatness of the human station in the divine address: “O reassured soul, return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing [to Him], and enter among My servants, and enter My Paradise” (Al-Fajr: 27–30).

However, if this small heart is worldly, even the consumption of colorful foods lacks flavor, enjoyment, pleasure, and fulfillment for the worldly, as such pure food or superficial joy cannot align with a tainted inner self distant from God, nor satisfy them. Food, pleasures, and joys lack true enjoyment and fulfillment for the worldly, failing to bring them pleasure or tranquility, and may even become a source of torment, as they lack satisfaction and contentment. Conversely, those devoted to meaning and God derive purity and fulfillment from worship, illumination, and love, finding in food love, satisfaction, contentment, pleasure, and fulfillment.

Quality of Mental and Inner Human Life

An individual attains perfection, quality, and caliber through “thought” and “will.” Theoretical sciences pertain to thought, fostering heart’s tranquility, inner purity, clear thought, and heart’s illumination. Practical sciences relate to human will, leading to embodying divine ethics and adorning oneself with divine attributes.

The perfection and strength of thought are achieved through theoretical wisdom, while the perfection and resilience of will are realized through practical wisdom. Wisdom is the initial stage of the heart’s perfection, followed by intuition and knowledge, which perfect the soul.

The vitality of the inner self and its scientific dynamism have two key indicators: first, the individual’s capacity to listen, hearing other voices, attentively analyzing criticisms, oppositions, and objections raised against them, seeking to benefit from others’ words and identify their own flaws and weaknesses; second, the blossoming of new thoughts and fresh ideas daily, possessing the power of critique and innovation, with novel and fresh insights keeping the soul fragrant and vibrant. Without these two, the individual is sick and lifeless. This means that a dynamic individual’s thoughts consistently evolve and grow, presenting ever-newer offerings daily. The capacity to listen does not imply hearing every voice or following every path; rather, it involves listening to those with genuine expertise and divine inspiration.

Four Stages of Personal Development

There are four general stages and levels in personal development for the growth and perfection of body and inner self:

1. Bodily desires and natural inclinations.
2. Bodily and minor mental, conceptual inclinations and rational life, centered on the brain and physical heart, operating through tools, leading to knowledge and attribute recognition reliant on instruments and tools.
3. The transcendent heart and luminous wisdom, independent of tools and the mind, endowed with inner perception. Love at the heart’s level is not yet free of the ego.
4. The soul, the apparatus of knowledge, essence recognition, and identity cognition, the stage of love and the loving heart, entirely free of the ego, loving and being in love without need for tools, companionship, or bodily expression. Through this love, vision, discovery, truth, and God Almighty blossom in the heart. Such a lover sees without eyes, possessing vision independent of bodily eyes.

So long as a human is raw, embodied, and merely mental, they do not experience the higher, supra-mental stages. If a human dies in the material realm’s exigency and worldly freedom in a raw state, the intermediary realm becomes a furnace of forceful refinement, where they discover the Lord’s name, the essence of creation, and the purpose of their existence. Some are so rigid, hardened, obstinate, and antagonistic that even billions of years in the intermediary realm are insufficient, requiring the trials of the Day of Judgment and the ordeal of Hell to emerge from their rawness.

The Process of Transition from Material to Transcendent

The starting point of the human’s transcendence process is their material body. Just as a morsel of food is broken into pieces by the front teeth, chewed by other teeth, and undergoes several stages of digestion in the stomach, becoming progressively finer and more refined until it enters the bloodstream and ultimately nourishes cells through capillaries, growing ever more refined at each stage, so too does a human, initially material, ascend through an inner self fed by refined and meaningful sustenance—knowledge, love, fulfillment, and other perfections—along with divine guardianship and God Almighty. Through the consumption of refined foods, refined perception, fluids, pleasant fragrances, and pure, fresh air, they are continually refined until they reach a stage where they are no longer material but transcendent, free of matter, like divine saints and prophets. Geniuses, noble, and courageous individuals also quickly attain a transcendent inner self, endowed with the power of creation, innovation, and initiative, relying less on memory or acquired knowledge. However, a cowardly, short-sighted, imitative, self-defeated, hypocritical, or duplicitous individual, even if claiming expertise in conceptual and informational knowledge, or a greedy and ambitious person who does not live lovingly, neither possesses a transcendent inner self nor can comprehend what it entails.

An embodied human is material, and even if they possess a soul, it is initially material. Through the consumption of refined elements, it gradually gains strength, authority, and resilience, reaching transcendence. Transcendence is a graded, nuanced, and elevatable matter, which can be categorized as low, moderate, or high transcendence.

Humans can become so refined beyond their material body that they achieve transcendence. Thus, humans neither remain confined to matter alone nor are a composite of matter and transcendence. Matter and transcendence form an interconnected, interwoven, and infinite continuum. Matter is refined to the point of becoming transcendent, and transcendence, conversely, can condense to become matter.

Humans, predominantly beginning with nature and matter, take on the form and determination of any manifestation they approach and engage with, capable of descending or ascending. This form is not taken from them. Whatever settles in the human soul becomes inseparable. What we perceive as the “self” is an act, a determination, and a facet of the human self, not the self itself, and even this act is not separated from them. Humans can assume infinite facets without anything being removed or added, governed by a system of transformation and metamorphoses to infinite formations and facets. Therefore, humans should not be regarded as dualistic or a composite of matter and transcendence.

A transcendent human can become a recipient of revelation and profound insights, unlike a mind filled with greed or a heart burdened with malice and hardened by enmity, confined within a material body and a mercantile mind.

A transcendent human can possess a luminous phase and divine, innate, and graced attributes, even in the embryonic stage or at the moment of conception, following a trajectory of descending knowledge and awareness, as I have elucidated in my book Consciousness and Divine Humanity. This is not true of an embodied, material human whose sole existential and manifest phase is earthly, not surpassing the level of a rational animal or the mental stage. Malevolent individuals—such as Muawiya—and ordinary humans lack the luminous phase. The luminous phase is innately provided in the material realm for those who are courageous, noble, chivalrous, insightful, wise, and possess a sacred intellect through which God, the Merciful, is worshipped. Otherwise, it is merely devilry, misguidance, inclinations, malevolence, egoistic devilry, or ordinary knowledge with limited scope and potency. Misguidance and perdition entail distancing oneself from the joy and fulfillment of life and the grace of existence, rooted in an abundance of love. Guidance means enjoying a fitting share of pleasant life, possessing the capacity for love, which is divine being and the operationalization of God’s innate ordinances—divinization. Sometimes, God designates certain individuals as His chosen and beloved, as I will discuss later. Divinization entails receiving God’s special and unique grace, placing the individual on a higher horizon than their peers and counterparts.

Infinite Individuation

Psychological discussions are also analytical, addressing related components academically and scientifically. Through philosophical psychology, the principles and roots of a psychological phenomenon or process are identified fundamentally and precisely, attending to its subtleties with a practical philosophy that incorporates laboratory methods, inductive reasoning, abstract deductive proof, and operational and practical definitions for understanding phenomena within its logic. I have discussed these methods and thought formulas in my book The Logic of Understanding.

Wise and tolerant psychology, in its approach to education and instruction, adopts a method compatible with the individual, making the individual the subject of psychological instruction. In this method, each individual’s psychology is treated as a workshop and apparatus for research, experimentation, practice, and evaluation, gently guiding the individual toward abstract and transcendent psychological topics.

Applied psychology emphasizes that humans do not possess a single individuation to be recognized as a unique entity. Rather, the body, psyche, and inner self of each human can assume infinite facets, angles, dimensions, and levels.

Just as the number of cells in a body is vast, so too are the individuations of a human. Humans are not a singular type to be defined in a single sentence as a rational animal or confined to their earthly phase. Humans are not a singular type, nor merely a rational animal, nor do they have a fixed essence or type. They are the aggregate of all manifestations and can transform into anything, either gradually or with unnatural haste.

Individuation is the recognition of a phenomenon’s unique personality and identity without considering its relation to another phenomenon, prioritizing its individual characteristics over differentiation. Differentiation is the recognition of a phenomenon’s distinctions from another in their relational and comparative context, which does not inherently lead to uniqueness.

Existence, meaning God Almighty, possesses individuation by its very essence, while the individuation of manifestation corresponds to its level. In the system of existence and manifestation, we encounter God’s existence and the individuations of manifestations. God’s existence comprises essence and manifest levels, with the difference between existence and manifestation being the difference between essence and level. Every manifestation is a person, individuated in both identity and attributes. Manifestation, in addition to individuation, possesses determination, but God’s essence has neither determination, level, nor gradation, which are attributes of manifestation. These truths, fundamental to anthropology, will be discussed later.