THE SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Why do we want to know?

Dr. Faust also wanted to know. What in particular did he want to know?

The secrets of nature. For what purpose did he want to know? In order to dominate nature! What did he do in order to learn the secrets? He sold his soul to the devil!

“Self” and “Knowing”. The ontological and epistemological story of existence. Knowledge of God, the Being and the Self.

Throughout the history of humanity, knowledge and wisdom have been gathered in three parts. The first is self-knowledge. The second is to know the Creator, that is, the God-knowledge, and the third is to know the existence outside of one’s own self, the knowledge of being. These three concepts, namely knowledge of self, God, and being, include all types of knowledge within themselves. For example, self-knowledge means that it encompasses studies such as psychology, sociology, and philosophy, which are called human sciences as a whole and emerged as a result of human experiences and experiments and take them into a framework. Consider this by including sciences such as mysticism, fiqh, tafsir and kalam in Islamic sciences. Although we know thatIslamic sciences, such as mysticism, kalam, and tafsir, derive from a divine source, we must remember that every idea and theory that is fed from that source is self-knowledge, as it is a result of the knowledge acquired by one’s own effort.

The knowledge of Almighty God, on the other hand, is based on the human’s need for a support in the universe in a way beyond the self-knowledge that human beings gain as a thinking creature. When we pull back the knowledge of God, that is, the sacred, it is not possible to realize any civilization, ethics, responsibility, or conscience issues. Mankind falls, mankind drifts. Human beings define their own existence, their world of meaning with the Other.

In human relations, people find themselves in a competition, as they struggle for survival like any other mammalian species. If we analyze it more deeply, we will see that the universe proceeds in conflict and tension. Separation and fragmentation following physical collisions create new objects. Biological tension, change and transformation/evolution arises from the existence of new living things. All this physical and biological struggle for existence and survival and conflict also requires a compromise.

Because after a while, contention, competition, conflict necessitate the development of their own natural laws and rules. One may need to kill to live, but a set of rules is also necessary to live and kill. The propositions we call morality and ethics must acquire transcendent meanings. Concepts need to be produced in this context. Preventing the production and overcoming of these transcendent concepts necessitates the knowledge of a superior other, that is, the knowledge of God. For these reasons, the ideal that we call God comes into play and the civilization established by human beings in the world of conflict, competition and struggle gains legitimacy by gaining transcendent meanings. This manifests not as human self-knowledge, but as God’s knowledge.

The Being’s knowledge is the knowledge about what the being is. What is a pen, what is a notebook, what is the sun, what is a virus or a disease... Being knowledge is the knowledge that people cannot take with them when they come to the end of their lives. When we leave this world, we can only take the Self and God knowledge with us. Because, when we look at the flow of life and the result we have achieved, we understand that the knowledge of being is not the knowledge that creates us, but the knowledge that makes us feel that we exist. However, it is the knowledge of God that we believe created us and ourselves. We will not need what is left behind, since our existence, which is the place where we look at the end, is formed by a new knowledge of being. The meaning of “The hereafter is better than the previous one,” will be revealed.

Any type of knowledge other than these are generally useless/ satanic knowledge about things that Islam in particular and Semitic

divine religions in general call devilish, about things such as who steals what, how people rob or kill or how people cheat.

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) says, “I have brought you information about your Creator, your God.” Humans can reach the knowledge of )صلى الله عليه وسلم( the creator through revelation. At the same time, the Prophet brings self-knowledge to mankind as his duty. The line drawn by the Prophet on knowing the being says, “I am a human being like you,” and the difference is explained by stating that “the knowledge of being has the wisdom of being, but the subject of how it will be given depending on our effort and work”.

For example, the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) may have wisdom and knowledge about the reality of a calamity and Allah’s intention or will in that matter. However, since the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is a human being, he has no obligation to have knowledge about the development stages of that calamity.

There is the inner world of people and there is the world in which people live. Self-knowledge is basically a place where people do not have knowledge of their inner world and the world they live in, and where they look at themselves beyond layers, status, role, and memorization. The inner world can only be accessed when all the statuses, masks, roles, memorizations and addictions that the world in which one lives in are removed. Self is the area that is purified from all attached knowledge, all mechanisms and parameters of the world in which human beings live, by effort or characterization.

Is the inner world of people, then, a place to be reached quickly?

Throughout history, all Islamic traditions and philosophy have revealed teachings on this subject. In fact, the self consists of a number of layers and is based on the person’s assumptions or experiences. For example, the basis of a person’s integrity is attributed to religion, laws, family, and morality. In the expression ‘I have integrity, because...’, all the information that comes after ‘because’ does not belong to the person himself/herself and consists of knowledge taught by religion, ethics, law or family without comprehension or belief. The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) has emphasized on self-knowledge a lot, and those who reach this knowledge are classified as wise or sages. This knowledge can only be gained through a long and arduous story.

All judgments, memorizations, beliefs, and teachings of a person who has not discovered himself/herself are a pile of straw, and a match will destroy it. Right and beautiful, virtue and conscience are embedded in human beings. You need to discover them. All the judgments you receive from the outside are not your own. You have not discovered your judgments; you have not found them in your essence. You are wearing other people’s clothes. In this way, you can get rid of forms of imitation and become a free person. But only free people are offered faith. You don’t know who you are... Living without knowing who you are is suffering. If you don’t know who you are, whatever you do will result in failure and frustration.

Creative knowledge includes several levels in itself. The first level consists of the knowledge about the Creator we believe in and the comprehension of this knowledge rather than knowing it. The transformation of the knowledge of the Creator, in which we believe, into a state, that is, the becoming of human beings, is a higher level. Therefore, when we believe in the knowledge that Allah sees us, we first know it as knowledge, but the comprehension of this knowledge is different. Anyone can commit any sin very easily when they are in a secluded place. A person can do this despite having some knowledge because that person has not yet fully grasped the subject. Those who are conscious means that they have drawn themselves to the center of themselves in every phase of their life, as the beloved sufi Yunus Emre tells. So, what do we mean by becoming? For example, do you think about whether you are breathing? Becoming is being able to experience any knowledge without thinking about the why and how. Knowing is useful for knowing where, how and what to do. Knowing is worship, becoming is the multiple of worship. Science is an ongoing system. It is a slowly manifesting phenomenon; it requires effort and material and spiritual well-being.

Allah sees me in the room, He sees me everywhere. For example, do you think about whether you can get oxygen or not? For us, breathing is essential without thinking about how and why. This is the level of becoming. The servant who says Allah sees me no longer needs a reminder or information on that subject. The comprehension of knowledge does not stop here either, according to the people of wisdom. Therefore, the knowledge of Allah sees me for someone who does not have self-knowledge is unnecessary at that level. This is a great social wound. What does the fact that Allah sees us contribute to our self-knowledge? How does my essence benefit from this knowledge? The elements, such as geography and family, which have brought me into existence, have existed long before I arrived, and continue independently of me after I am gone. For example, in elementary school, I collected moral information, such as the concepts that theft and lying are bad, but I did not experience it.

We cannot have the truth of anything that we have not experienced in life, such as evil, sin, merit, or mistakes but we can only memorize the truth that someone else has created by experience, after which we become a parrot. Although parrots memorize the word, they are not aware of its meaning.

In high school, laws, ethical, moral, sexual, religious, and political prohibitions are added to this cumulative knowledge, and we become constructed, constructed individuals. What do I get when I ask myself one day; “Who am I?” For example, when I answer by saying “I am a person with integrity,”, where am I in this answer?

The integrity that I am talking about is something that is taught to me. It is not me; it is something that occurred outside of me.

We are talking about a Self-created by the world in which I live, therefore, it is not my essence. For example, let’s say we were taught that being Turkish is right. Years later, I realized that actually being Turkish does not mean being happy. Or, actually, I learn that I’m not as hard a worker as I was taught to aspire to be in primary school. Or that I have no experience of being a hard worker. Maybe when I discover my Self, I will find that I am not industrious. What’s the difference if I’m Turkish or English? Even if I have some value related to my being Turkish in essence, I have not experienced this value or know that it is true for me. This value existed in my virtual reality and was taught to me and memorized by me.

For these reasons, true self-knowledge is very valuable. If people spend their whole lives trying to access this information, they will reach their own self-knowledge. In fact, those who reach their own self-knowledge through experience actually discover the Almighty God.

In the age of aphorisms, it is too easy to recite remarkable memorized sentences. Unfortunately, this is the journey with the weakest form in terms of a person’s journey to their own essence. Centuries ago, when people said, “He who knows himself knows his Lord,” they knew that to know oneself, to know that s/he is a part of nature, to know that s/he has a place in nature spatially, and to experience that both nature and himself/herself are from Him.

However, in this age, a person who encounters this sentence immediately opens the books of Sufism, sees the nafs-i ammarah and its attributes and thinks that s/he has learned the subject. Let’s consider some attributes, for example. We encounter many definitions within this context. There are definitions based on concepts such as arrogance, superiority, ego. If we examine these definitions, we will see that they do not exactly match the definition of vanity in our inner world. We see that written documents and information about these definitions of vanity do not have a counterpart in our inner world, but have a counterpart in the world we live in.

People talk about an inner world formed by their outer world. For example, in love, you see that there is a concept that people create with information outside of themselves. “But that’s not me,” you’ll say. This is actually a person created by the law and in love with someone created by morality. In fact, law and morality fall in love with each other. There is no law in the inner world! The question of what I am actually has an answer. I am like a dog, about my loved ones. I guess I’m a bit like a cat. “You will not be my lord just because you have given me a little treat,” I say, because my Lord is one. Scholars say that when people look in the mirror of nature, they see their own reflection. I cannot give an answer from my own essence to the question of what vanity is in the context of my own existence. Even if I define vanity in a certain way, it does not belong to me in truth. It’s not mine because it’s not something I’ve discovered through real experiences in my life.

For example, a doctor cannot diagnose a stomach ailment without an examination and analysis. For example, reflux is completely different in person ‘a’ and person ‘b’, it is necessary to look at thousands of parameters to define a case of reflux. We can’t simply ask and get a diagnosis over the phone.

It can come in handy when I accept the suggestion that ‘Vanity is to consider oneself conceptually superior to others’ and then say that I should not consider myself superior to others. But one day, when I come across with other information that will undermine this, such as “believers are holy and clean, while polytheists are dirty”, how can I not consider myself superior to the polytheists?

There is a power that bestows this quality on me. Is there vanity here, and if so, how do we explain it?

What is dignity, and what is vanity? How to distinguish these two? These are all taught information that is conceptually related to the outside world, attached to us, not our own.

Islamic Sufism puts this knowledge, which we call self- knowledge, at the center of life. This teaching, in response to the question “Who am I,” says; if you have been dragged into a search for a biography that you can create yourself, even if you have sunk to the bottom of sin, you are the type of person God deals with.

Especially if you add the sentence “I am still searching” to the end of this biography you are moving forward, it means that you will meet God even if you are an atheist. Because God Almighty has a great love for this kind of human being, regardless of who or what it is.

If I answer the question of who I am, for example, with the title, status and labels I have acquired, although this biography has a meaning in the eyes of the servants with the parameters I have mentioned, it has no meaning in the eyes of Allah! Because before Him, how much status, followers, or knowledge or even wisdom a person has no value. But each of us can still gain value if we can say, “I am in the depths of ignorance, Lord, I want to know you, find you and be with you.”

People who know what they are not, will also have the knowledge of what they are, and this is very valuable in the sight of Allah Almighty. We have said that knowledge of being is not a type of knowledge that can be carried to the other world. Allah, the God we believe in says, “On the day of judgment, your mother will not even be with you, that day she will flee from you.” The only thing we can take away is the knowledge of our own essence, the knowledge of Allah, the understanding of this knowledge and how far you have come to become the attained knowledge in this life.

At the level of becoming, even what we believe in, if it can be measured by research, is not actually faith. At this point we just have wishful thinking. There are clear statements about this in the Qur’an: "Do you think that you will enter Paradise while you have not yet been visited by (difficult) circumstances like those that were faced by the people who passed away before you? They were afflicted by hardship and suffering, and were so shaken down that the prophet, and those who believed with him, started saying: “When (will come) the help of Allah?” (Then, they were comforted by the Prophet who said to them) ‘Behold, the help of Allah is near.’ (Qur’an, Surah al-Baqarah, verse 214)

“Did you think you would not be tested? That the flesh of those before you were separated from their bones by iron differences, but they did not return for a moment.” We are not at this point. Because the faith mentioned here is an internalized faith, like the merging of established, settled water with soil. We are not at this level; we are busy with tomorrow.

When the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) came to Bilal Abyssinia while he was sick, he saw that he was saving dates in a bag and asked what they were. Bilal answers: “O Messenger of Allah, I am full today, )صلى الله عليه وسلم( but I have saved them for tomorrow.” Thereupon, the Prophet said, “How do you trust in Allah?” As if saying what kind of a faith is this? We are far from such faith and surrender. We do not make this claim. If there were ten people with such faith in the world, the world would shine. The followers of the prophets in their own time had such faith. While we have dilemmas about faith, unfortunately we have nothing in our hands about what we can take with us.

“Even if we memorize the entire Qur’an, if we have entered Paradise, it can only benefit us in the ranks there,” some narrations say.

Know that you cannot take any information that has nothing to do with the self to the hereafter. All other information is temporary and need-based. No matter how many holdings you have, you cannot take them to the other world. You will not even take away philosophical, architectural, medical or engineering knowledge. All of these will stay here. These sciences are instrumental sciences. Fiqh is also a science of tools. But all of them, including Arabic, hadith, kalam and tafsir, will remain here. However, if and only if you have built a value in the center of yourSelf and the center of the Creator’s existence and built a work from all this information, only these beneficent works will be permanent. Then you only have a story in the grave... What is not permanent means that there is no value. It is also a great shame to put a precious treasure in a worthless place.

For this reason, our recommendation in every exchange of information is: Become a receiver, a giver or a mediator. Either learn or teach or be a mediator. Become a producer, a buyer, or a mediator.

There are two things that Allah Almighty has given us, but that we do not use out of ignorance. One is our ability to imagine, that is, to be able to put ourselves in the place of someone else. To exercise our imagination about a murderer being a murderer. The second is to take lessons from what we see and hear. These two energy points are what will provide the comprehension that will occur in experiencing something personally, without experiencing it. To imagine is to look at the murderer’s being a murderer without judgment. Taking a lesson is to draw a lesson to be understood from that subject. Trying to understand the story behind the murderer’s being a murderer requires us to have a very in-depth knowledge.

For example, hearing is not enough, because the information heard may be wrong. This knowledge is not obtained by seeing and reading on social media. This gain can only be achieved by imagining the state of the murderer and living it personally. Thus, we can take that lesson without being a murderer.

Let us illustrate the imagination with the example of theft. Theft is the taking of something that belongs to someone else without being in accordance with the law. However, if we look at the broad meaning of the concept of theft, we cannot find even a single person who is not a thief in some way in a country of 80 million. Sometimes stealing is stealing someone’s property, sometimes their feelings, sometimes their time or money.

In the sight of Allah, does the situation depend on the amount of money?

Do we get punished when we steal too much, while it’s okay if we steal little?

Allah does not make any difference in the quantitative part of the crime. Stealing someone’s money is essentially the same as stealing someone’s time. In His Sight (indallah), the quality part is important. This makes us all thieves in the quality part. For example, adulterers are prosecuted in society, like prostitutes.

But we are all partners in their action, qualitatively, if not quantitatively. We are all selling something. Sometimes we sell our body, sometimes our knowledge, and sometimes what we have in our minds. It is also immoral to market an idea that does not belong to me. Social media is filled with stolen information nowadays. Even though it may seem normal or ethical, sometimes with the law and sometimes with ethics, none of these are any different in the sight of Allah.

People want to be known... In their dreams, their loves, their fights, their beliefs, their ideals. Because they think this is the only way for “existence” They wish to be known. They know that to be known is to be the Self. The only obstacle to Self-mastery is also themselves. The ones who can transcend their illusive self-become a whole and become a place for the truth. Self-knowledge is true knowledge. Being ecstatic and transcending yourself is true wisdom.

And it starts with these words: “When I look around myself; Whatever sin or evil exists in the world, there they also are in my soul”, although it may seem like a bit of an emotional aphorism, it is completely true. In fact, we are all living beings in which evil and sin continue their existences without exception.

When we realize this issue, we will have solved the problem of vanity. In fact, we are no different from each other. Theft, corruption, and sins exist in all of us. If you look at life like this, you will have gained the right direction in your journey.

And here we remember the words of Ibn-ul Arabi again: “You should know that it is only Allah who teaches in truth. The whole world is a student who receives knowledge and is in need.

This is His Self-mastery. A person who does not have this quality undoubtedly means that he did not know himself. Those who do not know themselves, no doubt, have not known their Lord, and those who do not know something cannot give that thing its due. A person who does not give something its right, is undoubtedly isolated from the dress of knowledge in terms of judgment. So it is clear that superiority and honor are in knowledge. The one who knows Allah acts according to his knowledge: If his knowledge necessitates doing something towards the Truth, he does it; If it requires him to do something towards the creatures, he does it. So, the knowing person is one who walks in a white and flat field, where no curve or unevenness is seen.”

Ibn-ul Arabi - al-Futuhat-i Mekkiyye, volume:13