Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reading Wittgenstein on the Blessed Life One version of mystical experience that involves being safe and intoxicated by the miracle of being is what we find in Wittgenstein, the quintessential modern philosopher who initiated two influential movements in philosophy and impacted upon philosophy of religion. His description of being absolutely safe and seeing creation as a miracle are so compelling that we hardly need to entertain any second opinion about the mystical in him or his encounter with the mystical. The cognizance of the fact that there is a world is enough to make one dance with ecstasy and wonder. Wonder is the beginning and end of human wisdom for both philosopher-mystics as diverse as Ibn Arabi and Whitehead. It is time to explore the ideas evoking/invoking/leading to/reflecting Heaven or parasitic on our quest for Heaven or what may appear as some secular substitute or fragmented image of Heaven in Wittgenstein.       For Wittgenstein the metaphysical self that const

Believers and nonbelievers agree in their quest for something they call Heaven. We don’t understand that life is a paradise [at present], for we have only to wish to understand this and it will immediately appear before us in all its beauty. Father Zossima in  The Brothers Karamazarov .       Whitehead has referred to basic insights or initial intuitions or feelings of mankind calling for explanations or justifications. Our desire for immortality is “one of these initial intuitions, or persistent dreams, or impulses.” If we begin with this fundamental impulse of the human spirit, the question is not disputing their “truth” on this or that so-called scientific ground or explaining it away but how to express it. Believers and non-believers needn’t dispute the matter taking all or none position but may better have a dialogue regarding how far we have succeeded in defining or understanding it correctly.       It needs just a moment’s reflection to see that the issue of Heaven is neith

It is thanks to certain organizations that all of us can sleep with easy conscience. “To say ‘I’ is a lie” (as Simone Weil put it) and the best way to find the self is to lose it in the service of others. Spirituality is the art of dying of this self to find baqa, lasting life in God. The great secret of life is that one finds lasting joy (as distinguished from pleasure or mere happiness) only when one lives for the other. The deeper reason for this joy is  that God alone can say I, and man only, so to speak, after achieving fana which is then God’s ‘I’ asserting. Kreeft has noted that “Joy is more than happiness, just as happiness is more than pleasure. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind and feelings. Joy is deep in the heart, the spirit, the centre of the self. The way to pleasure is power and prudence. The way to happiness is moral goodness. The way to joy is sanctity, loving God with your whole heart and your neighbour as yourself.” If one is interested in this j

PART-I He was a great logician who approached logic on his own terms. The Muslim world is polarized over reception of Ibn Taymiyyah. For some a villian while for others the hero and standard reference point for use for ideological ends. He has been mostly received in sectarian framework and such rejectionist terms as anti-Sufi, anti- philosopher, and anti- mutakalimoon . Many find him a huge problem or embarrassment and seek to do away with him. Contrary to popular dismissive and valorizing readings, it needs to be pointed out that he often held quite nuanced positions and defended himself with rigorous arguments and often meticulous analyses. He rejects, not much unlike Nagarjuna, Ghazzali, Kant and some modern philosophers, overambitious attempts to build a metaphysics/theological system based on inflated claims for reason. He seconds Ghazzali in his critique of the claims of the philosophers in the field of metaphysics while endorsing the validity of the rational sciences in the