Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

First book of its kind from Kashmir on a difficult but vital topic by self-taught mystic scholar that any 8th grader can grasp.   A treat, already selling like sanitizer in the times of Corona, sanitizes the pathological environment created by puffed up ego holding consciousness in siege. The first book of its kind from Kashmir on a difficult but vital topic by self-taught mystic scholar that any 8th grader can grasp.      “In the beginning was consciousness.” Chit or Consciousness is, so to speak, the ultimate ground and end of all that is. The study or enquiry concerning consciousness is the first and the last enquiry concerning first and last ends of man. It is the science of consciousness that explains all the weird, mysterious, miraculous things that rationalism often dismisses without hearing. The sum and substance or objective of great art and poetry is development/universalization of consciousness. Man is, so to speak, consciousness. And God ...

If you want to immortalize a community oppress it brutally as its memory would later unite it. When God was distributing  special gifts to communities few could match Kashmiris in felicity of choice and fastidious taste. Kashmiris demanded and were granted the best of lands where heaven found its own reflection, the best of minds and hands and the hearts that have delighted, influenced and enriched the whole world. It was especially fastidious about the cuisine and developing a refinement of stomach for the same. Kashmir settled for nothing less than its own scriptures and wrote its own versions of great epics including the celestial song Gita as well. A whole new school of philosophy that is brand Kashmir it cultivated and gifted to the world. It invented new science of art/drama and its appreciation as well. It couldn’t accept any rule from outsiders on intellectual, artistic or spiritual planes. All these gifts, however, meant that it  had to excel in the virtue of pati...

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 th...

What is wrong with modern fear of death and why we need voluntary lockdown for a week or two every year?  Last few weeks have exposed certain pathological attitudes we have been living with including the following: Taking affairs of life too seriously and thus failing to appreciate the adventure of the climax of life – death or the great secret and joy of dying every moment or dying before death in which lies the true art of living well. Art’s abiding value in reconciling us to life is mediated through transcendence of life wedded to ego/self, thus embracing the tragic/death. Those who are ready to die every moment really live. Death is no punishment as Socrates noted and literature is one with philosophy in its aim of preparing us for death.  Fear of Corona shows how much we have understood this elementary lesson of religion, philosophy and art. Our failure to live with ourselves and be truly religious understood in Whiteheadian mystical sense as what one does with one’s soli...

Debating Traditionalist Thought in Kashmir What does one do to squarely face scores of influential books and websites targeting Islam, especially in the wake of modernity and post-modernity? Turn to the greatest Masters of Islamic tradition to examine for oneself how far can one’s moral, intellectual and spiritual legacy sustain this battery of critiques and in turn gives one certitude and meaning amidst torrential currents of doubt and despair that beset us in troubled irreverent times. This is what bright Kashmiri youth like Aamir Suhail Wani have done. Brought up in typical Kashmiri mystical ambiance and having unconsciously assimilated the heritage transmitted orally by parents/educators/Sufis in Kashmiri households, Aamir has been able to stay Muslim and modern thanks primarily to great modern sages of traditionalist school who have presented a compelling critique of modernity and defense of Tradition of which historical Islam is a subset. Few know that even Iqbal was ...

Here is where thinking is needed as against unthinking ideology of development that has brought irredeemable evils along with it. Do we ever ask why God-chosen-Mecca happens to be such a “desolate” hilly landscape and why stay in Arafat and Mina under the naked sky is such a challenging and liberating one? Why should one of the greatest scenes – the storm scene – in arguably the greatest play King Lear that unfolds Lear’s redemption be about encounter with nothingness and disowning civilization’s artificialities?  Why is that mountains are treasured symbols of spirit and mountaineering a mantra/ wazeefa and pastoralism/sheep-goat rearing in mountains treasured spiritual experiment/experience? Why do religious and spiritual traditions propose periodical retreats for their adherents? Why we should opt for culture over civilization is we are forced to choose only one? Art and religion – the manifestations of what is called culture – are treasured means of giving meaning to lives...