Hazrat Yusuf and Mirror
Mevlana has referred to companions of Kahf in this story and asked what is Zaat al Yameen and Zaat al Shammal? Ibn-Arabi in Fusus al Hikam has referred to it as God’s Two Hands. Whereas, the writer has found its correspondence with left and right brain.
Ibn-e-Arabi says: Know that the Reality has described Himself as being the Outer and the Inner (Manifest and Unmanifest). He brought the cosmos into being as constituting an unseen realm and a sensory realm, so that we might perceive the Inner through our unseen and the Outer through our sensory aspect. He has also attributed of Himself pleasure and Wrath, having created the Cosmos as (experiencing) both fear and hope, fear of His wrath and hope of His pleasure. He has also described himself as being possessed of beauty and Majesty, having created us as combining awe (of His Majesty) and intimacy, and so on with all His attributes and Names. He has expressed this polarity of qualities (in the Qur’an) as being His Hands devoted to the creation of the Perfect Man who integrates in himself all Cosmic realities and their individual manifestations). 38:75
(Allah) said: “O Iblis! What prevents thee from prostrating thyself to one whom I have created with my hands? Art thou haughty? Or art thou one of the high (and mighty) ones?”
As knowledge of all realities are possible only in human consciousness and the apparatus provided for it is human brain, one’s attention is automatically drawn towards different functions of two brain hemispheres as established by modern research. Let us look at the characteristics associated with each brain part.
A window to Mathnavi Maulvi Ma’nvi
Translation and Commentary Seema Arif
Further Links for Rumi
Learn which brain dominates you? Left/Right Brain Test (Free) – Personality Max
power of right hand (right brain thinking mode) is the power of the conviction, of faith of belief, which comes from inside, from our soul’s connection with Allah, whereas the left hand logic is what is acquired in this worldly experience, which fixes us in here and now, for our immediate survival and gratification, rather than having foresight to prepare ourselves proactively for the future.
Increasing our mental abilities therefore rests in a method of coordinating the two sides, so that logic and intuition, reason and imagination, and science and philosophy can both play a part in the future of our species. Hence, we may derive our conclusion based on the quotation of Ibn-Arabi:
God created shadows (ideas) lying prostrate (dormant) to right and left (brain) only as clues for you in knowing yourself and Him, that you might know who you are (left activity mode); your relationship with Him, and His with you (right activity mode) so that you might understand how or according to which Divine Truth all that is other than God is described as being completely
dependent on Him, as being (also) mutually interdependent.
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