Soul/ Conscious and its Training (4)

         

In previous parts of this article we have seen that human conscious is blessed with a unique quality of ‘will to develop good or bad intention’ in response to stimuli coming to the human conscious. It is this unique quality which distinguishes humans from animals. 'Will to adopt good or bad intention' means human adopts good or bad intention consciously or knowing that it is a good or bad intention respectively. Human’s distinction is not that it has free will; free will is also bestowed on animals. Human distinction is that it has free will with responsibility to exercise ‘will to develop good or bad intention’; it is this responsibility gained by the humans, which distinguishes humans from animals. Humans exercise ‘will to develop good or bad intention’ in response to stimuli coming to the human conscious. These stimuli are two types i.e. internal and external. The internal stimuli include intellect, knowledge, skills, capabilities, observations, experiences and above all emotions; all these stimuli are what have become part of human conscious. The external stimuli include all what come to human conscious from outside but have not yet become a part of human conscious; these are relating to all social systems a human is subjected to in his/her life. The external stimuli do not directly cause human’s will develop good or bad intention’; external stimuli at the first stage become a part of human conscious and impact human emotions (i.e. internal stimuli); the human emotions, in turn at the second stage, cause human’s will to develop good or bad intention. Similarly internal stimuli other than emotions do not directly cause human’s will develop good or bad intention; such internal stimuli at the first stage impact human emotions which, in turn at the second stage, cause human’s will develop good or bad intention. 

From the foregoing it becomes clear that, in response to internal and external stimuli, ultimately these are human emotions which lead human’s will to adopt a good or bad intention. But, of course, human emotions (which are themselves internal stimuli) are directly impacted by other internal stimuli which include intellect, knowledge, skills, capabilities, observations, and experiences, and are indirectly impacted by external stimuli through internal stimuli (because all external stimuli are made part of human conscious as internal stimuli;. In other words, in order to tame human emotions, external stimuli (which are relating to social systems) and internal stimuli (which include intellect, knowledge, skills, capabilities, observations and experiences) need to be managed. In short, human’s will to develop good or bad intentions may be trained by managing external and internal stimuli so that human will may be enabled to adopt good intention in response to such internal and external stimuli. 

In order to manage these internal and external stimuli, internal and external tools may be employed so that all internal and external stimuli may be managed so as to enable human’s will to adopt good intentions. It may be appreciated, because all internal stimuli except human emotions are originally external stimuli which are made part of human conscious as internal stimuli, therefore, except emotions, all internal stimuli (e.g. intellect, knowledge, skills, capabilities, observations and experiences) may be treated more properly as external stimuli for the purpose of managing these stimuli. Therefore all stimuli which are related to social systems including political, economic, administrative, social and religious set ups, laws, customs, traditions, morals, ethics and social practices, and which are related to intellect, knowledge, skills, capabilities, observations and experiences all are to be managed through external tools. The only stimuli to be managed through internal tools are human emotions.  

The training/ managing of external stimuli may be done by formatting all these external stimuli in the manner which may lead human emotions and consequently human’s will to develop and adopt good intention. In other words all social, political, economic, administrative and religious systems should be constructed in such a manner, and imbued with such values, which may tame human emotions in such manner that the human’s will may adopt good intention. Similarly, all laws, customs, traditions, ethics and social practices should be formatted in such manner, and imbued with such values, which may tame human emotions and consequently enable human will to adopt good intention.

Similarly, internal stimuli i.e. emotions may be trained/ managed by taming human emotions in such manner which may lead ‘human will’ to adopt good intention. We have seen already in the article  http://secondriseofislam.blogspot.com/2012/06/racial-traits-and-spiritual-elevation.html#links that  these human traits/emotions are neither good nor bad in their essence; it is the human choice of the situations, and kind and magnitude of these traits/emotions to manifest in those situations, which makes a human deed good or bad. A human deed based on each kind of traits/emotions (e.g. love or hate, anger or lack of anger, lust or lack of lust, courage or cowardliness etc) may be either good or bad, depending upon the situation chosen and the magnitude of trait to display in such situation. One way of training/taming human emotions is to develop and enhance love for Allah. For details pls see the article http://secondriseofislam.blogspot.com/2012/02/love-basis-of-human-deeds.html. Love for Allah may be enhanced through Meditation and Remembrance of Allah. In this way, internal stimuli i.e. emotions may not only be trained through internal tools like Remembrance of Allah and Meditation but also through external tools discussed above. Emotions, in turn, impact human's will to develop good or bad intentions. 'Will to adopt good or bad intention' means human adopts good or bad intention consciously or knowing that it is a good or bad intention respectively.
 

Human's 'will to develop good or bad intention' may go along or against the emotions. The real agency to develop good or bad intention is not internal or external stimuli though these internal and external stimuli do impact human's 'will to develop good or bad intention'; the real agency to adopt good or bad intention is human's 'will to develop good or bad intention'. The  human’s emotions may dictate good intention to be developed by the human’s will OR human emotions may dictate bad intention to be developed by the human’s will. But human's will is not compelled to go along what the human emotions dictate (whether emotions dictate good intention or bad intention). If human’s will goes against the emotions, it is called a state of coercion which seldom plays any role in individual matters, but plays frequent role in collective matters. In collective matters, coercion plays very important role to dictate people to develop good or bad intention. The collective systems/institutions play an important role in dictating people to go for good intention even if emotions dictate for bad intention. In this way devising of socio-politico-economic systems including all laws, customs, traditions, ethics and social practices, on the one hand, help in taming/training emotions, and, on the other hand, help in forcing people to adopt good intention in social life, even if emotions are not sufficiently tamed/trained to lead human conscious to develop good intention. 

We may conclude that human conscious/ soul is not something metaphysical which cannot be tinkered with by human beings. We can train our soul/conscious to enable it to develop and adopt good intentions. We have already seen 'qalb' is actually human mind/brain. The soul is an entity; human conscious/mind is soul's qualities. Soul manifests its qualities through human brain which is tangible entity whereas conscious/mind is intangible like soul is an intangible entity. By tinkering with human brain, we can train our soul/conscious to enable it to develop and adopt good intention  (concluded).