ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Spirituality of the Shi‘ism and Other Discourses Discourse Four: The Role of the Supernatural in Society Some discourses have been with us from ancient times and still have a place within our thoughts; such as “the effects of destiny and decree” and “the effects of the unseen world”.

Admittedly, we cannot say that all inner productions that we call “thought” are made up of right materials and correct formulas or that they have good effects on our lives because in the process of our daily lives we constantly encounter many mistakes and endeavor to correct them. We even find faults in our corrections and strive to put them right.

This point impresses upon us the fact that we are not immune to error in the process of our lives and utilization of our existential resources to attain bliss. Also, philosophically speaking, if humans were insusceptible to error and completely realistic, we could never achieve existential evolution. Thus, our movement would be blocked, our situation would be fixed, and creation would come to the end of its journey in the second moment of existence.

Also, if all human thoughts were erroneous and utterly unrealistic, life would not conform to the external world and it would be destroyed in the first moments as well. One cannot conceive that the thoughts of humankind or other sapient races are completely faulty or that their conformity to the external world is accidental. Human evolution is caused by the formation of correct and incorrect thoughts.

In other words, evolution exists because of the cline of realism ranging between the positive and the negative. By virtue of this cline, we are drawn toward our ultimate goal. With our inborn disposition toward gaining knowledge and examining the unknown, we continually discover our errors. We deem our thinking formulas faulty and inadequate in their correspondence with the external world and note in our minds the obscurities we encounter each day.

With restored spirit we review and revise our past thoughts, posit novel theories, reach newer conclusions and more expressive views, and make headway in spiritual and material matters of life. After thinking about this short discussion, the first thing we realize is that humans are perpetually faced with many obscurities upon which our lives depend. What we know of the causes and conditions of our spiritual and material lives is always much less than our ignorance.