Islam is called The Straight Way. It is so called in the Opening Chapter of the Quran, the Fatihah, which is regarded as containing the very essence of Islam in a very concentrated form. This chapter consists of 7 verses and is specially referred to in Quran 15:87 as "The 7 Oft-repeated Verses". This is because it is repeated several times in each of the Muslim five daily prayers. (The Straight Way is also mentioned in 2:142,213, 3:51, 4:68, 5:16, 6:39,87,126,153,161, 10:25,89, 11:56,112, 16:76,121, 23:73, 24:46, 36:4, 41:6).

The implication is that Islam is like a road that has a construction, a direction and a destination and is well trodden. It is a movement along this road towards a goal; it is a development, and not something static. There are many different places and several stages along the way and people like a moving stream are distributed along it - they are not all in the same place and do not remain there. A general realization of this and its implication can be regarded as the sixth aspect of Islam.

The goal is Surrender to Allah, to be at-one with Him, to be His agent.

The word "countenance" refers to the Essence. In the case of the Essence of Allah the Quran states:-

Human beings were made perfect with the Spirit of God in them (32:9, 15:29) but Fell owing to sin into a world of illusion (3:185, 57:20, 6:32, 29:64), restricted consciousness or spiritual death. The world of illusion does not refer to the world as created by Allah - that was created with Truth, and Allah Himself and His Word are Truth (22:62, 6:74, 38:85). If Allah is Truth and His word by which he creates the World is Truth then the underlying essence of all things is Allah. There is nothing but Allah.

But we are told that Allah is independent of all creatures (3:97). Allah is unlimited, omnipresent and omniscient, but the things he has created are limited in time, space, characteristics and power. They are mutually exclusive. Islam does not, therefore, regard anything created and limited as God. They are made out of nothing and may be regarded as ideas in the mind of God. But they are not illusions. The fact is that in reality all things are connected through all kind of forces. They are not independent but together form a Unity.

Illusion, therefore, refers to the misinterpretation of Truth.

Prophet were, therefore, sent to regenerate man.

This results in awakening.

This awakening leads to the realization:-

The Straight Way has many levels:-

Thus the purpose of Islam is the growth or development of the soul:-

Spiritual growth is mentioned also in 3:164, 20:76, 24:21, 56:61, 62:2, 71:17, 87:14.

The Prophet Muhammad (saw) began his mission of education and spiritual development in Mecca but he and his followers were persecuted there. He then escaped to Medina where he not only continued which this mission but also tried to establish the Kingdom of God or Dar-al-Islam. The first part of his mission may be regarded as equivalent to that of Jesus, while the second is equivalent to the expected fulfillment when Jesus returns. The rate of expansion of Islam, however, was much greater than the rate of spiritual development of people and this led to the collapse of the Theocentric System except in small pockets here and there. That this would happen was certainly known by the Prophet because he predicted the gradual degeneration of Muslims after the Four Righteous Caliphs who succeeded him. Yet this knowledge did not deter him from making his efforts. It must be presumed that it was all part of the plan. The seeds had to be sown but the harvest was to come much later when the righteous inherit the earth (19:40, 21:105) as also predicted by Jesus (Matthew 5:5). In the meantime human beings are required to continue to learn and develop (a) by the guidance provided by the Scriptures sent by Allah, particularly the Quran which watched over them; (b) by dealing with and overcoming the difficulties, problems and challenges of life, many of which were the consequences of human folly; (c) by the gradual increase in the number, quality and cooperation of the Foremost, those who have advanced. This is, of course, a hidden process and comes into manifestation only when a certain threshold is reached as when water begins to boil and transforms into steam.

Islam is called the Straight Way or Path because it is the simplest of all religions, and unlike other religions it attempts direct Surrender to God without mediation, instruments or indirect, crooked or complex routes, doctrines and techniques. There is no organized Church and no priesthood to dictate doctrine, no idols of stone, human or ideological "isms". Every person is responsible for his own soul and must develop his own understanding - mere acceptance without understanding cannot possibly do the individual any good. Religion, instead of being the property of an elite, has been made generally available.

The doctrine, the goal and the method are identical and it is these that keep the community united. The doctrine is that there is one God, Allah, who is supreme, that all things are in surrender to Allah and do serve the purposes of Allah unconsciously; the goal is that man must do so consciously; and the method is to do this by the practice of surrender - to give up the false ego and its illusions, and instead to cultivate God-consciousness. The Pillars of Islam and the other recommended religious practices are designed to do just this. In each case the individual is required to cultivate the awareness of God and to exercise his higher spiritual or conscious faculties while keeping the lower physiological ones under control, but without denying them completely since they are also God given and have a function. Austerity, Celibacy and Monasticism are not recommended.

The Straight Way is also the cable of Allah where a person may be regarded as a link joined to Allah through a series of links.

Islam is also the Balanced or Middle Way between the extremes (2:108, 143). The world itself provides enough challenges and opportunities by which spiritual development can take place. (2:155,185, 5:87, 57:27). The Muslim has only one loyalty, which is to Allah, the Benevolent and Merciful. He is the slave of Allah and this liberates him, or ought to, from everything else.

Hearing here refers not only to the Scripture or teaching of the prophet sent by Allah, but also to their own consciousness of reality, inherent conscience and what is inspired into their soul (32:2,9, 91:7-10, 5:49,77, 6:154, 7:3, 10:90,110 17:36).

However, Muslims are exhorted to cling to the cable or chain of Allah (3:103) and not to divide into sects. Yet sects have formed. This is the main problem in Islam - the arising of conflicts between sects, which is itself based on either arrogant self-righteousness or unintelligent mental conditioning. When there is no one to dictate doctrine, then because people are inherently diverse and have different amounts and kinds of experience that they process differently, differences of interpretation inevitably do arise. Islam requires that knowledge, wisdom, virtue and ability, and, therefore, those who possess them, be honoured and followed, and that those who have these should guide the others. The mistake lies in this that people cling to different authorities and dogmas, forgetting that, and only that, which they themselves understand can have any significance for them, and that each has only limited knowledge and understanding.

Certainly we should find our own path - nothing can possibly benefit us which is not the result of our own effort. There are, however, many paths and they lead to all kinds of destinations. We need to know the destination, which path leads to it, what problems it might present the traveler, and what equipment we might need to deal with them. Obviously, the one who has already been on the path would be the best guide. To put it another way, we are not already at the stage of development or knowledge that we wish to get to. Therefore, we rely on those who have the knowledge and ability. It took thousands of years of effort by millions of people to accumulate the knowledge that is now taught in schools. The chances are virtually nil that a person left to himself will reach the level of a Ph.D., attained by going through the educational system. The absence of a Church or Priesthood means that there is no standardization or dictatorship and variety is recognised. It is the duty of each Muslim to study the scriptures, learn from experience in general, or from all others, to find a guide and teacher, to use his own faculties and seek the guidance of Allah.

On the other hand a person need not go through a college because the same information is available outside colleges in Libraries etc. if he looks for it. He will have to make greater effort because he does not have the knowledge and skills to apply correct efforts systematically. He will be reduced to trial and error and the path to the destination may meander and become very long. His life time may not be long enough to reach the destination. However, he may have luck and the intelligence to take advantages of it. The lone path is not impossible and there are people with many levels of discernment, and the guidance of Allah.

Thus we have three layers of authority - Allah, the Messenger and those in Authority. These last could be those whom the Prophet or his representatives, or the Community and its representatives have appointed for various tasks or those who have become experts in various fields by dint of their own efforts. They are not, however, authorities on doctrine. Quran 33:40 tells us that Muhammad is not the father of any man among the Muslims, but that he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets (not of the Messengers - Jesus was to return). The mention in the Quran of the obvious fact that the Prophet had no son would be rather trivial if it did not have a more profound significance. It seems much more likely that we are to follow the spiritual descendants of the Prophet rather than his biological descendants. This does not, of course, exclude the descendants of Ali. A reading of the Light verse (24:35-36) confirms this view. There must be many thousands of the biological descendants of Ali in the world and there is no guarantee that they are wise, virtuous and able people. The task of the spiritual descendants is to educate and facilitate the spiritual development of the individual himself rather than to regiment him or form an authoritarian organized church. On the other hand Islam does not differentiate between the secular and the religious, and the Prophet was certainly not only a teacher but also a leader of the community, one in whom all aspects of life were combined. This function was continued in the Caliph (Khalifa = Successor). He was not appointed by the Prophet, but had to be chosen from among the most righteous and able and elected by the community. This office, unfortunately, degenerated probably because the phenomenal expansion of Islam was too rapid for any human being to develop sufficient ability to control.

Heaven and earth are to be renewed:-

Man, too is to be transformed :-

The righteous shall inherit the earth.

Resurrection is compared to the revival of vegetation after rainfall (7:57-58, 22:5-6) which may be the result of the coming of a new Prophet (8:24) The rainfall may be regarded as the pouring forth of the spirit. It consists of clear awareness.

There are some differences of opinion as to whether resurrection means physical incarnation or a re-awakening of the soul in some spiritual realm. This controversy is probably based on an invalid dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. The world into which a person is resurrected is just as real as this world. Strictly speaking resurrection is a regeneration of the spirit within man which has become dormant. A person will be resurrected after his physical death in the same inner condition as he died. No time will have passed for a person between his death and his resurrection because he is not conscious. He does not, therefore, go to live in some other world, as some sects believe.

The exception to this are the martyrs (2:154, 4:69), a term which refers to those who have sacrificed their life in the cause of Allah. But sacrifice does not necessarily mean physical death. It could mean dead to worldly life and fully devoted to Allah. They may be regarded as having constructed some kind of subtle body within themselves. People cannot really be said to be reincarnated if they do not remember their past lives. Each life would be like a separate bundle. These could be on strings representing a series of reincarnating individuals, or they may be like many circles within a larger collective circle. It is perfectly possible that these circles do affect each other and that there is some interaction between the lesser individual circle and the greater circle. Souls can be thought of as descending from, and ascending into, this collective circle.

The reincarnation theory is favored to explain two things -

(1) As time goes on more and more people are born, die and are replaced. If there is a Day of Physical Resurrection how could all these people be accommodated on earth and from where would the material come for all their bodies? These materials circulate and become part of many bodies. If the same people are constantly reincarnated then this would be no problem. It would also be no problem if they were not physically reincarnated.

(2) It explains evolution because of the accumulating experiences of several lives. However, the physical brain has limits and could not contain the record of all these lives, except as a resultant or average. But this is explained also by the idea of the Collective circle that contains the Record (6:59, 20:52, 17:71). Every individual adds his experiences to this Collective which affects the souls which descend from it. From another point of view, each individual is formed psychologically by the culture into which he is born. By his behaviour he modifies that culture which forms the next generation.

In fact, when we speak about a human being, we cannot mean the material of which he is composed. This is constantly passing in and out of him. We mean his character, or the bundle of information that defines him. Or his soul, the seat of his consciousness, conscience and will.. If he is not aware then nothing exists for him, including himself. If he is an automaton or simply a bundle of habits, he is a dead machine.

The notion of resurrection is different from reincarnation - it refers to spiritual awakening. It could be argued that if reincarnation is due to Karma, which is a cyclic law of cause and effect, then no progress or spiritual evolution is possible. An action or experience would produce a memory or Karma deposit, which would determine the next action or control the interpretation of the next experience. The present life would be fully determined by past lives and the future life by the present life. This will be so if the Law is mechanistic-deterministic. Something must be capable of stretching the cycle into a spiral, expanding the individual, causing development and evolution. This could happen because the total amount of negentropy (or Order or Information, the opposite of entropy) on this planet increases owing to radiations coming from the rest of the Cosmos, and this is not absorbed entirely by the increase in quantity of life or in its external or social organization. It could be increased deliberately by concentrating effort on psychological or spiritual development. There are four principles through which this can be done - fear, love, consciousness (awareness of reality) and surrender (or self-identification). They free a person from the trap of recurrent cycles. These are connected with the notions of Justice, Compassion, Truth, Islam. But first a notion of "self" other than one's physical body must exist.

But Paradise is also defined as nearness to Allah, and Hell is defined as distance from Allah. The love of God becomes a motivating force. Love is something more positive and transcends the ego. It means interest, concern, and sympathy, feeling for something other than oneself. God's love and the love of God in the seeker draws him towards the ultimate Unity. (See Quran 2:260). Love, though a bridge still retains the separation between lover and beloved.

Since God is Unity, Paradise also refers to outer and inner unity, harmony, fulfillment and peace while Hell refers to disunity, disintegration and conflict which brings disability and suffering. Consciousness of truth refers to the awareness of the relationship, pattern and order behind separate things and points to the underlying Unity. Things are then done because they are recognised as true because they are related and have a function with respect to Allah.

Surrender not only requires the consciousness of reality, of the unity underlying things, but is an identification with reality, with that which is ultimately Self-existing. It removes all separation. The individual becomes, as it were, a limb of Allah.

This experience of the annihilation of separateness is also mentioned in the following, though this can also refer to the winding up of the Universe.

Man has been created for a purpose, as a vicegerent, a servant of God. He is to be judged according to how he fulfills the purpose. He has his reward if he fulfills it well, otherwise he will be discarded and replaced.

All this does not necessarily refer to physical events, but may refer to social, cultural, ideological or psychological events. The trumpet may refer to an Announcement, a new Message, a proclamation, order or system of things. The first trumpet removes the old order and the second ushers in the new. Swooning away implies the cessation of consciousness and control.

Hell is described as an ill-abode (3:197) and an evil journey's end (4:97), where a person will neither live nor die (20:74). It is described as a Fire symbolizing suffering and torment (104:5-9, 9:81) and a dungeon (17:8). It surrounds disbelievers even here (9:49) but will appear plainly to disbelievers (26:91). Hell could be regarded as being in a state of severe limitations and a state of constant inner conflict and remorse. :-

People are not necessarily in it permanently (11:107, 101:1-11). It may be a place of education and transformation, like the tests in this life (2:155, 6:42, 7:94-95). If, as we are repeatedly told by the Quran, all things return to Allah (2:156, 245, 3:83, 5:48 etc.) and the Universe itself will be wound up leaving nothing but the essence of Allah (55:26-27), then we must presume that Hell will also disappear. This may also apply to Paradise unless that is included in Allah's Countenance.

Paradise is a state of fulfillment, security, peace:-

After the resurrection and Judgment people will be of three kinds :-

We are also told :-

The implication is that in the Hereafter, after this worldly life or after death, there are further stages of development. Each stage may be regarded as another resurrection and judgment. This is also implied in the history of the development of an human being on earth:-

Light is a symbol for Allah and the Prophet is the lamp through which it shines on earth. He is like the sun. But there is also a moon that shine by the light reflected from the sun, which may refer to the immediate Spiritual Teacher.

And again:-

Note that we have four stages before birth. There is then a transfer from the womb into the greater world of the family, and then as an adult, the individual goes out into the wider social world. Thus death may transfer him into a still greater cosmic world. However, the physical process described here symbolises spiritual development - the spiritual seed within us arises from the spirit (32:9) and must also undergo stages of growth. This physical world can be regarded as a womb in which man forms.

If this is true then it is not difficult to understand the notion of the Immortal Foremost :-

We may presume, therefore, that a time is coming when the Straight Path or the Theocentric System, sometimes called the Kingdom of God, will be established on earth and will be led by the Immortal Foremost. This system already exists in pockets here and there if the Prophecy of Daniel in the Old Testament is to be believed (Daniel 2:31-45).

The thesis in the Quran may be interpreted something as follows, but Allah knows best :-

The word "earth" refers not only to this planet but also to our physical life and the experiences, activities, structures and organizations which life here necessitates. The word "heaven" refers not only to the rest of the Universe but to our inner world of ideas, the culture and religion and the subconscious and unconscious forces. This is understandable because the rest of the Universe certainly exists as ideas, and the electromagnetic and other forces which account for the functioning of our minds are also those which pervade the Universe and underlie the phenomena in the world. We see only the coarse surface.

What we see depends not only on what is there but also on our capacity to perceive. Therefore, if the capacity for perception, consciousness, were to increase, then we would see the world quite differently. Human beings see the world differently from animals, adults from children, and the educated from the uneducated. It is, therefore, possible to arrange beings in a series according to their capacities and the possibility exists that this series is like a path, stairway or river such that development or evolution carries individuals along it. There are distinct stages. If there are 7 heavens and 7 earths then correspondingly there are 7 states of consciousness or states of the soul and vice versa.- it is the states of consciousness which determine the world we see.

There was at first only Allah. He created the Universe through 7 stages and levels or Heavens. The Commandment comes down among them slowly. There is also an ascent. Thus involution and evolution occur. The Universe will be wound up and in the end and there will be nothing left but Allah. Thus we start with Unity and through stages we get to maximum limitation and multiplicity and then back to Unity. Though things return to where they started from, this is not a futile process, but the purpose is formulated as "Allah wished to be known", there is increasing consciousness. The Spirit emanates from Allah, like a flare from the sun and returns again.

There is first the Absolute Unitary State which being undifferentiated cannot be known. By His Word or Command we get the Spirit (17:85), the original substance X, perhaps a sub-quantum field. This condenses, congeals, or organizes into clots or particles, and this is the second stage, perhaps light or an electromagnetic field. Further condensation of these creates the next stage and so on. e.g. nuclear particles into atoms and these into molecules and these into crystals and cells which form larger multi-crystalline or multi-cellular bodies. Since the Quran makes no distinction between matter, mind and spirit, then we may suppose that we have only phenomena with varying degrees and levels of order. Intelligence (consciousness), energy (activity) and inertia (materiality), are aspects of all phenomena but vary in different ones. The densest matter can, therefore, be seen as condensed spirit. Mind may be defined as behaviour which describes life and both these notions refer to energy. It is the spirit that carries Truth or information and it is this that produces order or structure at the various levels, by which things are recognised.

If all these stages co-exist then these levels can be represented by concentric circles or a ladder. Each lesser circle or lower rung represents a denser state. There is a motion of entities up and down the ladder or from and to the center. The whole system also emerges from the One and returns into the One. All these levels also exist in man and the whole system exists within the greatest circle, in the mind of God as it were.

There is a Universal Consciousness (6:103). Allah's Knowledge surrounds all things (65:12, 4:126), and there is a Universal Record or Memory (27:75, 50:4, 21:94, 23:62, 36:12, 69:19,25, 83:7,18). Universal Consciousness contains many smaller ones, each being made up of still smaller ones and so on. At one level our human consciousness is a small part of a collective consciousness - like little circles in a large circle. Our personal consciousness itself may be regarded as a large circle with respect to the little consciousnesses of our brain cells. But there are also greater units or "egos" or "complexes" which tend to give us several different personalities (39:29) as a result of which we behave differently at home, at work, with friends, on holiday and in cars and so on. There is some communication between the various circles at the same level and between the smaller and large circles. As one of these egos sees the others external to itself, this may give us the experience of hallucination, obsession, possession, split personality, visions, clairvoyance, contact with aliens and glimpses of past lives. Our consciousness exists in various states of disintegration and inner conflicts, and correspondingly, the society is also disintegrated, full of conflicts, and world we see and create also appears or becomes as one of conflicts and disharmony. These three affect and reflect each other.

These levels should not be regarded as necessarily separate in space. Though we live on this planet we are still also in the Solar System, the Galaxy the Universe. Though we are a multi-cellular organism, we are also composed of cells and exist in an environment of cells (bacteria, pollen etc.), and we are chemical molecules existing in a sea of molecules, and we are a structure of atoms, nuclear particles, electrons etc. Solids may exist in and be suffused with liquids, liquids by gases and gases by electric particles, all in the same space.

These levels have been named :-

0. Zat (The Unmanifest Essence of Allah), 1. Ahdiyat (Universal Consciousness), 2. Wahdat (Truth, Word), 3. Wahdiyat (Spiritual world), 4. Arwah (Soul world), 5. Mithal (World of Similitudes or Forms), 6. Ajsam (Causal world), 7. Nasut (Material or Inertial world).

These can be regarded as corresponding to the Worlds of 1. Self 2. Inspiration 3. Psyche or Inner World of which we are mostly unconscious. 4. Consciousness (personal) 5. Thought (Intellect) 6. Feeling (Emotion) 7. Action. These levels may also be referred to as the 7 realms of Arch-angels, angels, jinn, man, animals, plants and minerals respectively. Different states of Consciousness are associated with these - e.g. we are unconscious minerals when dead, when asleep we have a vegetative or sub-consciousness, when awake and moving we have an animal or pre-consciousness, and when we direct our attention on something we have the human ego-consciousness. Three further stages can be named as self-consciousness, objective consciousness and cosmic consciousness.

Corresponding to the above there are 7 souls or states of the soul. At first a person has a Nafs-i-ammara (12:53). This is the Commanding soul, ego-consciousness, which has formed attachments through the senses to sense objects including the body. It causes the mind to be externally orientated, unaware of its inner state. A person cannot then be under his own control, but is controlled by these outer objects, persons, conditions to which he has formed attachments. This soul is materialistic, sensual, selfish and pleasure seeking, containing pride, vanity, lust, greed, laziness, and anger. It can be regarded as spiritually asleep. It is disintegrated, full of conflicts and at odds with other people and the world of nature and God. It is this soul which is in Hell.

It is possible to argue that most people are not even at this stage, but behave entirely automatically or by conditioned reflexes and habits with very little awareness or conscious behaviour. They are spiritually dead, walking automatons. The first stirrings of life activates the Nafs Ammara, the Ego, in which the spirit is trapped. The Ego is a mental construct, an idea of self created around the experience of one's body and name and attachment through the senses to the material world - a reflection or shadow of the Soul.

True ascent begins only when the Divine or Holy Spirit begins to stir. This may occur because of the impulse from a Prophet, saint, scripture, a religious teachings or when some impressive event punctures the crust. According to another allegory (83:14-16) it must be something which removes the "rust" from the mirror of the heart, the rust which prevents reality from being reflected in them. Rust arises when a pure metal is exposed to the environment and is corrupted thereby. Obviously the religious teaching must be a true and effective one, able to create a resonance in the Spirit within.

The person then compares his behaviour with the inner ideals and begins to see his failings. He now has a Nafs-i-Lawwama (75:2), a Self-accusing soul which self-consciousness. This uncovers true inherent Conscience as opposed to the cultural conditioning, which the psychologist Freud calls the Superego. An inner conflict begins. But this, unlike the conflict caused by psychological disintegration, happens at a conscious level where control is possible. He can, as it were, experience both hell and heaven.

The fourth stage produces Nafs-i-Mutmainna (89:27), the Soul at Peace. Three further stages are added by taking each verse in 89:27-30 separately. We then have Nafs-i-radhiya, Nafs-i-mardhiya and Nafs-i-safiya. This gives us 7 states of the soul ending with The Perfect Soul, Cosmic Consciousness. Conflict has ceased, it has become unified and whole. The soul has become free and is in heaven. It is aware of its identity as part of the Universal soul.

In previous articles it was shown that Islam can be described according to 7 points of view and that it incorporates teachings found in previous religions. These aspects may be described as follows :-

(1) Justice, Law and order. Learning this is the first step.

(2) Love, Compassion, Mercy, benevolence, fellow feeling, brotherhood, formation of communities.

(3) Truth and awareness of relationships, the awareness of nature, of the greater objective world and the invisible forces which control it.

(4) Surrender, acceptance of reality and self-subordination to it; alignment with the plan of Allah or with the Cosmic process. Though there can be nothing deeper or higher in religion than Surrender by the individual, it is also a means by which human evolution is facilitated. Individuals in this state may now spread their influence by becoming teachers and guides, thereby gradually transforming the rest of mankind. This leads to the next stages

(5) Universality - the realisation that mankind is one and has a cosmic function; that prophets were sent to all peoples with the same message and no distinctions are to be made between them. All religions as originally taught are One and should affect the whole man in thought, feeling and action. They come to lift human consciousness to a higher level of universal truths. It is not sufficient that the individual surrender since he is affected by and affects others, is inter-dependant with them, and is part of humanity. He is derived from a single soul (4:1). All this gives him further responsibilities.

(6) At the sixth level the purpose of Islam is the establishment of the Straight Way and motion along it, the transformation or Spiritual Evolution, development or growth of mankind (2:129,151,174,261, 3:77,164, 9:103, 20:76, 24:21, 35:18, 62:2, 71:17, 87:14, 91:9) - The Stairway (70:3, 90:10-20), and there are many levels of beings on it. The consequences, and therefore, the aim of surrender, is that it is rewarded with the wisdom, virtues and powers of Allah. Those who acquire these must use them to raise the level of others.

(7) Unity - that all things and all aspects of existence and life form a single system. That the whole is greater and more than the sum of the parts. That all things arise from and return into the One. That Allah is One and all those who surrender to Allah also become One. Humanity becomes One and exercises its Vicegerency. The implication is that humanity should become a single integrated organism, perhaps the brain of this planet with a collective consciousness. This organism is, like others, made up of cells and tissues of many kinds each having its own function. But it is possible that versatility is also increased so that to various extents anyone can take the place of any other. It is not, however, so much a question of "becoming" (because things are already so) as "becoming aware" that it is so. Time is a relative thing as a several verses indicate (54:50, 32:5, 57:4, 70:4). It may be that humanity is destined to spread into the rest of the Cosmos. Or having achieved this unity, humanity will return and become integrated into the Cosmic community of similar beings. Perhaps the whole Universe is to become Conscious and Existence is a process of becoming self-conscious.

Human history and development may be thought of as consisting of 7 cycles, each consisting of similar stages, each of which is further sub-divisible into the same stages. Though each stage contains all the 7 ingredients, it is the difference in emphasis that distinguishes them. It is religion that introduces the impulses which facilitates this development. It brings a new consciousness though most people remain unconscious of most of its causes and effects. This can only be understood if we regard religion as arising from the general state of the Cosmos at a particular time and place and some consciousness of this in the more sensitive and receptive souls. There may have been several cycles in the past before the cycle in the midst of which we now find ourselves, and there may be further cycles to come in the future. The Religion in ancient Egypt, India and China, and perhaps in the Americas also appear to belong to a previous cycle. The present cycle appears to begin when Moses rescued the ancient wisdom and brought it out of Egypt. It is necessary to understand that this as other religions have widespread influences far beyond the people who are identified with it and bring reform to past religions, if they do not replace them and give rise to other off shoots.

The first stage, Hebrewism emphasizes Law, Justice, order, hope and fear, reward and punishment and ritualism. The next stage brought Christianity with an emphasis on love, charity and social services - the focus changes from action to motives. This was followed by Islam, the religion of Truth that brought awareness of nature and facilitated the development of science and technology. The Eastern religions also underwent development. Hinduism consists of several stages of religions and mixtures between them. Buddhism may be regarded as a further stage with a change of emphasis. It appears to have had considerable influence on Christianity. There is emphasis on wisdom and self-development, but relatively little on social service and less on justice.

It is fairly obvious that civilization requires all three ingredients. But owing to environmental, social and psychological disasters which man has caused and which are becoming more and more evident to people, it is also clear that the notion of Surrender has to be more deeply understood and applied, and on a more Universal basis. In so far as these threatened disasters are due the fact that human technological skills have outstripped their moral development, mankind has to undertake their own psychological development with some urgency. In view of the fact that this technology has created the means of transport and communication which have shrunk the world and made all people commercially, politically and culturally inter-dependent, there is no doubt that the psychological unification of peoples is also becoming urgent.

A study of Islam shows that it contains all these previous features, but also the other three. But these other have not yet been actualised in the World. The establishment of these features is still a task for the future. It is certain that the establishment of these features involves revolutionary changes. Whether man is up to the task and whether this can be done before a major disaster overtakes mankind is not certain.