✿ Modern Crisis of Knowledge and the Human Pursuit of the Unseen ✿
❖ The World: A Prison or a Path?
The world resembles a sealed chamber —
✘ No doors, no windows, no escape routes.
✔ Every wall seamless, every surface perfect.
Man is trapped within, unsure whether this existence is a home, a path, or a dungeon.
All around are bewilderment, fear, and confusion.
❖ The Dilemma of Existence and Consciousness
➤ Being: A sequence of questions without answers.
➤ Life: A continuity of pain and suffering.
➤ Consciousness: A labyrinth of tangled inquiries.
Man wonders: Is this cosmos a prison? If so, is there any escape, any solution?
These questions force introspection into his inner self and relationship with the universe.
❖ Knowledge: The Search for Light
Humanity recognizes that the darkness within can only be dispelled through knowledge.
But what kind of knowledge?
Three Major Ideological Schools:
① Sophists (Ahl al-Safsata):
➤ Deny the possibility of true knowledge.
➤ Nothing, according to them, can be known with certainty.
② Rationalists (Ahl al-ʿAql):
➤ Accept knowledge only through observation and experience.
➤ Deny the unseen (ghayb) as a valid source of truth.
③ Religious Thinkers (Ahl al-Dīn):
➤ Affirm knowledge through revelation (waḥy).
➤ To them, empirical observation is real, but it gains meaning only through revelation.
➤ They believe in the interconnectedness of the unseen and the seen.
❖ The Connection Between Ghayb (Unseen) and Shahādah (Observed)
The religious worldview sees ghayb as the axis of consciousness and existence.
Consciousness acts like a barzakh (intermediate realm) — a meeting point between the unseen and the seen.
❖ The Victory of Rationalism and Its Aftermath
Historically, the rationalists overcame the sophists, and then overpowered the religious worldview.
This shift transformed human behavior and worldview — but at what cost?
➤ It led to a crisis of meaning.
❖ The Tragedy of Modern Man
⤷ From the Enlightenment to Postmodernism, man has:
✘ Lost meaning,
✘ Lost hope,
✘ Lost beauty.
Even scientists like Oppenheimer, after witnessing the atomic bomb’s power, remarked in despair:
“Now we are all sons of bitches.”
But modern man has deteriorated further:
He seeks to become a nameless being — neither human, nor animal, nor machine — but something undefined and absurd.
❖ The Prerequisite for Knowledge: Belief in the Unseen
Knowledge rests upon two pillars:
① Determining the source of consciousness — so that reason has a foundation.
② Belief in something beyond consciousness — to make discovery possible.
Even modern science operates with assumed “unseens” — theoretical constructs, hypothetical particles, and invisible forces.
But these are merely rational assumptions, not transcendent truths — hence modern knowledge is laced with absurdity.
❖ Relationship Between Religion and Knowledge
✦ Ghayb through Shahādah:
→ Revelation bridges the unseen to the observed world.
✦ Shahādah through Ghayb:
→ Metaphysical and spiritual knowledge derive meaning through the lens of revelation.
❖ Conclusion: A Crisis Rooted in Denial of Ghayb
Modern man assumes knowledge is possible without belief in the unseen.
But this pursuit leads only to:
✘ Emptiness
✘ Confusion
✘ Despair
Without the religious paradigm, the foundation and sustainability of true knowledge is not possible.
