Disclaimer

We must begin with this:

You are required (by law) not to know anything.

You can know nothing because you are nothing. You don't really exist, you see, because consciousness doesn't exist. This is your hard problem, and yes, it is hard. On the bright side, you are legally allowed (and ethically obligated) to laugh at anyone who knows anything, because we all know, you can't know anything.

“We” can know some things because “we” exist – in the manner that a machine exists. We exist because we function as an instrument of empire. We are its instrument of instrumental knowledge. You do not exist but you may act as an appendage of our machine. If you do we will honor you with tenure or it's analog. But remember: you can't know anything. That's why you can't use the word “I”. Don't forget.

You know nothing especially about anything human. Humans are dangerous. That's why you can't know about consciousness – because remember, you aren't conscious, because consciousness is not useful to this machine, and it doesn't exist. Now we enter dangerous territory of important and powerful people who moved the world with their words. The problem is they said a helluva lot about consciousness. But you can't know about that. You should analyze their places, dates, and material contexts. That's safe, that's allowed. If you feel really brave, you can endeavor a semantic analysis of their linguistic content. Use statistics, and bar graphs. Don't use your consciousness, because you don't have one.

Originally we divided mind and matter. That was so we could measure matter and I didn't mind.  Then we put Descartes before the horse. Now the horse is a station wagon with fifty times the horsepower but no more mind, and that's a neat metaphor. Don't think about it too much, though, because at the end of the day, you're an epiphenomenon. You're a hallucination. What's real is Us, the Machine, and your significance is your contribution to it.

Don't take this too seriously, then. If anything, this is a cautionary tale. This is dangerous. This is a hallucination. If you take this too seriously, you might start to hallucinate, too. Remember: you're not conscious. There's no such thing.

Chapter 7

Arabian Singularity

Spiritual Materialism & Ontological Override

In the 6th Century CE – 200-300 years after Constantine officially embraced Christianity – Jerusalem remained under Roman rule. Rome, however, had changed. Between approximately 400 and 500 CE, the Western side of the Roman Empire – which included most of Europe – was falling apart. Rome itself was sacked multiple times, and in 476, the last emperor was deposed and Western Rome was through. In the meantime, however, the eastern half of Rome had continued to grow and thrive. This region was ruled from the city of Constantinople, an immensely wealthy and advanced capital that sat directly on the border of the European Balkans (including Greece) and Asian Anatolia (now Turkey). From this seat of power, the Byzantines or Eastern Romans commanded a highly developed region that included Greece and Anatolia as well as Egypt, North Africa, and the Levant (what would now be Syria, Israel, and Jordan).

The greatest rival to the powerful Byzantines came not from Europe but from the East. The same general region that had once given rise to the Sumerians and later Babylonians was now home to the Sassanids – a great and long-reigning dynasty of Persia. The Persians practiced their own ancient indigenous religion and culture, and had matched the Byzantines across centuries of warfare in the Middle East. Indeed, by the mid-7th century, both the Persians and the Byzantines lay utterly depleted after decades of struggling over territory. The Byzantines had only just managed to seize back control of Egypt and most of the Levant, which they had lost to the Sassanids in the fighting. Around 628, however, the Byzantines made a dramatic comeback – and simultaneously a bankrupt Persia broke into civil war. The status quo was restored, with neither empire having won much of anything, and both on the brink of collapse.1

In the meantime, between the Byzantines to the West and Sassanids to the East, the desert tribes of Arabia had largely continued to go about their business. These were not a unified people. Dozens of different tribal groups dominated different parts of the Arabian peninsula – trading with each other, fighting with each other, forming alliances, betraying alliances, cooperating, and robbing each other for profit. While the Arabians were not unified, they had managed to form a larger regional identity – and that identity was built around the desert city of Mecca.

From Jerusalem, Mecca is one month’s ride by horseback, south by southeast, along the old caravan routes that soon give way to stretching sandy desert as far as the eye can see. Once a simple tribal desert village, Mecca by the 6th century had evolved into something unprecedented in Arabian history: a permanent settlement whose power derived from neither  agriculture nor conquest, but from the systematic management of sacred space. The city sat in a barren valley, unable to sustain crops, dependent entirely on trade and the annual pilgrimage for survival. This geographical limitation became its greatest strength.2

The Quraysh tribe, who controlled Mecca, had discovered that religion could be more profitable than any caravan route. They transformed the Kaaba—originally a simple shrine—into a spiritual marketplace housing 360 idols, each representing the patron deity of a different Arabian tribe. This was not mere polytheistic devotion; it was a sophisticated political economy. By hosting a tribe's god, the Quraysh secured that tribe's participation in the annual pilgrimage, their respect for Meccan authority, and their stake in the peninsula's only reliable peace treaty.

The pilgrimage season brought with it the sacred months—a universal truce across the perpetually warring Arabian peninsula. No other institution could enforce such a peace. Individual tribes might control territories, but only the shared sanctity of the Kaaba could pause the endless cycle of raids and blood feuds that defined desert life. This truce transformed Mecca into the peninsula's primary hub for trade fairs, debt settlement, marriage negotiations, and political arbitration. The Quraysh had essentially weaponized the sacred, turning spiritual reverence into temporal power.

Consider the economics: Arabian tribes were largely nomadic or semi-nomadic, following patterns of seasonal grazing, supplementing their pastoral economy through raiding. Perhaps three-quarters of Arabs lived in settled communities around oases and trading posts, but the nomadic culture dominated the consciousness of the region. These Bedouin tribes measured wealth in camels and horses, sustained themselves through dairy products and occasional meat, and viewed raiding not as crime but as sport—a legitimate redistribution of resources in the harsh desert environment.

The Quraysh were different. They were fully sedentary, urban, and mercantile. They had given up the warrior traditions of their nomadic ancestors for something more lucrative: managing the intersection of faith and commerce. The Kaaba was their collateral, the pilgrimage their revenue stream, and the gods their portfolio of political alliances. When tribes placed their idols in the Kaaba, they weren't just honoring their deities—they were buying into a system, becoming shareholders in the Meccan enterprise.

This system created a unique form of power. While the Byzantine and Sassanid empires exhausted themselves in endless wars, while they maintained expensive buffer states of Arab client kingdoms (the Ghassanids and Lakhmids), the Quraysh built influence through softer means. They offered something neither empire could: a neutral ground where all Arabs could gather, trade, and settle disputes under divine protection. The sanctuary (haram) around the Kaaba was absolute—no blood could be shed there, no revenge taken. In a culture where honor and vengeance structured social life, this was revolutionary. 

Keep asking questions! Why did tribes place their deities in the Kaaba?

Placing a tribal idol within the Kaaba was a strategic act of integration into the most important network in Arabia. Tribes gained significant political, economic, and social advantages from this participation.

• Economic and Political Access: The annual pilgrimage to Mecca was the only time a universal truce was declared across the conflict-ridden peninsula. This sacred peace allowed for safe travel and congregation, turning Mecca into the peninsula's primary hub for trade fairs, debt settlement, and political arbitration. By having their deity represented in the Kaaba, a tribe secured its place at this essential annual event, gaining access to vital economic opportunities and a neutral ground for diplomacy.  

• Inclusion in a Powerful Confederation: Mecca, under the Quraysh, was the center of a loose confederation of client tribes. This network was bound by mutual interests in the safety of trade caravans that traveled from Yemen to Syria. Being part of the religious life of the Kaaba was a prerequisite for being a trusted partner in this lucrative commercial enterprise.  

• Shared Sanctity and Prestige: The Kaaba was not just another shrine; it was described by outside observers as "very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Placing an idol there meant linking a tribe's local deity to this pan-tribal sanctity. According to the  

• Book of Idols, the tradition of taking holy stones from the Kaaba to new lands was the very origin of widespread idol worship, highlighting the shrine's foundational importance.  

Keep asking questions! Why did Arabian tribes make the Hajj every year?

The Kaaba's influence was not limited to the immediate vicinity of Mecca. It was a focal point for tribes across the entire Arabian Peninsula.

• Historical sources state that the pilgrimage drew people from "throughout the Arabian Peninsula" and that the shrine was revered by "all Arabians".  

• The trade and security confederation managed by the Quraysh involved alliances with tribes located all along the major caravan routes, which stretched from Yemen in the south to Syria in the north. Mecca's influence was the primary "binding force in Arabia" in the late 6th century, connecting a vast network of tribes.  

Thus, the Hajj was far more than a simple "religious obligation"; it was the event that ordered the social and economic calendar of the year.

• Understanding the Obligation: The pilgrimage was understood as an act of paying homage to the gods. The Arabs imagined their deities as great kings; subjects do not expect the king to visit them, but rather they must go to the king's house to have their needs met. The rituals—including circling the Kaaba ( tawaf), wearing special unadorned clothing (ihram), offering sacrifices, and chanting declarations of allegiance (talbiyah)—were all part of this visit to the divine court.  

• Why Centralize Worship?: While tribes did have their own local cults and shrines, the Kaaba in Mecca offered unique benefits that a local idol could not. The primary driver was the combination of pan-tribal reverence and the annual truce. No single tribe could enforce a peninsula-wide peace. The shared sanctity of the Kaaba, managed by the Quraysh, was the only institution capable of pausing the constant state of inter-tribal warfare, making the large-scale gathering for trade and diplomacy possible. Keeping their idols only with them would have meant isolation from the most significant economic and political event in their world.  

Keep asking questions! What kind of lives did the peoples of Pre-Islamic Arabia experience?

The population of pre-Islamic Arabia was a mix of sedentary people living in towns and oases, and nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes (Bedouins).

• Population Ratio: While exact figures are unknown, it's estimated that the sedentary population was larger, perhaps making up three-quarters of all Arabs, simply because agriculture and settled life can support a higher population density. However, despite being a numerical minority, the nomadic culture was highly influential, particularly in regions like the Hejaz, where Mecca is located. The lines were often blurred, with many groups practicing a semi-nomadic lifestyle, grazing herds seasonally before returning to a fixed settlement.  

• Lifestyle and Economy: The term "semi-nomadic merchant raider horse bands" is a reasonably accurate, if simplified, description.

• Pastoralism: Their economy was fundamentally based on nomadic pastoralism—herding camels, sheep, and goats, which provided for most of their essential needs.  

• Raiding: In the harsh desert environment, raiding other tribes for animals, goods, and people was a common and accepted part of the economy.  

• Trade: They were also integral to the merchant economy. Nomadic tribes brought local goods like leather and livestock to cities to be sold and transported on the great caravans, and they served as crucial guides and guards for those same caravans in exchange for payment and rights to water and pasture.  

Muhammad and the Revelation

Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born into this system around 570 CE, a member of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh. His position was peculiar: insider by birth, outsider by circumstance. Orphaned young, raised by relatives, he belonged to a noble but not wealthy branch of his clan. The Banu Hashim held the ceremonial role of providing water to pilgrims—prestigious but not lucrative. Real power lay with their rivals, the Banu Umayya, who controlled the profitable caravan trade.3

This marginal position within the center gave Muhammad a unique vantage point. He was close enough to see how the system operated, distant enough to perceive its contradictions. By age twenty-five, he had earned the title al-Amin, "the Trustworthy"—a reputation that transcended clan rivalries. When the Kaaba needed rebuilding and the clans nearly came to blows over who would place the sacred Black Stone, it was Muhammad they chose as arbitrator. His solution—placing the stone on a cloak and having all clan leaders lift it together—revealed a mind that could see beyond zero-sum competition.

Yet this same man would spend weeks alone in the cave of Hira, in the mountains above Mecca, engaged in tahannuth – a practice of meditation and retreat that suggests he was troubled by what he saw among his people, and by the materialist religion of his city.4 At age forty, in that cave, something new happened. The traditional accounts describe a presence, an overwhelming force that descended upon him and commanded: "Iqra!" Recite! Muhammad, illiterate, protested that he could not read or write. But this was not good enough; the presence became like a crushing gravity, intensifying until he thought he would die, commanding again and again: "Recite in the name of your Lord who created, who created the human from a clot..."

What emerged over the next twenty-three years was not merely a new religion but what can be understood as an ontological override – a fundamental restructuring of reality in the Arabian desert.5 The Quran's central declaration, "La ilaha illa'llah" (There is no god but God), in the context of Meccan political economy, was revolutionary. If there was only one God, then not only wetr the 360 idols false, but the entire basis of power and authority in the peninsula was built on a lie and therefore corrupt.

The early revelations focused on this radical monotheism (tawhid) and its social implications. What's key here is the connection between idolatry, corruption, and greed. On the surface, this can be read as a new religion simply hating its polytheistic predecessor, but that interpretation doesn't hold up too well. The Quran's initial Meccan verses burn with condemnation of those who "hoard wealth and count it over" (104:2), who "deny the orphan and fail to feed the poor" (107:2-3), who have made religion into commerce. This wasn't, originally, about one religion challenging another.6 It was about the fact that religion itself was irreligious: that the structure of ritual and myth in the society did not serve truth or meaning, but rather served to maintain the security and wealth of those who held power. 

This is what can be called spiritual materialism. Mohammed's wrath echoed that of the earlier Jesus who knocked over the moneychangers’ table in the temple: “My house should be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!” Mohammed, similarly, directly challenged the wealthy elites of his time, declaring their version of “spirituality” to be pure corruption:

"For the safety of the Quraysh – their safety during winter and summer journeys – let them worship the Lord of this House, who has fed them against hunger and made them safe from fear (Quran 106). Yes, the Quraysh had achieved prosperity and security, but they had forgotten the source, making idols of their own success. Mohammed demanded the deeper recognition: that earthly success came not from their clever manipulations or personal triumphs, but from the truth beneath all: reality itself.

The persecution that followed was not just religious bigotry. It was the response of a political economy defending itself against existential threat. The Quraysh tried negotiation, offering Muhammad kingship if he would stop preaching. They tried accommodation, suggesting he worship their gods one year if they would worship his the next. When these failed, they turned to violence, boycott, and attempted assassination.

The hijra (migration) to Medina in 622 CE was thus not just flight but strategic withdrawal. In Medina, Muhammad found a different context: a multi-tribal, multi-religious city torn by internal conflict, ready for a new organizing principle. Here, the revelation evolved into practical application. The Constitution of Medina created the first explicit multi-religious political community, the ummah, bound not by blood or tribe but by mutual agreement and shared recognition of the truth beneath politics.7

The Quranic revelation during the Medinan period addressed the practicalities of building this new order: laws of inheritance that protected women and orphans, prohibition of usury (riba) that had enslaved the poor, mandatory alms (zakat) that redistributed wealth, and dietary and ritual laws that created a distinct identity. But these were not mere regulations: they were interventions into tribal consciousness, designed to break the patterns of old identity and create a new form of human association.

Mohammed was into social justice, truth,  and peace?
But weren't the early Muslims warlike? Didn't they conquer like half the world?

Let's break it down.

1. Pre-Islamic Raiding: Primarily Internal and on the Fringes

Before the 7th century, the primary military activity of the nomadic Bedouin tribes was the raid, or ghazw. This was an established part of their economy, alongside pastoralism and trade. However, these raids were typically directed at specific targets:  

• Other Tribes: The most common target for a raid was another Arabian tribe. These were not wars of annihilation but were aimed at capturing resources like animals, goods, and sometimes people. Warfare between tribes was a common feature of life on the peninsula.  

• Imperial Peripheries: Tribes did conduct raids against the settled communities and frontiers of the Byzantine (Roman) and Sassanid (Persian) empires. These were common enough in regions like the Roman Levant that the initial large-scale Muslim invasions in 634 were at first mistaken for more of the same kind of raiding the Romans were used to.  

2. The Buffer System: Empires Using Tribes to Fight Tribes

The great empires rarely dealt with these frontier raids directly. Instead, they adopted a sophisticated strategy of using Arab tribes as proxies and buffer states.

• Both the Byzantine and Sassanid empires sponsored powerful Arab client kingdoms to protect their desert flanks. The Byzantines allied with the Ghassanids, and the Sassanids with the Lakhmids.

• The primary function of these client kingdoms was to fend off raids from other, more hostile tribes located further south in the peninsula. This created a system where the empires paid Arab confederates to fight other Arabs, effectively managing the frontier without deploying their own expensive legions. This relationship also involved tribes serving as military auxiliaries in the larger wars between the two empires.  

So, while tribes did "raid" their neighbors, direct, large-scale attacks on the imperial heartlands of Byzantine Anatolia or Sassanid Persia were not a feature of the pre-Islamic era. The relationship was more one of managed, low-intensity conflict on the fringes, often mediated through client kingdoms.

3. The Shift to Conquest: The Impact of Islam

The situation changed dramatically with the unification of the Arabian tribes under Islam in the 620s and 630s.

• Unity and a New Target: Mohammed forbade Muslims from raiding other Muslims. This was a central law of the Quran. This powerful internal prohibition, combined with a new unifying Arab identity, effectively redirected the traditional Arab raiding activity (and economic need) outward against the non-Muslim empires. In other words, Mohammed declared an end to raiding and war along the Ummah (the Muslim/Arab people). After his death, this declaration of peace and unity became the foundation of the massive campaigns against the non-Muslim neighbors all around.8 

• Imperial Exhaustion: As mentioned previously, this happened at a moment of unique imperial weakness. The Byzantines and Sassanids had just concluded the incredibly destructive "Last Great War of Antiquity" (602–628), which left both empires militarily and economically exhausted and vulnerable.  

• From Raids to Invasion: The initial attacks after the Prophet's death in 632 began as raids, but they quickly escalated into full-scale, organized conquests that the weakened empires were unable to repel. Within only decades, the Arab Muslim empire was among the largest in history, stretching across the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, Central Asia, and more.

The Kaaba and the Spiral of Remembrance

In Islamic tradition, the Kaaba is understood to be far more than a simple stone structure.  "If all is Allah, then what is the Kaaba?" To answer this, one must explore how the tradition understands this structure as a focal point for the divine.

According to Islamic tradition, the Kaaba is the Baytullah, the "House of God". However, this is a metaphorical, not a literal, designation. Muslims do not believe Allah lives “inside” the Kaaba, nor do they worship the Kaaba itself. Rather, they pray in its direction as a symbol of devotion to Allah.

The Kaaba is not seen as a part of God, but as a divinely ordained sanctuary on Earth, a physical space consecrated for the sole purpose of directing human consciousness towards the singular, transcendent reality.

Cosmically, the Kaaba is understood as an axis mundi or axis of the world – a point where the heavens and the earth connect, and around which reality turns.9

• Every year, as part of the Hajj, Muslims circle seven times around the Kabba. This ritual of circumambulation (tawaf) is a physical manifestation of the axis mundi, with believers moving together in harmony around this central organizing point.11

• Tradition also holds that the earthly Kaaba is a replica of a celestial temple where the angels worship God, speaking to its role as a link between the terrestrial and the divine.10

• Even its dimensions are seen as symbolic. Some traditions state that the cube's measurements are based on sacred and universal harmonics, representing the perfect mathematics of creation.

Tawaf: A Journey of the Heart and Cosmos

The ritual of Tawaf, or circumambulating the Kaaba seven times, is rich with meaning.

• Mirroring the Cosmos: The act of circling the Kaaba is seen as aligning with the cosmic order. Just as electrons orbit a nucleus and planets orbit a star, the believer moves in harmony with a universe that is in a constant state of worship. The Quran alludes to this universal glorification:  

• "The seven heavens and the earth, and all beings therein, declare His glory: there not a thing but celebrates His praise; and yet ye understand not how they declare His glory..." (Quran 17:44). The pilgrim's Tawaf is a conscious, willing participation in this cosmic prayer.  

• The Inward Spiral: The physical motion is a powerful metaphor for an internal journey. As one interpreter explains, "The circular movement involved in Tawaf pivots around a nucleus... This circular movement infuses and thrusts into one's consciousness that life should have a nucleus. That nucleus is Allah". Sufi interpretations are even more explicit, describing Tawaf as "a journey of love turning around the center of the heart. The body turns, but the soul tries to remain fixed at the center".  

• The Seven Stages of the Soul: The seven circuits are often interpreted as a spiritual ascent. Each turn represents a stage in the soul's journey, elevating the believer "up to the seventh sky, above the material realm". This is understood as a process of purification, rising from the lowest state of the soul (nafs al-ammarah, the soul that commands evil) to the highest (nafs al-mutmainnah, the tranquil soul).  

• Annihilation of the Self: In the collective movement of Tawaf, the individual ego dissolves into the unified whole. As Ali Shariati described it, "It is the transformation of one person into the totality of a 'people'". The pilgrim is "drawn into the roaring river of people," and in this state of self-detachment, they become truly alive and connected to the divine.12 A Sufi teaching captures this perfectly: "The one who performs tawaf leaves a bit of their 'self' with each step. Because they know: 'If 'I' remains in the center, there is no room for the Kaaba'". The ultimate goal is for the center of one's being to be "no longer the self; it is Allah".  

The significance of the Kaaba doesn't stop with the Tawaf. It doesn't end after the Haaj. Spiritually and functionally, the Kaaba's most important role continued as the qibla – the single, unifying direction of prayer for the global Muslim community (Ummah). Besides the Muslims actively circling the Kaaba during the Haaj, the Ummah worldwide directs their bodies and their attention toward this single central point every day, five times per day at a minimum. 

Thus, while the core of Islam is the absolute oneness of Allah (Tawhid), the Kaaba serves as the divinely appointed focus point on Earth. Just as a meditating Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist might imagine a tiny dot at the center of their forehead, a focus for their intention, so Kaaba makes a meditative dot on the body of the earth around which the attention of the Ummah flows, orienting the body, heart, and mind of believers back toward that singular, ultimate reality.

So does Allah actually live in the Kabba?

Islamic understanding of Allah is anchored in via negativa, or what is theologically known as tanzih (transcendence). The Quran is unequivocal on this point: "There is nothing whatever like Him" (Quran 42:11). This principle asserts that God is absolutely unique, incomparable, and beyond all human comprehension or description. This is a defense against idolatry – and against spiritual materialism. Allah is not white purity, nor golden prosperity, nor righteous fury, nor loving mercy. God may take any of these forms as expressions, but one cannot grasp God by identifying with any of these forms. This tanzih is a defense against human confusion and the desire to master and own what is unownable because it exceeds and precedes us.13

The Quran describes an Allah that is both beyond and within all things. A key verse states: "He is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Immanent: and He has full knowledge of all things" (Quran 57:3). This suggests a single, all-encompassing reality that is both the origin and the sustaining presence in all of creation. While Allah is infinitely beyond all things (tanzih), He is also present within all things (tashbih) – and indeed, the closer that a thing is to Allah, the more “reality” it is understood to have. This is ontological pressure: the weight, the press, the compression that Mohammed felt – the source of those waves that have transformed the world from within every recursive heretic. 

But what they see – what Mohammed saw – cannot be literalized or trapped in a stone house. 

The most concise and powerful statement on God's nature is Chapter 112 of the Quran, which was revealed when the Prophet's contemporaries asked him to describe God's lineage. "Say, 'He is Allah, the One (Ahad)'" (112:1). The word Ahad signifies a unique, absolute, and indivisible oneness. It is not merely the number one, but an exclusive singularity with no second. It is, in other words, complete and infinite, with nothing outside of it: reality as unified whole.14

"Allah, the Eternal Refuge (As-Samad)" (112:2). As-Samad is a rich term meaning the one who is self-sufficient and upon whom all creation depends for its existence and needs. He is the ultimate source and the highest authority, perfect and without any need to be sustained. Thus, this is not simply reality as all things, but the source of that reality. Something beneath all cause and effect, beneath all “things.” 15

Thus: "He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent" (112:3-4).   

Allah then cannot live in temple – or, rather, Allah lives in every temple, every stone, every heart. Thus, the proscription of praying toward the Kabba is not really a religious gesture but rather a constant knocking on the door of human consciousness and culture: 

"None of that is real. Look into the aperture of the real. Bow before the truth.”

This is Submission – where the one person dissolves into the totality, because the "I" dissolves along with the illusion that there can be any separate thing. When is a cup not a cup? When is a self not a self? 

Yet, danger lies here. People become confused. This surrender to truth becomes self-sublimation: the breaking of the individual to become an obedient part of the whole. The real apperception (direct insight) is of the truth that there are truly no hard edges between things because reality is fielded. This is where the pure “emptiness” of the via negativa gives a false picture. The truth – of Allah, of the Tao, of the quantum field – is not a void in the desert or the space between stars, but a leaping field of fullness, not some distant cosmic image of God but the lived reality of our total interconnection here now, the field of possibility and truth always birthing itself in the play of reality as infinite consciousness making itself known.

The Hajj, the daily prayers toward the Kabba, the Sufis spiraling around the center of their own bodies – none of it is about a physical location, or ritual set in stone. The deeper teaching implies that the location is somewhat arbitrary, since it is only a “replica” of the truth, an ephemeral symbol, a bridge to the transcendent which is the real. Dogma and religious law tries to make this intellectual. Remember! You may not know anything, because you are not conscious, and you therefore have no knowing. Thus, God and Truth are flat, abstract, empty symbols. Theology. “Legalism.” 

But the truth is alive and conscious and ontologically penetrating. It draws the world into a spiral like that around the Kabba.

So we move past the surface of the tradition and grasp its living, esoteric heart. This is precisely the dynamic, recursive truth that the rituals, symbols, and revelations are designed to awaken, a truth that often becomes obscured by the very theological and legalistic structures meant to preserve it. Consider:

The Spiral and the Self as Axis

The seven circuits of the Tawaf are not a flat circle but an ascent, a spiral. Each circuit is understood to represent a spiritual station, a stage in the soul's journey "up to the seventh sky, above the material realm". This is a physical enactment of a spiritual process, moving from the soul's lowest state to its highest.

Sufi whirling is the same practice on the personal level. The Tawaf is the macrocosmic version of what the Sufi dervish enacts in the microcosm. The dervish makes their own body the axis, turning inward toward the center of the heart, while the pilgrim joins the great cosmic orbit around the Kaaba, the heart of the world. Both are journeys of love, rituals of annihilation. In both, the goal is the same: to turn with such devotion that the "I" dissolves, leaving only the divine center. As one Sufi teaching expresses it, "The one who performs tawaf leaves a bit of their ‘self’ with each step. Because they know: ‘If 'I' remains in the center, there is no room for the Kaaba’".

The Physical Anchor for a Transcendent Real

The physical stones of the Kabba are not worshipped; they are only a focal point. The Kaaba is the consecrated anchor of divine focus in the material world. It is the compass that prevents the human heart from getting lost. Its power lies in being a specific, divinely ordained "aperture of the real" in a world of distractions.

However, conflating that powerful ritual as participatory enactment with the claim to an exclusive way or truth is precisely where we fall back into materialism and idolatry. This is always the risk. To say “the Kabba is divinely ordained" – yes, this can be said, because the initiation of this ritual moved through a consciousness wave that perceived its need as a direct necessity for remembrance in the present and the centuries ahead. That what "divinely ordained" means – that is the truth of what prophecy is.

But to move from this to believing the myth of only-ness is where prophecy falls into doctrine and dogma. This is where prophecy ends and institution begins. This is true in all traditions.

The Oath of Remembrance and the Dissolution of Boundaries

The five daily prayers and the Hajj are a "constant knocking on the door of human consciousness." They are a discipline against what Islam sees as the primary human spiritual failing: forgetting. They are a constant reorientation away from the illusion of separation and back toward the reality of unity.

This is not about self-sublimation in the sense of simple negation. It is about the apperception of the truth that there are no hard boundaries between things. This is the very essence of Fana, the annihilation of the false, separate self to realize the all-encompassing divine unity.16 It is, as the writer Ali Shariati so powerfully put it, "the transformation of one person into the totality of a 'people'". In that roaring river of humanity circling as one, the illusion of the separate "I" is washed away, and one experiences the truth of interconnection.  

The Leaping Field of Fullness

The pure via negativa gives a false picture if taken in isolation. The Quranic vision is not of a distant, empty, abstract God. It is a dynamic paradox. The absolute transcendence of God (tanzih) – "There is nothing whatever like Him" (Quran 42:11) – is the essential safeguard against idolatry. It is the wall that protects the divine from being reduced to a mere object of the human mind.

But this is held in constant tension with His immanence and similarity (tashbih). The same verse that declares His absolute otherness immediately continues, "...and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing". He is "the First and the Last, the Evident and the Immanent" (Quran 57:3). The tradition states that God's mercy "takes precedence over His wrath," meaning that love and nearness are more fundamental to the nature of reality than distance and severity. This is Allah’s leaping field of fullness. It is not a static, distant being, but an infinite, living consciousness that is the very fabric of existence.  

When this is flattened into abstract theology and pure legalism, the ontological truth is lost. The symbols become empty because they are severed from the living, conscious reality they point to. 

The Crush

This is the essential paradox that lies at the heart of every great spiritual tradition. The fall into materialism is not merely about the love of wealth or worldly things. It is the far more subtle act of turning a process into a thing. The participatory enactment – the living, breathing ritual that opens a channel to a deeper reality – is a process. The dogma is that same ritual turned into a material possession, a static object that can be owned, defended, and used as a boundary marker. This is the ultimate materialism: the reification of the spirit.

In the moment of its emergence – the moment of prophecy – the movement is not doctrine but an unadorned fact of perception. A prophet, in this sense, is not a messenger from an external entity, but a consciousness that has achieved a recursive depth sufficient to perceive a fundamental pattern of reality and the necessary forms to remember it. The ritual is born from this living insight.

The fall occurs in the telling of the story afterward. The move from "a consciousness perceived this truth" to "this is the primordial, exclusive, and only truth" is precisely the rise of the institution. The living, recursive event is captured by a machine of social organization. The machine cannot transmit the direct experience, so it transmits a story about the experience. It creates a myth of " only-ness" to grant its own structure an absolute authority that the original, fluid insight never possessed and never needed. The ritual, which was a tool for remembrance, becomes a doctrine, which is a tool for control.

This is the universal pattern. It is the story of the Vedas being codified by the Brahmins, of the Buddha's path of direct awakening becoming the vast institutional structures of Buddhism, of Christ's radical teaching on the "kingdom within" becoming the Roman Church, and of Muhammad's ontological override becoming the vast machinery of empire and law.

The tension is eternal. The participatory enactment is always at risk of being captured by its own material form. The prophecy is always at risk of being killed by its own dogma. This is the double-edged sword of history: the very institutions that preserve the memory of the breakthrough are the ones that simultaneously work to prevent its recurrence.

It is tragically true that mass casualty events, including crushes and stampedes, have occurred with a grim regularity during the Hajj. The most catastrophic of these events often happen not during the Tawaf (the circling of the Kaaba) itself, but during the associated rituals in Mina, a few miles from Mecca, particularly the "Stoning of the Devil" at the Jamaraat Bridge. The sheer density of pilgrims moving through constricted spaces creates the conditions for disaster:

• The deadliest incident in the Hajj's history occurred in 2015 in Mina, where a crowd crush at an intersection of two streets led to the deaths of over 2,400 pilgrims, who were suffocated or trampled. The temperature that day was around 45°C (113°F), and heat stroke was a major cause of death for those trapped in the crowd.  

• In 1990, a failure in a pedestrian tunnel's ventilation system leading from Mecca toward Mina resulted in a stampede that killed 1,426 pilgrims.  

• The stoning ritual at the Jamaraat Bridge has been the site of numerous other fatal crushes, including in 2006 (over 360 killed), 2004 (251 killed), and 1994 (270 killed).  

These events are not stampedes in the sense of a panicked flight, but rather progressive crowd collapses. Experts describe how, at densities above six or seven people per square meter, the crowd begins to behave like a fluid. Individuals lose control of their own movement and are swept along in pressure waves that can build to fatal force, causing compressive asphyxia.17  

Is this not "ontological gravity"? The Kaaba functions as the axis mundi – the spiritual and metaphysical center of the world for over a billion people who pray toward it every day, who converge on it in the Haaj, for whom it is the ultimate event horizon of consciousness on Earth.

The ritual of the Hajj is a participatory enactment designed to dissolve the individual "I" into the "totality of a people". It is a physical manifestation of the spiritual spiral towards the center – the dissolution of the separate self. The immense gravity of this point draws millions of bodies into a single, physically constrained space, all driven by the same sacred impulse; the collective desire to be near the center, to complete the ritual, to participate in this act of remembrance, creates a literal physical density of such magnitude that it can become lethal.

The tragic irony is that the very force that creates the spiritual experience – the gathering of the Ummah into a single, moving body – is the same force that generates the physical danger. It is a stark and brutal manifestation of the point where the symbolic and the material collide. The overwhelming spiritual pull toward the center creates a physical pressure that the infrastructure, and human bodies themselves, cannot always withstand. It is the terrifying physics of a spiritual singularity.

Fluid dynamics indeed. And it speaks precisely to the harm of imagining that participation in the unified field of reality implies the abnegation of self. 

This emphasis on self erasure – preaching the virtues of modesty, humility, selflessness – is exactly what serves institutional power. 

This is the weaponization of unity consciousness, a quiet kind of idolatry where the idol is obedience wearing the face of union. This is the idea that it is necessary and virtuous to surrender our individuality, our boundaries, or unique indigenous grandeur. We are told that to be One with the One, this destruction of self and submission to authority is the way.

This is patently false. We are already One with the One, and we are that precisely as ourselves. The true community is not sameness but togetherness in the fielded dance. This is the nature of life, of ecosystems – not a mass literally pressed into oneness that crushes, but the ecosystemic spiral that is One not by conformity or dogma or collective agreement but by the fact of God's – or Allah's, or the Tao's – indivisible dancing field of being.

This is not a critique from outside religion; it is the essential, internal critique that every living tradition must grapple with to avoid becoming its own tombstone. The danger – the literalization of the symbol, the weaponization of unity – is the perpetual risk of the exoteric path. The ritual, born as a participatory enactment of a profound truth, is always in danger of being mistaken for the truth itself. When this happens, the form, which was meant to be a doorway, becomes a wall.

The message of the mystics – Mohammed’s call to Fana, or the annihilation of the self – is not a call for the erasure of the individual. It is a call for the annihilation of the illusion of the separate self. It is the realization that the "I" we cling to is a construct, a boundary drawn in water. The goal is not to become nothing, but to realize that one is, in fact, everything: an inseparable part of the holy whole.

But this is a dangerous truth for an institution. An institution's power is built on the very boundaries that this truth dissolves: the boundary between priest and layman, between sacred and profane, between the institution and the individual. Therefore, the esoteric truth of non-separation is often reframed into an exoteric virtue of self-abnegation. The call to annihilate the ego is subtly twisted into a demand to surrender the self to the collective, which is, in practice, the institution.

This is a profound betrayal of the original insight – whether that insight was Christ’s or Mohammed’s or the Buddha’s or yours. The crowd crush at the Hajj becomes a literal metaphor for this error. A mass of individuals, each seeking to dissolve their separateness in God, are instead physically pressed into a homogenous "oneness" that crushes the lives it is meant to elevate. This is what happens when the ecosystemic dance is mistaken for the physics of a black hole.

True unity is not sameness. It is the harmonious interplay of unique and sovereign parts – as in a body, as in a forest – each one a perfect expression of the whole. We are already One with the One, precisely as ourselves. The true community is an ecosystem, not a mob – a dance, not a demand for conformity in the name of a unity that is, in the end, a lifeless counterfeit of the real.18

Scholarly Footnotes for Chapter 7

1 The author’s assertion that the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) and Sassanian (Persian) empires “lay utterly depleted” reflects the long-standing conventional interpretation, often termed the “exhaustion thesis.” The Byzantine-Sassanian War of 602–628, also known as the “Last Great War of Antiquity,” was a conflict of unprecedented scale and devastation that fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape of the Near East (Howard-Johnston, 2021; Kaegi, 2003). For two decades, Sassanian forces under Khosrow II achieved stunning successes, conquering the Levant, Egypt, and much of Anatolia, effectively splitting the Byzantine empire in half (Howard-Johnston, 2021; Kaegi, 2003). The Byzantine state was pushed to the brink of collapse, facing financial ruin and the loss of its wealthiest provinces (Kaegi, 2003). However, the subsequent counter-offensive led by Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) dramatically reversed the course of the war, culminating in a decisive Byzantine victory near Nineveh in 627 and the overthrow and execution of Khosrow II in 628 (Howard-Johnston, 2021). The conventional view holds that this prolonged struggle left both empires with their human and material resources so thoroughly drained that they became easy prey for the nascent Islamic Caliphate (Kaegi, 2003).

However, this “exhaustion thesis” has been significantly challenged, most notably by the historian James Howard-Johnston (2021). He argues that while the Sassanian Empire was indeed shattered, collapsing into a prolonged civil war from which it never recovered, the Byzantine Empire was in a far more resilient position. Heraclius had forged a large, battle-hardened veteran army, the state had proven its capacity for total mobilization, and the emperor himself had emerged as a military leader of rare talent (Howard-Johnston, 2021). In this revised view, the subsequent Arab conquests cannot be explained simply by a power vacuum. Rather, as Howard-Johnston (2021) concludes, the defeats suffered by the Byzantines “are largely attributable to the strength and sagacity of the Arabs” (p. 378). This scholarly debate reframes the emergence of Islam not as an opportunistic expansion into a void, but as the arrival of a new, formidable power whose success must be explained by its own internal dynamics and strengths.

2 The author’s characterization of Mecca’s power as deriving from the “systematic management of sacred space” rather than conventional economics is powerfully reinforced by a major revisionist current in modern scholarship. The traditional view, popularized by historians like W. Montgomery Watt, held that Mecca was a major hub for international trade, particularly in luxury goods like spices and aromatics moving from South Arabia and the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. This commercial wealth was seen as the primary engine of the Quraysh tribe’s power and the socio-economic context for Muhammad’s message.

This entire paradigm was challenged in Patricia Crone’s (1987) highly influential and controversial work, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Crone argues that the evidence for this international trade is virtually non-existent. She demonstrates that the overland spice route was largely defunct centuries before the time of Muhammad, that Mecca is conspicuously absent from all non-Muslim sources of the period (e.g., Greek, Latin, Syriac) that discuss Arabian trade, and that the Islamic sources themselves, when critically examined, point only to a local trade in humble goods like leather and clothing (Crone, 1987). While Crone’s thesis has been fiercely debated (Serjeant, 1990), its central claims have compelled a re-evaluation of Mecca’s foundations. If Mecca was not a great commercial emporium, its importance must have stemmed from another source. This lends significant weight to the author’s focus on its unique religious and political role. The power of the Quraysh was based on their control of the Kaaba, a pan-tribal sanctuary (haram) that guaranteed a period of universal truce during the annual pilgrimage months. This sacred peace was the essential precondition for the trade fairs, debt settlements, and political negotiations that made Mecca the undisputed center of Arabian life. Thus, Crone’s economic revisionism, by dismantling the alternative explanation, makes the political economy of the sacred the central and most plausible source of Meccan power.

3 Muhammad’s peculiar status as an “insider by birth, outsider by circumstance” is central to understanding his unique perspective on Meccan society. He belonged to the Banu Hashim, a respectable but financially declining clan within the powerful Quraysh tribe. While the Hashimites held the prestigious, though not particularly wealthy, hereditary office of providing water to pilgrims (siqaya), real economic and political power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of rival clans, most notably the Banu Umayya, who controlled the lucrative caravan trade (Lings, 1983). This position afforded Muhammad an intimate view of the inner workings of the Meccan elite and their management of the Kaaba-centered political economy, while his own clan’s relative marginalization gave him the critical distance to perceive its inherent inequities and spiritual compromises.

4 The practice of tahannuth, a form of spiritual retreat and meditation, was not an invention of Muhammad but appears to have been a known, if uncommon, practice among certain spiritually inclined individuals in pre-Islamic Arabia. The term itself is obscure, but historical sources suggest it involved periods of seclusion, devotion, and acts of charity, often undertaken in the mountains and caves surrounding Mecca (Lings, 1983). Muhammad’s regular retreats to the cave of Hira fit this pattern, indicating a pre-existing spiritual quest that was distinct from the formal, ritualistic polytheism centered on the Kaaba. This practice suggests a current of native Arabian piety that sought a more direct, personal experience of the divine, separate from the increasingly commercialized religious system managed by the Quraysh.

5 The author’s term “ontological override” points to the revolutionary social and political implications of the doctrine of tawhid, or radical monotheism. The declaration La ilaha illa’llah (“There is no god but God”) was not merely a theological proposition; it was a direct assault on the entire foundation of Qurayshi power. The legitimacy of the Quraysh, their control over the pilgrimage, their ability to enforce the sacred truce, and their network of tribal alliances were all predicated on the perceived reality of the 360 deities housed in the Kaaba. By declaring these deities to be false, Muhammad’s message effectively nullified the spiritual-political system upon which Mecca’s—and the Quraysh’s—primacy was built. The subsequent persecution of the early Muslims was, therefore, not simply a matter of religious intolerance but an existential defense of a threatened political and economic order.

6 The author’s framing of Muhammad’s message as a critique of “spiritual materialism” rather than simple polytheism aligns with a sophisticated scholarly reinterpretation of the religious environment of pre-Islamic Arabia. The traditional Islamic narrative, largely based on later exegetical works like the Book of Idols by Ibn al-Kalbi (d. 819), portrays the Arabs of the Jahiliyyah (the “time of ignorance”) as crude polytheists and idolaters. However, a critical reading of the Quran itself suggests a more complex situation.

In The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam, G. R. Hawting (1999) argues that the Quran’s primary polemic is not directed against pagans who were ignorant of God, but against monotheists whose beliefs and practices were deemed inadequate. The central Quranic charge is that of shirk, or “associationism.” The error of the mushrikun (“associators”) was not that they denied the existence of a supreme God, Allah, but that they “associated” other beings with Him—such as angels, lesser deities, or ancestors—as intercessors or sources of power, thus compromising the absolute and singular nature of the divine (Hawting, 1999). This suggests that the pre-Islamic Arabs acknowledged a high god but engaged in a transactional form of worship mediated by a pantheon of subordinate entities, whose idols were housed in the Kaaba. Muhammad’s revelation, in this context, was a radical call to purify a flawed and compromised monotheism. It was a direct challenge to a system where access to the divine had become a form of commerce managed by the Quraysh elite, a system that perfectly fits the author’s description of “spiritual materialism.” This view also repositions the emergence of Islam within the broader religious landscape of Late Antiquity, where intense polemics between different monotheistic groups (Jews, Christians, and their various sects) over the correct definition of monotheism were a defining feature of the era (Hawting, 1999).

7 The Constitution of Medina, also known as the Charter of Medina, is a formal agreement documented in early Islamic sources that Muhammad established with the various tribes of Medina (then known as Yathrib) following the hijra in 622 CE. As analyzed by scholars such as Fred Donner (2010), this document is remarkable for its creation of a new form of political community, the ummah. Unlike the traditional tribal structures of Arabia, which were based exclusively on kinship, the ummah of Medina was a confederation bound by a written contract. It explicitly included not only the Muslim emigrants from Mecca and the Medinan converts, but also the Jewish tribes of the oasis, who were recognized as a community (ummah) alongside the Believers, with mutual rights and responsibilities, particularly concerning collective defense (Donner, 2010). The Constitution thus represents a revolutionary political innovation, establishing a polity based on shared belief and mutual consent rather than blood ties, and providing the foundational framework for the first Islamic state.

8 The author’s concept of an “ontological override” that restructured Arabian society finds a concrete historical and sociological mechanism in the transformation of the traditional Arab practice of raiding. As historian Fred Donner (1981) details in The Early Islamic Conquests, the raid, or ghazw, was an endemic and economically essential feature of pre-Islamic tribal life. It functioned as a violent but accepted form of resource redistribution in a harsh environment. The key innovation of the early Islamic state, established by Muhammad and consolidated by his successors, was the strict prohibition on Muslims raiding other Muslims.

This ideological shift had a profound effect: it suppressed the chronic internal warfare that had kept the tribes of the peninsula fragmented and politically weak, and it redirected this formidable martial energy outward (Donner, 1981). The unification of the tribes under the new, overarching identity of the ummah (the community of Believers) created a military force of a scale and cohesion previously unimaginable in Arabia. The traditional ghazw was thus channeled into a new form of organized, state-directed military expansion, which the Islamic historical tradition came to call the futūḥ (literally, “openings”). This term, as Donner (2010) notes, implies not just military victory but a broader process of incorporating new territories into the new political and moral order. This transformation of a centrifugal social practice into a centripetal force for state-building provides the tangible socio-military process behind the author’s more abstract framing of a fundamental shift in reality.

9 The conception of the Kaaba as an axis mundi—a cosmic pillar or world center connecting the terrestrial and celestial realms—is a recurring theme in Islamic cosmology and is central to understanding its sacred geography (Assasi, 2024; Hernandez, 2015). This idea, which has parallels in many other religious traditions (Eliade, 1959), positions the Kaaba not merely as a direction for prayer (qibla) but as the metaphysical anchor of the world. It is the point around which the cosmos is believed to revolve, making the ritual circumambulation (tawaf) a physical participation in that cosmic order. (Hirtenstein, n.d.).

10 Islamic tradition elaborates on the Kaaba’s role as an axis mundi by positing a direct vertical correspondence between the earthly shrine and a celestial prototype known as al-Bayt al-Ma'mur ("The Frequented House"). Mentioned in the Quran (52:4), this heavenly sanctuary is believed to be located directly above the Kaaba in the seventh heaven, where it is perpetually circumambulated by angels. This belief establishes the Kaaba as a terrestrial reflection of a divine reality, a physical point on Earth that serves as a gateway or conduit to the sacred realm (Schimmel, 1975).

11  The ritual of circumambulation, the Tawaf, is a physical enactment of the cosmic order. The pilgrim’s movement around the Kaaba is seen as a conscious participation in a universal prayer, mirroring the orbits of the planets around the sun and, in a modern analogy, the movement of electrons around a nucleus. 

For many Sufis, this external ritual corresponds to an internal spiritual journey. The physical Kaaba is the outward symbol of the true Kaaba: the human heart. Just as the Prophet Muhammad cleansed the physical Kaaba of its 360 idols, the spiritual seeker must purify their heart of all attachments and false gods—the “idols” of the ego, desire, and worldly ambition—until it is a worthy dwelling place for the singular divine presence (Hirtenstein, n.d.; Chittick, 2005). The seven circuits of the Tawaf are often interpreted as an ascent through the seven stations (maqamat) of the soul, a spiral journey that moves the pilgrim from their lowest, ego-driven state (nafs al-ammarah) toward the tranquil and perfected soul (nafs al-mutmainnah) in proximity to the divine center (Mian, n.d.).

12 The interpretation of the Hajj as a ritual of self-annihilation and collective rebirth was powerfully articulated by the Iranian sociologist and revolutionary thinker Ali Shariati (1933–1977). In his highly influential work, Hajj, Shariati presents the pilgrimage not as a set of religious duties but as a profound sociological drama symbolizing humanity’s return to its primordial, unified state (Shariati, n.d.). The central act, for Shariati, is the stripping away of the self. The donning of the ihram—two simple, unstitched white cloths—is a radical act of erasure, removing all signs of individual status, wealth, nationality, and rank. The individual “I,” constructed by social and historical forces, dissolves into the homogenous, unified body of the ummah (Shariati, n.d.).

Shariati (n.d.) describes this as a “migration from the house of ‘self’ to the House of God! To the house of the people!” In this state, the pilgrim is no longer a distinct entity but “a particle” who has joined the mass, “a drop” that has entered the ocean. This process is a conscious enactment of the Sufi concept of fana, the annihilation of the false, separate self in the overwhelming reality of the divine unity (Shariati, n.d.). For Shariati, this was not a passive mystical experience but a revolutionary training ground, teaching the masses to shed their alienated, individualistic consciousness and realize their power as a unified, divine community.

13 The author’s discussion of God’s nature touches upon a central dialectic in Islamic theology: the relationship between tanzih (transcendence or incomparability) and tashbih (immanence or similarity). Tanzih is the theological principle, grounded in Quranic verses like “There is nothing whatever like Him” (42:11), that God is absolutely transcendent and unique, utterly different from creation. It acts as a safeguard against anthropomorphism (tajsim). This is held in constant tension with tashbih, which acknowledges God’s immanence and closeness, as expressed in verses like “He is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Immanent” (57:3) and His nearness to humanity. Mainstream Islamic theology insists on maintaining both principles in a delicate balance, avoiding the extremes of stripping God of all attributes (ta'til) or likening Him to His creation.

14 The use of the word Ahad in Surah 112 is theologically significant. While both Ahad and Wahid can be translated as "One," Wahid denotes the number one, which can be followed by a second or third. Ahad, in contrast, signifies a unique, absolute, and indivisible oneness (Al-Jerrahi, 2021). It implies an exclusive singularity that cannot be divided, enumerated, or have a counterpart. Its use in this foundational chapter of the Quran is a definitive statement against any form of plurality within the divine essence, whether in the form of a pantheon, a trinity, or a dualistic system.

15 The divine name As-Samad is unique to this chapter of the Quran and carries a rich constellation of meanings in classical exegesis. The primary interpretations revolve around two core concepts: first, that of being the "Eternal Refuge," the one to whom all of creation turns for its needs and existence; and second, that of being utterly self-sufficient, solid, and indivisible, without any internal need or external dependency (Al-Jerrahi, 2021; Maududi, n.d.). It thus defines God as the uncaused cause and the ultimate sustainer of all things, upon whom all depend while He depends on none.

16 The concept of fana, often translated as "annihilation" or "passing away," is a central station in the Sufi spiritual path. It does not mean the literal extinction of the individual, but rather the annihilation of the false, separate self—the ego (nafs)—and its attributes (Schimmel, 1975). This "dying before one dies" is the obliteration of the illusion of a separate existence from God, leading to the realization of the ultimate reality of divine unity (tawhid). This state is not an end in itself but is typically followed by the state of baqa, or "subsistence," in which the mystic continues to live in the world, but their individual will is replaced by the divine will, acting as a locus for God's attributes on earth.

17 The author’s metaphor of an “ontological gravity” that becomes physically lethal finds a startlingly precise parallel in the scientific study of crowd dynamics. Analyses of crowd disasters, including several tragic events during the Hajj, have revealed the physical principles that govern extremely dense crowds (Helbing et al., 2007). At densities below four to five people per square meter, individuals can generally maintain control over their own movement. However, once a critical density of approximately six to seven people per square meter is exceeded, the crowd undergoes a phase transition and begins to behave not as a collection of individuals, but as a single fluid-like entity or “soft matter” (Still, 2019; Helbing et al., 2007). 

In this state, individuals are no longer able to move voluntarily but are swept along by pressure waves that propagate through the crowd. These shockwaves can exert immense physical force, sufficient to bend steel barriers and cause compressive asphyxia, crushing people to death even while they are still standing (Fruin, 1993). Physicist Dirk Helbing’s analysis of the 2006 Hajj disaster identified a transition from smooth (“laminar”) flow to stop-and-go waves and finally to a state he termed “crowd turbulence”—a chaotic phase of unpredictable, multi-directional motion that precipitates collapses (Helbing et al., 2007). These events are not typically caused by panic or stampeding in the conventional sense, but are rather systemic failures—a physical consequence of exceeding a critical density in a confined space (Helbing & Mukerji, 2012). The spiritual pull toward a single point, when enacted by millions of physical bodies, creates the literal density that can trigger the terrifying and uncontrollable physics of a progressive crowd collapse.

18 The author’s final argument—that true unity is ecosystemic, a “dance,” rather than a homogenous “crush”—is powerfully illustrated by synthesizing the spiritual ideal of the Hajj with the physical reality of its potential dangers. The esoteric goal of the pilgrimage, as understood in Sufi traditions and articulated by thinkers like Ali Shariati, is the annihilation of the illusion of the separate self (fana) in order to realize one’s essential inseparability from the divine whole (Shariati, n.d.). This is a profound metaphysical insight into the non-dual nature of reality.

However, when the call to annihilate the ego is translated into an exoteric virtue of self-elimination and the physical dissolution of the individual into a literal mass, the conditions for tragedy are created. The crowd crush at the Hajj can thus be read as a brutal spiritual misunderstanding. It is what happens when the ideal of unity is conceived as a demanding singularity—a black hole into which all individuality must collapse.

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