Bees learn and teach new lessons

Bridges AD et al. Bumblebees acquire alternative puzzle-box solutions via social learning. PLOS Biology, March 2023.

A recent study showed that bumblebees can learn to solve puzzles from each other, and this behavior can quickly spread throughout a colony, suggesting an unexpected social capacity for these humble insects. The scientists designed a two-option puzzle box that could be opened either by pushing a red tab clockwise or a blue tab counter-clockwise to reveal a sugar reward.

“Demonstrator” bees were trained to use either the red or blue tabs, while “observer” bees watch. When it was the observers’ turn to solve the puzzle, 99% of the time they chose the same method that they had seen, even after discovering the alternative option. On the other hand, the control group, without a demonstrator still managed to open the puzzle boxes with much less success. For example, observer bees with a demonstrator opened 28 boxes in a day, whereas the control group was able to open only 1 box.  Once the demonstrator bumblebees

learn how to open lids, the researchers released them into colonies with hundreds of individuals. Over 6-12 days, many other naive bees picked up the behavior from demonstrators.

These results provide strong evidence that social learning underpins the transmission of novel foraging behaviors in bumblebees. People tend to overlook the complex structures formed by bees, ants and wasps and they were typically attributed to hardwired instinct-based behaviors.

However, emerging studies suggest that even small sized animals can innovate, teach and spread new learnings to the rest of the colony in response to new environmental changes.

Origin of water in our solar system

Tobin JJ et al. Deuterium-enriched water ties planet-forming disks to comets and protostars. Nature, March 2023.

Have you ever wondered where the water on earth came from originally? The current hypothesis suggests that the water was locked up in icy comets before collected on our planet’s surface. A recent study discovered gaseous water in the disc of a protostar from the Orion constellation. Experts got really excited by this discovery as this star can help explain how Earth first got its water. In this study, a team from the European Southern Observator, measured the chemical signatures of the water around V883 Orionis, a baby star about 1300 light years away from Earth, using the powerful radio telescope ALMA. They found that the gaseous water around V883 Orionis was remarkably similar to the kind found in comets near Earth and remained relatively unchanged between each stage of solar system formation: protostar, protoplanetary disk, and comets. These and other findings from the study support the idea that the water in our Solar System was formed billions of years ago in interstellar space, long before the Sun, planets, and comets came into being, and it got directly incorporated into the Solar System during its formation likely in large icy bodies. So, next time you drink water or wash your hands, stop and reflect that the water you see most likely came from the dark spaces between the stars even before the Earth or the Sun existed.

Diabetes managed by Artificial Pancreas

Daly AB et al. Fully automated closed-loop insulin delivery in adults with type 2 diabetes: an open-label, single-center, randomized crossover trial. Nature Medicine, January 2023.

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a lifelong disease which affects the body’s ability to process glucose for energy, leading to dangerously high levels of blood sugar. There are around 415 million people worldwide living with T2D and the disease is usually managed through a combination of lifestyle changes and medication that aims to keep blood glucose levels low. Scientists have developed a fully automated closed-loop insulin delivery system that improved glucose control in T2D patients without leading to low blood sugar levels (hypoglycemia) compared to standard insulin therapy. This newly designed “artificial pancreas” combines an off-the-shelf glucose monitor and insulin pump with an app called “CamAPS HX.” This app is run by an algorithm that can precisely calculate how much insulin is needed to maintain glucose levels in the target range. Recently released clinical trial results were also extremely encouraging for the CamAPS HX system. On average, patients using the CamAPS HX system spent two-thirds (66%) of their time within the target range, which was twice as much on the standard therapy (32%) without any liability for hypoglycemia. Moreover, CamAPS HX doesn’t require any input from users at mealtimes. Many patients with T2D struggle to manage their blood sugar levels using  currently available treatments and this simple yet effective “artificial pancreas” can provide an alternative and  safe approach to help them.

Consider this scenario.

A 60-year-old Muslim patient with diabetes makes an appointment with his physician to come up with a plan for adjustment to his usual insulin dose for the next month.

“I won’t be eating anything in the hours between dawn and dusk for the next thirty days,” he explains.

The physician reluctantly admits that it is possible, but proceeds to probe the necessity of such a change, especially for the whole thirty days.

“Of course, the best thing is to leave the dose as is,” the physician says, switching to a practiced authoritative tone reserved for such moments. “Your blood sugars are doing great. Perhaps consider taking every other day off.”

The well-meaning physician is certain that a few more such statements will steer the conversation away from making any significant changes to the patient’s insulin regimen. But, to the physician’s surprise, the patient politely refuses the compromise, stating that he wants to give it his best shot, and if a true medical reason were to come up over the course of the month, he will revisit the physician’s suggestion. [1]

As a practicing physician, I can tell you that in the months leading up to Ramadan, such a scenario is anything but uncommon. My non-Muslim colleagues are often perplexed after these patient encounters, wondering why Muslims are so adamant about observing the Ramadan fast, which requires them to abstain from any food and water from sunrise to sunset—a period of over twelve hours in most states across the United States.

In all honesty, even as a Muslim physician, I have found it difficult to answer this question in a way that truly encompasses the spiritual and emotional reasons behind why so many Muslims cannot fathom letting go of a Ramadan fast, even those who may otherwise struggle with the basic obligation of observing the five daily prayers (May God forgive us all, ameen).

As is the promise of God, when we sincerely seek, He uncovers for us the answer, often in a way that leaves us wondering how we never perceived it before. The secret of Muslims’ collective devotion to Ramadan permeates innumerable verses in the Qur’an, makes up the foundation of frequently cited Ahadith (traditions of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him), and comprises the subject matter of many famous works by the great scholars of Islam.

It is a collective devotion tethered to the feelings of peace and tranquility so many Muslims enjoy in the month of Ramadan, feelings borne out of a source that somehow becomes elusive outside of this month, and feelings that become the reason for the reluctance of Muslims everywhere to miss even a single fast.

Largely unbeknownst even to them, Muslims naturally begin tapping into this secret source of tranquility as soon as the Ramadan moon is sighted. In a flurry of excitement and newfound motivation, members of the family wash themselves for wudhu, gather the young and old alike, and drive to the masjid, ready to stand for the first taraweeh prayer with the community. Suddenly, gone are the excuses of just one night ago, when staying out to pray in the masjid past midnight seemed like a near impossibility.

And what’s more, this despite being fully aware that in only a few hours, a morning meal will need to be consumed while it’s still pitch-dark outside. Those, like myself, who aren’t used to eating anything until mid-morning, simply ignore the otherwise rock-solid inclinations and sit down for the only meal until evening.

No matter what the day’s schedule looks like, Muslims make their best efforts to perform the obligatory daily prayers at a higher level than outside of Ramadan, both in the quality of the prayers, and in the extra consideration for their prescribed times. With no meals to prepare or share, their attention automatically diverts towards other things to fill up the hours, gravitating to that scholarly lecture series a family member recommended. The scholar’s words in turn inspire recitation and reflection of the Qur’an, replacing mindless internet surfing or watching the news.

Despite a lack of sleep, food, and drink, Muslims the world over experience a sense of fullness beginning to take place that is hard to explain. It is situated above the gut and the private parts, in the center of the chest, and it is far more satiating than the fulfillment of carnal desires could ever be. This addictive tranquility of the heart is so deeply felt in the month of Ramadan that fasting believers gladly give up the comforts of a consistent schedule, undisturbed sleep, and instant gratification of bodily impulses, in exchange for humanity’s most sought-after treasure that no amount of money can buy.

What then, is the key to this treasure of tranquility, and why is it accessible only in the month of Ramadan?

For those whose hearts are ready, the answer is as simple as it gets. It is in the shunning of the inclinations of the self, battling base desires for sleep and hunger, increasing the threshold for discomfort in performing acts of worship that are pleasing to God, that Muslims discover the only currency with which tranquility can be purchased: complete obedience to the command of God, in the way most pleasing to Him.

Allah says in the Qur’an:

“O believers! Enter into Islam wholeheartedly and do not follow Satan’s footsteps. Surely, he is your enemy” (2:208)

Scholars of Tafsir have explained this verse to mean that as slaves of God, the submission required from Muslims is one that is complete, independent of reason, logic, convenience and preferences of the self, all of which can be deceptions of Satan. In the month of Ramadan, when the apparent logic against staying up late into the nights is pushed aside, preferences for eating at specific times of day are disregarded, reasons for delaying obligatory prayers in the face of a full work schedule are challenged, all for the pleasure of God alone, the key to the ultimate treasure every human being yearns for is granted to the believer.

Is this to say then that the secret of tranquility lies in the subduing of the human intellect, in conquering our ability to reason, in vanquishing our natural instincts of reflecting on the wisdom in the commands of God?

Absolutely not. It does not befit the infinitely merciful God to first bestow upon humanity the very thing that sets us apart from animals, the intellect, and then reward us for repressing its natural inclinations to think, question, and reflect. In the Qur’an, Allah (swt) Himself says:

“No soul can believe except by Allah’s will, and He places a blight on those who do not use their intellect” (10:100).

Using the intellect therefore is in itself a command of the One Who created it, a means for us to strengthen our faith by understanding the many benefits for us in the required acts of worship. For instance, the scientific community has only just begun to scratch the surface of the health benefits of fasting, benefits that wouldn’t have become apparent without using the God-given powers of the intellect, and benefits that undoubtedly deepen our commitment to fasting regularly.

This is indeed from the Mercy of the Master, that He has not imposed His laws on humanity, but rather illuminated the path to faith through the intellect. What must be recognized by the slave, however, is that the intellect itself is a creation of God, and can never surpass the perfect wisdom of the Creator Himself. With this framework, the believer escapes the predicament of conditional faith, present when the intellect agrees with revelation, absent when a clash occurs.

This is the precise position in which fasting Muslims find themselves in Ramadan when they are commanded to adopt a new, much different, daily schedule than what satisfies their own preferences and logic. It is here, at the limits of reason, that Muslims choose divine revelation over their own intellect; instead of questioning the timing of the Ramadan meals, or arguing the inconvenience of the nightly prayers, or reasoning their way out of performing the obligatory prayers whilst enduring hunger, thirst, and lack of sleep, they make the choice to submit, wholeheartedly, to the commands of God.

In return for giving up the need to satisfy the intellect at the expense of the unlimited wisdom of revelation, God hands fasting Muslims the key to unconditional tranquility, peace, and contentment of the heart.

The real question then becomes: which of us will let go of this key when the month of Ramadan ends, and which of us will guard it beyond the thirty days, striving to live up to the title of the muslim—one who surrenders to God?

The choice is open to all of us.

Note

1. This scenario does not include the patient with uncontrolled or complicated diabetes who is advised against fasting by a physician for true medical reasons. According to Qur’an and Sunnah, such a person is exempt from fasting, as Allah only wants ease, not hardship, for us.

Let’s close our eyes for a second and imagine a food court in a shopping mall during peak hours. It would not be that difficult in our imaginations to place some toddlers holding tablets or teenagers checking social media feeds. While such a narrative directly cautions our protective behaviours against those technologies, we are also aware of the reality that without those technological advancements younger generations would not be able to continue their education during the pandemic, or in general, access valuable information and socialize instantly within a couple of clicks. According to UNICEF, children and teens represent one-third of all internet users and experience the digital world very early stage of their lives [1]. However, as children spend more time online than ever before they also deserve protection so that they can interact, learn, and play online safely.

The Internet does not know if a user is a minor or not unless there is input data that enables service providers to make a determination about a user’s age. As with adults, a child’s ability to participate online requires the collection, processing, and use of personal data. While such processing of personal data makes the online experience optimized and personalized, and content moderation appropriate to minors, it also raises concerns about children’s privacy and potential manipulation of children’s vulnerabilities. Parents are also worried about the creation of their children’s profiles that will attach and follow them into their adult years. To that end, the reconciliation of both ends of the spectrum, i.e., benefits and risks of technologies available to children, requires effective regulation and policy-making to contextualize the “best interest of the child” online. As UNICEF envisioned, this could be achievable through empowering children to exercise their rights online, including privacy and freedom of expression and information rights [2]. This article focuses on underlying privacy considerations that are discussed in academic literature aiming to strengthen children’s digital safety.

Most data protection legal frameworks require organizations to obtain consent from minors,  parents, or responsible adults on their behalf for the lawful processing of children’s data. However, the age of consent differs significantly across countries and is mostly reflected by cultural differences. For instance, in the United States, children can provide valid consent for the collection and processing of their data at 13, while this number becomes 16 in the European Union, or 14 in South Korea and Argentina – any processing under those prescribed ages would be subject to parental consent. Setting a threshold for valid consent is not a problem-free solution. First, it is difficult to determine the maturity of a child’s understanding of the meaning of his or her consent and categorize it with a certain age threshold. This creates significant compliance challenges for organizations which eventually results in inconsistent protection for children. Besides, while certain content or experiences would be inappropriate for a four-year-old, it may not be the case for a ten-year-old although both would be restricted without parental consent.

On the other hand, parents (or responsible adults) may not necessarily understand the technologies used by their children or how parental consent works. Such a mechanism may also lead to unwanted consequences such as discrimination against children not living with their parents. Also, seeking parental consent results in further data collection about a child and a parent, for instance, to authenticate the relationship between them. Thus, those practical challenges and the reality should be reflected while considering how to address issues surrounding children’s privacy. For instance, some jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, allow organizations to rely on an alternative legal basis in lieu of consent for lawful data collection and processing, e.g., when there is a legitimate business interest. This decreases the level of burdens imposed on companies, children, and parents because companies would not need to reiterate consent requests for each type of processing. Importantly, such an alternative legal base does not immunize companies from ensuring a sufficient level of safeguards as regulations still hold them accountable in absence of the desired level of protection. In doing so, this risk-based approach potentially creates effective governance for children’s privacy by shifting the burden of protecting children’s data away from parents (via consent) to companies that will engage in risk and impact assessments, and accordingly mitigate potential harms that may arise from the collection and processing of children’s data [3].

Another consideration is the profiling of children through data collection and processing. Creating a profile is inevitable and enhances the online experience through personalization. For instance, companies must use profiling to make sure children are exposed to content, activities, and products appropriate for their age. However, there are legitimate concerns about the secondary use of collected data by third parties, e.g., in the form of targeted advertising, that may attach to children and follow them into adulthood. Indeed, children may not have the cognitive capacity to understand the nature or purpose of advertisements, particularly those deceitful or manipulative advertisements. In practice, some companies have already embedded in privacy enhancing technologies using age verification in real-time and on a one-time-only basis and subsequently disposing of collected data without storing it in their data repositories. Besides, it is important for companies to provide transparency that is understandable by children and families such as which personal information is used for which purpose, by whom, which safeguards are taken in place, and what individual rights can be invoked. Beyond self-regulation by companies, while some jurisdictions require organizations not to engage in targeted advertising for users below 18 unless they opt-in for such a feature, [4] others take a more radical approach with a blanket prohibition of targeted advertising to minors [5].

In conclusion, discussions around children’s privacy protection will continue to take their place on regulatory agendas in the following years. However, a risk-based approach is perceived as being one of the promising data governance models to protect children’s privacy by holding companies, rather than parents, accountable. It requires companies to carry out impact assessments and mitigate risks to rights and freedoms arising from data processing while preserving the benefits of data processing. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of this approach is dependent on clear regulatory guidance on how to implement measures necessary for children’s privacy protection and ongoing oversight by regulators. Finally, any harmonization between regulators or mutual recognition would enable companies to streamline their global compliance.

References and Notes

1. UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World, December 2017, available at https://www.unicef.org/media/48601/file
2. UNICEF, Industry Toolkit: Children’s Online Privacy and Freedom of Expression, May 2018, available at https://sites.unicef.org/csr/files/UNICEF_Childrens_Online_Privacy_and_Freedom_of_Expression(1).pdf
3. This approach is, partially or in entirety, followed by several jurisdictions such as the European Union’s general Data Protection Regulation, proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Privacy Framework, Canadian Consumer Privacy Protection Act.
4. United Kingdom Information Commissioner Office’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act
5. European Union Digital Services Act.

“The fool’s heart is on the tip of their tongue; the wise’s tongue is in the extreme bastion of their chest.”
M. Fethullah Gülen [1]

Throughout human history, numerous writers, philosophers, scientists, and religious scholars across different eras, geographies, and cultures have arrived at a common point about interpreting society and people. This finding—long known as the “audacity of ignorance”—has only recently been addressed scientifically.

Two American social psychology professors, David Alan Dunning and Justin Kruger, conducted social experiments to scientifically prove Charles Darwin’s theory “Ignorance augments one’s self-confidence more than true knowledge.” In Dunning and Kruger’s experiments, participants were given four tests in the areas of humor, grammar, and logic. They were then asked to evaluate their own performance and estimate how many questions they would have answered correctly. The results revealed that participants who performed poorly on the tests rated their own performance above average. The researchers called this the “double burden” of unskilled people and stated that it was due to the individual’s lack of ability to evaluate their own knowledge and experience. According to them, the main problem was that they were “unskilled and did not know they lacked proficiency” [2].

Dunning and Kruger formulated their results as follows:

1. Incompetent people always overestimate their own abilities.
2. They do not realize the extent of their own inadequacies.
3. Because of their ignorance, they do not feel the need to improve their knowledge and skills.
4. They consistently underestimate the superior qualities of others.

The study also found that the best performers were the humblest who underestimated their knowledge and abilities [3].

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is two-sided: Unqualified people exaggerate their own knowledge and abilities; and on the flipside, people who are truly experts in their field tend to behave humble and downplay their experience and abilities [4].

Since experiments in the positive sciences have measurable parameters, their results are more reliable; human psychology is much harder to study, as the number of variables affecting the outcome is exceptionally high. Therefore, research in this field must be more extensive and eliminate the parameters that affect the outcome by deploying objective criteria.

In a study on the Dunning-Kruger effect in Southern Illinois University aviation students, students were tested on both grammar and piloting knowledge. The results of the study supported the DK effect and revealed that students with low scores overestimated their abilities, while students with high scores underestimated their abilities [5].

In a 2018 study examining the development of overconfidence in new hires, it was observed that the self-confidence of people who exhibited a humble attitude at their hire was far ahead of their performance with little experience. As they continued to gain experience, their self-confidence first fell and then surged again in proportion to their performance [6].

In 2021, another study attempted to prove the existence of the Dunning-Kruger effect using electroencephalography (EEG), which records the electrical signals in the brain. Participants in the bottom quartile overestimated their percentile and participants in the top quartile underestimated their actual scores. In the experiment, where the reaction times of individuals at these two levels were also measured, it was found that those in the lower quartile reacted faster, while those in the upper quartile reacted slower. It was also observed that dissimilar mental processes occurred in the brains of these two groups during the evaluation [7].

In another recent study, the existence of the DK effect was tested under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study surveyed 2,487 participants, asking them about their level of education, sources of information, and COVID-19. Finally, the participants were asked how many questions they could have answered correctly. Poor performers’ self-estimates were disproportionate to their actual level of knowledge and much higher than the overall average. They were also found to have lower levels of education than other participants and to prefer social media and mass media as sources of information [8].

If the person under the Dunning-Kruger Effect realizes their ignorance and gains knowledge and experience, they can overcome the negative effects of the phenomenon. There are four main periods of self-confidence in this process:

Mount Stupid: This is when the Dunning-Kruger effect is at its peak, when people are pretentious in their own knowledge on a subject about which they have meager information.

Valley of Despair: This is the stage when one faces the inadequacy of one’s existing knowledge. When one realizes how little they actually know, their self-confidence sinks. The sentiment, “I know everything,” is replaced by, “There is much more than I know.”

Slope of Enlightenment: The person who has fallen to the lowest point of despair pushes themselves to increase their level of knowledge and skill and makes progress. From the Valley of Despair, they gradually climb towards the Slope of Enlightenment. This is the stage where real learning begins.

Plateau of Sustainability: This period does not imply that the person has mastered all knowledge. The person can now clearly draw the boundaries of their level of knowledge on a certain subject. They can clearly identify what they do not know, and make an effort to do so. Self-confidence rises again, but the tendency to be modest may also increase [9].

Conclusion

This phenomenon, which has always been controversial, continues to tempt both supporters and opponents with new research. As of today, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5). It is still recognized as a psychological phenomenon rather than a pathological condition. However, it is sad that the phenomenon described is visibly common in society. When we think about it, it is not hard to find people under the influence of the DK effect in business, education, politics, sports, and arts. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we sadly witnessed those with little knowledge on the subject make statements on social media and mass media and pass laid-back judgments in contrast to the experts.

In an interview, Dr. Dunning said, “The key mistake people make about the Dunning-Kruger Effect is about who falls victim to it. The effect is not really about others; it is about us. The lesson to be drawn is how humble and cautious we should always be about ourselves.” The Dunning-Kruger effect affects not only ignorant or unskilled people. It impacts us all about the things we are yet to learn [10].

From a different perspective, “ignorance” has always been a major human weakness traditional scholars have addressed throughout history. Fethullah Gülen explains that there are three degrees of ignorance. “Simple ignorance” is when a person does not know; “double ignorance” is when they do not know that they do not know; and “triple ignorance” is when they think they know, although they don’t. In relation to this Gülen said, “The Arabic word muq’aab means “three-dimensional” and ignorance at this level is almost impossible to eradicate. It leads people to diverse delusions; sometimes into tyrants, sometimes into the likes of Yazid ibn Muawiya or Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and sometimes into a Führer, down every path except the straight one” [11].

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi also draws attention to the connection between knowledge and humility: “In society as a whole, everyone has a window, known as rank, through which to see and be seen. If the window is higher than a person’s stature, he will grow taller through arrogance, but if it is lower, he will bow down out of modesty to see and be seen at that level. The measure of greatness in man is smallness, that is, modesty. The scale of smallness is bigness; that is, arrogance” [12].

Notes

1. M. Fethullah Gülen, Ölçü veya Yoldaki Işıklar, [Pearls of Wisdom] Istanbul: Nil Yayınları, 2011, p. 126.
2. J. Kruger, D. Dunning, “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999; 77:1121–1134.
3. Brian Duignan, “Dunning-Kruger effect”, www.britannica.com/science/Dunning-Kruger-effect
4. Jochen Mai, “Dunning-Kruger-Effekt: 4 Phasen der Selbstüberschätzung”, karrierebibel.de/dunning-kruger-effekt
5. S. R. Pavel et al. “The Dunning-Kruger Effect and SIUC University’s Aviation Students”, Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering, 2013, s. 125–129.
6. C. Sanchez, D. Dunning, “Overconfidence among beginners: Is a little learning a dangerous thing?”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018; 114(1), 10–28.
7. A. Muller et all. “Neural correlates of the Dunning-Kruger effect.”, Eur J Neurosci, 2021 Jan; 53(2): 460–484.
8. A. Claessens et al. “Self-Illusion and Medical Expertise in the Era of COVID-19”, Open Forum Infectious Diseases, April 2021, 8/4.
9. Joshua Render, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect”, agile-mercurial.com/2019/07/12/the-dunning-kruger-effect
10. Jonathan Jarry, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real”, www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect- probably-not-real
11. M. Fethullah Gülen, “Sevgi İksiri ve İmanın Tadı” [Elixir of Love and Taste of Belief], 1/10/2015, www.herkul.org/herkul-nagme/485-nagme-sevgi-iksiri-ve-imanin-tadi/
12. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Mektubat, [The Letters] Istanbul: Şahdamar Yayınları, 2010, p. 536.

My lover is dying.

We met late, both forty-two, both Elvis diehards, both into hiking through spectacular scenery in remote locations. The Inca Trail was endless shambolic staircases, an acute episode of food poisoning, and the coming together of two akin spirits. The priceless reward for such a brutal trek was not the breathtaking abandoned citadel of Machu Picchu, but the unparalleled joyful finality of discovering one’s soulmate.

We would go on to explore the planet together, trekking its tallest peaks hand in hand, from Tanzania to Tibet. We devoted hours of the working week to running and biking in preparation for the extreme elevations we would encounter during our annual high altitude expeditions. He and I crafted aerobic capacities to rival that of any Olympian; our bodies specialised in the ultra-efficient oxygenation of red blood cells.

How mercilessly ironic for him to be dying due to the failure of his lungs to provide him with sufficient oxygen.

My lover is dying of acute respiratory distress.

My lover, the man whose embrace evokes in me both a comforting familiarity like a ticking clock to a weaned pup, and a stoking of the flames of passion as though our romance were freshly forged. I know the coordinates of his every last crease and mole, could scrunch my eyes and trace his outline in precise detail, have learnt by heart the exact sag of his stomach, bulge of his biceps, sharp lines of his shinbones.

His body is not new, but we all know where beauty lies, and to this beholder it is a work of art encasing his precious soul; together they manifest as my fiercely cherished life partner.

Our love is not new either, yet it remains a vibrant shade of magenta. Never did it pale to pink, or worse yet, fade away entirely.

My lover is my heaven, my haven, my home.

My lover is dying in the hospital, alone.

Prior to this surreal era, we traversed a good portion of the globe together, though a number of further-flung destinations  – Reykjavik, Tenerife, Rapa Nui – are yet to be struck off the bucket list. They shall remain forever unstruck; what was once a potential future is now a wistful fantasy doomed to the confines of my grief-stricken imagination.

It was rare for either of us to travel alone, but with my mother’s recent ailing health, we agreed it was best I stay home while my lover journeyed to London to meet his newest nephew.

We weren’t to know he would be swept up in the middle of a pandemic and struggle to catch a return flight. We weren’t to know that upon landing he would commence a fortnight of hotel quarantine only to be diagnosed with coronavirus four days in. We weren’t to know his dry cough would deteriorate into a wet one and he would be hospitalised one week later.

My ardent anticipation of a joyful reunion crumbled to ashes on a forgotten hearth, bone-cold and empty.

The hospital is only fifteen kilometres from home, but it may as well be on Mars. I cannot go there, cannot see him, cannot touch him. I hadn’t seen him in two months, since he kissed me farewell at the airport with star-sprinkled eyes, eager to meet the new baby, reunite with his brother, discover more of London; to go, do, live.

Then I got the call, far too early in the day. I was still in bed, still sleeping on my own side even if my lover was not there to occupy the other. By keeping out of his space I could somehow pretend that he was in it, right where he belonged.

They had commenced palliative care, the nurse said. They didn’t expect him to see the other side of the weekend, she said.

His side of the bed would remain empty forever.

Its vastness was suddenly overwhelming, and I jettisoned myself from beneath the warm covers to collapse on the hardwood floor.

The nurse’s voice continued to flow. I was invited to come to the hospital and see him.

To see him!

I arrived almost before she had hung up.

My phone, my watch, my glasses were to be left in the car. My temperature was to be normal, my flu vaccination to be current, my name to be signed at the bottom of a lengthy disclaimer form. A nurse would supervise my donning of the required protective equipment, beginning with a white mask for my face and a net to restrain my hair. My first attempt at putting on the mask was deemed incorrect, and I was compelled to toss it into an overflowing bin and start over with a new one. Then sanitise my hands. Put on surgical booties to cover my shoes. Then sanitise my hands. Put on full body smock, sanitise hands. Then on with a plastic face shield and two pairs of latex gloves for good measure. I was done up like an astronaut, ready to enter an alien land.

The nurse led me through plastic-sheeted halls to my lover’s ward, told me I had exactly fifteen minutes, and warned me I may find the experience confronting. I was bursting out of my skin to see him, yet I was also apprehensive. This was the last time I would ever get to spend with him. This was so special, so bittersweet, so momentous; I wanted nothing to go wrong. I stepped through the doorway.

My lover was lying on a hospital bed. I was allowed no closer than one and a half metres.

His eyes were open.

His skin was grey.

His head, my lover’s sweet darling head, lolled to one side at an awkward angle.

He is on morphine, the nurse told me.

The man who held my heart was reduced to this broken, pitiful being before me. The man I had chosen to share my life with was slipping through the veil between this world and the next. The man in whose eyes I had always sought and found reassurance was trembling and feverish, and I could not comfort him. There was to be no touching, no proximity of any kind.

I spoke to him lovingly, soothingly, repeatedly, then as he failed to respond, urgently. Hidden beneath a mask and gown, I called to him, eyes welling upon the realisation.

He did not recognise me.

His breath was a rattlesnake, and when it burst into a fit of coughing the nurse whisked me from the room, allowing re-entry only once his breathing had stabilised.

I gazed forlornly at what was left of the man I loved, a crippled shell and woozy mind no longer fit to house his noble soul. The one with whom I had lain a thousand times was departing his earthbound vessel, was beyond my reach, beyond even my voice.

“It’s time to go,” the nurse said.

I could barely choke out a final farewell.

“Goodbye, my love.”

I don’t know if he heard me.

We should have been attending my niece’s wedding in Adelaide in December. Her mother, my sister, lost her husband two years ago, to a long battle with a brain tumour. She had to watch him slowly wither and decay over a period of many months. She was at his side from the time of diagnosis right through to the time of relinquishing her job to bathe, feed and wipe him like a baby. When he was finally dealt the mercy of death, she was at his bedside, playing him a soft score of his favourite tunes, stroking, soothing, whispering goodbye.

Would anyone play the King’s records for my lover, a soundtrack to his egress?

As I sit at home, numb with not knowing, my lover is erupting in pink secretions from the blood cells leaking into his airways. I crave news of his condition, yet dread it. He is drowning in his own fluids.

I miss him. I don’t think I can live without him.

We should have been celebrating his birthday with sponge cake in September, planting the garden with tomatoes in October, toasting our anniversary with moscato in November.

Instead, he is dying.

The two decades we spent in a divine state of oneness feel like an eternity, for I cannot remember what my life was like prior to his entering it. An eternity that was not long enough, however, as I dread to imagine a life without him, having known him, loved him, cherished him every day for the past twenty years.

How grateful I am for each priceless minute he and I were blessed with one another’s company. From those budding moments high in the Andes through to mundane evenings in living room silence, from the long Sunday afternoons of exuberant lovemaking to the hurried little good-bye pecks on the way out the door on work mornings; I am thankful for it all.

The manner in which this joy has all ended leaves me like the ruin of a war-torn city, lovelorn for its ill-fated citizens whose memories stalk the streets in the absence of their earthly bodies.

We all must one day die; certain knowledge of this is the penalty for being born human. While a premature emptying of the hourglass feels as though one has been shortchanged, no-one can know when their final grains of time will pass.

I am not bitter that the man I love more than I ever thought possible must depart this world so soon. But I am devastated I cannot be with him when he does.

My lover is dying, and I can’t even hold his hand.

In the eyes of those who have reached the stage of the soul at rest, all things, all colors and forms disappear with their peculiar features. They continuously think of and utter the truth of “There is no deity save God,” and while doing so, they feel only Him as the true Self-Existence, they live surrounded by the light of this Existence, and experience with delight all creation as the manifestation of His Knowledge and Existence. In this state of pleasurable experience, they pronounce “There is no truly existent being save God,” in the sense that every other existent being comes into existence by His giving it existence. This implies neither the Unity of Being nor the Unity of the Witnessed. It is a state of pleasure which those who do not experience it cannot perceive, and those who experience it cannot describe fully. In the hearts of the travelers who have risen to this point, all else save Him disappears under the light of His Existence, and the Holy Acts, Names and Attributes begin to appear wherever they look. The travelers who go on further and further become intoxicated with new signs of meeting with Him at every step, and feel that everything belongs to Him alone due to a certainty based on observation. These travelers attempt to make presents out of their existence which they see as a borrowed garment they have been made to wear, pronouncing: “I have found the most genuine, sweetest honey, so let my existence be plundered!”

These travelers are such that if they are asked to offer their souls, they stretch out their necks like a sheep in order to be sacrificed. They follow in the footsteps of Prophet Ishmael, who is mentioned in the Qur’an, (Ishmael) said: “Father, fulfill that which you are commanded, and you will find me patient, by God’s will. So when they both (Abraham and his son Ishmael) wholly submitted (to God’s will), and Abraham laid him prostrate on the side of his face (for sacrifice) (37:102–03). They are extremely tender-hearted and unburden themselves with tears. They love everything, smell and caress everything, and feel a heart-felt interest in human beings, as they are polished mirrors that reflect the Creator. They exchange greetings with His manifestations in every color, taste, scent, and sound, and every exchange of greetings causes them to think and feel new things. They put the brake of self-possession and wakefulness on their pleasures and zeal. Fearing that they may fall into the error of thinking that all the spiritual pleasures, joy and delight that seethe in their spirit and pervade their whole being in waves originate in themselves and therefore belong to themselves, they pay no attention to these feelings, although many tend to sacrifice their souls for the same, but rather pursue only God’s good pleasure and approval in every word and act of theirs. Like Yunus Emre, they always say: “I need and want You, only You.”

At this point of the soul at rest, God’s gifts begin to pour abundantly on those with special capacities. In addition to several other characteristics, this rank is also the stage where those who have reached it are tested with spiritual discoveries and wonderworking. Sincerity requires that all spiritual discoveries and wonders which the travelers encounter should have no worth in their sight. They should even fear that these discoveries and wonders may cause their gradual perdition if they attribute them to them- selves. At exactly this juncture, where a second nature begins to grow in them, the travelers’ hearts expand and discover newer and newer truths and many secrets are revealed to them. At this stage, the veil is removed from their eyes with the result that the truths beyond things and events begin to appear in their own colors and dimensions, and where some become dazzled and feel dizzy, travelers with insight hasten to take refuge with the Sunna of the master of creation, and think and talk according to the fundamental principles of religion. They continue their journey, guided by the reflectors of the way which the Messenger and his Companions followed. Formerly, in the times after the Universal Teacher and Perfect Guide, upon him be peace and blessings, perfected guides who represented the way established by the Book and Sunna brilliantly and fully used to show the way to travelers. However, during times that have been deprived of such guides, many have deviated and many others have been left stranded halfway.

The rank of the soul at rest is also the station where an initiate journeys with or in the company of God, and the station which attracts particular Divine gifts. Some express these gifts with words that suggest incarnation and union; this is only because of a lack of suitable words or expressions. But it may cause a loss that leads the travelers to fall. Even though they may be at a summit, they can still fall into the abyss. Summits and abysses exist side by side. The higher one’s rank, the deeper the abyss into which one can fall. One who falls from the apex of the tower of sincerity will fall into an extremely deep abyss. For this reason, as one covers distances along the way, reaching higher and higher points, one should become more and more self-possessed and wakeful. When the horizon or destination is within sight, travelers should supervise themselves more strictly, they should be more aware of their nothingness before God, and be conscious that whatever favor and blessing they enjoy is from Him and that they are only mirrors that reflect the same. They should turn more sincerely and deeply to the Source of those favors and blessings; they should affirm that the greatest favor and blessing is servanthood, and do so with a deep feeling and perception of their poverty, neediness, and helplessness; and they should pray in the manner of Uwaysu’l-Qarani:

You are the Creator, and I am the one created.
You are the All-Providing, and I am the one provided.
You are the Master and All-Owning, and I am the one owned. You are the All-Mighty, and I am the one humble and abased. You are the All-Wealthy, and I am the one impoverished.

According to some verifying scholars of Sufism, the final rank in the spiritual journey is the soul at rest. Other ranks, such as being pleased with God, God’s being pleased with the traveler, and perfection or purity, are different manifestations or evolved forms or dimensions of being at rest. It is better to view these as the manifestations of feeling attracted toward God rather than different ranks or degrees.

However, it is viewed or whatever it is called, travelers who have reached the final point of being at rest receive fully—fully according to the capacity of each traveler—the manifestation of the Divine Name the All-Living and become a polished mirror of It, only pursuing God’s good pleasure as a requirement of the second nature that they have acquired. This summit is that of being pleased with God. Having attained this spiritual profundity, where they welcome with the same contentment whatever comes from Him—whether it be favor or retribution—the travelers are freed from the influence of all the features of their corporeality, and gain a new existence in all its fresh aspects. This is the existence that comes with sobriety after self-annihilation, subsistence after annihilation, and certainty based on observation after certainty based on knowledge. In the sight of such a traveler, every particle becomes a voice which mentions Him in all the circumstances in which it exists. Every voice or sound is a tune that echoes from Him in a different way that is peculiar to it. Every color pours into the eyes and hearts, as if they were smiles from a clime of holiness. The traveler breathes with the truths of There is none to be desired save Him and There is none to be worshipped save Him. In proportion to their position, they take in these blessed words as if they were oxygen for their spiritual life, and send out, as if carbon dioxide, everything else that arises in their bodily existence that occasionally makes itself felt because of human nature. The travelers calm their nerves and irritations, things regarded as the remnants of the carnal soul. When they feel stressed under the pressure of struggling with those remnants, they turn to their eternal Goal with supplicating tears, and experience their accomplishments as favors of God, saying as Muhammad Lutfi Efendi said:

That which I have—I am not worthy of it;
This favor and grace—why are they bestowed on me?

Their every word, act, and manner reveal the sincerity and depth of their being pleased with God the Almighty. Every day they refresh the thought of resignation to God’s will, without even being aware of the beauties that flow into the eyes of their hearts from the heaven of the feelings of attraction and being attracted toward Him. They whisper:

Whatever comes from You—
be it suffering from Your Majesty or a favor from Your Grace; Both are a pleasure for my soul; both are pleasant—
whether this or that is from You.

Having set up their thrones in such a world of approach and feeling, heroes of truth—those servants of the Ultimate Truth— advance through the manifestations of the Divine Names and Attributes toward the final point of certainty based on knowledge. Beyond this lies the peak of God’s being pleased with them. Here they feel His pleasure and approval with the signs peculiar to this state, and which they know as witnessed by their sound, pure consciousness. This summit has been called by different names, such as “certainty based on knowledge” which has the color of certainty based on experience, the rank of ahadiya (of God’s special manifestation of His particular Names) or “absorption within absorption.” Those who have reached it continue their journey on the summit of journeying from God in deep wonder and self-possession. With the Almighty acting as their eyes with which they see and their ears with which they hear, they can always see and hear correctly and they act endowed with most praiseworthy qualities. They overlook the evils done to them, ignore the imperfections they see in others, never cherish an ill-opinion of believers, embrace everyone with affection, and live in peace with all people because they know that they are all creatures of God. They always feel happy in their inner world (even though suffering with the afflictions of others) because they are pleased with God, Who is also pleased with them, and they convert everything into a confection in the workshop of their hearts, offering it to others in abundance. With their hearts always indicating God’s good pleasure, they act in all places as those who direct people’s hearts to the One Who is pleased with them. They love for God’s sake, embrace for God’s sake, smell for God’s sake, and try to fulfill what is required by such a great favor, which is regarded as the beginning of the rank of the Truth of Muhammad (or Muhammadan Truth), and to deepen their relation with this rank.

The ultimate, indescribable point of the soul at rest is the soul perfected. Travelers at this point feel that Divine manifestations have pervaded all the created worlds to give them their color, and all other colors, forms and qualities have been wiped out, and they experience transformation after transformation in their inner world of pleasures and visions.

This highest summit, where travelers continue their journey in journeying with God and experience unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity, belongs, first of all, to the Prophets. The pure scholars succeeding the Prophets in their duties can feel in their hearts only a reflection of this in loyalty to the Prophets. The most important characteristic of these scholars is wakefulness. They are aware of their place—where they are and why and with what mission. They distinguish between the whole and the parts, the universal and the particular, the origin and the shadow, and the ones who are leading and the ones who are led. They never fall into confusion. They are seen to neither make utterances of self-pride that are incompatible with the rules of Shari‘a, nor do they display affectations such that God’s attention may be drawn to themselves. Neither do they see them- selves as superior to others nor do they expect privilege. They attribute to Him whatever they have that is worthy of appreciation, and regard every effort to preserve the same as thankfulness to God for those things. They are exceptionally humble and modest. Without expecting anything in return, they are ready to shoulder further tasks and responsibilities.

The souls with such a degree of purity fulfill all their responsibilities in the manner and solemnity of performing their duties of worship and they cause every moment to overflow with a new delight in meeting with Him in the depth of their being. Their breaths, which reflect the breezes of His nearness and friendship, cause peace and serenity wherever they blow. Their silence is a deep reflection that uncovers the meanings of things and events, and their words are sparks of wisdom from Prophetic psalms. Numerous eyes search for them. Their manners remind people of the Creator, and wherever He is remembered and mentioned, hearts are aroused to self-supervision, and boil like magma, burn like a furnace, and cry aflame:

O nightingale crazy with love, do you cry again in pain?
Do you head for a rose once more shedding such profuse tears?
You hasten into fire like moths throwing themselves to light to burn; or have you constantly been burning in the fire of love?

Besides the stages of the carnal self or soul, the Sufi scholars have also mentioned some degrees or ranks of depth and purity for the spirit. The inward dimension of the spirit is “secret (sir),” and the inward dimension of “secret” is “secret within secret.” The most important dimension of “secret within secret” is “private (khafi),” and its deepest aspect is “the more private (akhfa’).”

What is meant by “inward” is the essence or substance of a thing. Only one of these faculties is from the realm of creation, while the others are from the pure realm of Divine commands. The deepest, most abstruse and impenetrable of these faculties is the “more private.” It is in the center of the spiritual realm of human existence. The “private” envelops the “more private” with its aspects belonging to the realm of Divine commands. “Secret within secret” surrounds them like a wall, and the spirit embraces all these faculties like an atmosphere and connects them to the heart. The development of these faculties depends on possessing a deep spiritual life to govern the human daily life. For this reason, it is not possible for unfortunate ones who have not been able to save themselves from their corporeality and to discover their real human faculties to feel the gifts that flow into those who have risen to high levels of spirituality. The minimum conditions of feeling such are to have the necessary capacity and to make the required efforts to develop it, and then to be able to be saved from the domination of corporeality through periods of suffering.

May God guide us and you to the right, sound path. And let God’s blessings be on our master Muhammad, who was tender-hearted and compassionate, and on his Family and Companions, the noble, honorable and godly ones.

There’s a fear in my heart
A vision on my mind,
That someday I’d be lost.
Walking down the road
Among the ones who are lost.
A fear of ample pride,
A seed which outweighs
A million skies.
A fear of a light,
Which would make
A believer go blind.
Oh, there’s a fear in my heart,
That someday my deeds
Would fall short,
Infront of the one
Who knows what hides
In every heart.

~A.Z

In November 2022, New York University announced startling research led by researchers at Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere. Some 25 hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom participated in the study which involved 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Despite immediate treatment, only 53 people recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital. Six of the 28 participants interviewed remembered unusual experiences. The press release states: “Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others. The researchers found these experiences of death to be different from hallucinations, delusions, illusions, dreams, or CPR-induced consciousness.”

Sam Parnia, the lead study investigator and an intensive care physician, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health, has been researching people who have come back to life after their heart, respiration, and brain activities have stopped. Dr. Parnia presented the study findings at a resuscitation science symposium which was a part of the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022. In his speech, he mentioned patients who stated that they had a very clear evaluation of life and gave some examples. One of them said: “I was given a life review. During the review, we revisit scenes from our lives.” Another person said, “I saw my entire life in great detail and experienced feelings through it of satisfaction, shame, repentance.” And another one said: “I then saw things in rapid succession that were moments of my life.”

In a press release from NYU Langone Health in April 2022, it was stated that for decades, people who have survived an encounter with death have recalled unexplained lucid episodes involving heightened consciousness and awareness. These have been reported using the popular—yet scientifically ill-defined—term “near-death experiences.” According to the press release, a research team led by Dr. Sam Parnia examined the accumulated scientific evidence to date and published the research results in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The researchers in the study represent many medical disciplines and represent many of the world’s most respected academic institutions. According to the study, thanks to advances in resuscitation and critical care medicine, many people have survived encounters with death or being near death. These people have consistently described recalled experiences surrounding death, which involve a unique set of mental recollections with universal themes; they follow a specific narrative arc involving a perception of (a) separation from the body with a heightened, vast sense of consciousness and recognition of death; (b) travel to a destination; (c) a meaningful and purposeful review of life, involving a critical analysis of all actions, intentions and thoughts towards others; a perception of (d) being in a place that feels like “home”, and (e) a return back to life. “We took hundreds of people’s experiences and merged them together so that we could pull out clusters of experiences, and come up with a common definition” Parnia told The Telegraph. According to the article in The Telegraph, many people remember leaving their bodies. Some report being able to see in all directions, or hovering in space, sometimes connected to their own body by a cord. Others recall being drawn through a tunnel or seeing their entire life in review, including how their actions impacted others.

Dr. Sam Parnia gave an example of the cases they’ve been studying in his speech at the New York Academy of Sciences Symposium in 2019: “… then I began a review of my life, the key moments of my life. But at the same time, I was reexperiencing it from other people’s points of view. And that was a stunt because you feel that pain, you feel the sting, you feel the hurt. So what I saw was my own lies and my own self-deception to myself, which I had used to convince myself that doing certain things was okay. Because people had deserved that. I was not experiencing the emotional impact it had on other people. I felt their pain. I felt the shock.”

Dr. Parnia talked about the brain and consciousness at the TV show “Closer to Truth” in 2021. He said: “… So the heart stops, the person stops breathing immediately because no blood is flowing. There’s no oxygen delivered to the body. The brain shuts down within seconds, and it flatlines completely. … And we used to think that brain cells, neurons only had like five or 10 minutes before they became irreversibly damaged and we realized that’s not true. … However, today, we’ve managed to discover ways to essentially manipulate those processes by which cells are dying in a person who has just died. And we start the heart thus bring the person back to life. Not just minutes, but hours after they’ve died. … We cannot deny that human beings are conscious thinking entities and that essentially, we don’t want to bring back a husk, a shell. We want to bring back a whole person with full consciousness, the mind, the psyche, the soul of the person with them. And so we study consciousness after the period of death after someone’s gone through cardiac arrest. And what we’re beginning to demonstrate is that actually contrary to our perceptions, consciousness does not become annihilated, just because a person has just died. … When you examine the results of studies in people who have gone through clinical death through cardiac arrest for these ever-extended periods of time, we see that there are clear cases where people’s consciousness has continued, but the brain has flatlined.”

The results of a large-scale study sponsored by the University of Southampton were published in 2014 in the journal Resuscitation. The study involved patients from 15 hospitals in England, America and Austria. 2060 people had cardiac arrest during the study. Of the 330 survivors, some of them could not be interviewed for reasons such as being very ill and of the 140 patients interviewed, 55 reported perceptions of awareness. (Although no patient demonstrated clinical signs of consciousness during CPR.) Scientists included the patients’ descriptions of their experiences in the Resuscitation article. One of them said: “I have come back from the other side of life… God sent (me) back, it was not (my) time—(I) had many things to do… (I traveled) through a tunnel toward a very strong light, which didn’t dazzle or hurt (my) eyes… there were other people in the tunnel whom (I) did not recognize. When (I) emerged… (He described a very beautiful crystal city)… there was a river that ran through the middle of the city (with) the most crystal clear waters…” A 57 year old man described the perception of observing events from the top corner of the room and continued to experience a sensation of looking down from above. According to the article he accurately described people, sounds, and activities from his resuscitation and his medical records corroborated his accounts and specifically supported his descriptions and the use of an automated external defibrillator.

Cardiologist Dr. Pim Van Lommel and colleagues also published startling research in The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals. The study included 344 cardiac patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest in ten Dutch hospitals. The research team found 62 patients had experiences such as out of body experience, moving through a tunnel and meeting with deceased persons. During the pilot phase in one of the hospitals, a coronary-care-unit nurse reported a veridical out-of-body experience of a resuscitated patient. She said, during a night shift an ambulance brought in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. After admission, he received artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied. When they wanted to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. The nurse removes these upper dentures and puts them onto the ‘crash car.’ Meanwhile, they continue extensive CPR. After about an hour and a half, the patient had sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose. He was transferred to the intensive care unit. After more than a week, she meets him again and distributes his medication. The nurse described the incident: “The moment he sees me he says: ‘Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are.’ I am very surprised. Then he elucidates: ‘Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth.’ I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR. When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself. At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die. And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR. He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. 4 weeks later he left the hospital as a healthy man.”

Bruce Greyson, emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, is one of the world’s leading authorities on near-death experience research. Greyson interviewed many people who have had these experiences throughout his career. He recently appeared on NPR and said the near-death experiences that many people had included strong emotions, like a sense of overwhelming peace and well-being, an experience of unconditional love, a sense of being outside the physical body.  In his speech on NPR Greyson said: “I’ve got story after story of people who couldn’t go back to the same profession, people who were, say, career police officers who couldn’t shoot after a near-death experience, of people who were in competitive businesses who no longer felt it was meaningful to get ahead at someone else’s expense. And they had to change their careers. They often go into helping careers – you know, health care, teaching, social work, clergy, that sort of thing.” And he also said: “After 50 years of studying thousands of cases, I can’t deny that they happen and that they profoundly affect people’s lives and present us with things that we don’t have materialistic explanations for.”

Three cases

On the NPR show, Greyson gave an example from his book “After” which was published in 2021: He met a 25-year-old man named Jack, who kept having respiratory arrests and had to be resuscitated. Greyson said: “And his primary nurse, who worked with him every day, told him once that she was going to be leaving for the weekend, and some of the nurses would be substituting for her. So she left. And while she was away on the weekend, he had another respiratory arrest where he had to be resuscitated. And he found himself in a beautiful pastoral scene. And there, to his surprise this nurse, Anita comes walking towards him. And he does a double take and says, you know, Anita, what are you doing here? And she said you can’t stay here Jack. You need to go back to your body. And I want you to find my parents and tell them that I love them and I’m sorry I wrecked the red MGB. And then she turned and walked away. He then woke up back in his body in the hospital with a complete memory of this vivid experience and tried to tell this to the next nurse who walked into his room. And she quickly exited the room in tears. It turned out that his primary nurse, Anita, had taken the weekend off to celebrate her 21st birthday, and her parents surprised her with the gift of a red MGB. And she got excited, jumped in the car, took off for a test drive, lost control and crashed the car, dying instantly, just a few hours before he had his near-death experience.”

Penny Sartori, who worked as an intensive care nurse in England for 17 years, has a doctorate on near-death experiences and has written four books. Sartori describes one of the cases in her article published in the Daily Mail in 2014: “Take, for instance, the case of Fred Williams, a Swansea pensioner in his 70s who was suffering from the final stages of a terminal heart problem. One night in the hospital, he lost consciousness and we feared he was about to die. But he somehow managed to keep his faltering grip on life. And when he eventually came to (himself), I noticed at once that he looked very happy. My colleagues also remarked on this. By the following morning, Fred had recovered sufficiently to see his anxious relatives. To their astonishment, he told them that he’d been visited—while unconscious—by his mother and grandmother, both of whom were dead, as well as by his (living) sister. They’d just stood by his bedside, keeping vigil. ‘I couldn’t understand why my sister was there as well,’ he remarked. Unknown to him, his sister had actually died the week before. Fearing the news might jeopardize his recovery, his family had kept it from him. Poor Fred never learned the truth, and died a week later.”

Atif Khalil, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Canada, mentions an account shared through personal correspondence in his article published in Renovatio, the journal of Zaytuna College based in California: “A South African Muslim father recounted the NDE of his son, a drug addict who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, in which he met the family’s deceased Chishti Sufi shaykh, relatives who had died, as well as the Prophet Muĥammad (peace be upon him)—all of whom instructed him to return (to his life) to care for his child. The father’s conviction in the veridical nature of the son’s experience rested partly on the fact that, to the astonishment of his physicians, he not only made a virtually impossible recovery, eventually reforming his life, but also accurately described family members he had never met before.”

In an article published in 2014, Dr. Bruce Greyson and Nancy Evans Bush, President Emerita of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, wrote: “The great majority of near-death experiences (NDEs) reported publicly over the past four decades have been described as pleasant, even glorious. Almost unnoticed in the euphoria about them has been the sobering fact that not all NDEs are so affirming. Some are deeply disturbing.” They say a classic response to profound spiritual experience is conversion, not necessarily changing one’s religion but in the original sense of the Latin convertere meaning “to turn around.” And that the terrifying NDE is interpreted as a warning about unwise or wrong behaviors, and to turn one’s life around.

References

• https://nyulangone.org/news/lucid-dying-patients-recall-death-experiences-during-cpr
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkgLBCATUgA
• https://nyulangone.org/news/recalled-experiences-surrounding-death-more-hallucinations
• https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.14740
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/07/near-death-experiences-will-studied-seriously-number-people/
• https://www.nyas.org/events/2019/what-happens-when-we-die-insights-from-resuscitation-science/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Boi6rzQms
• https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572%2814%2900739-4/fulltext
• http://107.21.79.195/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/eqm-a5f.pdf
• https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111473823/one-man-recounts-his-near-death-covid-story
• https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1111686005
• http://www.drpennysartori.com/media.html
• https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-religion-and-the-challenge-of-near-death-experiences
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6173534/

2023 marks a full decade since the beginning of the unprecedented persecution of the Hizmet movement started in Turkey, the movement’s home country. Its institutions were confiscated, its volunteers purged, and tens of thousands of associates were arrested—many of whom are still under arrest. Despite this persecution at home, Hizmet continues to promote education and dialogue elsewhere. This resilience did not go unnoticed: California State University hosted a two-day conference on February 16-17, 2023, to explore Hizmet’s activities and the challenges they face as immigrants in different countries. Over 270 participants from 22 countries attended the conference to listen to presentations dissecting Hizmet’s interactions with modern society and the movement’s contribution to its improvement.

The conference took place only ten days after massive earthquakes left at least forty thousand dead across southeast Turkey, leaving many cities almost entirely uninhabitable. In her welcome speech as the host of the conference, Professor Sophia Pandya, the department chair at California State University at Long Beach, in the Department of Religious Studies, called for a moment of silence to honor those who lost their lives. She further pointed to the trauma this disaster has added to the Hizmet community, some of whom have lost family and perhaps suffer from “survivor’s guilt” while being unable to assist former countrymen and women. Suffering is accompanied with anger because of the rampant corruption and greed that led to needless deaths under buildings which were not built to code. University psychologist Corrie O’Toole participated in the conference to present a tool called EFT tapping to help with stress, trauma, and anxiety. Quoting Rumi, Dr. Pandya noted that “through love, all pain will turn to medicine.” She also suggested that “Hizmet” should be used to identify the movement—instead of “Gülen Movement,” which some academics prefer for easier association. But “Hizmet” is more accurate, she emphasized, because its participants prefer to use it and communities and individuals should be allowed to self-identify.

Dr. Elise LoBue from the University of Illinois Springfield presented some of the findings from her research on Turkish refugees in Canada. Many Hizmet volunteers who had to leave Turkey have been seeking refuge in Western countries, including Canada. Among the reasons they chose Canada was their perception of the country as more immigrant-friendly, where many Muslim women could participate in the workforce with fewer concerns—at least relatively—about practicing their faith and dress. Trump’s election in the United States was also another major factor pushing many Muslim refugees further north. Despite the recent rise of Islamophobia in the country, Canada is still a good option for many immigrants. Dr. LoBue also emphasized the fact that Hizmet is more prone to integration than many other immigrant groups because of the “Hizmet philosophy.”

Dr. Ori Z Soltes, professor of theology and philosophy at Georgetown University and the author of a recently published book titled Between Thought and Action: An Intellectual Biography of Fethullah Gülen, drew similarities between the persecution of Hizmet under the current Turkish regime and the one Jews and communists endured under Hitler. Thankfully, the result is not as tragic as during the Holocaust, but it is noteworthy to see how authoritarian regimes use similar tactics to cling to power by stigmatizing and scapegoating certain groups.

Vonya Womack spoke about her research regarding the unjustly incarcerated women affiliated with Hizmet. Many women were arrested for working for a Hizmet school or having a bank account with a certain lawfully operating bank. Womack portrayed inhuman treatments in prisons, which included many heartbreaking stories of new mothers giving birth while handcuffed to a hospital bed.

Ayhan Cetin from South Africa presented a report of his interviews with Hizmet volunteers who had moved to his country, focusing especially on how their approach to other human rights violations in Turkey and around the world has changed in recent years.

In the second panel chaired by Professor Jon Pahl, the author of Fethullah Gülen: A Life of Hizmet, Dr. Fevzi Sarac from Louisiana State University pointed to how the Hizmet Movement is more engaged in “bridging” work with the “other” compared to more politically motivated groups who prefer in-group “bonding.” Dr. Zeki Saritoprak from John Carroll University (Cleveland) explained that although he does not agree with the dichotomy of “political Islam” vs. “civil Islam,” he lacks words to show the differences between groups like Hizmet, which is engaged in civil activities, and apparently religious figures, as in Turkey, who abuse Islam for their political interests. Dr. Reginald Nalugala from Tangaza University College (Kenya) pointed to the importance of the works done by Hizmet to counter radical fundamentalism around the world. Dr. John Turres from Lagrange University in Georgia presented his research on the connection of authoritarian regimes with sports, focusing on examples from the World Cup and including stories of top Turkish athletes like Enes Kanter and Hakan Sukur, who are being threatened by the government.

Rabbi Yakov Nagen, the Director of the Blickle Institute for Interfaith Dialogue, explained in the third panel his initiatives for better understanding between Muslims and Jews, and how he conducted some of that work with the Hizmet community. Answering a question from the floor about how similar he found the resilience of Hizmet to that of Jews historically, Rabbi Nagen praised how the Hizmet community is building bridges at a time when they do not have a land of their own. Professor Pim Valkenberg and Kate Middleton from the Catholic University of America talked about the spiritual stations of hawf and raja (fear and hope) emphasized by Fethullah Gülen in his works and how these concepts interplay with the resilience of the Hizmet community through the difficult times they are going through.

Sister Martha Ann Kirk explained in her presentation that her religious community used to run many schools in the US and Mexico, but about a hundred years ago, they were confiscated in a similar way to what happened to the Hizmet schools in Turkey. She said that after so many years, her community is still surviving and continuing their services. Dr. Aydin Inal, from South Africa, contextualized Hizmet activities in the context of the Ubuntu philosophy, in which humankind is perceived in a harmonious relationship with the world. Dr. Rajendran T. Govender, former Director in the Kwa-Zulu Natal Department of Arts and Culture in South Africa, explained Hizmet’s dialogue activities in that country. Dr. Macharia Munene, lecturer at the United States International University Africa in Nairobi, spoke about how Hizmet schools were first established in Kenya by very young and dedicated young educators in the ‘90s, when Kenya experienced a number of terrorist attacks. Dr. Munene explained how these schools still hold the top academic position in the country despite many pressures to close them from the Turkish government.

One of the conference’s key moments was the evening reception, when Dr. Scott Alexander from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago delivered the keynote speech. Drawing on from The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan, Dr. Alexander explained how Hizmet has been using this management strategy, knowingly or unknowingly, to manage their current affairs while building their future. He emphasized the importance of youth empowerment and gave examples of how Jesus, Joseph, and Muhammad (peace be upon them) were recognized with their wisdom at a young age according to Islamic tradition. Mike Honda, a former representative of California in the Congress, said in his brief address at the reception that “Hizmet values are American values.”

The second day of the conference started with a panel chaired by Professor Paul Weller from the UK, who has authored multiple works on Hizmet, the last two released simultaneously in 2022. Professor Anwar Alam, the author of For the Sake of Allah: The Origin, Development, and Discourse of the Gülen Movement, said that as opposed to many analyses, Hizmet should not be considered within the paradigms of modernity. According to Alam, Hizmet has a postmodern philosophy which celebrates diversity, transcends political boundaries, and is unapologetically pacific/non-violent in responding to tyranny.

Dr. Naveed Sheikh from the University of Keele in the UK noted that Hizmet is “sui generis” and encourages its followers to integrate spirituality into their social lives. In a rather modern form of chivalry (futuwwa), the movement raises the importance of practicing ethics (tarbiyah). In the post-2016 era, we clearly see that the movement’s values don’t coincide with the power that manipulates social practices and norms, similar to the rejection, powerlessness, and sorrow Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, experienced from the powerful elite of his time. Yet, grief can have a transformative power, as was the case with the Prophet in Taif, where he was stoned and attacked, but he still prayed for God’s mercy.

It is not possible to give a comprehensive summary of all the presentations. But here are a few notes to give an idea about what was covered in the conference: Ghada Ghazal compared Fethullah Gülen’s approach to exegetical studies of the Qur’an to some modern commentators. Asuman Celik talked about FKM, a program of young Hizmet volunteers in which they visited Fethullah Gülen and how that interaction had a positive influence on their dedication to perform more Hizmet. Nurdin Kaparov explained some symbolic concepts like “altruism” and “living for others” and how they shape Hizmet volunteers’ mindset. His study implied that a new generation of Hizmet around leadership, spiritual resources, communication, and modern ideals needs to be examined while also exercising freedom of thought. Iysha Arun reported how certain topics like gender, identity, sexuality, and LGBTQ issues are being explored within circles of the Hizmet community in their consultative meetings (istishara) and with utmost care to prevent conflict (fitna). Dr. Kristina Mashimi shared her research in Tanzania about the ethics education received by girls in Hizmet schools. Nancy Falcon, an Argentinian representative, reported on the contributions of Hizmet to interfaith dialogue despite pressure from the Turkish government. She strongly believes that Hizmet has the potential to contribute to human rights issues in Argentina. Shanthikumar Hettiarachchi explained the dynamics that allowed Hizmet to move forward despite the persecution. Sotirios S. Livas reported on the situation of Hizmet volunteers who fled Turkey under difficult circumstances. Dr. Nah Jeong Won, who translated a number of books about Hizmet into Korean, spoke about Hizmet activities in Korea. Dr. Jamal R. Cayamodin and Dr. Abdulhamit Durakoglu from the Philippines presented a brief history of Hizmet schools and their charity work in the country.

There were also parallel sessions which featured scholars who joined via video presentations. Ferah Armutcu, a medical doctor who was dismissed from his position by a government decree, explained the forced academic migration from Turkey. Lisa Dumovich, a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven, spoke about the concept of migration (hijrah) and how Hizmet volunteers has found in Brazil a home in exile. Dr. Mahmut Akpinar and Dr. Huseyin Sert from the UK detailed intergenerational gap within the Movement. Dr. Katende Abdu from Makerere University detailed the humanitarian activities of Hizmet in Uganda. Emine Turkoglu, a PhD candidate at Helsinki University, told about Hizmet in Finland with a focus on women involvement.

Overall, this conference felt like an introduction into the broad concepts of Hizmet. What is clear is that Hizmet is highly respected among a circle of sophisticated intellectuals who conduct research on its philosophy and activities around the world, but more work needs to be done for better understanding and to clear away the fog caused by disinformation. People should be informed that even though the movement operates from a religious and spiritual framework, it doesn’t necessarily impose its own frame of reference. Hizmet rather opens room for a discussion and calls for an exchange of ideas from diverse communities in order to help everyone live in harmony and peace.

In her closing remarks, Dr. Pandya quoted Rumi one more time: “A heart filled with love is like a Phoenix that no cage can imprison.” She said she hopes to see Hizmet rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Coincidentally, she made this speech on the second day of the conference (February 17), which was the day of Miraj, the night in which Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is believed to have ascended to the heavens. This miraculous journey took place in what would be called the Year of Sorrow, when he lost two dear members of his family, and his entire clan was removed from their homes and boycotted.

Every day of our lives is a spot on our map. It can be a success, a failure, a turnaround, or maybe even simpler it could be traced by a smile, a frown, a sign or a memory.

A day can be a witness of our splendor and glory; a day can also be forgotten amidst the pages of our diary or deliberately disregarded from our accounts.

I wonder who woke up in the morning missing the motivation to get-up, lacked a cause to fight for, didn’t have a child to take care of, a smile to help you move-on, or someone to say “I am here for you.”

I wonder who didn’t wait for a chance, looked for a sign, stared at the sky envisioning a dream, who never had a wish, never welcomed someone to their life, who didn’t keep hoping for a dream to come true. Who?!

This story does not belong to me, it belongs to us as human beings. It belongs to the fact that we dream, we wish, we fall and we get-up, we get hurt and we get cured, we criticize and we flatter, we think and we act, we feel weak and we become strong.

We mark our lives with events such as the first time we fell in love, our first job, our first raise. We mark our lives with break-ups, engagements, marriages, birth, death, and with the hard lessons we gather on our way.

We sense our directions with great guts that does not prevent us from feeling a single piece of regret. We laugh at jokes, we cry at love scenes, we enjoy the gossip but never forgive being subjected to it.

We are who we are for some reasons, for some genes, for family matters, for experiences we went through, for challenges we faced, for social hazards, for whatever causes and whoever we have met. To those who have never been subjected to monumental changes or personal transformations, isn’t it time for you to stand on the crossroad where choice is calling? Either turn the chapter or stay trapped in the past. It’s your life and it’s your choice!