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Wahi: The Supernatural Basis of Islam
Part I - The Yogic View of the Quranic Trance
Dr. Koenraad ELST
[Editor's Note: Kashmir Herald is honored to have Dr. Koenraad ELST write a
series of articles exclusively for Kashmir Herald. His series of 4 exclusive
articles on "The Supernatural Basis of Islam" will be published exclusively
here on Kashmir Herald.]
In discussing Islam, most non-Muslims tend to focus on the negative
achievements of Islam, such as Islamic mistreatment of women and
unbelievers. However, we should realize that in its essence, Islam is a
belief system, a truth claim. The Islamic religion stands or falls with the
truth or untruth of two assertions: (1) there is no God but Allah, the
Creator of the universe; and (2) Mohammed is the final spokesman of Allah,
who through him passed on to mankind a series of messages assembled in the
Quran. This is understood to have been a constant process of "revelation"
from AD 610, when Mohammed was 40, until his death in AD 632. The first
belief is a theological claim which Islam has in common with some other
religions, and which could even be reconciled with some schools of Hinduism
(the wise call the One True One by many names) if subjected to cunning
interpretation. The second belief, by contrast, is the truly defining truth
claim of Islam, setting it apart from every other religion: the prophethood
of Mohammed.
In this series of articles, we will discuss some non-Islamic views of this
core assertion of Islam. The present paper will focus on the Hindu view of
Mohammeds prophethood.
Before the colonial age, there was hardly any Hindu evaluation neither of
Mohammeds prophetic claims, nor even of Islamic doctrine in general. The
first detailed criticism of Islam, and in particular of the Quran, was
written by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Vedic reform movement
Arya Samaj. He mainly lambasted the contradictions, irrational beliefs and
inhumane injunctions in Islamic scripture. Arya Samaj criticism of the
Prophet typically focused on his dictatorial and immoral personal behaviour
(e.g. Rajpals Rangila Rasul, about Mohammeds sex life), not on the source
of his revelations.
The basis of Islam is the belief that Mohammed regularly went into a state
of trance (wahi) and heard a voice dictating Allah's own words. As Hindu
students of Islam have been pointing out in recent years, many of Mohammed's
contemporaries were skeptical of his recipiency of divine messages: "The
Meccans stood firm by their gods; their faith in the gods was not at all
shaken by Muhammad's attacks. Allah reports: 'When it was said unto them,
There is no God save Allah, they were scornful, and said: Shall we forsake
our gods for a mad poet?' (Q.37:36/35) 'And they marvel that a warner from
among themselves had come. They say: This is a wizard, a charlatan.'
(Q.38:4/3) " (S.R. Goel: Hindu Temples, vol.2, 2nd ed., p.334)
It was probably Swami Vivekananda who first connected the questionable
nature of Mohammed's leadership with the nature of his prophethood. Mohammed
had to be ruthless in imposing adherence to his belief in his own divine
mission because this belief could not stand on its own, based as it was on a
delusion. If your neighbour, whom you have known for years as an ordinary
businessman, tells you one day that he is hearing Gods voice and that you
have to obey his divine instructions from now on, you would not readily give
in to his demand. Instead, you would certainly wonder what had happened to
him. So, Vivekananda offered one hypothesis of what had happened to Mohammed
to make him believe in his own selection as Gods sole living spokesman.
The specifically Hindu contribution to our understanding of the Quranic
revelation is to bring in the yogic experience. As an example of how yogic
practice can go wrong, warning against the dangers of experimenting with
yoga without competent guidance, Swami Vivekananda mentioned none other than
Mohammed: "The yogi says there is a great danger in stumbling upon this
state. In a good many cases, there is the danger of the brain being
deranged, and, as a rule, you will find that all those men, however great
they were, who had stumbled upon this super-conscious state without
understanding it, groped in the dark, and generally had, along with their
knowledge, some quaint superstition. They opened themselves to
hallucinations. Mohammed claimed that the Angel Gabriel came to him in a
cave one day and took him on the heavenly horse, Burak, and he visited the
heavens.
"But with all that, Mohammed spoke some wonderful truths. If you read the
Koran, you find the most wonderful truths mixed with superstitions. How will
you explain it? That man was inspired, no doubt, but that inspiration was,
as it were, stumbled upon. He was not a trained Yogi, and did not know the
reason of what he was doing. Think of the good Mohammed did to the world,
and think of the great evil that has been done through his fanaticism! Think
of the millions massacred through his teachings, mothers bereft of their
children, children made orphans, whole countries destroyed, and millions
upon millions of people killed! (...) So we see this danger by studying the
lives of great teachers like Mohammad and others. Yet we find, at the same
time, that they were all inspired. Whenever a prophet got into the
super-conscious state by heightening his emotional nature, he brought away
from it not only some truths, but some fanaticism also, some superstition
which injured the world as much as the greatness of the teaching helped."
(Vivekananda: Complete Works, vol.1, p.184, from the book Raja Yoga, Ch.7:
"Dhyana and Samadhi")
Mental disturbance as a consequence of meditative experiments had already
been named as the cause of the Quranic revelations by Gisbertus Voetius, a
17th-century Dutch Calvinist theologian who trained missionaries for
conversion work in Indonesia (discussed in Karel Steenbrink: Dutch
Colonialism and Indonesian Islam). Protestants who had abolished monastic
institutions and were scornful of the ascetic practices of Catholic and
Orthodox monks, liked to point out such dangers, and the warning seemed to
apply to the case of Mohammed as well.
Most yoga manuals emphatically warn against wrongly practising the
techniques of Hatha Yoga, which are very powerful whether used properly or
in disregard of the concomitant rules. Yogic masters can relate anecdotes of
pupils or colleagues who spurned the precautions and practiced dangerous
forms of prânâyâma ("breath control" or "control of the vital energies")
till they impaired their nerve systems. One well-known written testimony of
the painful and lasting effects of erratic yogic practice is given by Gopi
Krishna in his book Kundalini. Arya Samaj leader Vandematharam Ramachandra
Rao told me of one case involving a friend of his who inflicted brain damage
on himself and died of a stroke as a consequence of improper prânâyâma
practice. Likewise, Taoist Qigong comes with the same warning and anecdotes.
Many mystic phenomena the world over come about as cases of stumbling upon
certain states of consciousness, which may lead to some kind of
"enlightenment" but also to serious delusions, most typically megalomania,
witness the self-importance of the assorted gurus and messiahs in the modern
cult scene.
Hindu yogis claim to have left these dangerous mind games behind because
their forebears have developed a safe and sound method laid down in such
classics as Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. Ram Swarup (Hindu View of Christianity
and Islam, p.45-46) argues that the methodical and systematic "science of
yoga" has a substantial qualitative edge over other forms of mysticism or
mediumism. From this angle, it is unfair (even if fashionably in tune with
the "equal truth of all religions" doctrine) to put yoga in one class with
the experiments of Shamans taking hallucinogenic plants, or with the
uninvited voice-hearing experiences of Mohammed.
In recent years, Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel have further developed Swami
Vivekananda's position on the nature of Quranic revelation. Ram Swarup has
elaborated on the yogic theory of samadhi (enstasis) states of different
levels of purity, which allows for states of high concentration tainted by
delusion (Hindu View of Christianity and Islam, p.107). S.R. Goel has
pointed out the similarity between Mohammeds experiences and that of other
men who combined a susceptibility to convulsive trance states with a great
charisma and strategic ability, most notably Chengiz Khan (foreword to Goel,
ed.: The Calcutta Quran Petition, p.103 ff.; with reference to A. Guillaume:
Life of Muhammad, p.104/150-107/154).
They conclude that the Pagan Arabs had every right to reject Mohammed's
claims, born from a deluded consciousness and then propagated on a war
footing, but that they made the one mistake which history does not forgive,
viz. the mistake of being defeated. However, "the fact that they failed to
understand the ways of Mohammed and could not match his mailed fist in the
final round should not be held against them. It was neither the first nor
the last time that a democratic society succumbed in the face of determined
gangsterism. We know how Lenin, Hitler and Mao Tse-tung succeeded in our own
times." (Goel: Hindu Temples, vol.2, 2nd ed., p.272)
As far as I can see, the foregoing constitutes the single most radical
criticism of Islam available in the world. Christian critics, no matter how
fierce, usually appreciate at least Mohammed's monotheism, which does not
impress these Hindu authors. They are also inhibited in criticizing the
deluded nature of Mohammeds revelations, as they profess a belief in the
divine revelations to the Old Testament prophets. Though "irreverent" and
"demythologizing" are among the most specious words of praise in the review
columns of modern newspapers, few people have the stomach for something as
irreverent and demythologizing as the Hindu Revivalist analysis of the
Prophet's mission.
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