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51.8%ANMag Issue 22 Global Awareness
Adam: Human or Being?
By Ali Sadeeq, Staff Writer
Kano, Nigeria − In everything that exists in the heavens and the earth, organic or inorganic, material or immaterial, must obey and conform to certain laws that govern it, knowingly or unknowingly. The reason for this is because God wanted to manifest his power as the only one above governance by any kind of law.
The laws that govern us and the things around us are known to us only through knowledge - religious and scientific. And all true knowledge came from God. The only difference between religious and scientific (or any real) knowledge is not in the knowledge itself but rather in the methods, application or the propagators of that knowledge. Religious knowledge is communicated by God only to great men of faith (prophets and Saints,) but scientific knowledge can be communicated by God to any individual he chooses. Let me now examine evidence that prove to religious scholars that Adam was not what they assumed him to be.
1. The Word
The word Adam was, in our present record, first used in the book of Genesis (in the old testaments and was derived from a Hebrew word "Adama"). Subsequently, God used the word in the Holy Qur'an. In Arabic, the word is also derived from the word "Adama" which means "mixture of various things together". Therefore, even the origin of the name suggested that Adam was a congregation of all created life on this planet. (Refer to Lisanil Arab and Majmu Alfaz Luggal Arabiya).
Even Hadith literature, if examined carefully, will reveal the underlying meaning of Adam, as reported in the book The Story of the Prophets. The prophet said, "When God decided to create Adam he sent Jibril to collect dust from the earth, and Jibril collected dust from east and west, north and south, mountain tops and valleys, land and sea, black, red, brown etc. before they were mixed to form Adam." This hadith is indicative of the collective nature of Adam.
2. The Plane
God says: Q20:117-9: "Then we said, ‘O Adam! Verily this Satan is an enemy to thee and thy wife. So let him not get you both out of the garden, so that you are landed in misery. There is therein (enough provision) for thee not to go hungry, nor naked, nor suffer from thirst nor from the suns heat’".
Here, the Lord is addressing Adam in the former plane before his expulsion and condemnation to the lower plane. The former plane is immaterial; thus, it is not governed by all the physical laws. In that plane, Adam need not eat for there is no hunger, had no physical body to suffer nakedness, will not get thirsty and not existing in physical plane, the sun's heat is out of the question. The provisions in the Garden provide for perpetual spiritual contentment and endless bliss. In that plane, man existed in his pure state with pristine qualities, devoid of any evil tendencies. God warns him to keep on like that and be not prone to any evil or it may cause his fall into the lower plane (the physical plane). The advice was unheeded and man succumbs to Evil forces (Satan), which led to his expulsions to the lower plane. Had he purged the evils by restraints, it would have earned him re-admittance into the original station. Contrary to popular belief by Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Garden of Eden was not a physical sensuous garden somewhere in the Middle East. It is a spiritual state beyond the temporal.
Q47: 15: "Here is a parable of the garden which the righteous are promised. In it are rivers of water incorruptible, rivers of milk of which the taste never changes, rivers of wine joy to those who drink and rivers of honey pure and clear. In it are for them all kinds of fruits."
In a further allegory, God explains to us, in a graphic imagery, that we will go to the Garden if we become righteous by purging out the evil tendencies in us.
The parable talked about four kinds of drinks and kinds of fruits.
1. Water: Delicious, cool, pure water, not like earthy water, for it never undergoes corruption.
2. Milk: Which never turns sour, and the taste of which is constant, never changing through time as earthy milk.
3. Wine: Of joy not like earthy wine that leaves headaches behind and causes intoxication.
4. Honey: Pure and clear, with no admixture of wax or foreign substance.
These drinks, metaphorically speaking, will cool the spirit, feed the heart, warm affections and sweeten life. So originally, man came from the immaterial plane and will go back to it. His sojourn in the physical plane is only temporary as a sort of punishment in order to purge out the evil in him. God uses parables, appealing to our knowledge of the things we know because it is the only way for us to glimpse the idea he wants to convey. It is part of our nature to visualize things that we do not know or cannot understand to those that we know (imagine yourself trying to explain to a young boy, who has been blind all his life, the brightly colored pattern of a peacock).
What God is trying to tell us is that the collective soul of all human beings was created and living in a spiritual garden. Adam is not a man but rather is the symbol of all men, nay all creatures. Adam represents the fountain of our dual existence − spiritual and physical. That is why God told us in chapter:
Q7:11 "It is we who created you and gave you shape; then we made the angels bow down to Adam, and they bowed down."
In this verse God, interchangeably, used the pronoun "you" in the plural, meaning all beings, and the word "Adam" representing them. It is after the spiritual creation of all soul that God calls the collective souls as Adam.
In the Old Testament, God specifically calls all Humans as Adam.
Genesis 5:2 "Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day when they were created."
These collective souls were living in an immaterial plane, not the sensuous paradise as depicted by religious scholars.
3. Satan and Angels
What does the two terms really signify? Most people visualize Angels and Satan as creatures of fantasy. If one looks at the various verses in the Qur’an, s/he will easily conclude they represent the two opposing forces of evil and good. As the previously-mentioned verse says, all the angels agreed to bow down to us while Satan refused. The obedience of the angels by bowing down to us symbolizes their role in being the agents responsible for our protection and commanding our souls at every turn to do good. Angels are the inherent good nature of all beings; thus, they represent the forces of good. That is why God told us in chapter:
Q82:10-12: "But verily over you are appointed Angels to protect you, kind and honorable writing your deeds, they know and understand all that you do."
This is virtually the picture of the roles of angels, subservient to human spiritual development. On the other hand, Satan refused to bow and instead became the champion of evil deeds. Unlike the angels, he is the inherent evil nature of all creatures, thus representing the evil forces. God says in chapter:
Q4:79: "Whatever evil happens to you is from your own soul."
This verse is telling us that the king of evil is part and parcel of our souls. In one of the sayings of Prophet Muhammad he said, "Satan runs through every person’s veins, the way blood runs through". After the creation of our collective souls, the two forces struggle to win us over. Man being created from the spirit of God is inherently good, but Satan cunningly misled him. At every turn, the two opposing forces command our souls to follow them as they are entwined in our own souls. Man was given a limited free will, to choose from the two, and Satan began to campaign:
Q20:120: "But Satan whispered evil to him he said, ’O Adam, shall I lead you to the tree of eternity and to a kingdom that never decays?’"
And in the Bible it was like this:
Genesis 3:4-5: "And the serpent (Satan) said unto the woman, ‘Ye surely shall not die: for God knows that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods knowing good and evil’".
God has forbidden the collective soul from approaching the evil tree, but cunningly, Satan is here telling the collective souls the aroma of eternal life. Seduced, man became the victim of the power play between God (the absolute creator) and Satan (the challenger). God decided to expel them both from the garden down to earth to see if Satan can uphold his claim as being able to be God himself (a vote today by human beings on who has more followers between God and Satan; I think Satan can emerge victorious). It is at this juncture that God told the Angels of his plans.
Q2:30: "Behold thy lord said to the Angels, ’I will create a vicegerent on earth‘. They said, ’Will you place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? While we do celebrate your praises and glorify thy holy name?’”.
Why does God call Adam a vicegerent? Why do the angels think he will make mischief and shed blood? I will give the answer to that question later. As for the answer to second one, it is obvious for the Angels that our collective souls were hesitant to the absolute authority of God in his presence at the Garden of Eden. What will make them subservient to God’s will on earth? So God replied:
Q2:30-31: "He (God) said, ’I know what you know not‘. And he taught Adam the nature of all things; then he placed them before the Angels, and said, ’Tell me the nature of these if you are right.’"
God showed the Angels the blueprint of all the creatures he has destined to emerge from Adam, who is the progenitor of all living things on this planet.
It became apparent to the Angels that not all creatures will testify to Satan; some will rank higher than anything before them. The Angels submit thus:
Q2:32: "They said, ’Glory to thee: of knowledge we have none save what you has taught us.’"
The Angels were not only convinced but marveled by the process they were shown, a process that will transform this planet. In fact they were astounded…