This page in one paragraph
On this page we look at how Dost says something in one direction and then, right after, says it in the opposite direction too, and we ask whether physics has anything like this. We did not mark any row as "stand close"; the closest are the two rows we call "greet each other from a distance": the servant's opinion of the Real and the Real's being found according to that opinion, and the couplet "If He were not, we would not be; if we were not, He would not be". The first looks from a distance at the choice of experimental setup in physics, the second at light and the electron-positron pair turning into one another. The furthest apart is the nothing-being-nothing row: in physics nothing is lost, whereas in Dost nothingness is described as a rank that knows and is honored; we said of this "walk separate roads". We did not look at four rows: the leap turned back halfway, the Real becoming the servant's eye, the speaker and the listener exchanging places, and the circle returning to its start. What remains open is this: can these resemblances be told apart from the resemblance between any two things that are "two-way", and Dost's sentences were not compared with the Arabic original.
What is this form?
In most accounts the road runs one way: the Real gives, the servant receives; a cause occurs, an effect follows; there is a beginning and there is an end. In Dost's pages, however, the road often turns back. The Real becomes the servant's eye, the servant becomes a will-bearer within the Real's will; in a dispute the parties say to one another «You are my time, and I am your time» (c1k2); the hadith says that the Real is found according to the servant's opinion; what comes last joins to the first. This reciprocity is stated at the level of the relations between the god (ilah), the Lord (Rabb) and the servant; we say nothing about the Essence (Dhat), and we do not count the two directions as equal in weight: the difference between the Necessary and the possible stays where it is.
What we call reciprocal transformation on this page is not the content of these sentences one by one but their form: what is said in one direction is often said, right after, in the opposite direction too, and the two do not cancel each other. "If He were not, we would not be" and "if we were not, He would not be" come in the same breath. The mind's first reaction is to say "one of the two must be true". Dost holds both together.
We look at whether physics has anything similar to this form. In physics too some processes run both ways: an electron-positron pair can turn into light and light into a pair; a quantum jump can be caught halfway and turned back; heat can flow in the opposite direction under certain conditions. There is also the matter of the observer: places where the measurement seems to take part in the result of what is measured. The outcome is not known beforehand. There are almost no places that stand close; there are places that wave from a distance, and there are several doors we did not look at at all. We write all of it as it is.
What does Dost say?
«I am as My servant thinks of Me» (c4k42)
A holy hadith (hadith qudsi) that appears within the subject of leading the prayer in fear. It is reported as a holy hadith; we did not examine its chain of transmission or its variants. The same saying comes back in other sections too: in c5k66 as an invitation to "think well", in c13k150 as "God is with every servant in his opinion", in c16k211 as "God is only in His servant's opinion of Him". In c5k54 Dost explains that a strong opinion can stand in for knowledge; he also counts knowing God by reason as a kind of conjecture, distinct from the certainty of knowing by the sharia. In c10k127, in turn, it is stated that this saying is understood as the servant's opinion of how God will treat him.
What to note: the saying carries both directions at once; on one side the servant's opinion, on the other the Real's being found according to that opinion. Dost does not put this forward as a claim of physics, and neither do we.
«If He were not, we would not be / If we were not, He would not be» (c6k80, p. 223-224)
This couplet states the mutual existence of the Real and creation (halk). It continues "He manifested us and hid Himself / He manifested Himself and hid us": when one appears the other is hidden, when the other appears this one is. In c15k173 there is another poem of this kind; it ends with "Do not annihilate me, or You too will be annihilated!".
What to note: dependence is given to both sides. This looks like a contradiction, because the mind says "one of them must exist first". Dost sets this up not as an ordering but as a relation. Whether it resembles something like "two things require each other" in physics is one of the questions we ask below.
«So while I was the first to listen, He was the first to speak. Then I became the first to speak, and He the first to listen.» (c14k163, p. 334-341)
Here the roles change hands in turn: the speaker becomes the listener, the listener the speaker. At the end of this Dost says that al-Batin and az-Zahir appear, that is, the one who is inward and the one who is outward.
What to note: the reciprocity is written here like a sequence, but the places of what is called first and second alternate. The question "who is first" is left unanswered.
«The Real who descends and the creation that ascends meet in it. When the Real asks the one who ascends "where to?", he says "To You".» (c11k142, p. 349)
The Real's descent and creation's ascent meet at one place. In the same section Dost also describes the place of this meeting by saying "as the Lord has a way, the servant has a way".
What to note: descending and ascending are like the two ends of the same road. One is the opposite of the other, but both end at the same meeting point.
«The soul was created in this nature and therefore in the end returns to its origin» (c12k143, p. 58-60)
In the continuation of the same passage Dost says "Thus the matter ended as it began, the end became the same as its beginning", and he explains the word din (religion) as "to return, to go back to its owner". In c2k24 there is a similar saying (p. 282): Dost says that the world is spherical in form and that for this reason a human being, while at the end, yearns for his beginning; he adds that as the coming out of nonexistence into existence is with Him, so the return is to Him.
What to note: here the coming out and the return do not stand as two separate movements; the coming out is the start of the return. Dost relates this to a circular figure.
«When I love him, I become his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he grasps» (c8k114, p. 225-227)
The hadith of drawing near through supererogatory acts (qurb al-nawafil): in the hadith's own words the Real becomes the servant's ear, eye and hand. It is known that commentaries debate whether this hadith is metaphor or reality; we did not enter that debate. After this Dost asks the opposite: what happens in the obligatory act? His answer is the mirror image of the supererogatory: in the obligatory act the Real wills through the servant's will, and the servant is given the possibility of "being a bearer of judgment according to the eternal will".
What to note: the two directions stand side by side. One is the hadith saying that the Real becomes the servant's ear, eye and hand; the other is the servant's being a will-bearer within the Real's will. Dost gives them as the opposite of each other; one does not erase the other.
There is also the matter of nonexistence. According to the section's summary, in c10k131 Dost starts from the verse "Surely We created you before, when you were nothing" and sees the human being's honor in his return to nonexistence within his existence. In the same place this saying appears:
«No one knows God better, among things other than God, than absolute nonexistence» (c10k131, p. 279-280)
Here nonexistence is described not as a deficiency but as a rank that knows and is honored. This paragraph rests on the section's summary; the quotation is only the quoted saying.
What is there in physics?
Anderson 1933 — The discovery of the positron
Anderson used a cloud chamber to study cosmic rays; this is an instrument that makes the paths of passing charged particles visible. He placed the chamber inside a strong magnetic field and took photographs. He saw that some tracks belonged to a particle as light as the electron's, but bent in the field in the opposite direction to the electron: that is, the particle was positively charged. This was the "positively charged electron" never seen until then; today we call it the positron. The finding was consistent with the idea of antimatter that Dirac had predicted theoretically. This is an experimental observation. Anderson's finding is only the existence of the positron; the electron and positron turning into light when they meet (annihilation) is general physics knowledge, and we do not rest on this source for it. We see the creation of a pair from light in the Adam 2021 card below. [Anderson 1933]
Adam 2021 — Matter is born from light
This is a collider experiment. When heavy ions pass side by side at nearly the speed of light, very intense electromagnetic fields form around them, and these fields can behave like light particles, that is, a crowd of photons. According to the article's title, the momentum and angle distributions of the electron-positron pairs born from colliding light were measured; because the light is polarized, the distribution of the pairs also separates accordingly. We do not write the detailed numbers. Obtaining matter from light has long been predicted in theory; this measurement tests it also in fine details such as polarization. That is, the birth of an electron-positron pair from light is a phenomenon measured in the laboratory. [Adam 2021]
Micadei 2019 — Heat can flow the other way
Heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold; this is the established rule of thermodynamics. But this rule assumes that the two systems are initially unrelated to each other. Micadei and colleagues prepared two spins by nuclear magnetic resonance in a correlated, that is, entangled, state and observed heat flowing from cold to hot. The direction of the flow was determined by a trade-off between the correlations and entropy. This is an experiment. What gives one pause is that the correlations can change the direction without violating the second law of thermodynamics; the law is being re-read with a broader view of information. This is not like an everyday refrigerator; it is a scene of two tiny spins. [Micadei 2019]
Minev 2019 — A quantum jump is caught halfway and turned back
According to quantum theory an atom "jumps" from one energy level to another; these jumps are said to be sudden and random. A team at Yale tried to catch the jump in the middle by using an artificial atom, that is, a superconducting circuit. By carefully watching a third, separately observable state of the atom, they found a sign that the jump was about to begin. The observation: the jump is not instantaneous; once begun, it proceeds as a coherent and smooth transition, and can even be caught halfway and reversed. The exact moment of the start of the jump is still random, but once it has begun, its course is predictable. This is an experimental result and brings a subtle correction to the "instantaneous jump" picture. What this means is disputed. [Minev 2019]
Proietti 2019 — Facts relative to the observer
The question was this: can two observers find different results for the same event, each correct within itself? This is a question arising from the thought experiment called "Wigner's friend". Proietti and colleagues carried out an adaptation of this thought experiment in a setup built with photons; the role of "observer" was taken by systems with quantum memory. Then they compared the results with the limit expected when a single observer-independent objective reality and some reasonable assumptions are true together. According to the article's own statement, the measurements exceeded this limit; that is, with those assumptions a single observer-independent objective reality cannot be held together; one of the assumptions must be dropped. The authors express this as: there may not be a single objective story that everyone in the quantum field would accept. The result depends on these assumptions and how it should be interpreted is disputed; in particular, what the "observer" is here is an open question. [Proietti 2019]
Jacques 2007 — Delayed choice
In a setup that a photon enters through two paths, it can appear both as a wave (through both paths together, interference) and as a particle (which path it took is known); which one we will see depends on the choice of setup. John Wheeler had asked "what if the choice is made after the photon has entered the setup?" Jacques and colleagues carried this out with single photons: the choice of open or closed configuration was made by a random number generator and took place at a moment so separated from the photon's entry that no communication at the speed of light was possible. The result agreed with the prediction of quantum theory: even a late choice determined the outcome. What gives one pause is that the photon seems not to have decided "what it is" before the entry. Its meaning varies from interpretation to interpretation, and no one has to say "we changed the past". [Jacques 2007]
Schlosshauer 2005 — Decoherence and the measurement problem
According to quantum theory a system, before it is measured, can be in a state in which several possibilities enter the calculation together; this is called superposition. But when we measure, we always see a single result; we call this mismatch the measurement problem. Schlosshauer's article is an evaluation piece explaining the phenomenon called decoherence and how far it helps with this problem. Decoherence is this: a small system inevitably interacts with its environment (air, light, heat), and because of this the traces of the possibilities' coexistence, that is, interference, are erased very quickly. This is a well-understood phenomenon. The article also asks whether this explains why a single result emerges, and examines the main interpretive approaches one by one within this framework. Its conclusion: decoherence explains why results look classical, but does not by itself close the question "why only one?" This part depends on interpretation. [Schlosshauer 2005]
What does the secondary literature say?
According to what the SEP entry reports, Ibn Arabi says in Insha' al-dawa'ir that the human being has two perfect relations: with one he enters the divine rank, with the other the cosmic rank; for this reason he is like an isthmus (barzakh) between the Real and the world, uniting and encompassing the two. In the same place the perfection of the divine is described as lying in eternity, that of the world in temporal origination, and that of the human being as unlimited in both; according to a sentence reported from Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, if the human being did not perform this mediation, the world could not receive the divine effusion because of the lack of correspondence and relation between them. As for the Lord-servant relation, the entry reports only this: the servant's right against God (his responsibility) is to accept the oneness (tawhid), while the servant's right against God in return is endless bliss. This paragraph is not Dost's word; it is the secondary literature's account. [SEP: Ibn 'Arabi]
Looking side by side
The servant's opinion and the Real's being found according to that opinion: greet each other from a distance.
What is shared: on both sides there is a bond between the "measurer" and the "measured" that is not one-directional. In Dost the hadith says that the Real is found according to the servant's opinion; in physics, in some experiments, how the measurement is made determines the result [Jacques 2007; Proietti 2019]. Where they part: it must be said plainly that what is in physics is a choice of setup, not a belief or a thought. In quantum experiments what affects the result is the setup itself, that is, a material choice; not anyone's opinion. A claim such as "thoughts are waves" or "intention changes reality" has not been measured in any source; we do not write this either, and no such conclusion should be drawn from this page. What one who looks may notice: that the sentence "the measured is not independent of the measurer" finds a place for itself in both languages. Open question: could the "opinion" in Dost be a distant relative of the "choice of setup" in physics, or are these only two separate matters that lean on the same word ("observer")?
"If He were not, we would not be; if we were not, He would not be": greet each other from a distance.
What is shared: two-way transformation. Anderson's positron brought the idea of antimatter into the laboratory; in Adam an electron-positron pair is born from light [Anderson 1933; Adam 2021]. The turning of the electron-positron pair back into light is, on the other hand, general physics knowledge. Where they part: in Dost "to be" is a relation of dependence; in physics it is a passage from one form of energy to another. In the transformation in physics both sides remain "existent"; in the dependence in Dost, without one the other too "would not be". One who looks may notice that the two-way rule is ordered in the same form in both places. Open question: are "transformation" and "mutual dependence" the same thing, or are they separate doors that can only both be called by the word "two-way"?
The leap caught halfway and turned back: we did not look at this door.
The only shared sentence is this: after a transition has begun it can turn back [Minev 2019]. In Dost the coming out is the start of the return; in physics the jump can be turned back halfway. Where they part: in Minev it is something happening within a very short time between two energy levels of an atom; in Dost it is the passage of a being from beginning to end and from there back to the beginning, a circle of ranks and states. Their scales, objects and meanings are separate; since the structure is not shared, we did not look for a mapping. Open question: does the commonality "what begins can turn back", as such a general sentence, say anything?
The Real becoming the servant's ear, eye and hand; the servant being a will-bearer within his will: we did not look at this door.
In Dost the same relation is described in two opposite directions in the words of the hadith. In Micadei heat flows, in two correlated spins, in a direction in which it normally does not [Micadei 2019]. But the structure is not shared: the reverse flow in Micadei happens thanks to the correlations between two systems and does not break the second law; the two descriptions in Dost are two separate forms of relation. Here we found no counterpart in physics and did not look for one.
Nothing-being-nothing: walk separate roads.
What is shared: on both sides a passage between "to exist" and "to cease to exist" is described. In physics a pair is born from light [Adam 2021]. In Dost, according to the section's summary, the human being is one who comes from nonexistence into existence and whose honor is seen in his return to nonexistence (c10k131). Where they part: in physics "ceasing to exist" is energy passing into another form, nothing is lost; in Dost nonexistence is described not as an energy but as a rank that knows and is honored, and transcendence (tanzih) is also counted as an attribute of nonexistence. They stand in opposite directions: one puts conservation at the center, the other the return to nonexistence. One who looks may notice that the word "ceasing to exist" is used with different meanings in the two languages. Open question: can Dost's nonexistence and physics' void (the state without energy) be called by the same word?
The speaker listens, the listener speaks: we did not look at this door.
For the exchange of roles in c14k163, the meeting of descent and ascent in c11k142, and the Lord and the servant making each other's time the other's time in c14k159, we did not look for a counterpart in physics. This aspect of time is treated on the Time form page; as for the exchange of roles, none of the sources we found offered a sufficiently solid counterpart.
The circle, the end returns to the beginning: we did not look at this door.
In Dost there is a saying "if it were a line, it would not return to where it started" (c11k140), and this "circularity" is a circle of states and ranks. In physics there are cyclic cosmologies, but these are speculative and the circle in Dost is not a physical cycle. Matching the two would have been forced; we did not do it.
Questions we are left with
- The servant's opinion of the Real determining the Real's appearance, and the measurement determining the result: are these two separate matters, or only a resemblance of words?
- "Require each other" and "turn into each other": in Dost are these two separate things or a single structure?
- In physics, does reversibility depend on a process being catchable in its middle, or can it be applied to every process?
- How close is the "two directions together" form in Dost to the idea in physics that "correlations change the direction"?
- Can the resemblances this page shows be told apart from the resemblance between any two things that are "two-way"?
What did we not do?
We did not compare Dost's sentences with the Arabic original. What we read is the site's Turkish section summary, and the quotations are given with the page numbers of the translation. This is not a reading summary but our own reading frame; we do not understand Dost, we are trying to understand.
We do not say that one thing is identical to another or that one confirms the other. In no row does Dost explain physics, nor does physics confirm Dost. The "opinion" hadith may have a distant greeting with the observer matter in physics, but the claim that thought or intention makes a physical effect has not been measured in any source; we do not write this either. The physics side is sourced, but we are not physicists.