What do most people say they want?They say they want the Truth.In Arabic the word is “Haqq” and it refers to both Truth and Reality.Epistemology is the science of accessing that Reality.From there,everything becomes possible! Without it,everything is meaningless!

Most modern people have been trained to think that the way to knowledge is to accumulate data and then analyze it logically.I like to call that the “Aristotelian Approach”I have found that way to be inefficient,defective and misleading .Watch the justice system operate if you don’t believe me.

So what do we learn from Sufism and Islam about this question?As I see it, there are three principal doors to knowledge-the deeper knowledge and the one that counts ultimately.

The first is the opening of the heart.We are talking here about the subtle heart -not the one of gross feelings like anger an d sadness and even joy.I won’t address the question of love for now as that can be very confusing and misleading lol.

The second  is seeing”basirat’-the inner vision.Once that is developed we can see the inner aspect of what is going on-the good and the evil of it,the sincerity and the hypocrisy,the darkness and the light.

And finally the the third is  hearing and developing ‘the ear of truth’ the entity that  hears ‘the sound of truth’.When we hear that, we have to act on the truth we hear.(Remember the sequential formula-ilm(knowledge),amal(action) then hal(state).Without the knowledge ,there is no proper action. Without the action,there is no change in state!Our nafs will surely object but our hearts will say ‘yes!’

Now the Quran tells us about this.It talks about “those whose hearts are sealed” and those who are “deaf,blind and dumb”.And we can understand that this is not outer blindness nor outer deafness but rather the inner senses.If our hearts are sealed and we are blind and deaf,we will surely make wrong decisions and that is what we see all around us.

Is there a corrective?Yes,there is.It is spiritual practice beginning with what is obligatory in our religion and proceeding to dhikr and wird and listening to wise ones and opening our hearts to the hidden and the invisible.There is no other way! Reason will not get us there.Psychotherapy will not get us there.Motivators like Antony Robbins and Steven Covey will not get us there!

Only proper spiritual practice and virtuous ways will get us there.For then, as a reward,Allah will cleanse our hearts to feel properly, clear our vision- to see what is real- and remove the ‘wax’ from our inner ears so we can hear ‘the ring of Truth’ when it chimes.

 

As I pursue my path and observe others, I see clearly that most people,no matter what I or other mystics say,still trust their minds(ideas and feelings) and act accordingly.Although this is instinctive,it is a serious error!A couple of quotes, from non-religious people, are in order: “The right answer is often the opposite of the instinctive one”-Clint Eastwood-“The Million-Dollar Baby. “All your problems come from the same place.You believe the contents of your own mind”Byron Katie. So what are the alternatives.

The first two alternatives to “mind productions” are very difficult for modern people.The first is to tap into the will of God.Not an easy matter.Most people are so stuck in their own will and desires that the true will of God is completely obscured.Many do not even accept the idea that God has Will.

The second alternative is to trust in an intermediary like a Prophet or a sheikh or a guru.Once again the modern mind is trained to rebel against authority and to want to be independent,autonomous,”free”.

For these reasons I will suggest a third method -despite knowing full well the actual resistance I will encounter-the Scientific Method.Yes,that’s right-the scientific method,the real one! That involves real observation and experimentation and genuine conclusions-not statistical analysis,demographics and peer-reviewed journals.Observation and experimentation.Simple as that.Simple but deep!

I’ll give you a concrete example.When I first started to learn about the Islamic Istikhara practice,I did an experiment.I took 10 decisions I had to make.Then I analyzed the data I had,did some research on the subject and some thinking and came to a conclusion.After that I did the Istikhara practice.And then I followed the situation to its inevitable conclusion.My analytic decision was wrong 8/10 times! That’s right-I was one out of five -a 20% success rate.And I believe I’m reasonably good  at that process.So all those wonderful decisions you make-are most probably wrong!

The Istikhara(it must be properly interpreted of course,which is another science) was inevitably right.When it wasn’t,it was due to misinterpretation!

Really folks,your whole process of making decisions is flawed!The one they taught you in school doesn’t work! Just look around you if you don’t believe me lol.You can observe it yourself.Admittedly,this takes deep observation and humility..It also takes a true open mind.

Medical Epistemology:I guess philosophy is important after all lol.My two favourite terms these days are Epistemology and Empiricism and its sister Philosophical Materialism.So my apologies to Wittgenstein and John Stuart Mills after all lol.

So( not supposed to use that word according to current anal grammarians .Another form of political correctness-this time in the  world of grammar.).And yet(probably also banned as a term lol) it is SO useful .Maybe that’s why they want to ban it! (the conspiratorial epistemology-to be unveiled shortly).So,I repeat,the current pandemic gives us a chance to examine different forms of Epistemology.Epistemology basically means “how do you get to the Truth,The Realty of any situation or question?”(same word btw in Arabic-Truth and Reality=Haqq!)

So let us examine four forms of Epistemology as applied to the Covid pandemic and  try to see their relative value.I will personalize these approaches in order to make the point more vividly and graspable.

1. The Didier Raoult paradigm-information on the ground.For those that don’t know this fascinating character from Marseilles,he is one of the first doctors to promote hydroxychloriquine as a Covid treatment-mostly based on his clinical experience at a hospital in Marseilles.He even took the trouble to document his cases and show that at his clinic ,they had reduced the death rate by about 70% by this approach.Further studies done in the right way,using HCT early in the illness with azithromycin and Zinc came to similar conclusions-anywhere from a 60-80% reduction! All of this based on examining the facts on the ground.This principle is applicable to many other situations .Ask the people who are there experiencing it.But no! The current Epistemological paradigm forbids this! It is dismissed either as “subjective” or “anecdotal” or some other disparaging term.         I was pleased to hear from my brother in NYC whose future son-in-law was himself working on the ground in a Brooklyn hospital where the doctors noticed that HCT was useful early in the illness and they were not even using it with antibiotics and zinc! But no,the CDC and WHO will hear nothing of this .They need their prospective, double-blind ,placebo-controlled peer-reviewed (i.e. non-existent studies) lol to arrive at conclusions.)
2. The Chris Martenson (peakprosperity.com) paradigm.Unlike the former paradigm  Chris is working from outside the battlefield.But he uses the on the ground workers as one source amongst others.Then he interviews people who have experienced the illness(how strange and unscientific lol!),looks at the research including the less high-profile journals and the non-statistical scientific reports.He scours the newspapers,TV Cable News and radio reports.From this vast array of sources he is able to discern the chaff from the wheat, pick out the B.S. even in hot-shot journals like Lancet and JAMA and then come to conclusions.He is almost invariably right and when he isn’t, he admits it.   Oddly enough I have seen judges in the courts using a very similar process of teasing out the reality from an abundance of sources.And in my experience, they consistently understand the Reality better than the “expert doctors” who are supposed to be the  experts in the area! That is because the doctors are using the next paradigm-the Fauci approach lol
3.  The Fauci and his acolyte Sanjay Gupta approach- also known as current scientific consensus.These people only believe in peer-reviewed,placebo-controlled,double blind prospective studies and Cochrane database metastudies and official organizations like WHO and FDA and CDC..They are very often wrong as has been Fauci all along in this pandemic.He got the mask issue wrong(not enough studies?!)the hydroxychloroquine issue wrong(looking at the wrong studies and ignoring the right ones) and the man-made nature of the virus(how he could get that one wrong is beyond me as HE was instrumental in creating it!). The problem is that most medical personnel and certainly the formal afore-mentioned institutions(WHO,FDA,CDC,NIH) are all using that paradigm! No wonder we are in such confusion and such trouble.
4. I can’t complete this abbreviated list of Epistemological approaches without mentioning the Brian Rose,Sayer Ji Plandemic conspiratorial epistemology.These people see the lies and the deceptions of the official stories of government and health institutions but go way beyond the facts into paranoid projections.So the fact that there was a 201 Event meeting of government and public health officials and businessmen organized by John’s Hopkins University  in October 2019 that simulated a pandemic to try to develop strategies to deal with such an event means for them that the pandemic was planned.Wrong! The fact that the Wuhan lab was under the control of the Chinese military means that this virus was a bio-weapon of war.Wrong again. The fact that Bill Gates screwed up with vaccines in India and Africa means that he is trying to depopulate the world so that he can better control it.Anyone with familiarity with the paranoid mind-set(I was a psychiatrist for 45 years lol) can recognize the cognitive errors in these kinds of distortions and projections.On top of it,they may be dangerous as they stir up unnecessary fear and anger in a situation where there is enough realistic fear and anger to go around already!
5. Btw, each of these types of Epistemology can be used in many other areas of life as well.As I have indicated in other articles on this blogsite-which you are free to explore.In fact,I consider myself to be an Epistemologist of Spiritual Reality and Truth.              In summary.we have all been conditioned and brain-washed into a form of Epistemology that is seriously flawed.Either we believe what the authorities tell us(Big Mistake!) or we over-use our minds and come to logical but wrong conclusions.We need to cleanse our hearts and ears and eyes to perceive correctly.And that requires a lot of inner work! God be with you.Salaams,Sufi Ibrahim