Though I had extensively covered this in The Mystery of Man, due to its importance I want to talk about the necessity of dhikr here also.

Let it be known without doubt that religion is a symbolic narration founded completely upon scientific principles.

All laws and regulations in the religion of Islam – the Quran and hadith – have come to provide the necessities of both this life and the afterlife. When man complies with these proposed laws, he will be protected from many things that may harm him in the future. Man’s life is structured by way of the brain. Everything that transpires from man is by way of his brain. In fact, even the ‘spirit,’ which is the body of the afterlife, is uploaded by the brain!

The meanings denoted by the Names of Allah become manifest in the human brain. Man’s consciousness may only know and attain certainty (yakeen) of Allah dependent on the capacity of his brain. This being the case, to understand the importance of dhikr, we must first grasp how the brain works and what kind of activity takes place in the brain during the practice of dhikr.

The brain is an organic structure composed of billions of cells that produce bioelectrical energy. It then converts this into radial energy and uploads the meanings that form within itself to the structure we call the spirit, while also emanating it to its surrounding. Generally, the brain works at an efficiency level in the single digits due to the influences it receives at inception. For this reason, most people that we know will have a ‘typical’ existence.

But this capacity can be increased!

The importance of dhikr was already explained in the world of science ten years before I provided information regarding this topic. The excerpts below prove my point:

From an article titled, ‘The West was Late to Discover the Power of Dhikr!’ in the 1994 publication of the Turkish Magazine NOKTA.^[1]

Did you the know the views by John Horgan published in the January 1994 edition of the Scientific American under the article named, ‘Fractured Functions’ was initially expressed by Ahmed Hulusi in 1986?

It seems we still need time to get over our inferiority complex when it comes to scientific discoveries. Instead of taking heed of the view of Turkey’s own thinkers, we wait for the notion to gain credibility in the Western world. And sometimes we encounter surprising coincidences, as with the Ahmed Hulusi example.

In his article ‘Fractured Functions’, John Horgan explores the answer for the question, ‘Does the brain have a supreme integrator?’ and presents various theories based on certain experiments conducted in 1993. However, Ahmed Hulusi seems to have already answered this question in 1986 in his books, ‘The Mystery of Man – In the Light of Religion and Science’ and ‘The Power of Prayer – The Art of Channeling Brainwaves through Dhikr’.

In his article John Horgan talks about an experiment where volunteers are given a list of nouns and are asked to read these nouns aloud, proposing a verb for each noun they read. For example, when reading the noun ‘dog,’ the verb ‘bark’ may be suggested. This experiment showed increased neural activity in different regions of the brain, but when the task was repeated with the same list a number of times the neural activity shifted to other regions of the brain. When the volunteers were given a new list of nouns the activity was seen to increase again and shift back to the first areas.

In his book, ‘Mystery of Man’ written in 1986, under the chapter titled, ‘Dhikr: The Most Important Practice in the World’, Ahmed Hulusi says the following in regards to this topic:

“Of the human brain, comprised of approximately 14 billion cells, only a very small region becomes activated with the rays it receives during birth. After this, new exterior effects cannot bring about new activations. External effects after birth cannot activate new cell groups in the brain. It can only enhance the capacity determined at birth. But this does not necessarily mean the inactivated regions of the brain are meant to remain inert forever.

When you say the word ‘Allah’ for example, a flow of bioelectrical energy occurs among the cell groups that correspond to the meaning of this name. Essentially, all functions in the brain are merely bioelectrical activities among various cell groups. Different cell groups are involved in this bioelectrical flow depending on different meanings. Resultantly, innumerous meanings are spawned from the dynamics of this activity…”

In his article ‘Fractured Functions’ John Horgan refers to the same topic in the following way:

“The experiment suggests that one part of the brain handles the short-term memory requiring verbal invention and another part takes over once the task has become automatic. In other words, memory might be subdivided not only according to its content, but also according to its function.”

Ahmed Hulusi’s answer to this, again from the Mystery of Man, is as follows:

“When one does dhikr, that is, when one repeats a word whose meaning is known to pertain to Allah, a bioelectrical flow takes place in the brain, which then gets uploaded to one’s magnetic body in the form of a type of energy. When one continues to repeat this word and thus the meaning that correlates to it, the bioelectrical flow is strengthened and begins to spread to other cells nearby, hence increasing one’s brain capacity.”

As a result, we have two sources of information in regards to the science of dhikr. One shared by Ahmed Hulusi in 1986, and one shared eight years after by John Horgan in an internationally well known science magazine. Before we grip onto what the West has to say about this, I suggest we re-read the works of Ahmed Hulusi.

The following is an excerpt from John Horgan’s article ‘Fractured Funcions’ in the December 1993 edition of Scientific American.

Fractured Functions

Does the brain have a supreme integrator?

The brain, as depicted by modern neuroscience, resembles a hospital in which specialization has been carried to absurd lengths. In the language wing of the brain, some neurons are trained to handle only proper nouns, others only verbs with irregular endings. In the visual-cortex pavilion, one set of neurons is dedicated to orange-red colors, another to objects with high-contrast diagonal edges and still another to objects moving rapidly from left to right.

The question is how the fragmentary work of these highly specialized parts is put together again to create the apparent unity of perception and thought that constitutes the mind. This puzzle, known as the binding problem, has loomed ever larger as experiments have revealed increasingly finer subdivisions of the brain.

Some theorists have suggested that the different components of perceptions funnel into “convergent zones,” where they become integrated. Among the most obvious candidates for convergent zones are regions of the brain that handle short-term, or “working,” memories so that they can be quickly accessed for a variety of tasks. Yet two different sets of experiments done this year—one in which monkeys were monitored by electrodes and the other in which humans were scanned with positron emission tomography (PET)—show that the parts of the brain that cope with working memory are also highly specialized.

The monkey experiments were performed by Fraser A. W. Wilson, Séamas P. Ó Scalaidhe and Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic of the Yale University School of Medicine. The workers trained the monkeys to accomplish two tasks requiring working memory. In one task, each monkey stared at a fixed point in the middle of a screen while a square flashed into view at another location on the screen. Several seconds after the square disappeared, the monkey would direct its gaze to the spot where the square had been.

The other task required storing information about the content of an image rather than its location. The investigators flashed an image in the center of the screen. Each monkey was trained to wait until the object had disappeared and then turn its eyes left or right, depending on what type of object it had observed. Electrodes monitored the firing of neurons in the monkey’s prefrontal cortex, a sheet of tissue that cloaks the top of the brain and has been implicated in mental activities requiring working memory.

In each test, a set of neurons started firing as soon as the image flashed on the screen and remained active until the task had been completed. But the “where” test activated neurons in one region of the prefrontal cortex, whereas the “what” test activated neurons in an adjacent but distinct region. “The prefrontal cortex has always been thought of as a region where information converges and is synthesized for purposes of planning, thinking, comprehension and intention,” Goldman-Rakic says. “We’ve shown that this area is just as compartmentalized as the sensory and motor regions.”

Complementary findings described this year by investigators at Washington University have emerged from PET scans of humans. (PET measures neural activity indirectly by tracking changes in blood flow in subjects injected with a short-lived radioactive tracer.) In the experiments, volunteers were provided with a list of nouns. They were required to read the nouns aloud, one by one, and to propose for each noun a related verb. On reading the noun “dog,” for example, the volunteer might suggest the related verb “bark.”

When the subjects first did this task, several distinct parts of the brain, including parts of the prefrontal and cingulate cortex, displayed increased neural activity. But if the volunteers repeated the task with the same list of nouns several times, the activity shifted to different regions. When the volunteers were given a fresh list of nouns, the neural activity increased and shifted back to the first areas again.

The experiment suggests that one part of the brain handles the short-term memory requiring verbal invention and that another part takes over once the task has become automatic. In other words, memory might be subdivided not only according to its content but also according to its function. “Our results are consistent with Goldman-Rakic’s ideas,” comments Steven E. Petersen, a member of the Washington University team.

So how do all the specialists of the brain manage to work together so smoothly? Are their activities coordinated by a central once or through some form of distributed network? Petersen favors “a localized region or a small number of localized regions,” where perceptions, memories and intentions are integrated. Goldman-Rakic is leaning toward a nonhierarchical model in which “separate but equal partners are interconnected, communicating with each other.”

Larry R. Squire, a memory researcher at the University of California at San Diego, thinks the binding problem may take many years to solve. He concedes that “we still don’t really have a clue” as to what the binding mechanism is. But he is hopeful that the answer will inevitably emerge, given the rapid advances in techniques for studying the brain—including microelectrodes, noninvasive imaging technologies (such as PET and magnetic resonance imaging) and computers, which can help make coherent models out of empirical data. “We need it all,” Squire says. —John Horgan^[2]

Therefore, since only a very small percentage of the brain is employed while a large part of brain capacity remains unused, dhikr allows the activation of this larger percentage.

The bioelectrical energy produced in specific regions in the brain via dhikr spreads to other regions and activates the dormant cells, thereby increasing brain activity. Whatever dhikr is about, the frequency corresponding to that meaning is emanated to the cells and thus brain capacity relevant to that particular meaning is increased.

For example, when one does dhikr with the name Mureed, which is the name that references the will of Allah, the dormant cells in the person’s brain become programmed with the vibration of the frequency of this name, and thus in a short time, the person’s willpower is strengthened and things that were previously impossible to achieve become possible. Here, I would like to make note of an important point: Each brain has a unique make-up and so, when doing dhikr of the Names of Allah, it is important to obtain information from a learned person. Doing dhikr without such guidance can inadvertently lead to engaging in the kind of dhikr incited by the jinn, hence unconsciously surrendering the self to them. This is why some saints have said, “Satan will be the guide of the one who does not have a guide.”

To recap, unprogrammed brain cells can be programmed in accord with the meaning of the word that is repeated during dhikr to reach a desired result and strengthen and increase brain power and capacity.

Some may ask, “If dhikr is such a powerful tool, why hasn’t the world of Islam produced an extraordinary brain as yet, why do all advancements stem from the West, from among non-Muslims?”

The answer is quite simple, at least for someone who knows its technique and procedure… Allow me to share the technique of dhikr with you, which was inspired to me as the favor of Allah and with the guidance of the Rasul of Allah (saw)…

 

Ahmed Hulusi

1989