The Secret of Obligation

The bāb opens with the Qur'anic verse most argued over on the standing of man:

The first step is an exegetical decision, and the text presents it on the authority of predecessors:

Four words receive four glosses, and all four run the same way:

• الأمانة = تقلُّدُ عُهدةِ التكليفِ - having the charge of obligation hung about one's neck, that is, being exposed to the hazard of reward and punishment.
• عرضُها عليهنَّ = اعتبارُها بالإضافةِ إلى استعدادِهنَّ - not offering it to them, but assessing it with respect to their readiness.
• إباؤهنَّ = الإباءُ الطبيعيُّ … عدمُ اللياقةِ والاستعدادِ - a natural declining, that is, mere unfitness; no insubordination.
• حملُ الإنسانِ = قابليتُه واستعدادُه لها - the taking up is not an act either, but the having of capacity.

Now comes أقول - the word after which Shah Waliullah speaks for himself. And this is the bāb's most important step:

On a first reading the clause always sounds like reproach: "he took it up; truly he was much wronging, much ignorant" - as though man had overreached in shouldering a burden. The text says: خرجَ مخرجَ التعليلِ - the clause comes to state the reason. And then it gives the definitions on which everything rests:

• الظَلوم - one who is not just, and whose nature it is to become just.
• الجَهول - one who is not knowing, and whose nature it is to come to know.

It is the second qualification (ومن شأنِه أن يعدِلَ) that does all the work. Bare negation yields only a defect; negation joined to "nature" yields possibility. And now three kinds of being come into view:

And the footnote defines the two terms on which this stands:

The second half of the verse raises its own difficulty. Read as "so that God may punish the hypocrites", it makes punishment the purpose of having the trust borne. The text unties the knot with one term:

The lām is not of purpose but of outcome. The sense is not "it was borne in order that there be punishment" but "the outcome of bearing the trust is punishment and bliss". And here Palanpuri's footnote lifts the claim out of mere terminology into a formal argument:

m The lām must attach to some verb - there are only two possibilities, and both are closed:

1. If it attaches to ﴿عَرَضْنَا﴾ - "We offered it in order to punish" - that is to make God's act purposive, and أفعالُ اللهِ غيرُ مُعلَّلةٍ بالأغراضِ.
2. If it attaches to ﴿فحملَها الإنسانُ﴾ - "man took it up in order to be punished" - that is impossible too. For a purpose is what moves an agent to a voluntary act, and here "taking up" is no voluntary act at all - it is القابليةُ والاستعدادُ.

Now the text leaves argument for imagining - وإن شئتَ أن تستجليَ حقيقةَ الحالِ فعليك…. Two scenes are set out, so that man's place between them can be grasped. The first:

Two things deserve attention here. First: the angels' freedom from disturbance is described by reference to deficiency or excess of the animal power - hunger, thirst, fear, grief (deficiency); lust, anger, conceit (excess). That is, what shakes man is the two ends of one power. Second: تبقى فارغةً - they remain empty, and this emptiness is not a lack but their perfection, since what comes from above needs room.

The second scene is brief, and deliberately so:

The word فانيةً فيها returns - but now annihilation in the demands of nature. Both are annihilation; the direction differs: one upward, one downward. And the footnote explains that فقط:

The last gloss is familiar: إجماعٌ: عزمٌ - exactly the footnote that appeared in bāb 3 on the highest council's إجماع. Here too "consensus" is not the juristic kind but firm resolve.

Having set out both scenes the text turns to man, and states his structure:

Read the two definitions side by side and one thing opens at once: the parties are the same two. On one side the spirit proper to man, on the other the natural spirit coursing in the body. The difference is only in which way domination runs:

• Angelic - the spirit's outpouring falls upon the natural spirit, and it receives it and انقهارِها له, is subdued to it.
• Animal - the animal soul استقلالِها بنفسِها, becomes independent, and إذعانِ الروحِ الإنسانيةِ لها - the human spirit submits to it, and takes its ruling from it.

And this is not only my inference - Palanpuri's footnote translates these terms plainly into bāb 5's language:

That footnote is worth its weight in gold. الروح المخصوصة بالإنسان = bāb 5's الروح الربانية; الروح الطبيعية = bāb 5's النَّسَمة. That is, bāb 6's two powers are made, word for word, out of bāb 5's two strata, and bāb 5's closing line (the nasama's two faces) opens here into a full theory.

Then their mutual relation:

A question now forms: if a man takes the animal direction, is he abandoned? The text's answer is startlingly even-handed:

In both cases أمدَّ فيها - assistance is given; and يسَّرَ له ما يناسبُها - what suits it is made easy. Two verses are cited for this:

m الاستعدادُ الأصليُّ والكسبيُّ. Readiness is not only innate; it is also acquired. And this is what keeps the bāb clear of determinism: dispositions are "earned" (كسب), and assistance then comes according to them. So a man's entry into the order is by his own acquiring.

Every power has a pleasure and a pain attached to it, and the definition is perfectly simple:

From this a question arises: if deprivation of the angelic power is also pain, why does the one living an animal life not feel it? The answer comes by a medical image:

One who has taken an anaesthetic does not feel the scorch of the fire - the pain is there, the perceiving is suspended. Then, when the drug weakens and he returns to what nature gives, he finds the pain أشدَّ ما يكونُ, at its most severe. m: animal absorption is itself an anaesthetic, and death ends its effect.

And with it a second image, finer still:

One flower holds three powers, and each appears through one particular operation: the earthy by grinding and applying, the watery by pressing and drinking, the airy by smelling. No power was absent - but whichever operation is not performed, that power stays hidden.

Now the bāb's close, and it is the central sentence of the whole mabḥath:

Two clauses, and both turn the question around.

One - التكليفُ من مقتضياتِ النوعِ: obligation is among the demands of the human species. It is not an addition from outside but a necessary consequence of the structure man is. Two - and this goes further still: الإنسانُ يسألُ ربَّه بلسانِ استعدادِه - man petitions his Lord in the language of his own readiness that there be made obligatory upon him what suits the angelic power, and that he be rewarded for it; and that absorption in animality be forbidden him, and punished.

And here three bābs meet at one point: