Formation of thoughts

Formation of thoughts

by: Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford

Thoughts are formed independently of reason and before they are articulated in some form of language. Thoughts arise out of empathy of fellow feeling with some outside entity such as another person, or animal, or natural object like a tree or mountain, or a combination of these in a situation or scene.
The most important thought that forms in the mind or the heart before it is capable of being reasoned or articulated is thought about God. Examples are the feeling that later emerges in questions like what is my life for, why does the world exist, why there is death. Such feeling is essentially an enquiry, the most primitive form of prayer. Necessarily God responds to this prayer with some form of inspiration or revelation.
As human thinking and speaking develops in the society, there is a clear understanding of human ability to make some sense of what is real, but not complete sense, some ability to control some events but not all, some ability to experience and celebrate the diversity and utility of life, but with the strong sense that the whole of it cannot be experienced or celebrated. This feeling is accompanied by the need to believe that there is a higher being, higher than man to whom all matters are clear through all of time.
It needs further intuition or direct revelation to understand why and how the scope and the limitations of all human abilities express the care of the Creator.