The Psychological Signs

To grasp the idea of the psychological signs, we must understand the true meaning of the human soul that lives within our bodies, which is the essential component of the human being, who is made up of three components: the body, the spirit, and the soul. The psychological signs speak of the human soul and how it is affected by the whispers of Satan, which course through the soul as blood courses through the heart, by way of the black clot in our hearts that links the material body to the immaterial soul.

The human soul is the foundation of the human being, or the human being himself. It was created before we came to earthly life, and before the spirit was breathed into us while we were in our mothers’ wombs. It is the soul that thinks, rejoices, grieves, speaks, hears, enjoys, and suffers; it is the soul that worries, fears, and feels shy. The body is nothing but a special material garment, created from dust, that we wear over our souls entirely, and through which we see and hear in the material world of the earth. The spirit is what breathes life into the body we wear, just as electrical energy makes a car pulse with movement and life. Without the electrical energy in the car, it would stop moving altogether and become a piece of iron. So too with the spirit in the body: without it the body would lose life, all its cells would stop growing and moving, the heart would stop beating and the blood would stop flowing. The soul, for its part, is what rides this body and moves it by using its organs, and comes to know the material world through its five senses, just as the driver of a car controls it, sees through its headlights, moves on its wheels, and feels pain through its frame.

Modern science confirms the existence of something else inside the human body that perceives, sees, hears, grieves, and rejoices: something else, not material. It is not the eye itself that sees, and it is not the brain that perceives. The eye is a means that helps with seeing, like a car’s headlight; likewise the brain itself does not see, but is a means of analyzing the images it receives, which, after several processes, are finally turned into electrical signals. Everything that comes through our five senses is transmitted to the brain and converted into electrical signals. This is what modern science says: the images we see, the sounds we hear, the smells we smell, the foods we taste, and the materials we touch, all of it is finally transmitted to the brain, in a swift and complex way, as electrical signals that help us perceive.

But whom, precisely, do they help? Help the brain to perceive? If we analyzed the brain, we would find nothing in it but fats and proteins, and these same components are found in many other living organs. That is, in the piece of flesh we call “the brain” there is nothing that makes us see different images, or forms our consciousness, or creates in each of us the entity we call “I” or “myself”! The one who sees, hears, and perceives is the human soul.

The Types of the Human Soul

The Noble Quran speaks of three main types of human soul: the soul is either self-reproaching, or inclined to evil, or at peace. Because of the small black clot inherited in the heart, the human soul in its origin was self-reproaching. The black clot is very small at birth and grows as the person grows, and Satan cannot begin to cast his whispers until it reaches a certain size. The main cause of the black clot’s growth is carrying out the whispers and satanic commands that Satan instills in our souls, whose sole aim is to lead us away from the straight path, the path of guidance that will take us and walk us to Paradise.

For this reason Satan tries to use seven wicked means, gradually, with human souls in order to reach his goal. He begins with his first whisper, disbelief in God; if that fails, then with the second, associating partners with God; if that fails, then with the third, committing major sins; if that fails, then with the fourth, committing minor sins; then the fifth, wasting time; then the sixth, trivialities of religion; and finally the last, which is setting people against one another.

The seven ways of Satan in whispering to the human being

1. Disbelief in God
2. Associating partners with God
3. Committing major sins
4. Committing minor sins
5. Wasting time
6. Minor matters of religion
7. Setting people against one another

The strange thing is that the whispering of the devils abounds in the lands of the Muslims and diminishes, or almost vanishes, in the lands of the disbelievers and atheists. The reason is that human souls in the West have already achieved Satan’s sole aim, which is their distance from the straight path of God, so the black clot there is affected by the person’s way of life and not by the whispers of Satan, who has left them for others. In the lands of the Muslims, however, you find the soldiers of Iblis attacking us by every means. Though they failed with the first and second means, they keep butting at us with the remaining five, and the one that has most often prevailed over us is the fifth, which is wasting time!

[Satan] said, ‘Because You have put me in error, I will surely sit in wait against them on Your straight path. Then I will come to them from before them and from behind them and on their right and on their left, and You will not find most of them grateful [to You].’

Al-A‘raf 16-17

The Division of the Human Soul

The psychological signs are divided into twelve different signs, entirely different from the signs we knew before or heard about. The psychological signs are affected neither by the sun, nor by the moon, nor by any other planet or celestial star, and they are calculated neither by the month of birth, nor the year of birth, nor the day of birth. Rather, they are determined by a person’s way of life and the degree of his submission to the commands and whispers of the accursed Satan. That is why we find no special dates here for the psychological signs; rather, there are particular questions that pass between a person and himself about which of the psychological signs he currently belongs to. And what is striking about these signs is that they do not stay fixed on their owner permanently; they may change more than once as a person’s way of life changes and as his struggle with the whispers of Satan goes on!

The psychological signs have special dual names that express the groups they belong to. They begin with the first sign (the Defeated Destructive) and end with the twelfth sign (the Victorious Constructive). Each sign has its own distinctive traits, and to make these signs easier to understand they have been divided into three horizontal groups and four vertical groups. The following figure shows these groups:

As we see in the figure above, there are three horizontal groups, each containing four signs, and there are also four vertical groups, each containing three signs. They are:

The Vertical Groups

The second vertical group: (the Isolated signs):

1. The second sign: the Defeated Isolated
6. The sixth sign: the Balanced Isolated
10. The tenth sign: the Victorious Isolated

The first vertical group: (the Destructive signs):

1. The first sign: the Defeated Destructive
5. The fifth sign: the Balanced Destructive
9. The ninth sign: the Victorious Destructive

The fourth vertical group: (the Constructive signs):

4. The fourth sign: the Defeated Constructive
8. The eighth sign: the Balanced Constructive
12. The twelfth sign: the Victorious Constructive

The third vertical group: (the Dual signs):

3. The third sign: the Defeated Dual
7. The seventh sign: the Balanced Dual
11. The eleventh sign: the Victorious Dual

The Horizontal Groups

The third horizontal group: (the Victorious signs):

9. The ninth sign: the Victorious Destructive
10. The tenth sign: the Victorious Isolated
11. The eleventh sign: the Victorious Dual
12. The twelfth sign: the Victorious Constructive

The second horizontal group: (the Balanced signs):

5. The fifth sign: the Balanced Destructive
6. The sixth sign: the Balanced Isolated
7. The seventh sign: the Balanced Dual
8. The eighth sign: the Balanced Constructive

The first horizontal group: (the Defeated signs):

1. The first sign: the Defeated Destructive
2. The second sign: the Defeated Isolated
3. The third sign: the Defeated Dual
4. The fourth sign: the Defeated Constructive

The Psychological Signs and the Corruption of the Earth

To understand why these signs are given these dual names and divided into these horizontal and vertical groups, we must grasp, or picture, a particular analogy for them. It is that corruption in our present life, in its various kinds and forms, is very much like a vast blazing fire that burns every combustible thing in its path, and that human beings in this life are like firefighters, whose task by nature is to put out this vast fire: first by protecting themselves from it, and second by extinguishing any fire that surrounds them or any distant fire they are able to reach. With this analogy, God willing, we will be able to take in everything that will be explained later about the human psychological signs.

Every time they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it. And they strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters.

Al-Ma’idah 64

The psychological signs deserve to be studied and explored in depth, since they seek the true causes of the spread of corruption in our lives and try to treat that corruption with a remedy that reaches the roots of the problem and not merely its surface.

Sadly, the fires are still burning in most regions and countries. In some places we find them very strong, their flames towering; in others they are less intense and less strong! More than six billion human beings are firefighters who wish to put out this destructive fire and be rid of its flames and its fierce heat, yet they do not all work to extinguish it. Very few of them struggle hard to put it out, but to no avail! Many stand bewildered, staring at the fire, doing nothing. Others do not shield themselves with any protective garment against fires and stand amid the blaze, suffering as they burn, and even burning others with the flames of their own fire, while still others burn without knowing that they are burning.

If all the firefighters armed themselves with protective clothing and worked together to put out the fire, each according to his strength and ability, we could truly be rid of the flames of corruption spreading through our lives, and we would enjoy the fruits of peace, happiness, security, justice, freedom, dignity, honesty, and knowledge, the very same fruits we would reap if Islam were to spread! Everyone is searching for these fruits, whatever their religion and creed; each one wants to convince others, or compel them, that he is in the right and that the fruits of his creed are all of these fruits!

From the drawings that these signs reflect, we can get a clearer idea of the traits of each sign. The Constructive signs are those that try with all their effort to put out the fires of corruption they are able to reach. The Destructive signs, sadly, help the fire spread and burn everyone they meet along the way! The Isolated signs, who are sadly the vast majority of people, are those that stand apart and do not try by any means to help put out the fires surrounding them; most of them believe their thinking is right in keeping away from the fire, because they have no experience in fighting fires and do not even think of learning how. The Dual signs are strange by nature, because they are beneficial in that they help put out fires, while at the same time, with the other hand, they help the fire grow from the opposite side. They are beneficial to humanity if their power to extinguish is greater than their power to burn; if the opposite is true, they are very harmful, just like the Destructive signs!

We also notice from the drawings of these signs that some firefighters cover their whole bodies with protective clothing, some cover half of their bodies, and others cover their bodies with no protective clothing against the fire at all! The reason for this lies in the struggle of these signs with the whispering of the accursed Satan, whose whispers course through our souls as blood courses through the heart. The more a person purifies his heart of the traces of the black clot found in our hearts, the closer he comes to the group of Victorious signs and the better he is shielded from fires by wearing the special protective clothing; and the more the black clot in the heart grows, becoming fouler and blacker, the closer the owner of that heart comes to the Defeated signs and the less shielded he is from the fires around him. In most human beings, though, the soul is originally self-reproaching and its struggle with Satan’s whispers is evenly matched: at times it triumphs over those whispers, and at other times they triumph over it, and it feels the sting of conscience and regret. That is why it wears only half protective clothing against the fires, for sometimes it is scorched by the fire and sometimes it stands up to it.

But seek, through that which Allah has given you, the home of the Hereafter; and [yet], do not forget your share of the world. And do good as Allah has done good to you. And desire not corruption in the land. Indeed, Allah does not like corrupters.

Al-Qasas 77

The Defeated signs are so called because they were defeated by Satan through his wicked whispering, which made the black clot large in the human soul.

The first horizontal group: (the Defeated signs):

1. The first sign: the Defeated Destructive
2. The second sign: the Defeated Isolated
3. The third sign: the Defeated Dual
4. The fourth sign: the Defeated Constructive

The Balanced signs are so called because they are evenly matched with Satan: at times they overcome Satan and at other times Satan overcomes them, so we find the black clot in them medium in size.

The second horizontal group: (the Balanced signs):

5. The fifth sign: the Balanced Destructive
6. The sixth sign: the Balanced Isolated
7. The seventh sign: the Balanced Dual
8. The eighth sign: the Balanced Constructive

The Victorious signs are so called because they have defeated the whispers of Satan, so we find no clear trace of the black clot in the human soul.

The third horizontal group: (the Victorious signs):

9. The ninth sign: the Victorious Destructive
10. The tenth sign: the Victorious Isolated
11. The eleventh sign: the Victorious Dual
12. The twelfth sign: the Victorious Constructive

The Destructive signs are so called because they tear down in life and do not build; they are the main cause of corruption on earth.

The first vertical group: (the Destructive signs):

1. The first sign: the Defeated Destructive
5. The fifth sign: the Balanced Destructive
9. The ninth sign: the Victorious Destructive

The Isolated signs are so called because they are isolated in life, neither building nor tearing down; they and their own small world are one on the earth.

The second vertical group: (the Isolated signs):

1. The second sign: the Defeated Isolated
6. The sixth sign: the Balanced Isolated
10. The tenth sign: the Victorious Isolated

The Dual signs are so called because they are dual in their actions in life: they build and tear down at the same time.

The third vertical group: (the Dual signs):

3. The third sign: the Defeated Dual
7. The seventh sign: the Balanced Dual
11. The eleventh sign: the Victorious Dual

The Constructive signs are so called because they are constructive in their actions in life: they build on the earth and set it right, and try to put an end to the corruption of the earth.

The fourth vertical group: (the Constructive signs):

4. The fourth sign: the Defeated Constructive
8. The eighth sign: the Balanced Constructive
12. The twelfth sign: the Victorious Constructive