My Thoughts on a Hayy Ibn Yaqzan Image

 To preface, this is a long image. Sorry. 

“Imagine a child, growing up in a certain city, born blind, but otherwise intelligent and well endowed, with a sound memory and an apt mind. Through his remaining channels of perception he will get to know the people as well as all sorts of animals and objects, and the stress and alleys, houses and markets–eventually well enough to walk through the city without a guide, recognizing at once everyone he meets. But colors, and colors alone, he will know only by descriptive explanations and ostensive definitions. Suppose after had gone this far his eyesight was restored and he could see. He would walk all through the town finding nothing in contradiction to what he had believed, nor would anything look wrong to him. The colors he encountered would conform to the guidelines that had been sketched out for him. Still there would be two great changes, the second dependent on the first: first the

daybreak on a new visual world, and second, his great joy” (Tufayl 97).

To me this whole image is an embodiment of the religious experience and essentially what I predict the point of the story will be about. Those of us who have not had a “religious experience” are the blind boy. We walk around understanding all that we see, but we are missing a crucial sense. We hear descriptions of what it means to be enlightened and religious, but without experiencing it for ourselves the descriptions are somewhat pointless. If we then did have our religious experience, the world would not change. We would still see the same things, but just with a new enlightened understanding. We would feel great joy and perhaps a sense of purpose with our new found outlook on our world. I predict that Hayy goes through this process in the story. I would also like to explain in better detail what I mean by a religious experience as it is something that we have discussed in my current religion class and I find it to be very interesting. I am not religious; I am an atheist. But religious experiences, surprisingly, are not just for those who are religious. A religious experience is an acknowledgement of there being something bigger than you out there in the world. It is a combination of the feelings of mystery, terror, and joy. You somehow comprehend that there is more to the universe out there that you cannot and will not understand. The power of this unknown force causes terror, but the fact that you are alive and the comfort in the insignificance of your life in comparison to this force makes you feel joy.