Who Holds the Scale?

This book is the sixth in the six-book Balance series: Measure · The Human · Breaking · Meaning · Life · Center. It is the last book of the series; it refers to the five books before it.

The subject who measures

Throughout the five books of the Balance series we have always looked at the scale. At the Mizan in the heavens, at the pans within the human being, at the broken balance, at the subtleties of Sufism, at the small weighings of everyday life. But we kept putting off one question: who holds the scale?

Every measurement has someone who measures. A thermometer measures temperature, but an eye is needed to read the thermometer. A clock shows the time, but without someone looking at the clock, it is only a turning mechanism. Measure gains meaning together with the one who measures.

When a person seeks balance, he focuses so much on what he seeks that he forgets the seeker. This last book turns the gaze away from the pans of the scale toward the hand that holds the scale. And then toward the heart behind that hand.

Can a person be his own measure?

In ancient Greece there is a famous sentence belonging to Protagoras. It is reported in Plato's dialogue "Theaetetus": "Man is the measure of all things." The measure of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.

This sentence seems to grant the human being great worth. But a danger hides within it. If every person is his own measure, no one can be mistaken. And if no one can be mistaken, no one can learn either. Everyone weighs with his own scale, and every scale vindicates its own pan.

We saw in the book Measure: the Mizan was sent down to the human being. It is not something man invented, but something entrusted to him. A person uses the measure, but does not create it. The one who measures with a ruler does not decide the ruler's centimeter himself. If he did, every measurement would change according to his whim.

A person cannot be his own measure. But neither can he escape measuring himself. In the book The Human we spoke of "the self that reproaches itself." A person weighs himself. But with what measure? The one who weighs with his own measure always comes out right. The one who weighs with the true measure finds himself a little lacking each time, and this lack keeps him walking.

Self and awareness

The eye sees everything but cannot see itself. To see itself, it needs a mirror. The self is the same. It sees the world, judges others, weighs events; but to see itself it needs a mirror.

Our Prophet says, "The believer is the mirror of the believer." (Abu Dawud, Adab 49) A brother's eye shows the stain that a person cannot see himself. But the mirror too has a limit. A mirror shows only the face. It does not show the heart.

We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves, until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.

Fussilat 41:53 (meaning)

And within yourselves too there are signs. Do you still not see?

Adh-Dhariyat 51:21 (meaning)

Awareness is a person's being able to look within himself as at a sign. As if watching his thoughts, his feelings, his desires before a mirror. In this gaze a person notices something: the one who looks and the one looked at are not the same. There is a self that grows angry, and another that notices that anger. The second lies deeper than the first.

In Sufism there is an often-repeated saying: "Whoever knows himself knows his Lord." This saying is not found in an authentic source as a hadith. But its meaning has lived for centuries in the language of the knowers of God. When a person looks deeply into himself, he arrives at something greater than himself. Behind the hand that holds the scale, another hand that holds that hand.