Proceeding to Surah al-Kahf:
In the course of his wanderings Moses said to his servant, ‘I will not give up until I reach the junction of the two seas, even if I have to spend years in my quest!’
Moses is committed to cultivating a depth of understanding of esoteric truth as deep as his understanding of exoteric law. It may take a very long time for Moses to attain this goal – but then follows the next lesson, which is that of the permanence of impermanence and change!
But when they reached the junction of the two seas, the servant caught a fish, but then forgot about it. The fish then jumped back into the sea and disappeared from sight.
Who is the servant who tries so hard to catch the fish, who thinks he has found his sustenance for the day, only to have it leap back into the water? The servant is our physical nature, a nature that hungers and thirsts, that sleeps, that is driven to procreate, that is vulnerable to decay and death, that seeks companionship, and that needs to be cared for. The servant sleeps every now and then, forgetting about the source of his sustenance until he wakes again. At the same time, while he sleeps, an amazing thing happens – a fish in a basket leaps back into the sea.
After the two had walked some distance, Moses said to his servant, ‘Bring us the mid-day meal; we have indeed suffered hardship on this day of our journey!’
Master and servant, body and intellect, can go only so far together before they need to rest. Moses, human that he is, expresses his suffering, his fatigue, and requests that the servant tend to his needs. No divine rebuke comes to him for this! After all, they have traveled far and deserve the fulfillment of their needs. However, the servant by his own efforts will not be able to fulfill all of their needs at the level to which his understanding is limited.
But the servant said, ‘Can you believe this? When I sat down to rest on the rock back there, I forgot about the fish – it must have been Satan who made me forget! – and it jumped back into the sea! How strange!’
The servant is conscientious, but like any human being, including his master Moses, gets tired now and then, and dozes off. The fish gets away, and the servant, no doubt a little ashamed at what he thought was his personal failure to preserve their food, fails to tell Moses about it until they’re a little way down the road. Perhaps he would like to conceal his regrettable, though human, act of forgetfulness, just as he sought to keep the fish in the basket. But the fish escapes, hunger calls, and there is no avoiding the truth. When the servant confesses, he makes a little attempt to avoid responsibility, blaming his forgetfulness on Satan with the ancient excuse, ‘The Devil made me do it!’ He externalizes his demon of forgetfulness; but he simultaneously points to the possibility that hidden forces may have something to do with the turn of events.
Perhaps the only way to keep hold of the fish, to ensure that it never gets away, is to never sleep, never rest. But without sleep, one will surely die. All humans need at least a little sleep. If one never sleeps, one isn’t human! So, one might as well relax a little, accept the inevitability of human imperfection, and stop attributing excessive guilt to oneself.
To this, Moses exclaimed, ‘That was the place which we were seeking!’
Moses and his servant need each other. Moses is awake, though weary, and understands the significance of the fish, but cannot catch it on his own. His servant is a simple man, who has the skill to catch the fish, and the dedication to his master to catch the fish for him. However, the servant looks upon the fish as nothing but a meal. Then the servant sleeps, and even that meal is gone. Moses recognizes the symbolic value of that loss, and is thereby moved to complete a quest far more essential than lunch – a quest for guidance that cannot be obtained through physical action or intellectual effort, whether alone or in tandem.
We now learn that the servant’s forgetfulness is his destiny, and that even his supposed failure in vigilance serves a profound purpose. As long as we are in this body, every now and then, no matter how conscientious we are, we will forget about our true sustenance – that which has its source in the sea. But it’s not necessarily a disaster. That forgetfulness has the potential to be followed by a greater understanding. Even the slightest memory or hint that there might be a greater significance to our experience can move us toward a greater understanding. This is why it is said that once a person begins to walk the path of a servant of Allah (the station of Khidr) or seeker of understanding of the cosmic order (the commodity possessed by Khidr), that person is hooked like the fish and will never stop seeking. Once a powerful symbol is embedded in a person’s memory, the slightest hint of it can lead to an influential train of associations and insights. However, even though one may be fortunate enough to haul the fish up to land every now and then (or the symbol to conscious view), it will always be compelled to dive beneath the surface of the sea. If it doesn’t, it will die, and be reduced to nothing but a meal.