Be patient with me. These are only my thoughts at this point in time.
[16:49]: And to Allah doth obeisance all that is in the heavens and on earth, whether moving (living) creatures or the angels: for none are arrogant (before their Lord).
We all obey God whether we like it or not. We obey Him by being subject to the laws of nature, implemented by Him. For instance, if I jump off the 50th floor, my body will go *splat* and I will die. It's maybe not very obvious to everyone, but indirectly, I am obeying God. There's no chance that I will survive. Same, if I jump off a cliff, and my body touches the ground, I WILL die.
Now maybe that's the true meaning of "controller". In this example, it would be the controller of Gravity and the controller of Death, who took action. As the Qur'an says, they cannot disobey God. Literally. They don't have the choice.
Also, in another thread, I suggested that the two "controllers" who are supposedly writing down all our good deeds, bad deeds and our thoughts may just be another allusion to our brain: the right side and the left side. (You may find the thread here:
http://free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9597444.msg215276#msg215276). This idea brought me to the conclusion that the controllers definitely affect the way our body works. It is through them that God makes our heart beat, our lungs breathe, our feet walk. They are the signs of God's infinite power, and through them, He intervenes in the world.
From what I've understood, God did ask the controllers to bow to mankind, but the jinn didn't. You will understand why.
God says that the jinn are "creatures with free will". This means that they can make decisions, plan, act. In addition, God says that each one of us has a qareen from among the jinn. In other words, we all have this creature within us, who has his own free will, who can make decision, plan, act. I'm not going to go all "psychological" on you now, but have any of you heard the theory of the id, the ego and the super-ego?
Go on wikipedia. This is the explanation it gives of the id: "The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, water, sex, and basic impulses. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure?pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and will not take "no" for an answer. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or "instinctive drive to create".
What's even more interesting is that Freud describes the id, as being "the dark, inaccessible part of our personality".
It is too long to explain my theory about how the human being (ego) must battle with his jinn (id) to reach peace and submission (super-ego), but I do want to add something. I think that it is only when man battles his jinn that he can reach submission. Okay, this is weird. I just noticed that Submission (Islam) can mean submission of the human being to God, but also submission of the id to the ego. Oh my God... I'll be right back. I need to think.
Peace,
Muse