It is a Scientific Fact That We Only Confront a Copy of The World in Our Brains
We acknowledge that all the individual features of the world are experienced through our sense organs. The information that reaches us through those organs is converted into electrical signals, and the individual parts of our brain analyze and process these signals. After this interpreting process takes place inside our brain, we will, for example, see a book, taste a strawberry, smell a flower, feel the texture of a silk fabric or hear leaves shaking in the wind.
We have been taught that we are touching the cloth outside of our body, reading a book that is 30 cm (1 ft) away from us, smelling the trees that are far away from us, or hearing the shaking of the leaves that are far above us. However, this is all in our imagination. All of these things are happening within our brains.
At this point we encounter another surprising fact; that there are, in fact, no colors, voices or visions within our brain. All that can be found in our brains are electrical signals. This is not a philosophical speculation. This is simply a scientific description of the functions of our perceptions. In her book Mapping The Mind, Rita Carter explains the way we perceive the world as follows:
Each one [of the sense organs] is intricately adapted to deal with its own type of stimulus: molecules, waves or vibrations. But the answer does not lie here, because despite their wonderful variety, each organ does essentially the same job: it translates its particular type of stimulus into electrical pulses. A pulse is a pulse is a pulse. It is not the colour red, or the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth—it is a bit of electrical energy. Indeed, rather than discriminating one type of sensory input from another, the sense organs actually make them more alike.All sensory stimuli, then enter the brain in more or less undifferentiated form as a stream of electrical pulses created by neurons firing, domino-fashion, along a certain route. This is all that happens. There is no reverse transformer that at some stage turns this electrical activity back into light waves or molecules. What makes one stream into vision and another into smell depends, rather, on which neurons are stimulated.1
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We live our entire life within our brain. The people that we see, the flowers we smell, the music we listen to, the fruits we taste, the wetness we feel on our hand… We know all of these in the form they appear in our brains. In reality, neither colors, nor sounds, nor images exist in our brain. The only things that exist in the brain are electric signals. This means that we live in a world formed by the electric signals in our brain. This is not an opinion or a hypothesis, but the scientific explanation of how we perceive the world.
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In other words, all of our feelings and perceptions about the world (smells, visions, tastes etc.) are comprised of the same material, that is, electrical signals. Moreover, our brain is what makes these signals meaningful for us, and interprets these signals as senses of smell, taste, vision, sound or touch. It is a stunning fact that the brain, which is made of wet meat, can know which electrical signal should be interpreted as smell and which one as vision, and can convert the same material into different senses and feelings.
Let us now consider our sense organs, and how each one perceives the world.
It's Not Our Eyes That See, It is Our Brain
Because of the indoctrination that we receive throughout our lives, we imagine that we see the whole world with our eyes. Eventually, we usually conclude that our eyes are the windows that open up to the world. However, science shows us that we do not see through our eyes. The millions of nerve cells inside the eyes are responsible for sending a message to the brain, as if down a cable, in order to make "seeing" happen. If we analyze the information we learned in high school, it becomes easier for us to understand the reality of vision.
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Everything We See and Own is Actually an Image That is Formed in Our Brains
A person watching a small child playing with a ball is actually not seeing him with his or her eyes. Eyes are only responsible for delivering light to the back of the eyes. When light reaches the retina, an upside-down and two-dimensional view of the child is formed on the retina. Subsequently this view of the child is converted into an electric current, which is then transmitted to the visual center at the back of the brain, where the child's figure is seen perfectly in three dimensions. Who then sees the child's figure in three dimensions with perfect clarity at the back of the brain? Clearly, the entity we are dealing with is the Soul, which is a being beyond the brain.
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The light reflecting off an object passes through the lens of the eye and causes an upside-down image on the retina at the back of the eyeball. After some chemical operations carried out by retinal rods and cones, this vision becomes an electrical impulse. This impulse is then sent through connections in the nervous system to the back of the brain. The brain converts this flow into a meaningful, three-dimensional vision.
All The Things We See and Own are Actually Images That Have Been Formed in Our Brains
When a person rubs his eye, he sees the image of his car moving up and down. This is proof that the observer is seeing not the actual car itself, but its image in his brain.
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For example, when you watch children playing in a park, you are not seeing the children and the park with your eyes, because the image of this view forms not before your eyes, but at the back of your brain.
Even though we have given a simple explanation, in reality the physiology of vision is an extraordinary operation. Without fail, light is converted into electrical signals, and, subsequently, these electrical signals reveal a colorful, shining, three-dimensional world. R. L. Gregory, in his book Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, acknowledges this significant fact, and explains this incredible structure:
We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle.2
All of these facts lead to the same conclusion. Throughout our lives, we always assume that the world exists outside of us. However, the world is within us. Although we believe that the world lies outside us, it is in the smallest part of our brain. For example, the CEO of a company might consider that he has direct contact with the external existence of the company building, his car in the parking lot, his house by the beach, his yacht, and all the people who work for him, his lawyers, his family, and his friends. However, he merely confronts images of all of these things formed in his skull, in a tiny part of his brain. He never knows the actual of the matter in the outside world.
He is unaware of this fact and, even if he knew, would not bother to think about it. If he stood proudly next to his latest-model luxury car, and the wind blew a piece of dust or a small object into his eye, he might gently scratch his itching, open eye and notice that the "material things" he saw moved upside down or to the sides. He might then realize that material things seen in the environment are not stable.
What this demonstrates is that every person throughout his or her life witnesses everything inside their brain and cannot reach the specific material objects that supposedly cause their experiences. The images we see are copies in our brains of the objects that exist outside of us. We can never know the originals of these copies.
Although German psychiatry professor Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a materialist, he acknowledges this fact about scientific reality:
No matter how we put the argument, the result doesn't change. What stands before us in full shape and what our eyes view is not the "world". It is only its image, a resemblance, a projection whose association with the original is open to discussion.3
For example, when you take a look at the room in which you are sitting, what you see is not the room outside of you, but a copy of the room that exists in your brain. You will never be able to see the original room with your sense organs.
How can a bright and colorful image appear in your dark brain?
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In the Darkness of Our Brains We See a Bright World
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There is another point that should not be neglected; light cannot pass through the skull. The physical area in which the brain is located is completely dark, and light cannot possibly penetrate it. However, incredible as it may seem, it is possible to observe a bright and colorful world in this total darkness. Colorful natural beauty, bright sights, all the tones of the color green, the colors of fruits, the designs of flowers, the brightness of the sun, people walking on a busy road, fast cars in traffic, clothes in a shopping mall—are all created in the dark brain.
Imagine a barbecue burning in front of you. You can sit and watch the fire for a long time, but throughout this entire time, your brain never deals with the original of light, brightness or heat from the fire. Even when you feel its heat and see its light, the inside of your brain remains dark and maintains a constant temperature. It is a profound mystery that, in the darkness, the electrical signals turn into colorful, bright visions. Anyone who thinks deeply will be amazed by this wondrous occurrence.
Light is also Composed in our Brain
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While discussing what science has discovered about vision, we mentioned that the light we receive from the outside gives rise to some movements of the eye cells, and these movements form a pattern from which our visual experience emerges. However, there is another point that we need to make: Light, as we perceive it, does not reside outside of our brain. The light we know and understand is also formed within our brain. What we call light in the outside world, which is supposedly outside our brains, consists of electromagnetic waves and particles of energy called photons. When these electromagnetic waves or photons reach the retina, light, as we experience it, begins to come into existence. This is the way light is described in physical terms:
Consequently, light comes into existence as a result of the effects that some electromagnetic waves and particles cause in us. In other words, there is no light outside our bodies which creates the light we see in our brains. There is only energy. And when this energy reaches us we see a colorful, bright, and light-filled world.
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Colors also Originate in our Brains
All Colors are Formed in Our Brains There are No Colors in The Outside World
There are no colors in the world outside. Colors are only formed in the eyes and brain of the observer. Only energy packets of various wavelengths exist in the external world. It is our brains that transform this energy into colors.
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Starting from the time, we are born, we deal with a colorful environment and see a colorful world. However, there isn't one single color in the universe. Colors are formed in our brains. Outside there are only electromagnetic waves with different amplitudes and frequencies. What reaches our brains is the energy from those waves. We call this "light", although this is not the light we know as bright and shiny. It is merely energy. When our brains interpret this energy by measuring the different frequencies of waves, we see "colors". In reality, the sea is not blue, the grass is not green, the soil is not brown and fruits are not colorful. They appear as they do because of the way we perceive them in our brains. Daniel C. Dennett, who is known for his books about the brain and consciousness, summarizes this universally accepted fact:
The common wisdom is that modern science has removed the color from the physical world, replacing it with colorless electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths.5
In The Amazing Brain, R. Ornstein and R. F. Thompson have stated the way colors are formed as follows.
'Color' as such does not exist in the world; it exists only in the eye and brain of the beholder. Objects reflect many different wavelengths of light, but these light waves themselves have no color.6
In order to understand why this is so, we must analyze how we see colors. The light from the sun reaches an object, and every object reflects the light in waves of different frequencies. This light of varying frequency reaches the eye. (Remember that the term "light" used here actually refers to the electromagnetic waves and photons, not the light which is formed in our brains.) The perception of color starts in the cone cells of the retina. In the retina, there are three groups of cone cells, each of which reacts to different frequencies of light. The first group is sensitive to red light, the second is sensitive to blue light, and the third is sensitive to green light. With the different levels of stimulations of these cone cells, millions of different colors are formed. However, the light reaching the cone cells cannot form colors by itself. As Jeremy Nathans of John Hopkins Medical University explains, the cells in the eye do not form the colors:
There is no light and no color outside of our brains. Colors and light are formed in our brains.
In the retina in the eye, there exist three groups of cone cells, each of which react to different wavelengths of light. The first of these groups is sensitive to red light, the second is sensitive to blue light and the third is sensitive to green light. Different levels of stimulus to each of the three sets of cone cells gives rise to our ability to see a world full of color in millions of different tones.
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In the picture shown above right, the green area on the left hand side appears to be dark while the green area on the right hand side appears lighter. In fact, the tones of both greens, as shown in the bottom are exactly the same. The red and orange colors next to the green bands trick us into thinking that the two green colors are of different tones. This again points to the fact that we do not see the original material world, we only see our interpretation of it in our brain.
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Because of God's perfect creation, we see electrical signals as a bright world, full of color, made up of millions of shades of color, and we enjoy what we see. This is an extraordinary miracle that must be carefully considered.
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All that a single cone can do is capture light and tell you something about its intensity. It tells you nothing about color.7
 All Sounds are Formed in Our Brains There are No Sounds in The Outside World | ||
The cone cells translate the information they get about colors to electrical signals thanks to their pigments. The nerve cells connected with these cells transmit these electrical signals to a special area in the brain. The place where we see a world full of color throughout our lives is this special area in the brain.
This demonstrates that there are no colors or light beyond our brains. There is only energy which moves in the form of electromagnetic waves and particles. Both color and light exist in our brains. We do not actually see a red rose as red simply because it is red. Our brain's interpretation of the energy that reaches our eye leads us to perceive that the rose is red.
Color blindness is proof that colors are formed in our brains. A small injury in the retina can lead to color blindness. A person affected by color blindness is unable to differentiate between red and green colors. Whether an external object has colors or not is of no importance, because the reason why we see objects colorful is not their being colorful. This leads us to the conclusion that all of the qualities that we believe belong to the object are not in the outside world, but in our brains. However, since we will never be able to go beyond our perceptions and reach the outside world, we will never be able to know the originals of materials and colors. The famous philosopher, Berkeley, acknowledges this fact with the following words:
If the same things can be red and hot for some and the contrary for others, this means that we are under the influence of misconceptions ...8
We Hear All Types of Sound in Our Brains
The outer ear captures sound waves and delivers them to the middle ear. The middle ear amplifies these sounds and transmits them to the inner ear. The inner ear converts these sounds into electric signals on the basis of their intensity and frequency and then sends them to the brain.
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The hearing process also operates in a similar manner to the visual process. In other words, we hear sounds in our brains in the same way that we see the view of the outside world in our brains. The ear captures the sounds around us and delivers them to the middle ear. The middle ear amplifies the sound vibrations and delivers them to the inner ear. The inner ear transforms these sound vibrations into electric signals, on the basis of their frequency and intensity, and then transmits them to the brain. These messages in the brain are then sent to the hearing center where the sounds are interpreted. Therefore, the hearing process takes place in the hearing center in essentially the same way that the seeing process takes place in the seeing center.
Therefore, actual sounds do not exist outside our brains, even though there are physical vibrations we call sound waves. These sound waves are not transformed into sounds outside or inside our ears, but rather inside our brains. As the visual process is not performed by our eyes, neither do our ears perform the hearing process. For example, when you are having a chat with a friend, you observe the sight of your friend in your brain, and hear his or her voice in your brain. As the view in your brain is formed, you will have a deep feeling of three dimensions, and your friend's voice is also heard with a similar feeling of depth. For example, you could see your friend as being a long way from you, or sitting behind you; accordingly you feel his voice as if it is coming from him, from near you or from your back. However, your friend's voice is not far away or behind you. It is in your brain.
The extraordinariness about the real nature of the sound you hear is not limited to this. The brain is actually both lightproof and soundproof. Sound never in fact reaches the brain. Therefore, despite the volume of the sounds you hear, the interior of your brain is actually very quiet. However, you hear noise, such as voices, very clearly in your brain. They are so clear that a healthy person hears them without difficulties or distortions. You hear the symphony of an orchestra in your soundproof brain; you can hear all the sounds in a wide range of frequencies and decibel from the sounds of the leaves to the sounds of jet planes. When you go to a concert of your favorite singer, the deep and loud noise that fills the whole stadium is formed in the deep silence of your brain. When you sing by yourself loudly you hear the sound in your brain. However, if you were able to record the sound in your brain with a tape recorder at that moment, you would hear only silence. This is an extraordinary fact. The electrical signals that reach the brain are heard in your brain as sound, for example the sound of a concert in a stadium filled with people.
Although People
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The brain is soundproof as well as lightproof. Therefore, even if the noises we hear are loud, the insides of our brains are very quiet. However, in this silence, there is a consciousness that can interpret electrical signals as a melody that he or she loves, or as the voice of a friend or the sound of the telephone ringing.
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All Smells Occur In The Brain
If someone is asked how he senses the smells around him, he would probably say "with my nose". However, this answer is not the right one, even though some would instantly conclude that it was the truth. Gordon Shepherd, a professor of neurology from Yale University, explains why this is incorrect; "We think that we smell with our noses, [but] this is a little like saying that we hear with our ear lobes."9
All Smells Take Place Within Our Brain
A person smelling roses in his or her garden does not, in reality, smell the originals of the roses. What he or she senses is an interpretation of electrical signals by his or her brain. However, the smell seems so real that the person would never understand that he or she is not smelling the original rose, and some therefore suppose that they are smelling the real rose. This is a great miracle created by God.
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Our sense of smell works in a similar mechanism to our other sense organs. In fact, the only function of the nose is its ability to act as an intake channel for smell molecules. Volatile molecules such as vanilla, or the scent of a rose, come to receptors located on hairs in a part of the nose called the epithelium and interact with them. The result of the interaction of the smell molecules with the epithelium reaches the brain as an electric signal. These electric signals are then perceived as a scent by the brain. Thus, all smells which we interpret as good or bad are merely perceptions generated in the brain after the interaction with volatile molecules has been transduced into electric signals. The fragrance of perfume, of a flower, of a food which you like, of the sea—in short all smells you may or may not like—are perceived in the brain. However, the smell molecules never actually reach the brain. In our sense of smell, it is only electrical signals which reach the brain, as happens with sound and sight.
Consequently, a smell does not travel in any particular direction, because all smells are perceived by the smell center in the brain. For example, the smell of a cake does not come from the oven, in the same way that the smell of the dish does not come from the kitchen. Likewise, the smell of honeysuckle does not come from the garden and the smell of the sea, some distance away from you, does not come from the sea. All of these smells are sensed at one point, in a related area of the brain. There is no concept of right or left, front or back, outside of this sense center. Although each of the senses seem to occur with different effects, and may appear to be coming from different directions, they all in fact occur within the brain. The smells which occur in the smell center of the brain are assumed to be the smells of outside materials. However, the image of the rose is generated in the sight center and the smell of a rose is generated in the smell center. If there is a genuine smell outside, you can never reach the original of it.
George Berkeley, a philosopher who has realized the importance of this truth, says "At the beginning, it was believed that colors, odors, etc., 'really exist,' but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in dependence on our sensations."
It may be instructive to consider dreams in order to understand that smell is only a sensation. When people dream, in the same way that all images are seen very realistically, smells are also perceived as if they were real. For example, a person who goes to a restaurant in his dream may choose his dinner amid the smells of the foods that are on the menu; someone who dreams of going on a trip to the sea side senses the distinctive smell of the sea, and someone who dreams of a daisy garden would experience, in his dream, the pleasure of the magnificent scents. Likewise, someone who dreams of going to a perfume shop and choosing a perfume would be able to distinguish between the smells of the perfumes, one by one. Everything in the dream is so realistic that when the person wakes up, he or she might be surprised by this situation.
In fact, it is not necessary to examine dreams to understand the subject. It is even sufficient to imagine one of the depictions that were mentioned, such as the example of the daisy. If you concentrate on the daisy, you can feel as if you are aware of its scent, even though it isn't there. The scent is now occurring in the brain. If you want to visualize your mother in your mind, you can see her in your mind, even though she isn't there in front of you; in the same way you can imagine the smell of the lily, even though it isn't there.
The purpose of the nose is to receive smell signals and transmit them to the brain. The smell of soup, or a rose, is sensed in the brain. However, a person can sense the smell of the rose or soup in his dream, even in the absence of any soup or roses. God forms such a convincing collection of senses within the brain with the taste, smell, vision, sense of touch and sound that it takes a lot of explanation to demonstrate to people that all of these feelings occur in the brain and that they are actually not dealing with the originals of anything they see. This is the magnificent knowledge of God.
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A person can picture the face of his wife or imagine the smell of a daisy in his brain with little concentration. The question then is that who is seeing without the need of an eye or smelling without the need of a nose things that physically do not exist nearby? This being is the soul of the person.
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Michael Posner, a psychologist and Marcus Raichle, a neurologist from Washington University comment on the issue of how sight and other senses occur, even in the absence of an external stimulus:
Open your eyes, and a scene fills your view effortlessly; close your eyes and think of that scene, and you can summon an image of it, certainly not as vivid, solid, or complete as a scene you see with your eyes, but still one that captures the scene's essential characteristics. In both cases, an image of the scene is formed in the mind. The image formed from actual visual experiences is called a "percept" to distinguish it from an imagined image. The percept is formed as the result of light hitting the retina and sending signals that are further processed in the brain. But how are we able to create an image when no light is hitting the retina to send such signals? 10
There is no need for an external source to form an image in your mind. This same situation holds true for the sense of smell. In the same way as you are aware of a smell which does not really exist in your dreams or imagination, you cannot know about those objects, which you smell in real life, that exist outside you. You can never deal with the original objects.
All Tastes Occur in The Brain
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| All Tastes Occur Within Our Brains | The Sense of Touch also Occurs Within Our Brains | ||
The sense of taste can be explained in a manner similar to those of the other sense organs. Tasting is caused by little buds in the tongue and throat. The tongue can detect four different tastes, bitter, sour, sweet and salty. Taste buds, after a chain of processes, transform sensory information into electrical signals and then transfer them to the brain. Subsequently, those signals are perceived by the brain as tastes. The taste that you experience when you eat a cake, yogurt, a lemon or a fruit is, in reality, a process that interprets electrical signals in the brain.
An image of a cake will be linked with the taste of the sugar, all of which occurs in the brain and everything sensed is related to the cake which you like so much. The taste that you are conscious of after you have eaten your cake, with a full appetite, is nothing other than an effect generated in your brain caused by electrical signals. You are only aware of what your brain interprets from the external stimuli. You can never reach the original object; for example you cannot see, smell or taste the actual chocolate itself. If the taste nerves in your brain were cut off, it would be impossible for the taste of anything you eat to reach your brain, and you would entirely lose your sense of taste. The fact that the tastes of which you are aware seem extraordinarily real should certainly not deceive you. This is the scientific explanation of the matter.
The Sense of Touch Also Occurs In The Brain
The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevents people from being convinced of the aforementioned truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain. For example, if you told someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn't think carefully, reply "I can't be seeing the book in my brain—look, I'm touching it with my hand". Or, if we said "we cannot know the original of this book that exists as a material object outside", again the same superficially minded person might answer "no, look, I'm holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it - so I know what it actually is like ".
However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch. For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain's interpretation of certain stimuli.
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The fact that you are feeling the book you are reading now does not change the fact that you are seeing the book within your brain. As with the appearance of the book, the sense of touching the book also takes place in your brain.
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A person chatting to a close friend while drinking a cup of tea immediately lets go of the cup when he burns his hand on the hot cup. However, in reality, that person feels the heat of the cup in his mind, not in his hand. The same person visualizes the image of the cup of tea in his mind, and senses the smell and taste of it in his mind. However, this man does not realize that he actually has contact only with the copy of the tea within his brain. He assumes that he has direct contact with the original glass, and talks to his friend, whose image occurs again within his brain. In fact, this is an extraordinary case. The assumption that he is touching the original glass and drinking the original tea, which appears to be justified by his impression of the hardness and warmth of the cup and the taste and smell of the tea, shows the astonishing clarity and perfection of the senses which exist within one's brain. This important truth, which needs careful consideration, is expressed by twentieth century philosopher Bertrand Russell:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.11
The point that Russell makes here is extremely important. In fact, if our fingertips are given a stimulus in a different manner, we can sense entirely different feelings. However, as it will be explained in detail in due course, today this can be done by mechanical simulators. With the help of a special glove, a person can feel the sensation of stroking a cat, shaking hands with someone, washing his hands, or touching a hard material, even though none of these things may be present. In reality, of course, none of these sensations represent occurrences in the real world. This is further evidence that all the sensations felt by a human being are formed within the mind.
We Can Never Reach The Original of The World
A person who is observing a particular view supposes that he is watching the view before his eyes. However, that view actually forms in the center of vision at the back of the brain. The pertinent question is this: who is that takes pleasure from watching this view, if it cannot be the brain, which is made of lipid and protein?
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As has been demonstrated here, everything that we live through, see, hear and feel in our life occurs within the brain. For example, someone who looks out of the window while sitting on an armchair feels the hardness of the armchair and the slipperiness of the fabric in his brain. The smell of the coffee coming from the kitchen occurs in the mind, not in the kitchen some distance away. The view of the sea, birds and trees he sees from the window are all images formed in the brain. The friend who is serving the coffee, and the taste of the coffee also exist in the brain. In short, someone sitting in his living room and looking out of the window is in reality looking at his living room, and the view seen from the window on a screen in his brain. What a human being would refer to as "my life" is a collection of all perceptions being put together in a meaningful way and watched from a screen in the brain, and one can never come out of one's brain.
We can never know the true nature of the original of the material world outside the brain. We cannot know, whether or not the original, for example the green of a leaf, is as we perceive it. Likewise, we can never find out if a dessert is really sweet or whether that is just how our brain perceives it to be. Imagine, for example, a landscape you have seen before. That landscape is not in front of you, but you are seeing it in your brain. The science writer Rita Carter says:
Whenever we recall a given object, face or scene, we do not get an exact reproduction but rather an interpretation, a newly reconstructed version of the original… Although they may appear to be good replicas, they are often inaccurate or incomplete.12
The same thing applies to the time when you look at a landscape. There is in fact no difference between your imagining a landscape from a distance and seeing it close up. Therefore, when you look at a view you are actually seeing a version constructed in the brain, not the original.
Anyone who considers this will clearly see the truth. One such person, George Berkeley, expresses this truth in his work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge:
By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance... Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds... And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things...13
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You Can Never Get Out of The Room in Your Brain During Your Life
Imagine that you are entering a dark room which has a big television screen inside. If you could only watch the outside world through this screen, you would naturally get bored of it after a while and want to get out.
Consider for a moment that the place you are in is no different. Inside your dark little skull, similar to a box, you watch visions of the outside world during your life. You continue watching all of these pictures in your brain without getting out of this small place and never get tired of it. In addition to this, you would never believe that you were watching all of these things from a single screen. The vision is so convincing that in thousands of years, billions of people were unable to realize this great reality.
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The truth Berkeley expresses in these words is this: We define an object by interpreting different sensations that are experienced in the brain. As is the case in this example, the taste and smell of an apple, its hardness and roundness and those sensations related with the other qualities of it are perceived as a whole by our brain and we perceive this whole as the apple. However, we can never actually deal with the original of the apple, only our perception of it. What we can see, smell, taste, touch or hear are only the copies within the brain.
When we consider all that has been discussed up to this point, the truth will be revealed in all clarity. For example:
- If we can see a street full of colorful lights and all the colors with their own brilliant shadings inside the brain where there is no actual light, then we are seeing copies of the notice boards, lights, streetlights and the headlamps of cars which are produced from the electric signals within the brain.
- Since no sound can enter the brain, we can never hear the original of the voices of loved ones. We hear only copies.
- We cannot feel the cool of the sea, the warmth of the sun – we only feel the copies of them in our brains.
- In the same way, nobody has been able to taste the original of mint. The taste someone would sense as mint is only a perception which occurs in the brain. This is because the person cannot touch the original of the mint, see the original of the mint or smell or taste the original of the mint.
In conclusion, throughout our lives we live with copy-perceptions which are shown to us. However, these copies are so realistic that we never realize that they are copies. For example, lift your head and have a look around the room. You see that you are in a room full of furniture. When you touch the arms of the armchair in which you are sitting, you feel the hardness of it as if you are really touching the original of it. The reality of these images shown to you, and the excellent artistry in the creation of these images are sufficient to convince you and billions of other people that the images are "the original of the external matter". Even though most people have read that every sensation relating to the world is formed in their brains, since it is taught in high school biology classes, the images are so convincing that they have difficulty believing that they are actually dealing with only copies in their brain. The reason for this is that each image is created very realistically and perfected to an art.
Nobody has been able to move out of the perceptions that exist in the brain. Everybody lives in the cell that is in the brain, and no one can experience anything except that which is shown by his perceptions. Consequently, one can never know what happens outside of his perceptions. Thus to say "I know the original of matter" would in fact be an unjustified presupposition, because there is nothing that could be held up as evidence. The observer deals with the images formed in his or her brain. For instance, a person who wanders in a garden full of colorful flowers can in fact never see the actual of the garden, but its copy in his brain. Yet, this garden is so realistic that every person gets the same delight from the garden formed in his brain as if it's the actual one. Even so that billions of people have surmised seeing the original of all they have seen just like that garden.
We should also emphasize that scientific or technological development cannot change anything, as every scientific discovery or technological invention occurs in the minds of people, and consequently is of no help to people in reaching the outside world.
The Sense of Distance is Also a Perception That Occurs in The Brain
Imagine a crowd on a street, with shops, buildings, cars, horns honking… When you look at this picture it appears to be real. That is why most people cannot understand that the picture they see is produced in their brain, and mistakenly suppose that they see the original of all of it. The picture has been created so perfectly that it is impossible to understand that the image that they perceive as real is not the original of the outside world, but only a copied image which exists in the mind.
The elements which make a picture so convincing and impressive are distance, depth, color, shade and light. These materials are used with such perfection that they become a three-dimensional, colorful and vivid image inside the brain. When an infinite amount of detail is added to the picture a whole new world emerges that, without realization, we assume is real for all life, although we only interpret it in our mind.
A person driving a car believes that the road and the trees he is driving past are far away from him. However, everything he sees is actually on a single plane in his brain just as in a photograph.
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In this picture, the line in the back appears twice the size of the line at the front. However, in reality both of the lines are the same size. As we can see from this example, the use of lines, perspective, the light and shadow cause people to observe the same objects differently. In fact, all of these objects are viewed in a single place, in the visual center of the brain.
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Imagine now that you are driving a car. The steering wheel is at arms length from you and there is a set of traffic lights about 100 m (or 300 ft) in front of you. The car in front of you is about 10 m (30 ft) away, while there are mountains on the horizon, which, according to your estimation, would be many kilometers (miles) away in the distance. However, all of these estimations are wrong. Neither the car nor the mountains are as far away as you would assume. In fact, the entire picture, as on a movie reel, exists on a two dimensional frame, on only one surface within the brain. The images reflected to the eye are two-dimensional, like those on a TV screen. In such circumstances, how can a perception of depth and distance occur?
All The Objects You Perceive To Be Far Away From You are in Fact in Your Brain
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What is referred to as a sense of distance is a way of seeing three-dimensionally. The elements causing the effects of distance and depth in images are perspective, shade and motion. The form of perception called spatial perception by optical science is provided by highly complicated systems. This system can be explained simply in this way: The sight which reaches the eye is two dimensional. That is to say, it has measures of height and width. The senses of depth and distance result from the fact that two eyes see two different images at the same time. The image that reaches each of our eyes differs from the other in terms of the angle and light. The brain assembles these two different images to form our sense of depth and distance.
We can perform an experiment to understand this better. First, extend your right arm in front of you and hold up your index finger. Now focus on this finger while closing your left eye first and then your right eye. Because two different visions come to each eye, you will see the finger move slightly to one side. Now open both of your eyes and while continuing to focus on your right index finger, move your left index finger as close to your eye as you can. You will notice that the closest finger will have created two images. This is because now a different depth has formed in the closer finger from that in the farther finger. If you open and close your eyes one by one, you will see that the finger located nearer your eye will appear to move more than the finger which is further away. This is due to the increasing difference in the views appearing in each eye.
While a three dimensional film is being made, this technique is used; Images shot from two different angles are placed on the same screen. The audience wears special glasses which have a color filter and polarize the light. The filters in the glasses filter out one of the two views, and the brain transforms these into one single three-dimensional image.
The perception of depth in a retina with two dimensions is very similar to the technique used by artists to give the observer a feeling of depth in a picture with two dimensions. There are certain factors resulting in the feeling of depth, such as the placement of objects on top of one another, the atmosphere perspective, changes in texture, linear perspective, the dimensions, the height and the movement. For example the change of texture is very important in perceiving depth. For example, the ground that we walk on in a farm full of flowers is actually a tissue. The tissues closer to us are more detailed while the tissues further from us seem pale and harder to discern. Therefore, it is easier to estimate the distance of objects located on a tissue. Besides this, effects of shadow and light also contribute to the perception of a three-dimensional view.
The reason we admire a picture made by a successful artist is the sense of depth and reality which are given to the picture, which is created by using the elements of shade and perspective.
One of the significant elements which provides the feeling of depth is tissue differentiation. Tissues closer to us can be observed in detail while those further away appear less clearly. For example as we can observe from the picture on the side, a three dimensional tissue has been created on a paper with the feeling of depth, and which seems to be embossed due to the use of color, shadow and light. Even though all the dots are white in the above picture, they appear to be flashing in both black and white.
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Perspective results from the fact that distant objects appear smaller in proportion to those which are nearer, depending on the person who is looking at it. For example, when we look at a view, distant trees appear small, while those nearby appear large. Likewise, in a picture with a mountain in the background, the mountain is drawn smaller than the person in the foreground. In linear perspective, artists use parallel lines. For example, train tracks produce an effect of distance and depth by meeting with the horizon.
The method that painters use in their paintings is also valid for the image that occurs in the brain. Depth, light and shade are produced by the same method in two dimensional space in the brain. The greater the amount of detail in the picture, the more realistic it appears and the more it deceives our senses. We behave as if there was real depth and distance, as if there was a third dimension. However, all pictures are like a film square on a flat surface. The visual cortex in the brain is extremely small! The distances, the images such as those of distant houses, stars in the sky, the moon, the sun, airplanes flying in the air, and birds - they are all crammed into this small space. That is to say, there is technically no distance between a glass that you can hold by extending your hand and an airplane that, if you looked up, you would understand to be thousands of kilometers above; all of them are on the single surface, that is, in the sense center of the brain.
For example, a disappearing ship on the horizon is not actually miles away from you. The ship is in your brain. The window sill that you are looking at, a poplar tree in front of the window, the road in front of your house, the sea and the ship on the sea are all in the sight center of the brain, on a two dimensional surface. Just like a painter can represent the feeling of distance on a two dimensional canvas by using the proportions of size, elements of color, shade and light and perspective, so can the sense of distance also occur in the brain. In conclusion, the fact that we sense objects to be far away or nearby should not fool us, as distance is a sensation like all the others.
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Creating a Picture With Depth on a Two Dimensional Surface
There is a very realistic depth in all of these pictures. A three-dimensional view with depth can be formed on a two-dimensional canvas by making use of shade, perspective and light. This element of realism can be increased depending on the ability of the painter. The same can be said for our own sight perception as well, as the vision that reaches the retina in fact exists in two dimensions. However, the images reaching each of our eyes become a single image, so that our brain perceives a three-dimensional image with depth.
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Are You in The Room, Or is The Room Inside You?
One of the reasons that prevent people from understanding that the images seen are actually sensed in the brain, is that people see their body in the image. They come to this wrong conclusion that "since I am in this room, the room does not occur in my brain." Their mistake is to forget that they have direct contact with only an image of their body too. Just like everything we see around us merely consists of copy images, so does our body also exist as a copy image in the brain. For example, while sitting on an armchair, you can see the rest of your body below your neck. This image too is produced by the same perceptual system. When you put your hand on your leg, you sense a kinesthetic feeling in the brain. This means that you see your body in the brain, and you feel yourself touching your body in the brain.
If the body is an image in the brain, is the room inside of you or are you in the room? The obvious answer to this is "the room is inside of you". And you see the image of your body inside the room, which in turn is in the brain.
Since your body is an image seen in your brain, the question is this: are you inside the room that you are in, or is the room inside you? The answer is clear: of course, the room is inside you, in the vision center of your brain.
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Let us explain this with an example. Let us suppose that you call a lift. When it comes, your neighbor, who lives upstairs from you, is in it. You get into the lift. In reality, are you in the lift or is it in you? The truth is: the lift with the images of the neighbor and your body all occurs in your brain.
In conclusion, we are not "inside" anything. Everything is inside us; everything occurs in the brain. The sun, the moon, stars or an airplane flying in the sky many miles away cannot change this truth. The sun and the moon, like the book that you hold are only copy images which occur in a very small sight center in the brain.
Artificially Produced Senses
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In an experiment, blind people were made to see some visions by a device. Through the device, these blind people could see some very realistic visions not belonging to the outside world but produced artificially. They were under the impression that something was coming towards them, so they stepped back to protect themselves.
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Science writer, Rita Carter, states in her book, Mapping The Mind, that "there's no need for eyes to see" and describes at length an experiment carried out by scientists. In the experiment, blind patients were fitted with a device that transformed video pictures into vibrating pulses. A camera mounted next to the subjects' eyes spread the pulses over their backs so they had continuous sensory input from the visual world. The patients started to behave as if they could really see, after a while. For example, there was a zoom lens in one of the devices so as to move closer the image. When the zoom is operated without informing the patient beforehand, the patient had an urge to protect himself with two arms because the image on the subject's back expanded suddenly as though the world was looming in.14 As it is seen from this experiment, artificially produced senses can be enough to form sensations.
"The World of Wenses" that We Experience in Dreams
A person lies on his bed with closed eyes while dreaming. However, in spite of this, that person senses many things which he or she experiences in real life, and experiences them so realistically that the dreams are indistinguishable from the real life experience. Everyone who reads this book will often bear witness to this truth in their own dreams. For example, a person lying down alone on a bed in a calm and quiet atmosphere at night might, in his dream, see himself in danger in a very crowded place. He could experience the event as if it were real, fleeing from danger in desperation and hiding behind a wall. Moreover, the images in his dreams are so realistic that he feels fear and panic as if he really was in danger. He has his heart in his mouth with every noise, is shaken with fear, his heart beats fast, he sweats and demonstrates the other physical affects that the human body undergoes in a dangerous situation. However, there is no external equivalent of the events in his dream. They exist only in his mind.
When a person has a dream of being in a garden on a bitingly cold morning in the winter, he can feel the cold and start shaking. However, there is neither wind nor cold in his particular location. He might be even sleeping in a very warm room. Nevertheless, he feels the cold in all its reality. There is no difference between the cold he feels in the real world and the cold he is feeling in his dream.
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A person sleeping in a comfortable bed in his home may dream that he is in the middle of a war. And he might also feel the fear, tension and the panic of the war as if it were taking place in the real world. Yet at that time he is sleeping in a comfortable bed by himself. The realistic noises and visions he sees in his dream occur in his mind.
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A person who falls from a high place in his dream feels it with all his body, even though he is lying in bed without moving. Alternatively, one might see oneself slipping into a puddle, getting soaked and feeling cold because of a cold wind. However, in such a case, there is neither a puddle, nor is there wind. Furthermore, despite sleeping in a very hot room, one experiences the wetness and the cold, as if one were awake.
A person sleeping in his house can see himself on a rapidly turning wagon in a fair ground while dreaming. He can realistically sense the wind that he would experience on a fast moving wagon in the real world.
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Someone who believes he is dealing with the original of the material world in his dream can be very sure of himself. He can put his hand on his friend's shoulder when the friend tells him that "he is dealing with a copy image of matter; it isn't possible to deal with the original of the world", and then ask "Am I an image now? Don't you feel my hand on your shoulder? If so, how can you be a copy image? What makes you think in this way? Let's take a trip up the Bosphorus; we can have a chat about it and you'll explain to me why you believe this." The dream that he sees in his deep sleep is so clear that he turns on the engine with pleasure and accelerates slowly, almost jumping the car by pressing the pedal suddenly. While going on the road, trees and road lines seem solid because of the speed. In addition, he breathes clean Bosphorus air. But suppose he is woken up by his ringing alarm clock just when he's getting ready to tell his friend that what he's living at that moment isn't a dream. Wouldn't he object in the same manner regardless of whether he was asleep or awake?.
When people wake up they understand that what they've seen until that moment is a dream. But for some reason they are not suspicious that the life that starts with a "waking" image (what they call "real life") can also be a dream. However, the way we perceive images in "real life" is exactly the same as the way we perceive our dreams. We see both of them in the mind. We cannot understand they are images until we are woken up. Only then do we say "what I have just seen was a dream". So, how can we prove that what we see at any given moment is not a dream? We could be assuming that the moment in which we are living is real just because we haven't yet woken up. It is possible that we will discover this fact when we are woken up from this "waking dream" which takes longer than dreams we see everyday. We do not have any evidence that proves otherwise
Many Islamic scholars have also proclaimed that the life around us is only a dream, and that only when we are awakened from that dream with "a big awakening", will people be able to understand that they live in a dreamlike world. A great Islamic scholar, Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi, referred to as Sheikh Akbar (The greatest Sheikh) due to his superior knowledge, likens the world to our dreams by quoting a saying of the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace):
The Prophet Muhammad [may God bless him and grant him peace] said that "people are asleep and wake up when they die." This is to say that the objects seen in the world when alive are similar to those seen when asleep while dreaming, meaning that they exist in the imagination.15
In a verse of Koran, people are told to say on doomsday when they are resurrected from the dead:
They will say, "Alas for us! Who has raised us from our sleeping-place? This is what the All-Merciful promised us. The Messengers were telling the truth." (Surah Ya Sin: 52)
As the verse demonstrates, people wake up on doomsday as if waking from a dream. Like someone woken from the middle of a dream in deep sleep, such people will similarly ask who has woken them up. As the verse points out, the world around us is like a dream and everybody will be woken up from this dream, and will begin to see images of the afterlife, which is the real life.
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Someone could dream that he is arguing with a friend who is telling him that he is actually seeing an illusion of matter. This person can put his arm on the shoulder of his friend and ask him "Am I a dream now? Don't you feel my hand on your shoulder? So, how can you be a dream?"
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While he is driving with his friend in the car, he can smell the sea, hear the noise of the waves and feel the blowing of the wind, as in the real world.
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He then invites his friend into his car for a ride: "Come on, let's go for a ride by the sea, and you'll tell me what makes you think of all these things."
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While he drives faster, he can see the trees disappearing past him on the side of the road. All of these visions in his dream have no difference from the reality.
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The dream he sees is so realistic that he can sense herself starting the car, pushing the accelerator and almost jumping the car, just as he would in a car in the real world.
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At the moment he is trying to convince his friend that all of these things are real, he is woken up by his alarm clock. And when he gets up, he realizes that everything he saw, the reality of which he was so sure of, was just a dream. But what if he is now in a different dream, from which he will soon wake up?
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You Might Be Observing Your Life From Somewhere Else Just As You Observe Your Dreams
A person drinking coffee in his dream can feel the exact taste of the sugar, the milk and the coffee, when there is no coffee or any other drink there. If someone were to come up to him and tell him that he is just dreaming, and that there is no coffee, then the person would reject such an idea. He might ask how it could be just a vision when he felt the heat of the coffee on his tongue, and when after drinking the coffee he no longer felt thirsty. He would ask how it could remove his thirst if it wasn't real? However, he understands only after he wakes up that the coffee, which he thinks he drank, was an image formed in his brain, and that sensations such as warmth and thirst, which he felt while drinking the coffee. were perceptions formed in his brain.
Our experiences in our dreams and in the real world are based on the same logic. We experience both dreams and the real world in our mind. The only reason we believe that our dreams are imaginary is that when we wake up, we find ourselves in our bed, so we believe that we were actually sleeping and saw everything in our dreams.
What would happen if we didn't wake up and continued dreaming? Would we be able to realize that we were not actually dealing with the originals of any of the things we lived and saw in our dream? Of course not. Unless we wake up and discover that we have been sleeping, we can never realize that we have been dreaming, and spend our entire life by supposing that this is our real life. So, how can we prove that our real life is not a dream? Do we have any information about what happens when we depart this life and find ourselves watching the pictures of our present life from a different location?
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Other examples of worlds that are produced superficially
Modern technology presents many important examples of how sensory experience can be simulated with a high degree of realism, without the help of any external world. In particular, the technology called "virtual reality", which has developed considerably in recent years, gives us some insight on the subject.
Simply put, virtual reality involves showing animated three-dimensional images generated on a computer so as to construct "a real world" with the help of some equipment. This technology, which is used in many different fields for different aims, is called "artificial reality" or "virtual world" or a "virtual atmosphere". The most important characteristic of virtual reality is that a person who uses a special device believes that what he sees is real, and moreover he is captivated by that image. For that reason, recently, the word "immersive" is also used to describe virtual reality, with "immersive" meaning to involve deeply. (i.e. Immersive Virtual Reality)
The tools used to create a virtual world are a helmet (which houses a screen that provides an image) and a pair of electronic gloves (which provide a feeling of touch). A device in the helmet checks the movements and angle of the head in order to provide an image on the screen which is consistent with the head's angle and position. Sometimes, stereo pictures are reflected on the walls and floor of a room-size cell. People who wander through the room can see themselves through stereo glasses in different places, such as at the side of a waterfall, on the summit of a mountain, or sunbathing on the deck of a ship in the middle of the sea. The helmets create 3D pictures with a realistic sense of depth and space. The pictures are provided in proportion to human sizes and the sense of touch is provided by other equipment, such as gloves. Thus, a person who uses this equipment can touch the objects that he sees in the virtual world and can pick them up and move them. The sounds one hears in such places are also convincing, coming from any direction with different depths and volumes. In some applications, the very same virtual atmosphere can be presented to a few people in very different places in the world. Three people from different countries (even different continents) can see themselves with the others getting on board a powerboat.
Simulators used for virtual reality. Because of the equipment he is using.the person in the picture above is imagining that he is touching rapidly flowing water. The people shown below are watching themselves as heroes in the film shown to them and they become excited from what they are experiencing.
The system used in the devices that create the virtual world is essentially the same as the system used in our five senses. For example, with the effect of a mechanism inside a glove worn by the user, some signals are given to the fingertips and then transmitted to the brain. When the brain processes these signals, the user has the impression of touching a silk carpet or a vase with a serrated surface, with puffy prints on it, even though there is no silk carpet or vase around.
One of the important fields in which virtual reality is now being used is medicine. With a technique developed in Michigan University, doctoral candidates (in particular emergency service staff) complete a part of their training in an artificial operating room. In this application, images related to an operating room are reflected onto the floors and walls of a room and the images of an operating table and a patient are reflected in the middle of the room. By putting on 3D glasses, doctoral candidates start to operate on this virtual patient.
These examples illustrate that a person can be placed in a realistic yet unreal world with the help of artificial stimuli. With current technology, an image can be produced which is an effective practice aide. There is no reason in principle that eventually this technology couldn't produce a reality which is indistinguishable from the real world. It is very interesting that some famous films made recently deal with the subject. For instance, in a Hollywood film called "Matrix", when the nervous system of two heroes of the film are connected to a computer while lying on a sofa, they can see themselves in completely different places. In one scene, they find themselves participating in eastern sports; in another, they are in completely different clothes walking in a very crowded street. When the hero, under the influence of his realistic experience, says that he does not believe that the pictures are created by a computer, the picture is frozen by the computer. The person then becomes convinced that the world which he believed to be real is indeed only an image.
In conclusion, it is possible in principle to create artificial images or, in other words, an artificial world with the help of artificial stimuli. So, we cannot claim that what we deal with in the "life image" that we are seeing all the time is necessarily "the original". Our senses could well be coming from a very different source.
WORLDS ENVIRONMENTWORLDS FORMED IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS
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VIRTUAL OPERATION IN A VIRTUAL OPERATING ROOM
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In the University of Michigan, doctoral candidates and especially emergency service units are being trained with the same technology in an artificial operating room. In the first stage, images of an operating room are reflected to the walls of a simple room. In the operating room to the side, all that you see except the three doctors (including the patient) is virtual. With simulator devices, doctoral candidates conduct their first operations in a virtual environment on virtual patients.
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THE SUBJECT OF THE REALITY OF MATTER IN FILMS
One of the significant developments that has taken place with the bringing of the subject about the reality of matter to the world's attention and its being told to the world through a variety of means has been the subject's being taken up in various Hollywood movies.
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The subject of the movie The 13th Floor is this: The two lead characters in the film have created a virtual world by using computers. In the virtual world, they are animating the year 1937, although in the real world they are living in the year 2000.
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The person connected to this computer program lies in a bed where information and details about his identity in the virtual world of 1937 are loaded into his brain. For example, a character called named Douglas Hall, who is a rich and successful CEO of a computer company, gets the information of a bank treasurer called John Ferguson living in 1937 loaded to his brain.
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All of a sudden this person finds himself in the year 1937. All the cars, buildings, clothes belong to that year. What surprises him is that both of the lives appear perfectly real. He can feel the wetness of the water and the wind and experience fear and excitement in both of these lives.
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Later on, that person realizes that what he has been living through was no more than a computer program, and that he actually confronted only an illusion of the cars, buildings and even his friends, which he thought to be real. In reality, he is living in a much later year than 2000 and he is watching all of his life through a simulator. What the movie attempts to illustrate is that it is hard to differentiate life which is supposed to be real from imagination.
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In the movie The Matrix, the person in the leading role realizes that he has been living in an imaginary world in a glass cover formed by the electrical signals given to his brain. While he believes that he is a computer programmer, he is sleeping in the place shown above. What he believed to be his life consisted only of perceptions.
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In the movie, computer cables are connected to the brain of the person in the leading role, and some programs are loaded to his brain through the electric cables.
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After the computer program is loaded to his brain, this person who is actually sitting in a very different place on an old chair in shabby clothes sees himself in a totally different place in totally different clothes. His unkempt clothes are changed, his hair is longer. He has a totally different outlook from his image sitting in the simulator chair.
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This person does not want to admit the truth under the impression that what he sees is too close to reality to be a dream, and touches the armchair and asks "This isn't real?" The answer he receives is "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
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Then they show him that the whole world has been created by a simulation program. This includes all the details he has seen. Cars, the noise of the city, traffic, skyscrapers, ocean, people, basically everything he sees and experiences are just animated in his brain with a computer program.
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The person that shows him the facts also tells him that he has been living in a virtual life and he imagined everything to be real. And yet the real world at that time is totally different. There is just a collapsed, destroyed world. All the nice modern buildings and cars are just imaginations in his brain.
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He learns that even the history he thought was real was a dream and that he actually lives in a totally different time.
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Another scene from the movie The Matrix. The person in this scene knows that his whole life is shown to his brain by a computer program. He mentions that the beef he is eating doesn't exist in reality but he still enjoys the taste of it.
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In the movie, Total Recall (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger), Arnold Schwarzenegger realizes that the life he believed was real was merely a program which was loaded to his brain. However, he cannot differentiate between the real world and the dream world.
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The important truth indicated by hypnosis
One of the best examples of a world created with artificial stimuli is the technique of hypnosis. When a person is hypnotized, he experiences extremely convincing events which are indistinguishable from reality. The person under hypnosis sees pictures, people and various images, and hears, smells and tastes many things, none of which exist in the room. Meanwhile, because of the experience, he becomes happy, upset, excited, bored, worried or flustered. Moreover, the effect of the experience on the person under hypnosis can be watched from outside physically. In very deep hypnotic trances, certain kinds of symptoms can be observed in the hypnotized person, such as an increase in the pulse rate and blood pressure, redness of the skin, high temperature, and the removal of an existing pain or ache.16
After being hypnotized, this person imagines herself to be rapidly climbing 10 flights of stairs. At that point she loses her breath and becomes tired. The hypnotized person lives in the environment produced by the hypnotic induction, and accepts that it is real, despite the fact that the location, people and incidents that she has been told about do not exist.
In one hypnotic experiment, a hypnotic subject is told that he is in a hospital and that there is a dying patient on the tenth floor of the hospital. He has been hypnotized into believing that if he rushes to the patient with the right medicine, the patient will be rescued. The subject, under the influence of hypnosis, thinks he is rushing to the tenth floor. Meanwhile he gets out of breath and can't control it, due to a feeling of being extremely tired. Then the subject is told that he is on the top floor, and succeeded in fetching the medicine, and that he can lie on a comfortable bed. The subject then starts to relax.17
Although the subject experiences the locations and the atmospheres as if they were completely real, the places, people or events as told to him do not exist.
In another experiment, a hypnotic subject in a normal room is told that he is in a Turkish bath and that the bath is very hot. As a result, he starts to sweat.18
This draws our attention to a very important point. In order for a person to sweat, some conditions must exist. The reality that we come across in this instance of hypnosis is that the hypnotized person has sweated, even though there is no physical factor which would cause him to sweat. This example shows clearly that there is no physical necessity of direct experience of the original of places or atmosphere to feel such an atmosphere or place. Similar effects can be created through artificial stimulants or hypnotic suggestion.
The British hypnotherapy specialist, Terence Watts, a member of many organizations including The National Hypnotherapy Association, The National Psychotherapists Association, The Professional Hypnotherapists Center, The Hypnotherapy Research Association, states in an article that during hypnosis, some people who are recollecting a past event exhibit some physical changes related to the event. For example, if there was an element of suffocation in the event remembered, a hypnotic subject might become breathless while explaining the event under hypnosis and might even stop breathing for a while. Watts stated that under hypnosis, even finger marks appeared on one of his patients where a slap on the face was recalled. Watts also explains that this is not a mystery but a reaction to sense of pain in the body.19
It is a fact that some skin diseases can be cured by using hypnosis. On the pictures above we see the disease before being treated with hypnosis, then we see it after the person has been hypnotized and the disease has been cured.(D. Waxman, Hypnosis, p. 113)
One of the most striking examples seen in hypnotic applications is that even a wound can appear on the skin of the hypnotized person through inculcation. For example, Paul Thorsen, a researcher, touches the arm of the person under hypnosis with a tip of a pen and tells him that it's a hot skewer. Soon, a blister (as would have been produced by a second degree burn) formed in the region where the tip of the pen touched. Thorsen also hypnotized a person called Anne O. into believing that the letter A was being drawn onto her arm by pressing hard. Although nothing else was done, redness emerged in the shape of an "A" in that area.20 Researchers H. Bourru and P. Burot, persuading a hypnotized person that his arm was being cut, saw that the arm was bleeding after being slightly drawn on by a pencil.21
J.A. Hadfield told a sailor in hypnosis that he was going to press a hot iron bar on the sailor's arm and that the arm would burn. However, he merely touched it gently with his fingertip, after which he covered it. Six hours later when the cover was removed, there was a slight redness and puffiness in that area. Hadfield states that "the following day the puffiness became larger and swelled like a burn."22
These changes that occurred to the human body during hypnosis show that we do not need the outside world to produce sensations of sight, sound, touch, feeling, pain or ache. For example, although there is no hot iron bar in the outside world, if the person is persuaded, there can be a burn mark on his arm.
These examples show that when we examine how an image occurs, and follow technological developments, and also when we add consciousness-altering methods such as hypnosis to this knowledge, a certain truth becomes clear. Throughout his life, a human being assumes that he is living in a world which is external to his body. However, everything referred to as the world is only our brain's interpretation of the signals which reach the sense centers. In other words, we can never deal with any world other than the one that occurs in our mind. We can never know what happens or exists outside us. We cannot know what the original of the sources of signals reaching the brain is either. This reality has begun to take its place in science books and is taught to people since high school age. The problem is that people do not consider the full significance of this fact.
Who is It That Experiences All These Perceptions?
So far we have established that everything we perceive takes place in our brains. At this point we face a question which would be asked by anyone who thinks on this subject a little bit.
As we know, the electric signals coming from the cells in our eyes are transformed into an image in our brains. For example, the brain interprets some electrical signals coming to the visual center in the brain as a field filled with sunflowers. In reality, it is not the eye that is seeing.
Therefore, if it is not our eyes which are seeing, what is it that sees the electrical signals as a sunflower field, at the back of our brain, in a pitch dark place, without feeling any necessity for any eyes, retina, lens, visual nerves or pupil and enjoys the view in the sight?
Or who is it that hears (without needing an ear) the voice of a very close friend, becomes happy on hearing it, and misses it when he cannot hear it, when the brain is totally sound proof?
Or who is it in the brain that feels the fur of the cat when stroking it, without having any need for a hand, fingers or muscles?
Who is it that feels sensations such as heat, cold, and a sense of consistency, depth, and distance, as they originate in the brain?
Who is it that smells the lemon, lavender flower, rose, melon, watermelon, orange, and barbecued meat inside the brain (even though the brain is smellproof), and feels hungry because of the smell coming from the grill?
We have thus far discussed how everything we perceive continuously is actually formed inside our brains. Who is it then that sees the sights in a brain as if watching television, and becomes excited, happy, sad, nervous, or feels pleasure, anxiety or curiosity while watching them? Who is responsible for the consciousness which is capable of interpreting everything seen and everything felt?
What is the entity in the brain that has consciousness and throughout life is capable of seeing all the sights shown to him in a dark, quiet head, that is capable of thinking, and reaches conclusions and makes decisions in the end?
It is obvious that it is not the brain, made up of water, lipid and protein, and unconscious atoms, that perceives all this and is responsible for consciousness. There must be a being beyond the brain. Despite being a materialist, Daniel Dennett ponders the above question in one of his books:
My conscious thinking, and especially the enjoyment I felt in the combination of sunny light, sunny Vivaldi violins, rippling branches – plus the pleasure I took in just thinking about it all – how could all that be just something physical happening in my brain? How could any combination of electrochemical happenings in my brain somehow add up to the delightful way those hundreds of twigs genuflected in time with the music? How could some information-processing event in my brain be the delicate warmth of the sunlight I felt falling on me? For that matter, how could an event in my brain be my sketchily visualized mental image of … some other information-processing event in my brain? It does seem impossible. It does seem as if the happenings that are my conscious thoughts and experiences cannot be brain happenings, but must be something else, something caused or produced by brain happenings, no doubt, but something in addition, made of different stuff, located in a different space. Well, why not?23
On the other hand, R. L. Gregory questions the existence of the entity in the back of the brain, which sees all sights:
There is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye to see it – but this would need a further eye to see its picture… and so on, in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.24
Materialists who believe that nothing exists except matter cannot understand this particular question. Who does this "internal eye", which sees and perceives things seen and reacts to such things, belong to?
In the following passage, Karl Pribram describes this important search by science and philosophy for the identity of the perceiver:
Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I—the entity that uses the brain? Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking".25
IN THE ABSOLUTE QUIETNESS OF YOUR BRAIN IT IS YOUR SOUL THAT LISTENS TO A CONFERENCE
In a large room people listening to the speaker very carefully might think that they hear every sound coming from the speaker's mouth. In the same sense, the speaker confidently explains his thoughts thinking that the audience is hearing him. However, the reality is completely different and an extraordinary miracle is taking place which nobody in the room is aware of at that moment. In reality, the speaker is explaining things to the listeners in his brain, while the listeners listen to the speech in their brains. Indeed, everyone in the room who is convinced that they are sitting in the room is actually living through this event in their minds. And there is an entity in the brain of every individual in the room which hears the electric currents as the voice of the speaker, and this entity has no need for an ear.
This entity experiences everything so realistically that people cannot realize that they are not actually dealing with the real sound itself. This entity, created by God through a unique creation, is the SOUL. Despite the deep silence inside the brain, the soul hears everything perfectly clearly, the same as its original.
This entity experiences everything so realistically that people cannot realize that they are not actually dealing with the real sound itself. This entity, created by God through a unique creation, is the SOUL. Despite the deep silence inside the brain, the soul hears everything perfectly clearly, the same as its original.
Although many people venture close to this reality in answering the question "who is the entity that sees", they hesitate to accept all of its implications. As demonstrated in the examples above, in discussing the entity in our brains, some refer to the "little man", while others say "the ghost in the machine", some refer to "the being using the brain" while some say "the internal eye". All these terms have been used to describe the entity beyond the brain which possesses consciousness, and the means of reaching this entity. However, materialist assumptions keep many people from understanding the true nature of this being which actually sees and hears.
The only source that answers this question is religion. In the Koran, God states that He created man in a physical way initially and then "breathed His Spirit" to the man He created:
When your Lord said to the angels, "I am creating a human being out of dried clay formed from fetid black mud when I have formed him and breathed My Spirit into him, fall down in prostration in front of him!" (Surat al-Hijr: 28-29)
(He) then formed him and breathed His Spirit into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts. What little thanks you show! (Surat as-Sajda: 9)
In other words, the human being has another existence besides its physical body. That entity inside the brain which says "I am seeing" the sight inside the brain, and "I am hearing" the sound inside the brain and aware of its own existence, and which says "I am me", is the soul given to human beings by God.
Any human being with a mind and a conscience can understand this: the being that watches every incident inside the brain—watches as if looking at a screen throughout his life—is his soul. Every human being has a soul that sees without the need for an eye, hears without the need for an ear and thinks without the need for a brain.
The materialistic view—which maintains that matter is the only thing that exists, and that human consciousness is only a result of some chemical reactions in the brain—is in a quandary about this issue. To see this it might be instructive to ask the following questions to a materialist:
- Sight is formed in our brains but what is it that watches this sight in our brains?
- Try to see in your mind's eye your neighbor living downstairs in your apartment building when he is not with you. Who is it that vivifies this person so clearly in your imagination down to the details of his costume, the lines in his face, the whites in his hairs; the tone of his voice, the way he speaks, the way he walks?
A materialist will be unable to give a satisfactory answer to such questions. The only explanation to these questions is the soul given to man by God. However, materialists make a mistake not accepting the existence of any being other than matter. For this reason the truth explained in this book deals a massive blow to atheist materialist thought, and constitutes a subject that materialists refuse to discuss most.
Who Lets Our Souls Watch All of These Views?
CAN A VISION WITH THIS QUALITY APPEAR ON A PIECE OF MEAT?
At this level there is another question that should be asked: Our soul watches the sights in our brains. But who is it that creates these sights? Could the brain itself form a bright, colorful, clear, shadowy sight and form a whole world through electrical signals in a tiny space? The brain is no more than a wet, soft, curvy piece of meat. Could a simple piece of meat like this create a sight clearer than any that could be provided by a television set with the latest technology, without any snow or horizontal jitter? Could a vision of such high quality be formed inside a piece of meat? Could this wet piece of meat form a stereo sound of higher quality than a stereo hi-fi system with the highest technology, without any sizzling noises? of course, it is impossible for a brain, which is made of one and a half kilograms (four pounds) of meat to form such perfect perceptions.
Here we arrive at another truth. Since together with everything surrounding us, the body we have, our hands, arms and faces are the shadow beings, then our brains are also shadow beings. Thus we cannot say that this brain which is itself actually only a visual sensation, forms these visual sensations.
Bertrand Russell points out this truth in his work The ABC of Relativity: of course, if matter in general is to be interpreted as a group of occurrences, this must apply also to the eye, the optic nerve and the brain.26
Realizing this fact, French philosopher Bergson said in his book, Matter and Memory, that "the world is made up of images, these images only exist in our consciousness; and the brain is one of these images."27
Who, then, is the being that shows these sights to our souls, with all their reality and clarity, and lets us live a life with all of these perceptions and without any interruptions?
The being that shows all the sights to our souls, lets us hear all the sounds, and creates all the tastes and smells for our pleasure, is the Lord of all the worlds, the creator of everything, God.
One of The Most Important Dilemmas of Materialism: Human Consciousness
Materialist philosophy can never explain the source of human consciousness, i.e. the qualitative experiences that belong to the human soul. For the materialist philosophy, matter is the only thing that exists. Qualities belonging to the soul of a human being, such as consciousness, thought, decision-making processes, happiness, excitement, longing, enjoyment and judgment can never be explained in the materialistic concept. Materialists pass quickly over this subject saying "human consciousness is only the result of the functions of the brain". A materialist scientist, Francis Crick summarizes this materialistic claim as follows:
Your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.28
However, such a claim cannot be defended by either science or logic. The materialist prejudices lead materialists to make such explanations regarding the qualities of a soul that belongs to human beings. In order not to accept the fact that there is a being beyond the material world, they attempt to reduce human intelligence to matter and make such claims that have no relation with intelligence or logic.
In a sense, Crick is right. We are nothing but a pack of neurons. At the same time, neuroscience has so far proved to be oddly unsatisfactory. Explaining the mind in terms of neurons has not yielded much more insight or benefit than explaining the mind in terms of quarks and electrons. There are many alternative reductionisms. We are nothing but a pack of idiosyncratic genes. We are nothing but a pack of adaptations sculpted by natural selection. We are nothing but a pack of computational devices dedicated to different tasks. We are nothing but a pack of sexual neuroses.These proclamations, like Crick's, are all defensible, and they are all inadequate.29
Of course, these explanations are all inadequate and they are definitely not logical. Any fanatic materialist is in fact aware of this truth. Not surprisingly, Thomas Huxley, the foremost advocate of Darwin also stated that consciousness cannot be explained by the interaction of neurons: "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."30
It is very clear that mere cells cannot give a person consciousness, intelligence, the ability to think and talk, and feelings such as love, compassion, mercy, longing.
From Huxley's time until the present, the failure to explain human consciousness through neurons hasn't changed. However, this is not because of the inadequacy of science regarding this issue. In contrast, especially towards the end of the 20th century, there have been many developments in the field of neurology with many mysteries being solved. However, these findings have showed that human consciousness can never be reduced to matter and the reality lies beyond the material. One of the leading Darwinist-materialist writers in Germany, Hoimar Von Ditfurth, also confesses the fact that the currently adopted methods cannot describe human consciousness:
With our present research in natural history and genetic development, it is obvious that we will not be able to give an answer to what consciousness, spirit, intelligence and feelings are. That is because psychic-consciousness level is the highest level that evolution has arrived, at least in this world. Therefore, although we are able to look at the other stages and phases of evolution from the outside, by rising above them, again by the help of our consciousness, we are unable to approach consciousness (or spirit) itself in a similar way. That is because no level higher than consciousness is available to us.31
American philosopher and doctor of mathematics, William A. Dembski, states in his article, "Converting Matter into Mind", that the bio-chemical functioning of neurons in the human brain and which mental functions it involves have been understood, although qualities such as decision making, wishing, or reasoning cannot be "reduced to matter". Dembski also points out that specialists on consciousness have realized the error of reductionism;
…Cognitive scientists abandon hope of understanding this higher level through the lower neurological level. …Thus while the commitment to materialism persists, the hope of explaining human intelligence at the neural level, which for the materialist is the logical level, is not a serious consideration.32
It is impossible to describe consciousness with a materialist worldview, regardless of the extent of scientific development. As details of the brain surface, it becomes clearer that the mind is irreducible to matter. Materialists must put aside their prejudices and think deeper and research further if they are to understand the concept of human consciousness, as it is impossible to define the real meaning of consciousness through matter. Consciousness is a function of the soul that is given to man by God.
Questions For Materialists
It is totally illogical to state that thoughts, judgments, decision mechanisms, or feelings (such as happiness, excitement, joy and peace) are merely the results of the interaction of neurons in the brain of a human being. Materialists who consider this issue more deeply are aware of this truth. The famous materialist, Karl Lashley, made the following comment towards the end of his career, even though he had defended the idea for years that human consciousness could be reduced to matter:
Whether the mind-body relation is regarded as a genuine metaphysical issue or a systematized delusion, it remains a problem for the psychologist (and for the neurologist when he deals with human problems) as it is not for the physicist. . . . How can the brain, as a physico-chemical system, perceive or know anything; or develop the delusion that it does so?33
Lashley drew attention to this conflict in one single question. However, there are many other details that materialists must consider. The explanations listed below illustrate some of the issues that reveal the impasse of the materialist approach, and which must therefore be considered in depth :
- Stating that thoughts, excitements and feelings are products of neurons is to claim that such things are the products of the unconscious atoms, or products of the sub elements of atoms, such as quarks or electrons.
- Unconscious atoms cannot know the feeling of happiness or sadness and neither can they enjoy music, taste, good friendship or a chat with a friend.
- Unconscious atoms cannot be Darwinist or materialist and come together to write a book.
- Unconscious atoms cannot view themselves or the nerve cells that form themselves under an electron microscope and reach scientific solutions from their research.
- What is meant by the statement "consciousness is in the neurons of our brains"? Neurons, just like other cells, are made of cell membrane, mitochondria, DNA and ribosomes. Therefore, according to the materialists, where does consciousness lie in these things? If they suppose that consciousness is a result of chemical reactions between the neurons and electrical signals, they are mistaken, because they cannot explain a single "chemical reaction with consciousness". Nor can they show us an "electric wave" that starts to "think" at a certain voltage level.
If materialists think sincerely about these issues, they will realize that all people including themselves are different from groups of neurons or bunches of atoms. Despite being a materialist, the brain specialist Wolf Singer, admits this fact by saying "In this confusing material of the universe there is 'something' that perceives itself as 'I am'."34
This "something" that the scientist refers to is actually the soul that is given to the human being by God. Due to this soul possessed by the human being, a person can think, be happy, get excited, produce new ideas, or oppose the ideas of others, or know the concepts such as honour, respect, love, friendship, loyalty, sincerity and honesty. The neurons and atoms that form human beings cannot think, make decisions, produce philosophical ideas or know the feeling of love, compassion or affection.
Materialists, when they are alone, know this truth and accept it. However, due to their regarding their materialist prejudices as the requirement of science and reason, they cannot come to accept this absolute reality. On the other hand, the predicament they put themselves into just to defend materialism, and the illogical ideas they accept, actually cause much greater damage to them. A person who says "Our thoughts are the product of our atoms and neurons" is no different than a person who thinks his or her dreams are real, or a person who invents incredible stories like fairytales and then believes in them.
The truth is actually this: a human being is a being that possesses a soul given by God, and with this soul, he can think, talk, be pleased, make decisions, establish civilizations and manage countries.
Why is The Truth About Matter Such an Important Subject?
That what people see, hear, touch, smell and assume to be absolute entities are in reality perceptions, and that throughout our lives we merely deal with copy images is as remarkable as the facts that the universe was created from nothing, that existence is eternal, and that we rise again to eternal life after death. God creates the universe at every moment with its numberless details, perfect and without defect. Moreover, this creation is so flawless that many people who have lived on the earth so far have not understood that the universe and everything they see is an illusion, and that they have no connection with the reality of matter.
In the 21st century, this truth has become more evident because scientific discoveries have definitely proven that we are actually never in touch with matter. Although some people still refuse to accept this fact, it is not something that can be ignored, disregarded or rejected. On the contrary, knowing the true nature of matter is an important condition of being a realist. For this reason, it is very important for those who consider this question to grasp its significance. Some of those who read about the real nature of matter have stated that they do not understand why so much importance has been given to this question. They even think that it has no relation to faith, and ask why it has a place in every discussion about faith. However, the importance of this topic is now evident. A knowledge of the true nature of matter scares materialists because it destroys their worldview, and it is very important for Muslims to understand this truth and to try to let people know about it.
This knowledge helps people to understand some questions about faith and must be explained as being as important as any other matter concerning faith. As a result of an explanation of the real nature of matter, people are cleansed from their attachment to the things of this world, they direct their thoughts to the afterlife, they are rescued from a grave error and they can easily grasp some truths that those errors prevented them from understanding. Someone with a materialist view of the world, or someone who has been brought up under the influence of this kind of worldview, can never understand certain questions such as, "Where is God?", "Do heaven and hell and hell exist?", "What is the nature of spirit and eternity?", "Is there life after death?". But perceiving that matter is an illusion naturally provides answers to these questions, and enables people to clearly see that God is the one absolute Being.
When people understand what matter is , they strongly sense that everything by which they are bound to the life of this world—their desires, passions and everything that makes them forget God and the Day of Judgment—are deceptive and vain. Learning the true nature of matter is what saves people from the desires of this world. It directs them with pure hearts and sincerity towards God and saves them from the error of associating others with Him.
This is a century in which people display arrogance, conceit and every kind of inhuman and amoral behavior. However, when they realize that they themselves, and those whom they look up to, are just shadow beings, their arrogance and conceit will be replaced by humility and gentleness.
All these developments will be the means by which we will achieve a secure and comfortable society, in which people can live without meanness, selfishness and pitiless competition.
Certainly, there will be one important result that will come from an awareness of the fact that we have no contact with the original matter: The collapse of materialist philosophy.
Now, we shall discuss in detail why the fact that matter is not absolute is one of the most important discoveries in history.
The Truth About Matter Shows That God is The One Absolute Being
One of the most important things implied by this fact is that God is the One Absolute Being. Some people, under the influence of materialist philosophy, think that matter is absolute being. Some of these people believe that God exists, but when they talk about the existence of God, and where He is , they display their ignorance. For example, if they are asked "Where is God?", they will ignorantly answer, "Show me your intelligence; you cannot. So, God is a reality like intelligence, but you cannot see it." Others assume in their own minds (God is surely beyond that) that God has an illusory existence like that of radio waves. According to their false view, they themselves and the things they possess are absolute existence and God's existence encompasses this material existence like radio waves. However, what is illusory is they themselves and the things they possess. The One Absolute Being is God. God's existence embraces everything. Human beings are in no way absolute beings but a transient image.
God reveals this truth in a verse:
God, there is no deity but Him, the Living, the Self-Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep. Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them but they cannot grasp any of His knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent. (Surat al-Baqara: 255)
The fullness of faith consists of understanding this truth, avoiding the mistake of associating others with God and acknowledging God as the One Absolute Being. Someone who knows that, apart from God, everything is a shadow existence, will say with certain faith (at the level of Haqq-al yakin – truth of certainty) that only God exists and there is no other deity (or any being with strength) besides Him.
The materialists do not believe in the existence of God, because they cannot see Him with their eyes. But their claims are completely invalidated when they learn the real nature of matter. Someone who learns this truth understands that his own existence has the quality of an illusion, and grasps that a being which is an illusion will not be able to see a being which is absolute. As it is revealed in the Koran, human beings cannot see God but God sees them.
Eyesight cannot perceive Him but He perceives eyesight... (Surat al-An'am: 103)
Certainly, we human beings cannot see the Being of God with our eyes but we know that He completely encompasses our inside, our outside, our views and our thoughts. For this reason, God reveals Himself in the Koran as "controlling hearing and sight" (Surah Yunus: 31) We cannot say one word, we cannot even take one breath without God's knowing it. God knows everything we do. This is revealed in the Koran:
God – Him from Whom nothing is hidden, either on earth or in heaven. (Surah Al 'Imran: 5)
It is very important that God watches us, sees us and hears us at every moment. Someone who realizes this, even if he does not see God with his eyes, knows that He is aware of him at every moment. For this reason, no matter what he is doing, he knows that God is a witness of him. Consequently, he is careful not to do anything to displease Him and will be mindful of what he does, says, and thinks. In the Koran, it is revealed that God is close to us in everything we do; that He watches us and that nothing eludes Him.
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the Koran or do any action without Our witnessing you while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven. Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which is not in a Clear Book. (Surah Yunus: 61)
A person who hugs his child, embraces his spouse and chats with this mother thinks that these people are more intimate with him than anyone else. However, God is closer to a person than this friend, spouse, children, or even himself. As it is revealed in the Qur'an, God is nearer to a person than his jugular vein. (Surah Qaf: 16)
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Certainly God, Who is Absolute Being, knows every aspect of the human beings He has created. This is a very simple thing for God. But some in their ignorance may find this hard to understand. However, when we observe the impressions we think are the "external world", that is , as we lead our lives, the closest being to us is not an impression, it is clearly God. The secret of the verse "We created man and We know what his own self whispers to him. We are nearer to him than his jugular vein" (Surah Qaf: 16) is hidden in this fact. But when a person thinks that his body is composed of "matter, the absolute entity," he cannot conceive of this important reality; this is again because he thinks that the nearest thing to him is his body. For example, if this person conceives of his existence as being his brain, he does not admit the possibility that there is a being closer to him than his jugular vein. However, when he conceives of the fact that matter is not absolute, and that everything is a facsimile that he experiences in his mind, then concepts such as outside, inside, far and near have no meaning. His jugular vein, his brain, hands, feet, his house and his car that he thought were outside himself, even the sun, the moon and the stars that he thought were so far away, are all on the same plane. God has encompassed him all around and is eternally near to him.
That God is eternally near to human beings is also revealed in this verse: "If My servants ask you about Me, I am near (to them)..." (Surat al-Baqara: 186) In another verse the same reality is expressed, "Surely your Lord encompasses mankind round about." (Surat al-Isra': 60). In spite of this, some people continue to err by thinking that the nearest thing to themselves is themselves. However, God is closer to us even than we are to ourselves. The fact that God is the nearest Being to a human being is emphasized again in these verses: "Why then, when death reaches his throat and you are at that moment looking on-and We are nearer him than you but you cannot see" (Surat al-Waqi'a: 83-85) Indeed, a person on the point of death or lying in a hospital bed may think that the closest being to him is the doctor at his bedside, his mother who is embracing him, or his friends touching him and holding his hand. But as it says in this verse, God is closer to him at that time than anyone else. Moreover, God is the single closest Being to him not only at that particular moment, but from the first moment of his existence. But, because people do not see it with their eyes, some of them are ignorant of this reality.
The fact that God is not circumscribed by space but embraces all things is revealed in another verse:
Both East and West belong to God, so wherever you turn, the Face of God is there. God is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing. (Surat al-Baqara: 115)
In another verse, God explains this reality in this way:
It is He Who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then established Himself firmly on the Throne. He knows what goes into the earth and what comes out of it, what comes down from heaven and what goes up into it. He is with you wherever you are—God sees what you do. (Surat al-Hadid: 4)
All of this implies that God is the One, True, Absolute Existence. With His Knowledge, God embraces human beings who are shadow beings and every other thing. This fact is also pointed out in the following verse:
Your God is God alone, there is no deity but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Surah Ta Ha: 98)
In another verse of the Koran, God warns people against being heedless:
What! Are they in doubt about the meeting with their Lord? What! Does He not encompass all things? (Surah Fussilat: 54)
Human Actions Also Belong To God
All the acts performed by a human being belong to God. For example, a child's being able to read, a project realized by an architect, a scientist's discovery, a meal cooked in the kitchen, an artist's work... It is God Who has created all of these things and brings them to be.
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God has created man as a shadow being with no power or will independent of Himself. This reality is revealed in this verse:
But you will not will unless God wills... (Surat al-Insan: 30)
Some people are unaware of this great fact. They accept that God created them, but think that the work they do belongs to them. However, every action performed by a human being is created with the permission of God. For example, a person who writes a book writes it with the permission of God; every sentence, every idea, and every paragraph is composed because God wishes it. God reveals this very important principle in several verses; one of these verses is , "... God created both you and what you do?". (Surat as-Saffat: 96) In these words "... when you threw; it was God Who threw... ", (Surat al-Anfal: 17) God reveals that everything we do is an act that belongs to Him.
In other verses, God instructs the prophet to take charity from believers, but in the continuation of the verse, He explains that it is really He Who takes charity:
Take charity from their wealth to purify and cleanse them and pray for them. Your prayers bring relief to them. God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. Do they not know that it is God Who receives repentance from His servants and accepts such acts of charity, and that God is the Ever-Returning, the Most Merciful? (Surat at-Tawba: 103-104)
The great Islamic scholar Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi explains that the deeds we do belong to God:
As for the spirits, the source of the actions that derive from them is not found in their entities. It is God alone who puts spirits and objects into action continuously. … Spirit and matters are not comprised of chosen beings and determined facts. They are comprised of divine acts; various manifestations of the almighty being. In the same way, things that are said to be finite or infinite are nothing but a single entity seen from two different points.35
Everything a person does, all the success he has won and all his talents belong to God. This reality does not change if the person is a great statesman, the richest person in the world, a beloved artist or a scientist who has made an important discovery. Everyone lives in submission to God and does what He wills.
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As Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi explains, it is God Who creates every deed and makes the soul of the doer believe that it is he himself who is performing it. God creates this sense so realistically in every soul that someone who throws a stone, for example, really thinks that he is throwing it himself. However, a person who is a shadow being cannot perform the act of throwing, but God makes him feel as if he is performing the act. As a result of the wonderful perfection in God's creation, a person senses this feeling intensely and actually thinks that he is holding the stone, drawing back his arm to exert strength for speed and throwing it.
Human beings live at every moment dependent on God and, whether they know it or not, or whether they accept it or not, they are subject to God. God reveals this in this verse:
Everyone in heaven and earth prostrates to God willingly or unwillingly, as do their shadows in the morning and the evening. (Surat ar-Ra'd: 15)
Whoever you know, who lives or has lived in this world, in the present or in the past, wherever he may be, whatever he may possess, or no matter how stubborn a denier he may be, this reality does not change for him or for anyone. Every human being is subject to God's will, every person is a shadow being created from the breath of God's Spirit. Anyone who knows this finds it impossible to accept praise for his wealth, knowledge, title or reputation; nor can he accept adulation for his place or position in society or success in his profession. Those who are still arrogant despite this are in fact completely powerless. After God has revealed that the person who thinks he has thrown the stone has not really thrown it, but that it was God Himself who threw it, it is unfathomable ignorance for anyone to think that he deserves credit for any human success.
In this way God tests and trains every human being. Today those who cannot understand or accept this obvious reality will, when they are raised from the dead, see everything in its true light and understand that their own strength avails for nothing:
The metaphor of those who reject their Lord is that their actions are like ashes scattered by strong winds on a stormy day. They have no power at all over anything they have earned. That is extreme misguidance. (Surah Ibrahim: 18)
God is the only Being who has power over all things:
Everything in the heavens and everything on earth glorifies God. Sovereignty and praise belong to Him. He has power over all things. (Surat at-Taghabun: 1)
An Understanding of The Real Nature of Matter Will Lead People To Faith
People who will come to realize that they have been watching images shown to their spirits throughout their lives, will believe with certainty that it is God Who created both their spirits and these uninterrupted images.
The reason why some people stubbornly refuse to accept the secret of matter is their unwillingness to conceive of the magnitude of God's greatness and to accept their own nothingness. But even if these people do not want to accept it, there is an indisputable truth: Everything in heaven and on earth is God's and a manifestation of God. The only absolute Being is God. The other beings that God has created are not absolute beings but appearances. All the 'I',s , that is individuals, who observe the appearances that God has created are all spirits from God.
When people grasp the great secret of this knowledge, they will attain great clarity of consciousness and the haze enshrouding their spirits will lift. Everyone who understands it will freely submit to God, love Him and fear Him. In addition, human feelings of pride and self-satisfaction will be replaced by humility and modesty. This is what God wants from human beings. Those who understand this amazing fact will look at things from a different point of view and start out on a totally different life. They will acknowledge God's power appropriately, and distance themselves from the kind of person described by this verse:
They do not measure God with His true measure. The whole earth will be a mere handful for Him on the Day of Rising and the heavens folded up in His right hand. Glory be to Him! He is exalted above the partners they ascribe! (Surat az-Zumar: 67)
Understanding The Reality of Matter Removes Worldly Ambitions
A person merely has experience of the images and sensations of everything he thinks he possesses, his house, car, family, job and all his friends , which occur in the brain. He can never know the original forms of these in the external world. A person who understands this will also understand that the One who has created these images in his brain is God, to whom all things belong. For that reason, those who are emotionally attached to the life of this world fear this reality greatly.
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What we have described so far is one of the most profound truths that you have heard in your whole life. We have shown that the whole material world is really a shadow, and that this is the key to understanding the existence of God, His creation, and the fact that He is the one absolute Being. At the same time, we have presented a scientifically undeniable demonstration both of how helpless human beings are and a manifestation of God's wonderful artistry. This knowledge makes people assured believers making it impossible for them not to believe. This is the main reason why some people avoid this truth.
The things that are being explained here are as true as a physical law or a chemical formula. When necessary, human beings can solve the most difficult mathematical problems and understand many very complex matters. However, when these same people are informed that throughout their lives they have experience of only the images formed in their mind, and that they have no connection with the original of matter, they have no desire at all to understand. This is an exaggerated case of an inability to understand, because the idea discussed here is no more difficult than the answer to the questions, "What is two times two?" or "How old are you?", If you ask any scientist or professor of neurology where they see the world, they will answer you that they see it in their brains. You will find this fact even in high school biology text books. But despite the fact that it is clearly evident, information pertaining to the fact that we perceive the material world in our brains and the results that this information entails for human beings can be overlooked. It is of major significance that one of the most important scientifically proven facts is so carefully hidden from people's eyes.
The fundamental reason why people easily accept all scientific facts, yet are so afraid to accept this one, is that learning the truth about matter will basically change the way everyone looks at life. Those who believe that matter and the self are absolute beings will discover one day that they have merely dealt with the reflection in their minds of everything they have worked for and protected based on this idea - their spouses, their children, their wealth, even their own personalities. People are very afraid of this reality and pretend not to understand it even if they do. They try with determination to disprove the facts, which are simple enough for even a primary school child to understand. The reason behind this opposition is that they are afraid to lose what this world offers.
For someone who is attached to his possessions, his children, or the transient offerings of this world, the illusory nature of matter is cause for great fear. At the moment such a person understands this, he will have died before his natural death, and he will have surrendered his possessions and his soul. In the verse, "If He did ask you for it (all your wealth) and put you under pressure, you would be tight-fisted and it would bring out your malevolence." (Surah Muhammad: 37), God reveals how human beings will behave with meanness when He demands their possessions from them.
But when a person learns the real nature of matter, he will understand that his soul and his possessions already belong to God. If he knows that there is nothing to give or to resist giving, he will submit himself and all he possesses to God before he dies. For sincere believers, this is a beautiful and honorable thing and a way to draw nearer to God. Those who do not believe or whose faith is weak cannot recognize this beauty and stubbornly reject this reality.
The Greatest Fear of Those Who are Swept Away by Material Greed
Think for a moment about those people who are swept away by material greed: what do they value most? A fine house, luxurious things, ostentatious jewelry, the latest model car, big bank accounts, a yacht... For this reason, these people are very afraid of the fact that they are observing all the things they possess on a screen in their brains and that they will never have the actuality of these things.
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Whether they like it or not, they are living in a world of facsimiles composed in their brains and cannot possibly have any relationship with an external world. Sound, light and smell cannot enter the skull; what enters is only electrical impulses coming from these material things. This is the situation of a person, as in the picture above, who gives money to buy the magnificent villa shown in the background. While he thinks that he is buying the villa and counting the money, really he is buying an impression formed in his brain, and he is not giving actual money to the person in front of him, but an image of money. The person receiving the money is really receiving an impression. In other words, there is a "transaction of impressions".
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Those Who Own Factories, Yachts Or Land, Which Are Images In The Brain Worry Themselves For Nothing
In this section we will consider the example of a heedless factory owner who has lived all his life with the ambition of being rich, and who worked day and night since he was young, thinking that he would earn everything by the sweat of his brow. This example will show us a very important truth.
The person whom we shall describe is middle-aged. He has two children, a boy and a girl, whom he sends to good schools. He owns a few cars, a yacht, some houses and some land. This man thinks he has everything that is admired in the life of this world. He thinks he has attained everything that a person could hope for in this life. Besides his wealth, he has gained a great deal of respect. Everyone who knows him regards him as a person who is respected, and has standing and position in society. This opinion is shared by the servants who attend him in the morning, the chauffeur who bows as he opens the car door for him, the security guards who greet him with respect when he enters the company building, and the employees who stand to attention from the moment he enters the factory until he gets to his office. He has many close friends and acquaintances in high places and positions. Every day he runs from meeting to meeting; he is a member of some boards and societies, and even chairman of others. In the course of a day he gives orders to hundreds of individuals. In his bank and private safe he has more money, stocks and bonds that he can count. As he adds up these things from time to time, he gains even more satisfaction; he is proud of himself and congratulates himself. What gives him a special feeling of satisfaction and self-confidence is the fact that he earned everything himself by his own hard work, and that he attained what he had devoted his whole life to achieving.
One day, while he is sailing on a yacht with his friends, someone comes up to him and says: "Everything you see here at this moment—all these people, this yacht, the sea, the factories, the houses, the employees who jump to your command… You merely deal with their images formed in your brain. You never know the originals of these appearances. If the nerves entering your brain were severed, this yacht, the people on it, their voices and conversations, the smell of the sea, the taste of the fruit juice you are drinking, in short, everything would cease to exist in a moment. All of these things as well as everything you have owned in your whole life are in your mind. There is no difference between your houses, cars, yachts, factories and companies and things you own in your dreams. It is like having a dream about going to Europe in your own private airplane and waking up in the morning to find that there is no airplane, and that you are not in Europe but in bed. If one day you wake up from this sleep you call your life; how can you be sure that you will not be in a completely different place observing images pertaining to this life? "
This rich man will react strongly to what he is being told. If these facts were told to him plainly with all scientific proof, even if he understood he would not accept the truth. In his mind, to accept that everything he owned was a dream-like fantasy would mean that he had been following an illusion his whole life. Then, everything for which a person is praised, everything that gives him a sense of pride and self-importance is an illusion. The situation of that person will be as humiliating and ridiculous as that of a person who is rich in his dreams and puts on airs because of this imaginary wealth. When the rich man in our example goes into his company after he has grasped this truth, he will not be moved to arrogance by the respect and esteem shown to him. This is because he now knows that those who show him respect and bow to him are only facsimiles in his mind. Or when these things are told to him, he will not be able to "show off" to his guests with his yacht because both the yacht and the guests on it are appearances in his brain.
When he is told that matter is an illusion and that he can have no connection at all with the source of material existence, the farm he bought the day before will come into his mind. In that case, the money he counted out bill by bill and gave to the vendor, the farm he bought with all its fixtures, the surrounding area surveyed as he made the purchase—all would exist only in his mind. It would be exactly as if he had dreamed the night before that he had won an important contract and made a lot of money from it. When he woke up nothing would be left, and what he thought was real would be a dream.
If this is the case, he is not in the yacht now. The yacht is an appearance inside him. When he thinks he is going into his house furnished in the latest style, in fact, he is opening a big garden gate and entering a house in his brain. The house, the furnishings, the garden and the garden gate are in his mind.
If this person is aware that what he is being told is clearly true, he will come to realize that everything he owns at that moment are fundamentally shadow beings. All these things are images shown to him by God Who created him. In order to test him, God created his life and the appearances of the things that he would think he owned. But forgetting that God gave him these things and blessed him with the wealth of these appearances, he became arrogant and spoiled by these things, gave himself airs and regarded people as his inferiors. Then, he has spent his life vainly clambering after an illusory dream world. But one day he realizes that he has been caught up in illusions and wasting his time, that none of these things has absolute existence and that only God exists.
A person who owns a large holding company, who has houses, the latest model cars, and employees who show him respect and deference sees everything he owns as an impression in his brain. The esteem he enjoys is also in his brain. What he considers to be serious and important—the work to which he devotes a large amount of time, the meetings he has with his colleagues, the decisions he makes—are all impressions occurring in the brain.
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A person who counts his money with a great deal of satisfaction is actually counting money in his brain. He does not realize that the yacht he sails with so much pride and ostentation, the people he tries to impress and the scenery are all impressions formed in his brain. If the truth were told to him, he would forcefully reject it in order not to lose all the things he owns and the esteem he enjoys. However, the same person can dream that he owns all these things and, in that dream, never doubts their reality. If he were told in his dream that he is not the real owner of these things, he would not accept it. But when he woke up, he would understand that it was all a fantasy.
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In one verse, God calls attention to those who have refused to accept this reality throughout history and those who have pretended not to know it:
But the actions of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in the desert. A thirsty man thinks it is water but when he reaches it, he finds it to be nothing at all, but he finds God there. He will pay him his account in full. God is swift at reckoning. (Surat an-Nur: 39)
As we can see in this verse, God compared the deeds of deniers to a mirage or a phantom. When these people attach themselves to these phantoms and discover that they cannot expect help from them, they understand that the phantoms are not real and that God alone is the one absolute reality.
One of the main reasons why people are so afraid of this reality and do not wish to accept it is that they understand, like the man in the example above, that everything they own, their respect, their wealth will pass away in one moment. Here we call your attention to one point: we are not saying here that "everything a person owns will stay behind after death and do him no good". We are saying that "everything a person owns is an appearance." When he sees that what he has striven for throughout his life, has troubled him and made him sad, and that he has tried to beat down other people in the process, he realizes that it was all an empty deception. In one verse, the Koran reveals that heedless people live in deception. The greedy attachment of people to property is related in a verse as follows:
To mankind the love of worldly appetites is painted in glowing colours: women and children, and heaped-up mounds of gold and silver, and horses with fine markings, and livestock and fertile farmland. All that is merely the enjoyment of the life of this world. The best homecoming is in the presence of God. (Surah Al 'Imran: 14)
The Situation of the Person Who Is Not Aware That He Shows Off With Impressions
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A rich man showing off his expensive car to his associates is actually showing off an impression of a car formed in his brain. At that moment, the rich man cannot even imagine that he actually has no relation with the car that is receiving all the praise. In fact, the impression of the car in his own brain is formed separately in the brains of each of the people around him to whom he is showing the car. In that case, if there are five people there, and each of them receives the image of the car in his brain,
Those who show off their possessions, houses and cars to others are actually displaying fantasies formed in their brains to some other fantasies again formed in their brains. Some people are not even aware of this important fact. Certainly, this is a very humiliating situation because a person who prides himself on what he owns can have no relationship at all with the reality of a car he wants to show off or with the people he wants to show it to.
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In another verse it is revealed that the life of this world is a game, a waste of time and a deception:
Know that the life of this world is merely a game and a diversion and ostentation and a cause of boasting among yourselves and trying to outdo one another in wealth and children: like the plant-growth after rain which delights the cultivators, but then it withers and you see it turning yellow, and then it becomes broken stubble. In the hereafter, there is terrible punishment but also forgiveness from God and His good pleasure. The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion. (Surat al-Hadid: 20)
When people realize that these appearances they thought they owned during this life are actually an illusion, they understand that they have struggled and worried in vain, and that they have wasted their time. There are those who jealously guard what they own, and for the sake of these things become angry and abuse others, get irritated and pound the table with their fist. But when they realize that they have no connection with the actual material things, they are ashamed and deeply sorry that they are like be someone who, in a dream, assaults other people, gets angry and shouts at them. They immediately understand that they should act in a way that will be pleasing to God, the Origin of all the appearances shown to them. Those who comprehend this reality, that is , believers say:
Say: "My prayer and my rites, my living and my dying, are for God alone, the Lord of all the world." (Surat al-An'am: 162)
It is important never to forget this important point: It does not matter at which point in his life a person comes to understand this reality; it is never too late. He can change his way of looking at life right away and reorder his way of living according to this principle; he can begin to live not for illusions but for our Lord, the One Absolute Being. God is always forgiving to His servants.
Those who slyly pretend not to know this reality, and refuse to accept the fact that God is the One Absolute Being, have fallen into a powerful trap. God describes their state:
... What they achieved here will come to nothing. What they did will prove to be null and void. (Surah Hud: 16)
Even if a person does not want to accept this reality now and prefers to deceive himself by believing that the things he owns are absolute things, everything will become very clear after he dies on that Last Day when he is raised again to life. On that day, as it says in the verse, his "sight is sharp" (Surah Qaf: 22), and he will come to a much clearer awareness of everything. But if he has spent his worldly life running after illusory goals, he will wish that he had never lived in that world. He will perish saying, "If only death had really been the end! My wealth has been of no use to me. My power has vanished." (Surat al-Haqqa: 27-29)
Those Who See The Real Nature of Matter Lose Their Arrogance
When a person who is proud of his fame and the interest people take in him learns that those who pursue him and take an interest in him are actually impressions in his brain, he loses all his satisfaction. He sees that his pride has no meaning.
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Some people who become aware of this plain truth get upset. When they understand that they merely deal with the copies in their brains of their factories, houses, cars, property, children, spouses, relatives, and social position, their helplessness and powerlessness lies open before God. They understand that both they themselves and all that they own, even the whole universe is an illusion and that they themselves are nothing. All that is left is the spirit they call "I". Because it was God Who gave them this spirit, they certainly believe in God and submit to Him, even though they may not have believed before.
When a person grasps these facts, a feeling of humility and dependence replaces pride, arrogance and self-satisfaction. If all the wealth of the world and the most important position in it were given to a person such as this, he would not become conceited, proud or arrogant. He will not forget that he is only observing images that God has given to him, and he will not get caught up in illusions. This sublime reality will remove ambition, pride and conceit, as well as such negative feelings as spite, hatred and anger. Those who know that everything is an illusion will not engage in cut-throat competition with one another or harbor spite or enmity against anyone. In an environment where everyone has submitted himself only to God, there will be humility, submission, compassion, deference, love and intimacy.
Therefore, it is highly unreasonable for a person to pretend not to know this truth, and to fear it and run away from it. A person without faith may well fear this truth because if he accepts these facts, he will also be forced to accept the existence of God. But believers must embrace with pleasure and enthusiasm the fact that matter is a reflection that God makes them experience in their minds and that the one Absolute Being is God. For a believer, to fear God's magnificent artistry and to avoid seeing it makes no sense. When the truth is evident, it is pointless not to acknowledge it, and to continue to be deceived by the clear lines of shadows and three-dimensional apparitions. The believer does not fear the truth, but thinks about the beauty and depth of reality, and considers how much more wondrous God's flawless artistry becomes within this system.
This Reality Threatens Those Who Are Attached To This World By Ambition
A person who receives an award because of his success receives the award in his brain and receives applause from impressions of people formed in his brain.
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A man who has received an award for what he has achieved, received the award in his brain. Those who applaud him as he receives the award are, in fact, an apparition of people in his brain.
A person watching this awards ceremony on the little screen in his brain has no way of connecting with the source of the people in the auditorium, the award, or the auditorium itself. These things stay inside the brain. It is as if the person were watching the reward being given to him on a videocassette.
This is the reason why people avoid this reality with horror. When those who are bound to this world by ambition understand that their standing and position in society, the awards they win, their bank accounts, yachts, real estate, and the people that praise and esteem them are all apparitions in their brains, they are consumed by a tremendous anger. They avoid accepting this fact in all their arrogance because, they realize that it implies that their esteem, reputation and property will not be worth the ambitious commitments they have made. But no matter how hard they try to escape this reality, they cannot change the fact that they lead the whole of their lives inside their skulls.
Worries and Difficulties are Like Images in a Dream
No matter what difficulty a person is confronted with, everything occurs in the brain. In the same way a person thinks of and imagines her past, for example, her poverty during childhood; the present moment also happens in the brain.
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The things that caused people difficulty and anxiety in their lives actually happen in the brain. Someone who realizes this fact will show patience in the things that happen to him. He will know that God has created everything for a good purpose and will trust in Him.
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Some people realize that certain things happen as apparitions in the brain, but tend to forget that this is true for all phenomena. However, in every second of one's life, one experiences copy images in the brain. For example, a businessman who goes bankrupt receives images of his workplace and his employees in his brain. The things he sold and the money he received for them are all impressions in his brain. When this man loses all his money, he loses the image of that money. A person who loses his workplace and all possessions loses the image in his brain of the workplace and the property. Or a person who has his car stolen again has lost the appearance of a car in his mind. He can no longer see this car-like apparition which he thought he owned, but of course he was never actually connected to the original of that apparition even for one moment throughout his whole life.
Not only things like this, but every difficulty a person experiences in the course of his life is in the brain. For example, consider a person who lives in a country where there is internal strife. He lives every moment in mortal danger and comes every moment face to face with assaults from hostile soldiers, but he is actually face to face with an appearance of hostile soldiers in his brain. A person who is wounded or loses his arm in a skirmish loses the apparition of the arm in his brain and all his feeling of pain is a perception formed in the brain. The threatening, spiteful and aggressive things said to him by his enemies are composed of sounds formed in the brain.
As a result, events which produce difficulties, worries and fear are illusions occurring in the brain. A person who sees what these illusions really are does not feel anxious because of the difficulties in which he finds himself, nor does he complain about them. Even if he were confronted by the most aggressive and dangerous enemy, he would know that he is face to face with illusions in his brain and would not be overcome by fear or hopelessness. He knows that each one of these things is an apparition formed by God and that He created them for a purpose. No matter what he encounters, he is at peace in his trust and submission to God. In some verses of the Koran, God reveals that there will be no fear or sorrow for believers. One verse reads:
Those who say, "Our Lord is God," and then go straight will feel no fear and will know no sorrow. (Surat al-Ahqaf: 13)
A person who knows that throughout his whole life he has experience of the images created by God in his brain of everything that has happened, and every sound he has heard, will, instead of becoming fearful and vainly filled with anxiety and panic, trust in the endless mercy and compassion of the Creator Who made him and these images.
The Environment That Will Come To Be When The Real Nature of Matter is Not Kept Secret
Those who know that they have no connection with the actual material things, and that they are in the presence only of images that God presents to them, will change their whole way of living, their view of life and their values. This will be a change that will be useful both from the personal and social point of view, because someone who sees this truth will live without difficulty according to the high moral qualities that God has revealed in the Koran.
For those who do not regard the world as important and who understand that matter is an illusion, it is spiritual things that deserve to be given importance. Someone who knows that God is listening to him and watching him at every moment, and is aware that he will render an account of his every action in the hereafter, will naturally live a morally virtuous life. He will be very careful about what God has commanded and what He has forbidden. Everyone in society will be filled with love and respect for one another, and everyone will compete with one another in the performance of good and noble deeds. People will change the values according to which they judge others. Material things will lose their value and therefore, people will be judged not according to their standing and position in society but according to their moral character and their piety. No one will pursue illusion; everyone will seek after truth. Everyone will act without worrying about what others will think; the only question in their minds will be whether or not God will be pleased with what they do. In the place of the feelings of pride, arrogance and self-satisfaction that come from possessions, property, standing and position, there will be a sense of the understanding of humility and dependence. Therefore, people will willingly live according to those examples of good moral qualities spoken of in the Koran. Eventually, these changes will put an end to many problems of today's societies.
In place of angry, aggressive people, anxious even about small profit, there will be those who know that they have experience of an illusion of everything they see. They will be well aware that reactions of anger and loud shouting make them look foolish. Well-being and trust will prevail in individuals and societies and everyone will be pleased with his life and possessions. These, then, are some of the blessings that this hidden reality will bring to individuals and societies. Knowing, considering and living according to this reality will bring many more goodnesses to human beings. Those who wish to attain these goodnesses should consider this reality well and endeavor to understand it. In one verse, God says,
Clear insights have come to you from your Lord. Whoever sees clearly, does so to his own benefit. Whoever is blind, it is to his own detriment... (Surat al-An'am: 104)
Knowing The Real Nature of Matter is The End of Materialism
The philosophy of materialism is the worldview that is most threatened by the fact that we never have direct experience of the original material world. In order to understand this better, we must look at the general definition of materialism. The wicked philosophy of materialism is defined in materialist writings as:
Materialism accepts the eternity and endlessness of the world, that it is not created by God and is infinite in time and space.36
In the 8th volume of the Larousse Encyclopedia, materialist philosophy is defined as follows:
Materialism is a doctrine which does not accept the existence of any other substance than matter. It is the opposite of idealism which says that the essence and substance of reality is created by spirit.
As we can see in this brief definition, materialist philosophy regards matter as the only absolute existent and believes that, apart from matter, no thought or thing exists. Materialist philosophy does not accept the existence of spirit but regards human consciousness as a product of the activities of the brain. (We considered the invalidity of this materialist claim in the section entitled, "One of the Most Important Dilemmas of Materialism: Human Consciousness"). One of the most important implications of what is explained throughout this book is the fact that materialist philosophy is completely invalid. This is due to the fact that it is now very clear today that we merely know the version in our mind of what we call matter; it is impossible for us to demonstrate what the original of matter outside our mind is like. This is because it is impossible for us to come out of our minds and come into contact with a material source of things. If we accept this fact summarized in two sentences, neither matter nor materialism remains. Seeing that we can never attain to the material existence in the external world, it is clearly unnecessary and pointless to construct a philosophy on matter and to base a view of life on it.
Throughout his life, Lenin told his followers the falsehood that matter was absolute reality. Actually, he gave his most impassioned speeches to impressions of people formed in his brain and the followers from whom he took his strength were also impressions in his brain.
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Those who followed Communist leaders like Lenin, Mao and Stalin saw them as strong leaders. They listened to their speeches attentively and with great excitement. They thought that these persons were individuals who possessed their own strength. However, each leader was a figure in their brains.
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The basic reason why those who espouse materialist philosophy are disturbed by this important secret underlying matter and refuse to accept it even though it is very evident, is that they understand that it will mean the end of their philosophy. Throughout history every materialist has been disturbed by the description of the nature of matter, even by the other materialists' reading books telling about this fact, and they have expressed their misgivings. For example, one of the leaders of the bloody Russian Revolution, Vladimir I. Lenin, in his book written almost a century ago called Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, warned his followers of this fact:
Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism-and that is all that fideism requires. A single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machists have all become ensnared in idealism, that is , in a diluted, subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took "sensation" not as an image of the external world but as a special "element". It is nobody's sensation, nobody's mind, nobody's spirit, nobody's will.37
These sentences show how uncomfortable this fact made materialists; Lenin was very afraid of it and wanted to erase it from his own mind and from the minds of his comrades. But materialists today are in a much greater state of discomfort than Lenin was because the invalidity of materialism has, in the last 100 years, become more clearly and strongly established. Considered in the past to be a philosophical speculation or a matter of opinion, the unreality of matter has now been proven for the first time in history in an irrefutable and scientifically based manner. The science writer Lincoln Barnett says that even hinting at this possibility makes materialist scientists anxious and fearful:
Along with philosophers' reduction of all objective reality to a shadow-world of perceptions, scientists have become aware of the alarming limitations of man's senses.38
In Turkey and throughout the whole world, this fear and anxiety can be seen very clearly in every materialist who confronts this issue. For example, in Turkey, materialists have suffered a serious set-back from the collapse of the theory of evolution, which they supposed to be the basis of their philosophy. Now they have begun to understand that they have lost a more important support than Darwinism—matter itself. For this reason they are now saying that, from their point of view, this issue is a very serious danger which causes their cultural fabric to be totally shredded.
In fact, this points to a promise revealed to human beings by God in the Koran. Where truth is plain, false ideas are bound to perish:
Say: "Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Falsehood is always bound to vanish." (Surat al-Isra': 81)
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya': 18)
Materialism and those who have espoused it throughout history use matter as a pretext to rebel against God, Who created them from nothing, gave them life and created the universe for them to live in. Asking such superficial and ignorant questions as "If matter exists, where is God in it?", they deny the existence of God and exert much effort to get others to deny Him. Today they see one of their most important supports destroyed; the reality described here has ripped their philosophy up from its roots and left no possibility for further discussion. The matter on which they had based all their ideas, their lives, their arrogance and their denial has slipped from their hands in an instant.
Throughout history, materialists have left a heritage of denial and methods of denial. For example, many materialists today use the words of Lenin quoted above and urge their associates not to listen to or read about this reality. However, the fact that science has clearly explained the nature of matter, together with the fact that it is so easy to use technology such as the internet to diffuse this information throughout the world, has brought their efforts to nothing. Individuals are reading about this reality, learning about it and coming to understand it. Those who have accepted materialism until recently as the most valid worldview now are very surprised to learn the real truth about matter and life in this world. This is an extraordinary trap that God has set for the deniers. No matter how deniers throughout history have set traps with their foolish minds for true religion deviantly making material idols just to deny God, God, in turn, has prepared an environment where their false idols will be taken out of their hands and where they themselves will be caught in the traps they have set. God reveals how throughout history He has responded to the traps set by deniers.
... they were planning and God was planning, but God is the Best of Planners. (Surat al-Anfal: 30)
By giving people the impression that they are in contact with the source of matter, God has made materialists fall into a trap and has humiliated them in a way that has not been seen before. They have regarded as absolute being things composed of illusion-their possessions and property, positions and titles, the society in which they live, in fact, the whole world. And by trusting in these things, they exalt themselves before God. In their own arrogant minds they rebel and go forward in their denials. While doing this, their only strength lies in matter. But they have fallen into such a lack of understanding that they never think that God encompasses and surrounds them. In the Koran, God reveals the final condition that deniers will reach as a result of their lack of understanding:
And likewise in every city We set up its greatest wrongdoers to plot in it. They plot against themselves alone, but they are not aware of it. (Surat al-An'am: 123)
No doubt, the realization of this fact is the most horrible thing that could happen to a materialist. The fact that he merely has experience of copy images of everything he owns is , in his own words, to be sentenced to a living death.
Together with this reality, only God and they are left. In this verse, God points out the fact that everyone is totally alone in His presence.
Leave the person I created on his own to Me alone. (Surat al-Muddaththir: 11)
This remarkable fact is also revealed in many other verses:
You have come to Us all alone just as We created you at first, leaving behind you everything We bestowed on you... (Surah Maryam: 95)
Each of them will come to Him on the Day of Rising all alone. (The Koran, 19: 95)
In another verse, God reveals that deniers will be addressed with these words on the Last Day:
On the Day We gather them all together, We will say to those who associated others with God, "Where are the partner-gods, for whom you made such claims?" (Surat al-An'am: 22)
After this, deniers will see the loss and destruction of all the things they regarded as more important than God, things they thought existed in the world such as possessions, children and all the things around them. God reveals this truth in this verse:
See how they lie against themselves and how what they invented has forsaken them! (Surat al-An'am: 24)
The 21st century is a turning point in which this reality will be spread among all people and materialism will be wiped off the face of the earth. Why people believed what they believed in the past or held the opinions they held is not important. What is important is that, after seeing the truth, they must not resist it and not be too late to understand this truth which will be completely understood at the time of death. We must not forget that there is no escape from truth.
The Greatest Fear of Materialists
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It is not your hand that is feeling the book you are holding now or the edges or the thickness of its pages. The feeling that you are holding a book is something formed from nerve impulses that you sense in the touch center of your brain.
The consciousness that perceives this sense of touch is not the nerves or fats in the brain. In that case, what is it in the human brain that, without hands of fingers, senses that a person is holding a book? That being beyond matter is the human spirit. It is a great wonder that God makes the human spirit perceive every sensation without using any organ. For example, the spirit even without fingers, can sense that it is touching a book, cotton, stone or the fur of an animal. This is a fact that makes materialists very afraid. Materialists think that they pass their whole lives bound to matter but, when they consider that they have never once in their whole lives been able to touch or see the reality of matter, or to come out of their minds, they understand that they have arrived at a great impasse. For this reason, they make every effort to keep this extraordinary and remarkable wonder from the eyes of others.
But for people in the twentyfirst century, God has created an environment where they can grasp this important fact which they experience every moment and He has made scientific advances a very important support for understanding it.
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Time is a Perception Too
At this point in the book it has been explained that we can never reach the original matter, thought to be an absolute existent, and that every person experiences merely copy images in his brain. And it has been shown how important this reality has been for the increase of fear and love toward God, the spread of spirituality and good morals and the collapse of materialism.
There is another concept similar to matter that materialists have considered eternal and absolute—time. But like matter, time is also a perception and is not eternal; there is a moment when it was created. This fact, which has now been established by scientific proofs, was revealed in several verses of the Qur'an.
Time is A Concept That is Formed From The Comparison of One Moment With Another
We think that a lapse of time has occurred between the moment the telephone rings and when we hear the voice of a friend, and we call this interval "time". Time is a perception that arises from making a comparison between what we experience at one particular moment and the past.
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Time is a concept that depends on comparing events we have experienced. For example, someone goes into a room. Later he sees a pen on the floor and bends over to pick it up. Then, he takes the pen to a table and places it there. The person makes a comparison between all these actions. He thinks that a space of time has passed between each one and so the perception of time comes to be.
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Time is a concept that depends totally on our perceptions and the comparison we make between our perceptions. For example, at this moment you are reading this book. Suppose that, before reading this book, you were eating something in the kitchen. You think that there is a period between the time when you were eating in the kitchen and this moment, and you call it "time". In fact, the moment you were eating in the kitchen is a piece of information in your memory, and you compare this moment with the information in your memory and call it time. If you do not make this comparison, the concept of time disappears and the only moment that exists for you will be the present moment.
A person's past is composed of information given to her memory. If a person's memory is erased, her past is also erased. The future is composed of ideas. Without these ideas, only the "present moment" of experience remains.
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For example, a high school graduation ceremony is something in a person's memory. By comparing other pieces of information in his memory since the graduation, with the present moment, he forms an idea of time and, according to the information in his memory, he determines the length or the shortness of this time. But this sense of length or shortness is completely in his brain, and comes from this comparison.
In the same way, when someone sees a person bend over to pick up a pen that he had dropped on the floor and put it on the table, he makes a comparison. In the moment when the observer saw the person put the pen on the table, that person's bending over, picking up the pen, walking to the table are pieces of information in the observer's brain. The perception of time arises from the comparison of the person putting the pen on the table with these pieces of information.
Renowned physicist Julian Barbour defines time in this way:
Time is nothing but a measure of the changing positions of objects. A pendulum swings, the hands on a clock advance.39
In short, time is composed of a few pieces of information hidden as a memory in the brain; rather, it arises from the comparison of images. If a person did not have a memory, that person would live only in the present moment; his brain would not be able to make these interpretations and, therefore, he would not have any perception of time.
The Views of Scientists On The Idea That Time is A Perception
Today it has been scientifically accepted that time is a concept that arises from our making a definite sequential arrangement among movements and changes. We will try to make this clearer by giving examples from those thinkers and scientists who have established this view.
The physicist Julian Barbour caused a great stir in the scientific world with his book entitled The End of Time in which he examined the ideas of timelessness and eternity. He pointed out that the idea that time was a perception was very difficult for many people to accept. In an interview with Barbour reported in Discover magazine, these comments are made about time being a perception:
"I still have trouble accepting it" he (Barbour) says. But then, common sense has never been a reliable guide to understanding the universe – physicists have been confounding our perceptions since Copernicus first suggested that the sun does not revolve around Earth. After all, we don't feel the slightest movement as the spinning Earth hurtles through the void at some 67,000 miles per hour. Our sense of the passage of time, Barbour argues, is just as wrongheaded as the credo of the Flat Earth Society.40
As we can see above, this renowned physicist pointed out that any idea we have of time being absolute is false, and that research done in modern physics has confirmed this. Time is not absolute; it is a variously perceived, subjective concept depending on events.
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In a World Where Time Flew Backwards, Past Would Be Future
Because every event is shown to us in a definite series, we think that time always moves forward. For example, a skier always skies down a mountain, not up it. A drop of water does not rise up from a pool, but always falls down into it. In this situation, a skier's position on a mountain is in the past, while his position down the mountain is the future. However, if the information in our memories were to be displayed in reverse, as we would rewind a film, what is for us the future, that is the downhill position, would be the past and the past, that is the uphill position, would be the future.
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François Jacob, thinker, Nobel laureate and famous professor of genetics, in his book entitled Le Jeu des Possibles (The Possible and the Actual) says this about the possibility that time can move backwards:
Films played backwards make it possible for us to imagine a world in which time flows backwards. A world in which milk separates itself from the coffee and jumps out of the cup to reach the milk-pan; a world in which light rays are emitted from the walls to be collected in a trap (gravity center) instead of gushing out from a light source; a world in which a stone slopes to the palm of a man by the astonishing cooperation of innumerable drops of water which enable the stone to jump out of water. Yet, in such a world in which time has such opposite features, the processes of our brain and the way our memory compiles information, would similarly be functioning backwards. The same is true for the past and future and the world will appear to us exactly as it currently appears.41
Because our brain works by arranging things in a sequence, we do not believe that the world works as described above; we think that time always moves forward. However, this is a decision our brain makes and is therefore totally relative. If the information in our brains were arranged like a film being projected backwards, time would be for us like a film being projected backwards. In this situation, we would start to perceive that the past was the future and the future was the past and we would experience life in a way totally opposite than we do now.
In fact, we cannot know how time moves or, indeed, if it moves at all. This demonstrates that time is not an absolute reality but only a kind of perception.
The fact that time is a perception was proved by the greatest physicist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, in his "General Theory of Relativity". In his book, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett says this:
Along with absolute space, Einstein discarded the concept of absolute time – of a steady, unvarying inexorable universal time flow, streaming from the infinite past to the infinite future. Much of the obscurity that has surrounded the Theory of Relativity stems from man's reluctance to recognize that sense of time, like sense of colour, is a form of perception. Just as space is simply a possible order of material objects, so time is simply a possible order of events. The subjectivity of time is best explained in Einstein's own words. "The experiences of an individual" he says, "appear to us arranged in a series of events; in this series the single events which we remember appear to be ordered according to the criterion of 'earlier' and 'later'. There exists, therefore, for the individual, an I-time, or subjective time. This in itself is not measurable. I can, indeed, associate numbers with the events, in such a way that a greater number is associated with the later event than with an earlier one.42
From these words of Einstein, we can understand that the idea that time moves forward is totally a conditioned response.
Einstein himself pointed out, as quoted in Barnett's book: "Space and time are forms of intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of colour, shape, or size."43
According to the "General Theory of Relativity", time is not absolute; apart from the series of events according to which we measure it, it has no independent existence.
Our dreams are very important in understanding the relativity of time. In our sleep we experience events that we believe go on for days but actually, we are having a dream which lasts for only a few minutes or even a few seconds.
In order to make this clearer, let us think of an example. Let us think of a specially designed room with one window and that we spend a certain amount of time in it. In the room there is a clock by which we will be able to see the passage of time. Through the window we can see the sun coming up and going down at regular intervals. After a few days we are asked how long we have stayed in the room. Our answer will be calculated by information we have received based on looking at the clock from time to time and on how many times the sun rose and set. For example, we calculate that we have spent three days in the room. But if the person who put us in the room comes and says that we were actually in the room for two days, that the sun we saw in the window was actually artificially produced, and that the clock in the room was fast, then our calculations would make no sense.
This example shows that our knowledge about the rate at which time passes depends on references which change according to the person who is perceiving it.
This is an example of how under different circumstances a person perceives the same amount of time as longer or shorter. Here is another example. For a person who is waiting for his brother to come out of an operation, one hour seems like several. But if the same person is doing something he really enjoys, he cannot understand how the hour passed so quickly.
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One twin sister takes a space trip at a speed close to the speed of light. When she returns thirty years later, the sister who stayed on the earth will be much older compared to the sister who went into space.
1. 30 years ego
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Einstein scientifically established the following fact in his "General Theory of Relativity": The rate at which time passes changes according to the speed of a body and its distance from the center of gravity. If the speed increases, time decreases, contracts, moves slower and seems that the point of inertia approaches.
Let us explain this with one of Einstein's thought experiments. Suppose that there are two twin brothers. One of them stays in this world, the other goes on a space journey during which he travels almost at the speed of light. When he returns from space, he will find that his twin brother is much older than he is . The reason for this is that the time passed much more slowly for the brother who went on the space trip. The same example can be thought of in relation to a father who went on a space trip in a rocket traveling at nearly 99 percent of the speed of time and his son who remained on this earth. According to Einstein, if the father was 27 years old and his son was three, 30 earth-years later when the father returned to earth, the son would be 33 and the father would be 30 years old. 44
The relativity of time is not something that is relative to the speeding up or slowing down of the clock; it comes from the fact that every material system, to the particles at the subatomic level, works at different rates of speed. In an environment where time was slowed down, a person's heartbeat, rate of cell division and brain activity would happen more slowly. In this situation, a person would go about his daily business unaware that time had slowed down.
The Concept of The Relativity of Time is Revealed in The Koran
As we explained in previous pages, time is not an absolute reality; with discoveries in modern science it has been definitely proved that it is a relative perception. It is a wonder that this discovery made by science in tshe 20th century was revealed in the Koran 1400 years before.
For example, in some verses, it is pointed out that life is very short. A human life of approximately 60 years is said to be as short as an hour in a day.
On the Day He calls you, you will respond by praising Him and think that you have only tarried a very short time. (Surat al-Isra': 52)
On the day We gather them together-when it will seem if they had tarried no more than an hour of a single day - they will recognize one another... (Surah Yunus: 45)
In other verses, it is revealed that time is much shorter than people think it is .
He will say, "How many years did you tarry on the earth?" They will say, "We tarried there for a day or part of a day. Ask those able to count!" He will say, "You only tarried there for a little while if you did but know!" (Surat al-Muminun: 112-114)
In other verses in the Koran it is said that time moves with a different speed in different dimensions. For example, it is revealed that one day in God's sight is equal to a thousand years. (Surat al-Hajj: 47) Other verses speak of this:
The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose length is fifty thousand years. (Surat al-Ma'arij: 4)
He directs the whole affair from heaven to earth. Then it will again ascend to Him on a Day whose length is a thousand years by the way you measure. (Surat as-Sajda: 5)
In the style used in many verses of the Koran, it is clearly shown that time is a perception. For example, God speaks of a number of believers (The Companions of the Cave) whom He put into a deep sleep for over 300 years. Later, when He woke them up, these people thought that they had been asleep for a very short time; they could not imagine how long they had been asleep:
So We sealed their ears with sleep in the cave for a number of years. Then We woke them up again so that we might see which of the two groups would better calculate the time they had stayed there. (Surat al-Kahf: 11-12)
That was the situation when we woke them up so they could question one another. One of them asked, "How long have you been here?" They replied, "We have been here for a day or part of a day." They said, "Your Lord knows best how long you have been here..." (Surat al-Kahf: 19)
The situation referred to in the verse below is an important proof that time is a psychological perception:
Or the one who passed by a town which had fallen into ruin? He asked, "How can God restore this to life when it has died?" God caused him to die a hundred years then brought him back to life. Then He asked, "How long have you been here?" He replied, "I have been here a day or part of a day." He said, "Not so! You have been here a hundred years. Look at your food and drink—it has not gone bad—and look at your donkey so We can make you a Sign for all mankind. Look at the bones —how We raise them up and clothe them in flesh." When it had become clear to him, he said, "Now I know that God has power over all things." (Surat al-Baqara: 259)
As we see, it is revealed in these verses that time is relative and not absolute. This means that time changes according to the perceptions of the perceiver; it is not a concrete existent that exists on its own apart from the perceiver.
The Relativity of Time Explains The Reality of Fate
As we see from the account of the relativity of time and the verses that refer to it, time is not a concrete concept, but one that varies depending on perceptions. For example, a space of time conceived by us as millions of years long is one moment in God's sight. A period of 50 thousand years for us is only a day for Gabriel and the angels.
This reality is very important for an understanding of the idea of fate. Fate is the idea that God created every single event, past, present, and future in "a single moment". This means that every event, from the creation of the universe until doomsday, has already occurred and ended in God's sight. A significant number of people cannot grasp the reality of fate. They cannot understand how God can know events that have not yet happened, or how past and future events have already happened in God's sight. From our point of view, things that have not happened are events which have not occurred. This is because we live our lives in relation to the time that God has created, and we could not know anything without the information in our memories. Because we dwell in the testing place of this world, God has not given us memories of the things we call "future" events. Consequently, we cannot know what the future holds. But God is not bound to time or space; it is He who has already created all these things from nothing. For this reason, past, present and future are all the same to God. From His point of view, everything has already occurred; He does not need to wait to see the result of an action. The beginning and the end of an event are both experienced in His sight in a single moment. For example, God already knew what kind of end awaited Pharaoh even before sending Moses to him, even before Moses was born and even before Egypt became a kingdom; and all these events including the end of Pharaoh were experienced in a single moment in the sight of God. Besides, for God there is no such thing as remembering the past; past and future are always present to God; everything exists in the same moment.
Bir insan tüm hayatını bir film şeridi olarak düşünürse, biz bu şeridi video kasetten seyreder gibi seyrederiz ve kasedi ileri almak gibi bir iIf we think of our life as a filmstrip, we watch it as if we were viewing a videocassette with no possibility to speed up the film. But God sees the whole film all at once at the same moment; it is He Who created it and determined all its details. As we are able to see the beginning, middle and end of a ruler all at once, so God encompasses in one moment, from beginning to end, the time to which we are subject. However, human beings experience these events only when the time comes to witness the fate that God has created for them. This is the way it is for the fates of everyone in the world. The lives of everyone who has ever been created and whoever will be created, in this world and the next, are present in the sight of God in all their details. The fates of all living things—planets, plants and things—are written together with the fates of millions of human beings in God's eternal memory. They will remain written without being lost or diminished. The reality of fate is one of the manifestations of God's eternal greatness, power and might. This is why He is called the Preserver (al-Hafiz).
The Concept of "Past" Comes From Information In Our Memories
Because of suggestions we receive, we think we live in separate divisions of time called past, present and future. However, the only reason we have a concept of "past" (as we explained earlier) is that various things have been placed in our memories. For example, the moment we enrolled in primary school is a bit of information in our memory and we perceive it therefore as an event in the past. However, future events are not in our memories. Therefore, we regard these things that we do not yet know about as things that will be experienced or happen in the future. But just as the past has been experienced from our point of view, so has the future. But, because these events have not been given to our memories, we cannot know them.
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If God puts future events into our memories, then, the future would be the past for us. For example, a thirty yesar old person has thirty years of memories and events in his memory and, for this reason, thinks he has a thirty year past. If future events between the ages of thirty and seventy were to be put into this person's memory, then, for this thirty year old individual, both his thirty years and the "future" between the ages of thirty and seventy, would become the past. In this situation past and future would be present in the memory, and each one would be lived experiences for him.
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A person's past is actually information located in his memory. If that person's memory were erased, his past would be gone. The future is composed of human thoughts. We make plans for the future and think about it, but if our thoughts were destroyed there would remain no concept of the future. If our memory and our thoughts were taken from us, we would have only the moment of experience, or this particular moment, left.
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Because God has made us perceive events in a definite series, as if there were a time moving from past to future, He does not inform us of our future or give this information to our memories. The future is not in our memories, but all human pasts and futures are in His eternal memory. This, as we said before, is like observing a human life as if it were already wholly depicted and complete in a film. Someone who cannot advance the film sees his life as the frames pass one by one. He is mistaken in thinking that the frames he has not yet seen constitute the future.
Past And Future Are News of The Unseen
In the verses, God reveals that the only one who knows what is secret, invisible, unseen and unknown is He Himself:
Say: "O God, Originator of the heavens and the earth, Knower of the Unseen and the Visible, You will judge between Your servants regarding what they differed about." (Surat az-Zumar: 46)
Say: "Death, from which you are fleeing, will certainly catch up with you. Then you will be returned to the Knower of the Unseen and the Visible and He will inform you about what you did." (Surat al-Jumu'a: 8)
He said, "Adam, tell them their names." When he had told them their names, He said, "Did I not tell you that I know the Unseen of the heavens and the earth, and I know what you make known and what you hide?" (Surat al-Baqara: 33)
Generally, the word "secret" is thought to refer only to something unknown about the future; however, both the past and the future are secret. Those who have lived in the past and those who will live in the future are kept in God's sight. However, God gives some of the knowledge kept in His sight to the memories of people and makes it known. For example, when God gave knowledge concerning the past in the Koran, He told the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) that this was news of the unseen:
That is some of the news of the Unseen which We reveal to you. Neither you nor your people knew it before this time. So be steadfast. The best end result is for those who do their duty. (Surah Hud: 49)
This is news of the Unseen which We reveal to you. You were not with them when they decided what to do and devised their scheme. (Surah Yusuf: 102)
God gave the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) information about some things that had not yet happened which was news of the unseen about the future. For example, the taking of Mecca (Surat al-Fath: 27) and the victory of the Greeks over the pagans (Surat ar-Rum: 3-4) were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) before they happened. The Prophet's (may God bless him and grant him peace) sayings about the signs of the day of resurrection and the end times (which were news of the unseen to people of that time) show that God taught these things to him.
The Koran explains that news of the unseen is given to prophets and some devout believers. For example, it was revealed to Joseph that the trap set for him by his brothers will come to nothing (Surah Yusuf: 15), and to the mother of Moses it was revealed that her son would escape the cruelty of Pharaoh and become a prophet. (Surat al-Qasas: 7)
Finally, all that we call past and future is news of the unseen hidden in the sight of God. God gives some of this knowledge to the memories of those He chooses, at a time He chooses, thus making them aware of some of the unseen. The events which become visible and observable are characterized by human beings as being past events.
The Importance of Submission To Fate
Just as a person cannot change his past, he also cannot change his future. For this reason, those who are stressed or anxious about things that happen to them experience anxiety and difficulty that result from their not being in submission to their fate.
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The fact that past and future are already created in God's sight, and that everything has happened and is present at God's sight, demonstrates a very important truth. Everyone is in complete submission to his fate. Just as a person cannot change his past, so he cannot change his future, because, like the past, the future has already happened. Everything in the future is determined—when and where events will happen, what he will eat, who he will talk to, what he will discuss, how much money he will earn, what diseases he will get, and when, where and how he will die. All these things are already in God's sight and already experienced in His memory. But this knowledge is not yet in a person's memory.
Therefore, those who are sorry, upset, outraged and worried about the future, are anxious in vain. The future they are so worried and anxious about has already happened. And no matter what they do, they cannot change these things.
At this point it is very important to point out that it is necessary to avoid a mistaken understanding of fate. Some people misunderstand and think that what is in their fate will happen anyway so there is nothing they can do. It is true that everything we experience is determined in our fate. Before we experienced an occurrence, it has been experienced in God's sight and is written in all its details in the Mother of the Book (Lawh Mahfuz) in God's sight. But God gives everyone the sense that he can change things and make his own choices and decisions. For example, when a person wants to drink some water, he does not say "If it is my fate I will drink", and sit down without making any move. Instead, he gets up, takes a glass and drinks the water. Actually, he drinks a predetermined amount of water from a predetermined glass. But as he does this, he senses that he is acting according to his own desire and will. He senses this throughout his life in everything that he does. The difference between a person who submits himself to God and to the fate created by God, and someone who cannot grasp this reality is this: the person who submits himself to God knows that everything he does is according to the will of God despite the sense that he has done it himself. The other person mistakenly assumes that he has done everything with his own intelligence and power.
God Knows and Sees Our Past and Future as One Moment
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In this picture the people do not see the car and those in the car do not see them. For this particular moment they are unaware of one another. But someone who looks at this picture from a distance and from a different place will easily see everything on both sides at the same moment. The same thing happens in human life.
We have the concepts of the past and the future and, because we are bound to time, we are able to see our future only as time passes. But since God is not bound to time and space, He sees our past, our future and our present in one single moment, with complete vitality and clarity. For example, the sudden stop that this driver will make when he sees the people on the road is known and seen beforehand in the Sight of God.
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For example, when a person who has submitted himself to God learns that he has contracted a disease, knows that the disease is in his fate and he trusts in God. He thinks that because God has put it in his fate, it will certainly bring him great good. But he does not wait without taking any measures thinking that if he is fated to get better he will get better. On the contrary, he takes all possible precautions; he goes to a doctor, pays attention to his diet and takes medicine. But he does not forget that the effectiveness of the doctor, the treatment, the medicine, as well as whether or not he will get better are all in his fate. He knows that all this is in God's memory and was present there even before he came into the world. In the Koran, God reveals that everything that human beings experience is written beforehand in a book:
Nothing occurs, either in the earth or in yourselves, without its being in a Book before We make it happen. That is something easy for God. That is so that you will not be grieved about the things that may have escaped you or exult about the things that come to you. God does not love any vain or boastful man. (Surat al-Hadid: 22-23)
For this reason, anyone who believes in fate will not be troubled or despair about things that happen to him. On the contrary, he will have the utmost trust and confidence in his submission to God. God has determined in advance everything that happens to a person; He has commanded that we not be sorry for the things that happen to us, and be self-satisfied by the blessings that we receive. The difficulties that human beings experience, together with their wealth and success, is determined by God. All these things are in the fate predetermined by our Lord to test human beings. As it is revealed in one verse,"... God's command is a pre-ordained decree." (Surat al-Ahzab: 38)
Every existing thing is created with a fate. Even before a vase is manufactured, it is determined in God's Sight who will make it and in what style, who will buy it and from where, in what house and in what corner it will be placed, and on what day, in what moment and why it will fall and be broken.
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In another verse, God reveals that "We have created all things in due measure." (Surat al-Qamar: 49) Not only human beings but also all things animate and inanimate, the sun, the moon, mountains and trees have their fate determined by God. For example, a broken antique vase was broken at the moment determined by its fate. While it was being made, it was determined who would use this centuries-old vase, as well as in which corner of which house and with which other objects it would stand. The designs on the vase and it colors were determined in advance in its fate. It was known in God's memory on which day, which hour, which minute, by whom and how it would be broken. The first moment the vase was made, the first moment it was placed in the window for sale, the first moment it was placed in the corner of the house, the moment it was broken into pieces, in short, every moment in the centuries-long life of this vase, was present in God's sight as one single moment. Whereas even though the person who would break the vase was not aware that he would break it until a moment before it happened, that moment was experienced and known in God's sight. For this reason, God tells human beings not to be sorry for the things that may have escaped them. What have escaped them escaped in accordance with their fate, and they cannot change it. People must learn a lesson from what happens in their fate, see the purpose and benefits that accrue to them from it. They must always incline themselves toward the endless mercy, compassion and justice of our Lord, Who creates their fate, and spares and protects His servants.
Those who lead their lives heedless of this important reality are always anxious and fearful. For example, they are very worried about the future of their children. They are very concerned about questions such as these: What school will they go to? What profession will they follow? Will they have good health? What kind of lives will they lead? However, every moment of a person's life is determined in God's sight, from the time he is a single cell to the time he learns to read and write, from the first answers he gives in a university exam to what company he will work in during his life, what papers he will sign and how many times he will sign them, where and how he will die. All of these things are hidden in the memory of God. For example, at this moment, a person is in the fetal stage, at primary school and at the university. These are all in God's memory as one single moment, along with the moment he celebrates his thirty-fifth birthday, the first day he begins his job, the moment when he sees the angels after he dies, the moment when he is buried, and the moment on the Last Day when he will give an account to God.
Consequently, it is pointless to worry and be fearful about a life whose every moment has been lived, experienced and is still present in the memory of God. No matter how hard a person tries and no matter how anxious he may be, everyone, his children, spouse, friends and relatives will live the life that is present at God's sight.
If this is the case, a person of conscience and intelligence who grasps this reality must submit humbly to God and to the fate He has created. Actually, everyone is already in submission to God, created in subservience to Him. No matter whether he likes it or not, he lives subservient to the fate created for him by God. A person who denies his fate is a denier because being a denier is written in his fate.
Those who submit themselves willingly to God may hope to enjoy God's pleasure and mercy and to win paradise; they will live a life of well being in security and happiness both in this world and in the world to come. This is because, for a person who submits himself to God, knowing that there is nothing better for him than the fate created for him by God, there is nothing to fear or be anxious about. This person will make every effort, but he knows that this effort is in his fate and, no matter what he does, he will not have the ability to change what is written in his fate.
A believer will submit himself to the fate created by God. In the face of what happens to him, he will do his best to understand the purpose of these happenings, take precautions, and make an effort to change things for the better. But he will take comfort in his knowledge that all these things come to be according to fate and that God had determined the most beneficial things in advance. As an example of this, the Koran mentions measures taken by Jacob for the security of his children. In order to make his sons beware of people with evil intentions, Jacob advised his sons to enter the city by different gates but he reminded them that this would never influence the fate determined by God.
He said, "My sons! You must not enter through a single gate. Go in through different gates. But I cannot save you from God at all, for judgment comes from no one but God. In Him I put my trust, and let all those who put their trust, put it in Him alone." (Surah Yusuf: 67)
People may do what they like, but they will never be able to change their fate. This is revealed in this verse:
Then He sent down to you, after the distress, security, restful sleep overtaking a group of you, whereas another group became prey to anxious thoughts, thinking other than the truth about God—thoughts belonging to the Time of Ignorance—saying, "Do we have any say in the affair at all?" Say, "The affair belongs entirely to God." They are concealing things inside themselves which they do not disclose to you, saying, "If we had only had a say in the affair, none of us would have been killed here in this place." Say, "Even if you had been inside your homes, those people for whom killing was decreed would have gone out to their place of death." So that God might test what is in your breasts and purge what is in your hearts. God knows the contents of your hearts. (Surah Al 'Imran: 154)
Even before a car is manufactured, it is determined in its fate what color it will be, who will buy it and even what it will be like in the junkyard.
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It can be seen in this verse that even if a person runs away from a task in the way of God in order not to die, if his death is written in his fate, he will die anyway. Even the ways and methods resorted to in order to escape death are determined in fate and everyone will experience those things that are written in his fate. And in this verse, God reveals to human beings that the purpose of the things created in their fate is to test them and to purify their hearts. In the Koran it is said that everyone's death is determined in the sight of God and that the conception of a baby happens with the permission of God.
God created you from dust and then from a drop of sperm and then made you into pairs. No female becomes pregnant or gives birth except with His knowledge. And no living thing lives long or has its life cut short without that being in a Book. That is easy for God. (Surah Fatir: 11)
In the verses below it is revealed that everything a person does is written sentence by sentence and what those in paradise experience are also things that have already been experienced. As we said earlier, the real life of paradise is for us in the future. But the lives of those in paradise, their conversations and feasting is in God's memory at this moment. Before we were born, the future of humanity in this world and the next had been experienced in God's sight in a moment and is being kept in God's memory.
Everything they did is in the Books.
Everything is recorded, big or small.
The heedful are amid Gardens and Rivers, on seats of honour in the presence of a Competent Sovereign. (Surat al-Qamar: 52-55)
We can understand from this way of speaking in the Koran that, in God's sight, time is a single moment and for Him there is no past or future. As we see, some events that will be for us in the future, are understood in the Koran as being long passed. This is because both the past and the future are created by God as a single moment. Therefore, an event which is related to occur in the future, in fact, has already occurred, but, because we cannot understand this, we think of them as future. For example, in the verses where the account to be given to God by human beings is described, it is understood as a long passed event.
And the trumpet is blown, and all who are in the heavens and all who are on the earth swoon away, save him whom God wills. Then it is blown a second time, and behold them standing waiting! And the earth shone with the light of her Lord, and the Book is set up, and the prophets and the witnesses are brought, and it is judged between them with truth, and they are not wronged. Every self will be repaid in full for what it did. He knows best what they are doing. Those who disbelieve will be driven to Hell in companies and when they arrive there and its gates are opened its custodians will say to them, "Did messengers from yourselves not come to you, reciting your Lord's signs to you and warning you of the meeting on this Day of yours?" They will say, "Indeed they did, but the decree of punishment is justly carried out against the unbelievers." They will be told, "Enter the gates of Hell and stay there timelessly, for ever. How evil is the abode of the arrogant!" And those who fear [and respect] their Lord will be driven to the Garden in companies and when they arrive there, finding its gates open, its custodians will say to them, "Peace be upon you! You have done well so enter it timelessly, for ever." (Surat az-Zumar: 68-73)
Some further examples of this are the following:
And every soul came, along with a driver and a witness. (Surah Qaf: 21)
And the heaven is cloven asunder, so that on that day it is frail. (Surat al-Haqqa: 16)
And because they were patient and constant, He rewarded them with a garden and garments of silk. Reclining in the garden on raised thrones, they saw there neither the sun's excessive heat nor excessive cold. (Surat al-Insan: 12-13)
And Hell is placed in full view for all to see. (Surat an-Nazi'at: 36)
But on this day the believers laugh at the unbelievers. (Surat al-Mutaffifin: 34)
And the sinful saw the fire and realized they are going to fall into it and find no way of escaping from it. (Surat al-Kahf: 53)
In the above verses, the events we are to experience after death are described as finished. This is because God is not bound to the relative dimension of time and space as we are. God has willed all these events in timelessness; human beings have done them, experienced them all and brought them to a conclusion. The verse below reveals that every kind of occurrence, great and small, happens within the knowledge of God and is inscribed in a book.
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the Koran or do any action without Our witnessing you while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven. Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which is not in a Clear Book. (Surah Yunus: 61)
