MKADK’s Journey towards Allah
Part Four
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Dedicated To
The Supreme God
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Email address: mkadk2012@gmail.com
“Allah Guides To His Light Whom
He Pleases”
“Allah Is The Light Of Heaven And Earth”
(God in Holy Quran)
List of Books that helped my quest
- A Search in Secret Egypt by Paul Brunton
- A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton
- Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
- Confessions by Saint Augustine
- In Quest of God by Swami Ramdas
- Iqbal's poetry
- Kashaf ul-Mahjoob by Data Gunj Bakhash
- Living with Kundalini by Gopi Krishna
- Pilgrim of Stars by Dilip Kumar Roy and Indra Devi
- Shahab Nama by Shahab
- The Autobiography of St Therese of Lisieux. Translated by John Beevers
- The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda
- The Hunger of the Soul by Nancy Mayorga
- The Life of Teresa of Jesus by Teresa of Avila. Translated by Allison Peers
- The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Translated by Salvatore Sciurba
- The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
- The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. Translated by Allison Peers
Dictionary of terms
- Ashram: hermitage
- Daam. A prayer to cure a sickness
- Durvesh: a Muslim mystic or fakir
- Fakir: a Muslim ascetic mystic. beggar
- Fana: a disintegration. passing away ( in God, in teacher, in holy prophet )
- Juzzab. Absorption in God, in Islam
- Kundalini: a serpent power. When awakened it rises progressively from base of spine to the head
- Mantra: a holy word or phrase, to be repeated
- Marakba: contemplation, meditation
- Maya: a cosmic illusion
- Mujahida: a form of Jihad or holy war, but the purpose is God-realization by spiritual means
- Mujzoob. A person absorbed in God, in Islam
- Namaz: an Islamic prayer; one of the five pillars of Islam
- Qalandar: a high-grade Muslim mystic
- Puja: ceremonial worship
- Pujari: a priest that performs Puja
- Sadhana: spirtual practices in order to reach God
- Sadhu: a monk or a holy person
- Samadhi: a superonscious state, trance-like state
- Shariat: Islamic religious laws and traditions
- Sri: a title of respect
- Swami: a monk who has taken vows of chastity, obedience and poverty
- Tareekat: Islamic mysticism
- Tasauwuf: Islamic mysticism
- Tawakkul: trust in God; a central pillar of Islamic mysticism
- Yoga: a path to reach God in Hindu mysticism
- Yogi: a practitioner of Yoga
- Zikar: repetition of a name ( usually God's) or a phraseList of contents167.Foreword………………………………………………………………….page 7134.Fate versus Free Will. Part one ………………………………………….9135 Fate versus Free Will. Part two------------------------------------11136. Fate versus Free Will part three……………………………………….12137. Fate versus Free Will. part four…………………………………………14138. Fate versus Free Will part five………………………………………… 15139 Fate versus Free Will part six………………………………………………17140 Fate versus Free Will part seven…………………………………………18141… Fate versus Free Will part eight……………………………………….20142 Fate versus Free Will part nine ………………………………………… 21143.Systems of the World. Part. one…………………………………………23144 Systems of the World. Part. two…………………………………………25145. Systems of the World. Part. three………………………………………26146 Systems of the World. Part. four…………………………………………28147 Systems of the World. Part. five………………………………………….30148 Systems of the World. Part. six…………………………………………….31149 Development and critique of religion. Part one……………………33150 Development and critique of religion. Part two……………………34151 Development and critique of religion. Part three………………….36152. Two books on God. Part one ……………………………………………….38153. Shah Sahib. Part one…………………………………………………………….40154. Shah Sahib. Part two…………………………………………………………….41155. Shah Sahib. Part three………………………………………………………….43156 Two books on God. Part two …………………………………………………44157. Two books on God. Part three……….........................................46158 Mother of ST Augustine……………..............................................47159 ST. Augustine. Part one …………….............................................49160 ST Augustine. Part two……………...............................................51161 ST Augustine. Part three………….................................................52162 ST Augustine. Part four……………................................................53163 ST Augustine. Part five ……………................................................55164 Prophet Muhammadpnuh seen over centuries. Part one ………… 56165. Prophet Muhammadpnuh seen over centuries. Part two …………58166. Prophet Muhammadpnuh seen over centuries. Part three……… 60
167. Foreword
Mkadk presents part
four of my ‘Journey towards the Great God’. It is a collection of blogs 134-166.
I have made no further advance in my quest. It has gradually dawned on me that
I have two missions; first mission is to reach God, and the second is to invite
others to the Light of God. As of now, I have failed in both missions. The door
of God is still closed and I have not awakened the love of God in anybody.
Those who are worldly, do not read my blog, or books, or listen to my poems on
YouTube. They are not interested in God. Those who are religious are happy in
their own rituals. They do not have an inner thirst for spirituality. They
praise God, they thank God, they pray to God, they are afraid of God, but they
do not love God. They are not even attached to God. They do all those things as
a habit, in an absent minded way. Those who are devout worshippers do not need
my book because they are quite content, and may get nearness to God in their
own way. Only two persons have really liked my books, and praised them, but
they are already far advanced in mysticism, much more than I. One of them, Shah
Sahib, said, “He should not concern himself about approbation from others; he
has been assigned a task, he should just do it.”
Whatever I wanted to
convey to others has been completed. In these four books I have attempted to
answer all the riddles which had perplexed me for years. I will keep on writing
more blogs, but they will be about men and women of God or of books, but not
about complex subjects. Here is a summary of those topics that I have covered:
1. There are
eighteen blogs on God (blogs 97-114).
2. There are three
blogs on mysticism, as I understand it (blogs 93-95)
3. There are nine
blogs on Fate versus Free will (blogs 134-142)
4. There are six
blogs on the systems created by God for the governance of this world (blogs 143-148)
5. There are three
blogs on development and critique of religions (blogs 149-151)
6. There are twelve
blogs on dark night of the soul (blogs 39-50)
Some things have to
be added about the proof of God, as provided in my blogs. Without the existence
of God, one cannot explain the creation of universe, prophecies about future
events, miracles, answer to prayers, and the existence of spirits of dead
people. Atheists scoff at these five arguments. They call it “God of gaps
argument”. What they mean is that science cannot explain certain things, such
as those I have mentioned. They say, these are gaps in our knowledge. That does
not mean there is God who is the perpetrator of them, therefore, they are not
proofs of God. We, the scientists, are working on these gaps. May be in another
five hundred or a thousand years, we will have satisfactory scientific
explanation of them.
Although I do agree,
as I have mentioned in blog 146 (Reply of Einstein), that these supernatural
events must be carried out by some yet undiscovered laws, because that is the
way of God; everything follows laws, created by Him. Therefore, in a sense,
nothing is supernatural. However, even if a thousand years from now we discover
the new laws explaining these occurrences, they will still point to a Supreme
Mind.
The obstinacy of
atheists astounds me. They follow two basic assumptions, without any absolute
requirement or logical reason to adopt them, as if they were some self evident
truths, such as that an elephant is bigger than an ant. These two assumptions
are: There is no God, and Revealed
knowledge is not true knowledge because it is not testable. All their
hypotheses regarding these five supernatural phenomena are based on these two
rules that they have adopted. Let us examine some of them.
1. God created the
universe, because nothing can be created from absolute nothing (discussed in
detail in blog 101). Therefore atheist scientists said; No! Universe must have
been created from nothing, since we, the scientists, believe that there is no
God (and that is an inviolable, unshakable fact to us). A scientist Alan Guth
called the universe, an ultimate free lunch.
2. Bertrand Russell said“...The universe is just there, and that's
all.” That means there is no origin of universe. So, Russell denies the current
understanding that the universe started from a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago,
and stars and galaxies gradually evolved.
3. David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, said
that there are no miracles, because miracles violate laws of nature, which is
impossible. It is just superstition. St Augustine relates the miracle of
incorrupt dead bodies (blog 160):
“God
revealed Bishop Ambrose, in a vision, where the bodies of martyrs Protasius and
Gervasius were hidden. All these years
(over two hundred) You had preserved them incorrupt.”
Saint Augustine was far from a superstitious fool.
4. The chance of intelligent
life to arise is 1 followed by 117 zeroes (see blog 153). This is an extremely
small chance. The answer by atheist scientists is; have infinite universes.
Infinite has 1 followed by infinite zeroes( trillions, googol, googolplex or
even more zeroes ), at least in one of
them ( one out of 10117) everything would be exactly right, and
intelligent life will emerge.
We cannot fathom one
universe. Consider having infinite universes! Who created them? It reminds me
of world of fantasy. Create whatever you want, in your mind, and call it a
hypothesis, without an iota of data. Keep the mantra; no God, no revealed
knowledge.
Coming back to the
beautiful world of spirituality. God is not a supposition to the great mystics
and prophets, because they have actually experienced God. Some have actually
seen the light of God, although it had deleterious effects on them. Moses and
Saint Paul and Shah Sahib saw it. Moses fell unconscious. Paul became
temporarily blind. Shah Sahib (his original name is Noor Alam), a Sufi mystic,
told my brother, that he can see the light of God in his mind’s vision, with
closed eyes. This mote has written three blogs on Shah Sahib ( 153-155).
These scientists must pause
for a minute and realize the absurdity of their denial of a Creator, because it
requires three suppositions: universe was created from absolute nothing;
intelligent life emerged by itself, against insurmountable odds; and all these
dozens of incidents which I have narrated must be wrong and these persons must
be liars. It is as if a man was hit three times with lightning on his three
birthdays
St Augustine could not
answer the question that how prophets could see future (blog 159). He wrote:
“For it is utterly impossible that things which do not exist
should be revealed. The means by which You do this is far beyond our understanding.
I have not the strength to comprehend this mystery, and by my own power I never
shall.”
This mote has
attempted to answer this riddle. See explanation 6 in blog 141 and further
discussion in blog 142.
Fifteen years and two months have passed since the start of
my journey towards God
Mkadk
13th
February, 2015
134. Fate versus Free Will.
Part one
This is one of the knottiest problems of all times.
Mankind has thought about it for centuries. I have no
intention of stating what philosophers, scientists, rationalists and religious
scholars have said about it. I will discuss this problem in an entirely
different light; the insight of mysticism. Right at the outset, I want to state
that, despite years of thought, I have not arrived at any solution. I think it
is an insoluble problem. It ends in a paradox, which I will state somewhere.
Let this mote start with stating the two theories. Then the pros and cons of
each hypothesis will be examined. We
will see if one or both hypothesis can be rejected
Hypothesis. Fate. According
to this hypothesis, in its pure and extreme form, everything is predetermined.
What a person will do during his life has been determined before his birth, by
God (1-2). I quote from al-Ashqar:
‘The central knowledge of Allah, by
which He ruled that He would create whatever He wanted to exist, and……………….. He
wrote down all of that in Al-Lau hal-Mahfooz ‘the preserved tablet’ in His
words. So the heavens and the earth…….and everything in between them and in
them___ all of that is preserved in the Al-Lauh al-Mahfooz.
The
creation of whatever Allah, the Almighty, has decreed should exist, according
to His prior knowledge and what was written by His pen; whatever happens in
reality is identical to that prior, written knowledge.’
In other words, God has decreed all things as they will be.
To a modern man it is a preposterous notion. Nobody
infringes on his independence. If this hypothesis was true then he was a mere
puppet. He does not for a moment thinks that he is a puppet. Moreover it flies
against one’s own daily experience. Let us say I want to move my arm. I think
about it and will my arm to move, and it moves. I do not have to get permission
from anybody. All our actions are our own. We usually have multiple choices; we
choose one of them, for whatever reasons
But others, who have thought about free will a little more
deeply, have come to a different conclusion. They think that free will is an
illusion. In other words we think that we have free will but in reality we do
not. It is a mere illusion. This passage from Somerset Maugham’s novel ‘of
human bondage’ illustrates this point:
At
last Philip said: “Well, I can’t say anything about other people. I can only
speak for myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I
can’t get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an
illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do
anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but
afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all
eternity.”
“What
do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward.
“Why,
merely the futility of regret. It’s no good crying over spilt milk, because all
the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”
I had read these
passage decades ago, and at that time was struck by its novelty. Why do Philip
and others arrive at that conclusion? I believe for two reasons:
First, they think
it was determined as such. It was in their destiny. It was written in the
stars. If there were two choices to a possible action, and they took option
number one, they were destined to choose option number one. Had they taken
option number two, they were, since all eternity, chosen to take option number
two.
The other reason
is that one is a product of nature and nurture. Our nature is made by the genes
that we inherit; half the genes from one’s father and the other half from one’s
mother. We are nurtured by where we are born and where we are raised. Our
parents, our teachers, our peers, the environment surrounding us, are the
predominant forces that mould our character____all during childhood.
We have absolutely no independence during nature or nurture. Nobody asks us
where you want to be born? Where you want to be raised? Who should be your
parents?
Therefore,
although it appears that we perform actions according to our own free will, how
much of that free will was made by the twin forces of nature and nurture_____both,
as we have determined, were beyond our control. That is why the character of
Philip said that the free will is an illusion.
Now, let us
examine the evidence and the arguments in support of fate
1. The hypothesis
of fate has been handed down to us through religious books and scriptures. John
Calvin in Christianity, Ibn Taymiyah in Islam, Swami Vivekananda in Hinduism
(3), believed in it and their beliefs were derived from their scriptures.
Partial support is also found in Judaism.
However, since
this mote does not regard scriptures as evidence or argument, he is going to
completely disregard it.
2. Some persons
have been able to tell future events. That means future exists somewhere, which
these persons have the ability to read (or see)
To be continued
(1) “Divine will and
predestination” by Umar S. al-Ashqar
(2) Majmoo’ al-Fattawa by Ibn Taymiyah
(3) Swami Vivekananda (1907) "Sayings and utterances".. “Therefore
we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words
are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know
is within our universe, and everything within our universe is molded by
conditions of time, space and causality. ... To acquire freedom we have to get
beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here”
135. Fate versus Free Will.
Part two
We were discussing the two causes of belief in fate
Prophecy or prediction of future events is a strong argument
in destiny, and also God, as I have discussed in great detail in blog 102. If
the future exists somewhere, then somebody wrote it, and that somebody can only
be God. Nobody else is so powerful. How could Swami Vivekananda predict 43
years in advance that Mr Dickenson will receive a silver cup from his guru
(blogs 79-81)? I have described 13 such prophecies in blogs 102-3. Events
happened just as they were predicted years in advance. The ability of Chandi
Das to go blank for few minutes and then tell Paul Brunton (blog 91) what was
going to happen to him, strongly supports the notion that a scene of future was
brought to the inner eye of Chandi Das, just as the scene of Sri Yogananda
eating strawberries in America, years later, was brought to the mind’s eye of
Sri Yukteswar.
One may say, that it would really add to our knowledge, if
instead of guessing what transpires, we would know for certain what happens. In
other words the person who has the ability to see future, shares it with
others. This mote has the privilege of having this knowledge, because the seer
shared it with me.
A seer wanted to test whether he can see the future in
advance. There was a lottery which had live drawing of the numbers, on TV, next
day. He used some spiritual procedure, after following its stipulations. After
some time, like a flash, one number came. He wrote it down. He concentrated
again, and the next number came, in a similar flash. The lottery had seven
numbers. One by one, he got all the seven numbers. Next day he watched the live
drawing on TV. His seven numbers were correct. He never repeated it, due to the
following reasons:
a. He
became quite sick. These practices take a lot out of a person.
b. He
was strongly warned by higher powers, never to do it again. God’s laws, such as
hiding the future, are for important reasons. To look into future, without
God’s permission, is against God’s plans
You may argue that these prophecies do not necessarily prove
that God willed all events to happen as they actually happened; he just knows
them in advance. In other words, due to his infinite mind, he has foreknowledge
of everything, but he does not make it happen. Events happen by free will and
chance.
This is a valid point; we will discuss it when we discuss
free will.
Now, let us discuss the arguments against fate:
1. It does not explain evil
2. It does not explain injustice
3. Makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust
4. Why is God hidden?
5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the
purpose of creation by God?
6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening
due to free will.
7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey.
8. All human effort is completely useless.
Let us discuss each point.
1.It does not explain evil in this world. Everybody has
heard of Holocaust. There is no greater example of pure evil, on a large scale,
in modern human history. If God is responsible for all events then He is
responsible for Holocaust. This mote has never in all his life, for even a
moment, thought that my beloved God is responsible for any evil. We ourselves (
Nazi Germans in the case of Holocaust) and an indifferent, neutral Nature are
responsible. However, my sentiments are not a substitute of argument. The argument
is that God could not have created Holocaust because an infinite, limitlessly
powerful mind would neither have the need nor derive any pleasure from the slow
sufferings of millions of persons. It has to be the system which created such
evil philosophy. Since human beings ( Hitler ) created that philosophy, so
human beings are responsible. If humans are responsible then they acted by
their free will. If that is the case then hypothesis one ( Fate ) is wrong and
hypothesis two ( Free will ) is right, as we will discuss later when we examine
hypothesis two.
2. It does not explain injustice in this world. We all have
seen examples of injustice. Powerful, cruel, and selfish people thrive, while
weak and righteous suffer. One sees hordes of professional beggars in India and
Pakistan, their bodies distorted from poverty and disease. Some are born blind
or crippled and their whole life passes in grief. Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis
Khan led lives of power and comfort. All of them died without suffering. Beating
and cruelty to slaves was common in the past. I quote Darwin (1):
“I feel glad that this happened in the land of
the Brazilians, for I bear them no good will - a land also of slavery, and
therefore of moral debasement...On the 19th of August we finally left the
shores of Brazil, I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To
this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my
feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable
moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet
knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that
these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case
in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who
kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house
where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and
persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a
little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I
could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not
quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye.
These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it
has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese,
English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful
negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was
present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men,
women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived
together ”
_____________________________________________________________________________________(1)
Voyage of the beagle by Charles Darwin (1839), chapter V
To be continued
136. Fate versus Free Will.
Part Three
We were discussing the arguments against Fate.
3. It makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust. There is
cruelty, injustice, hunger, poverty, disease, and natural calamities, like
earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes. If
everything is decreed by God, then is it not logical to hold God responsible
for all of the above? If you believe in the hypothesis of Fate, then the best
you can say in God’s defense is that he is indifferent, or He does not know, or
He died. If He died then the universe and the earth are running on its own. The
inhabitants of earth are responsible for their affairs. But that is hypothesis
two (Free will). Same would be true if God did not know, because the mankind
must be managing their affairs on their own.
If God was indifferent, then we have to imagine a scenario
in which we envision God responsible for all the miseries that have been
mentioned above and not caring about them. It would be like us, killing
millions of animals every day for food, and billions of insects and microbes to
make our life better. I have seen the kindest hearted persons devouring meat
and killing mosquitoes and flies. How is it that we don’t think about it?
Because we get desensitized to it. Maybe God has become desensitized too. At
least, in our case we are compelled to do so because we need food and are
protecting ourselves from disease and discomfort. There is no such
justification for God. He need not worry about food or discomfort. And moreover
he created the insects and microbes.
Can God be indifferent? The closest example is that of a
writer of a play. Suppose the writer is also the producer, and director of the
play. Whatever, the actors will do or say on stage, how the plot proceeds, how
the drama ends, is what the writer has willed them to do. Can such a writer
(and in this case also the producer and director) who wrote the minutest detail
of the play be indifferent? No it is not possible. An indifferent writer would
be an oxymoron, like hot ice. Let me quote Darwin again: “To this day, if I hear
a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a
house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but
suspect that some poor slave was being tortured”
God created those
pitiable moans. God spilled the milk (see blog 134), in Maugham’s novel; ….. because all the forces of the universe were bent on
spilling it.”
Therefore, God is neither dead, nor indifferent. He is not
responsible for all the miseries. We and a blind nature are responsible. And we
have free will
4. Why is God hidden? His being hidden from us would only
make sense, if he wanted us to live on our own, without the interference of any
higher power. As if either there was no God, or if there was a God, He set
everything in motion 13.8 billion years ago (see blogs 100-101). The experiment, in our world, and billions of
other planets with life, may proceed for other billions of years. We will
discuss it in more detail when we discuss the hypothesis number two of Free
Will
5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the
purpose of creation by God? Our job is not to find the purpose of creation by
God, because with our limited intelligence we may never find it. Our purpose,
now, is to determine, if a meaningful purpose can be ascribed to God, in
hypothesis number one (Fate). According to this hypothesis God is like a play
writer who is also producer and director. The outcome of the play is known to
the writer. There is no suspense, unlike it is for a scientist who is setting
up an extremely long and complicated experiment, for the first time, and does
not know what the outcome would be. Whole drama (written by the play writer)
becomes useless and rather silly.
Furthermore, this hypothesis will make God (the writer of
the play) cruel, unjust and sadist. We will then sympathize with Swedenborg,
the Swede, who said: “if I could only find that arch-tyrant God, who created so
much misery in the world, I would strangle him to death”
6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening
due to free will. This point has already been discussed. There is no evidence
to support hypothesis one, except prophecies. Prophecies will be discussed
again in Free will hypothesis.
7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey.
There is cruelty in animal kingdom. I think it was Darwin who remarked “Every
living organism eats other organisms or is being eaten by it”
Now it is completely normal in nature. Predators have to
kill other animals to survive. But all the animals that become prey, suffer,
even if it is for few minutes. Ask yourself, would you like to be a deer being
chased by couple of panthers. You run and run, but are caught by the predators
and thrown on the jungle floor. They may start eating you while you are still
alive. Or, how would you like to be a bird being carried away in the talons,
which are digging in your body like iron nails, of the predator. Have you seen
a cat playing with a bird for hours (I once saw our two household cats playing
with a live mouse, like a soccer ball)? Bird predators have been known to throw
fish in the sea from a height, and swooping in the water, catching the fish,
and throwing it again and again, for sport.
Now, what if you are the author of this cruelty?
If you were the creator, you could easily have created a
world, without carnivorous animal. Every animal could have an aversion to meat,
like a cow or a horse. World would have been a peaceful place.
There is no excuse, whatsoever, in hypothesis one (Fate),
for creation of carnivorous animals.
All living things arose by themselves, through the process
of evolution, as I have explained in blog 99.
To be continued
137. Fate versus Free Will.
Part Four
We were discussing the arguments against Fate.
8. All human effort is completely useless. It
seems to be a startling statement but it is true. As discussed in previous
blog, in hypothesis one (Fate), God is like the writer, producer and director
of a play. Just as the actors in a play have no independence; they say their
lines and act, as directed, so in the drama of the world, nobody has any
independence. We are like puppets, in the hands of the puppeteer.
Religious scholars have tried to get around this notion, by
ascribing a two-tier system. A part determined by God, which is unchangeable,
and a part carved by humans, themselves, through the agency of free will. Since
it involves free will it does not belong here in hypothesis one. It won’t be
discussed here anymore.
One wonders if the evidence against Fate is so overwhelming,
why some people still cling to it.
Three reasons:
1 It has gone into human psyche, after thousands of years of
belief
2. If you don’t want to act, it supports inaction.
3. It is a consoling factor.
1. For thousands of
years (before Darwin) everyone agreed that everything was created by God and
God was omnipotent. So it was natural to ascribe most events to God. Palmistry
and Astronomy also supported the existence of fate or destiny. Since Copernicus
and Darwin, at least in the West, pendulum has swung in the other direction,
and Free will is held paramount, but still it is in our genes.
2. It supports inaction. A scene in the epic movie ‘Lawrence
of Arabia’ illustrated this point:
“They cross the Nefud Desert, considered
impassable even by the Bedouins, travelling day and night on the last stage to
reach water. A soldier accidently falls off his camel unnoticed during the night.
He is lost. The Arabs don’t think it is prudent, or even possible, to go back
and get the soldier. But Lawrence wants to go back. That means everybody will
have to wait for Lawrence for hours; a foolhardy and impractical notion. His
allies insist that the man’s death has already been written from heat, thirst and exhaustion.
Lawrence goes back in the desert and retrieves the man. On
return, he pointedly says to Omar Sharif; “Nothing is written”(bold letters are mine )
A great saint like Swami Ramdas also advocated inaction (1).
His ex-wife was telling him that their daughter needs to be married, while she
(the ex-wife) did not have a penny. I quote:
He listened to her with a cool indifference and said
“Why do
you worry over the matter? God’s will is supreme. All things happen as He wills
and at the time determined by Him”
“How can
you say so? Do you mean to say that human effort has no value”? She retorted.
“Human
effort” he replied “is necessary only to learn that human effort as such is useless and God’s will alone is the real
power that controls and brings about all events ( italics are mine ). When you
realize this truth, human effort ceases and divine will starts its work in you,
and then you do all things in the soul, liberated from care, fear and sorrow.
This is the real life to be attained. So leave all things to the Lord by
complete surrender to Him”
3. If life has been
especially harsh to you. If you have been dealt a bad hand, if sorrow and
misery has eaten your soul, if despite your best effort you have been
unsuccessful in achieving your heart-felt desire, your single greatest aim in
life, then you may console yourself that it was written in the stars. It was in
your fate, destiny or kismet.
___________________________________________________________________________________
(1). In the vision of God. Volume 1, by Swami Ramdas
138. Fate versus Free Will.
Part Five.
Hypothesis Two. Free
Will. It states that Humans are masters of their own fate. They have free
will. Future is not pre-ordained. It is not written in stars. It is not decreed by
God. All events, without exception, happen by the interaction between free
will, nature and chance (chance is actually one of the manifestations of
nature)
The two tier system proposed by religion and mystics ( such
as Ramakrishna ), according to which some events, such as birth, death and some
other major events in one’s life, are decreed by God, while the rest are in the
hands of the individual through his exercise of free will, is rejected by
hypothesis two. Let us read what the great saint Sri Ramakrishna said (1):
“Is there anyone who has free will or anything like that? It
is by God’s will alone that everything has always happened and shall
happen……man understands it in the long run.
Just as, when a cow is tied to a post with long tether, it
can go to a distance of one cubit, or it can go up to the full length of the
tether according to its choice, so too is the free will of the man….God has
given man some power and freedom to utilize it as he likes.
That is why the man feels himself free……
And mark this: if anyone prays to Him in all humility. He
may remove him to another place and tie him there; or he may lengthen the
tether or even remove it completely from the neck.”
We asked, “Does the man have no duty or responsibility?”
“………………..He does not give one more power, if the little that
is given is not properly used. This is why individual effort and perseverance
are necessary. Don’t you see, everyone has to make some effort? however small,
before he gets God’s grace?”
But this mote rejects that. All events, since the creation
of universe have been happening without the intervention of God. They have been
the result of natural events, as explained in blogs 97-99.
Everything happens according to the law of cause and effect.
Let me repeat what I had already written in blog 102:
According to the law of cause and effect, an action takes
place because a preceding action caused it. The first action is called the
cause, while the second action, which is the result of the first action, is the
effect. For instance, a ball is climbing up the sky. It is climbing up because
somebody threw it. Throwing the ball is the cause of the ball climbing up.
It is a fundamental law of nature that the cause precedes
the effect. When we will discuss time travel, a well known paradox is
mentioned, called the ‘grandfather paradox’. If it was possible to travel in
the past, one could kill one’s grandfather before one’s father was born. But
then one could not be born to kill the grandfather. The solution to the paradox
is that his existence (the cause) has to precede the killing (the effect). So
it cannot happen. Time travel in the past is not possible.
Sorry for this digress.
If that is true then nobody should be able to tell future,
because it does not exist. It does not exist because it has not been made yet.
But I have narrated in previous blogs (blogs 102-3) thirteen
prophecies. We will tackle this contradiction sometimes later.
When I talk of forecasting future, I mean the part of future
which cannot be told by any scientific means. Weather is predicted fairly
accurately by meteorologists. If somebody has boarded a nonstop train going to
London, there are fairly good chances of him being in London sometimes later
(barring some unforeseen event). Scientists can predict solar and lunar
eclipses very accurately. Doctors are fairly accurate in predicting the
approximate date or week of a baby’s birth. We know that Halley’s Comet last
appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061.
What cannot be told are the seven numbers in exact sequence
which would be the winning numbers in the live drawing of a lottery at some
future date? ( mentioned above in blog 135)
Now, let us quote again the objections to hypothesis one
(blog 135) and see if hypothesis two can explain them:
1. It does not explain evil
2. It does not explain injustice
3. Makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust
4. Why is God hidden?
5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the
purpose of creation by God?
6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening
due to free will.
7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey.
8. All human effort is completely useless.
Objection 1-3 are regarding evil, injustice, and cruelty.
Hypothesis two easily dismisses them, because they were not created by God. All
these are manmade. As regards to why God is hidden, is because God had to be
hidden, for mankind to reach their full potential. If a Father figure of God
was always hovering around, who mankind could consult, the growth of human race
would be stunted, like that of a child who refuses to grow up.
Statements 5-6 do not apply in hypothesis two.
Predators and preys in animal kingdom are the result of the
race for the survival of the fittest and other aspects of evolution, as
explained in Blog 99. Statement 8 does not apply in hypothesis two.
To be continued
__________________________________________________________________________________
(1) Sri Ramakrishna,
the great master, Volume one By Swami Saradananda, page 94
139. Fate versus free will.
Part Six
What are the arguments against free will, or hypothesis two?
Actually there is
only one argument against it, and that is if the future does not yet exist
(because it has yet to be made), then how come some men of God are able to tell
it, sometimes in precise detail? In blog 135, I narrated how a man of God who
foresaw the seven lottery numbers, one day in advance of their live drawing on
TV. It is as if future existed somewhere.
Thus we arrive at a paradox:
1. Some persons can see future, therefore it exists
somewhere
2. Future does not and cannot exist, because it has not been
made yet.
These are two mutually contradictory, immovable statements.
Only one of them can be right, or is there some way in which both are right?
Let us first examine the actual evidence of prophecies. I have
chronicled 13 such events (excluding the one in blog 135) in blogs 102-3. A
summary of them is in blog 114. Since many persons do not have access to
computer, I will restate the summary here:
How can
anybody tell the future which has not been made yet? To have my grandfather
buried in the same grave with his son, required a colossal event to happen, in
which millions suffered. For Swami Vivekananda to see the event of the silver
cup 43 years in advance, only a Divine power had to be involved. How did Swami
Yukteswar know that the veterinarian will fall ill soon, recover, and die 6
months later? How did he know that Yogananda will be fed strawberries in
America? And Kashi did die, as predicted.
How can
one explain the vision of the teacher putting a garland of flowers on the
president’s neck and receiving a check; Baroda Babu’s telling Dilip Kumar Roy,
12 years in advance, that he will have to wait for Indra Devi to join him as
his disciple for his real progress, and also telling him about what Sri Aurobindo
advised him regarding his hernia.
One does
not have any explanation of Indra Devi’s vision of the pilot dying in crash one
year in advance and then his spirit coming to Indra.
Brother
Lawrence predicted on Friday, that he will die on Monday (blog 15-7). That is
how it happened.
In blog 91, I have narrated the incident of
Paul Brunton meeting Chandi Das. Chandi Das, reluctantly, narrated some
incidents of Brunton’s future. Some of them came true, by the time book was
published.
What are the possible
explanations of prophecies?
1. All these anecdotes of prophecies are false.
They never happened.
2. The anecdotes are
true, but the predicted events were made to occur, when their time came, by
some powerful living persons or spirits.
3. The causes or
signs of future start appearing in the present, from them the future can be
predicted.
4. The people who
predicted, had the ability to travel in the future
5. There is a parallel world, which is a copy of
our world, like the image in a mirror (or we are the image). It is ahead of us
in time. Whatever will happen in future over here has already happened in the
other world. Therefore access to that world enables us to know our future.
Now, let us examine
these speculations in greater detail.
1. All these anecdotes of prophecies are false.
These episodes have been carefully selected by this mote. I heard the story of
my grandfather and uncle, from the lips of my mother (blog 102). Mr Dickenson
told the story of silver cup many times, and Sri Yogananda, being a man of God,
would not have chronicled it in his autobiography, were it false. The source of
other anecdotes (3-8, in blog 102) is also written by Sri Yogananda in his
book. I, myself, talked to the teacher who put garland of flowers, around the president’s
neck. He verified it. I, myself, talked to the seer who foresaw the seven
lottery numbers. The other episodes are also taken from the books of men of
God, like Paul Brunton, Brother Lawrence, and Dilip Kumar Roy. So all these
episodes are authentic.
There is a valid
criticism, that all of these episodes are hearsay or could have been fabricated
by the authors, themselves. I have not mentioned a single episode, watched by
me, or experienced by me. I have no answer to this argument. Maybe God will one
day grant me such an episode. But it still will not answer the criticism,
because how will the readers know that I am not making it up.
To be continued
140. Fate versus Free Will.
Part Seven.
We were discussing the possible explanations of prophecies
2. The predicted
events were made to occur, when their time came, by some powerful living
persons or spirits. Take the example of Mr Dickenson being told that one day
his guru will give him a silver cup. Swami Vivekananda may not have seen the
future; words may have been wrung out of his mouth by some unseen power, just
as it happened to Sri Yogananda (blog 103):
“One day in my Ranchi
school, a boy named Kashi, a brilliant youth of twelve, asked me “Sir, what
will be my fate?”
‘You shall soon be
dead’. An irresistible power forced the answer from me.
The boy died the same
year.
When Yogananda was
walking in a street of Calcutta, an unseen power may have influenced his mind
and made him buy a silver cup for Dickenson. Higher powers, when necessary, do
influence our minds.
For instance, take
the two incidents quoted in section 6 and 7 of blog 112, as Mufti Sahib’s
prayers. In one instance some higher power influenced the mind of the wife of
the landlord, and in the other case the mind of the person who gave Mufti Sahib
money for the bus fare.
This argument can be
invoked in some cases, but not all. For
instance, a fakir told my grandfather
that he and one of his sons will be buried in one grave. To have it happen, a
colossal event such as Partition of India had to take place, in which millions
of people died or suffered. It could not have been done just to make the fakir right. Similarly Yogananda sister
could not have attired herself in her bridal dress and later during the day
kill herself to prove herself right.
3. The causes or
signs of future start appearing in the present, from them the future can be
predicted.
This argument was
first made by St Augustine sixteen hundred years ago (1). For instance the
sunrise from day-break. I quote:
‘I
behold the day-break, I foreshow, that the sun, is about to rise. What I
behold, is present; what I foresignify, to come; not the sun, which already is;
but the sun-rising, which is not yet. And
Yet did
I not in my mind imagine the sun-rising itself (as now while I speak of it), I
could not foretell it. But neither is that daybreak which I discern in the sky,
the sun-rising, although it goes
before
it; ……… . Future things then are not yet: and if they be not yet, they are not:
and if
they
are not, they cannot be seen; yet foretold they may be from things present,
which are already, and are seen.’
This argument is not
valid in any of the 14 situations cited above, such as for Swami
Vivekananda to see the event of the silver cup 43 years in advance
4. The people who
prophesied had the ability to travel in the future. Travel in the future is the
fodder of science fiction. Even famous physicists claim that theoretically it
is possible (2). If some men of God have this ability they could go in the
future for few minutes, like Chandi Das did in front of Paul Brunton, and then
come back to the present, and report their findings (blog 91)
Let
us examine what the scientists have to say:
‘If you want to advance through the
years a little faster than the next person, you'll need to exploit space-time.
Global positioning satellites
pull this off every day, accruing an extra third-of-a-billionth of a second
daily. Time passes faster in orbit, because satellites are farther away from
the mass of the Earth. Down here on the surface, the planet's mass drags on
time and slows it down in small measures. In the super
massive black hole Sagittarius A at the center of our galaxy, the mass of 4 million suns
exists as a single, infinitely dense point, known as a singularity [source: NASA].
It must slow the time a lot over there.
We call this effect gravitational
time dilation. (3) ’
If you were travelling on a space
ship at 99.999% of the speed of light, one year on that space ship would have
equaled 223 years on earth. When you came back after a year, all the people you
knew before your journey would have died. One would have travelled 223 years in
future.
The trouble about all these
speculations is they do not help us one bit. Take the example of a traveler
starting on his space trip in year 2014, at close to the speed of light. Let us
say he has the magical ability to watch the events on earth. After a month he
wants to notify all the events to somebody on the earth. Let us further suppose
that he can send the message at the speed of light. The message will take
another month to arrive on earth. Two months have passed since he started his
journey. These two months are approximately equal to 37 years of earth time. Time
travelled 223 times faster on the earth than on the space ship. It is 2051 on
earth. The message cannot tell the earth inhabitants anything that they already
don’t know. They have lived through it. It is their past. What the men of God
supposedly do is to watch the future, which yet do not exist.
To be continued.
1). Confessions by St. Augustine, chapter X1 (2).: How to build a
time machine by STEPHEN HAWKING
(3) How
Time Travel Works by Kevin Bonsor and Robert Lamb
141. Fate versus Free will.
Part Eight.
We were discussing the
possible explanations of prophecies
5. There is a parallel world,
which is an exact copy of our world, but it is ahead of us in time. Let us
suppose it is 500 years ahead of us. Let us further assume that it is one hundred
light years away from us (a light year is the distance light travels in one
year, at the speed of 186,000 miles per second.). If the year on our earth is
2014, the year in the other world is 2514. If we had the ability to watch the
events at the other world right at this minute, we would be watching what is
going on in the other world in year 2414. (It took the light to reach to us a
hundred years; therefore it is 2514 minus 100).
So, if by some technique you were
able to make a video film of the last 4 hundred years of the other planet;
years 2014 to 2414 of the other world, and feed it to a giant computer on
earth, or still better, download it in the memory center of your own brain, if
you were a holy man, you would have the ability to forecast events which are
going to happen on earth, in the next four hundred years,! You could have
started recording in year 1614 of earth time, and be up to date, in the present
year of 2014.
However, to have all that to
happen, you have to fulfill the following conditions:
1. A planet which is an exact replica of our
planet, like an image in the mirror.
2. The planet is
ahead of our planet in time.
3. We have the
ability to watch or record the events in the other planet.
First two are highly
implausible suppositions, but the third is easy and is being routinely done by
many telescopes on earth and in space.
Therefore, we cannot
discard this possibility. Maybe, in the future, when the science is much more
advanced, we will find the parallel world.
However, there is one
consideration, which can make us reject this scenario, at least the part which
deals with prophecies.
We were discussing the possibility of a parallel world,
which is exactly similar to our world, like the image in a mirror, but is ahead
of us in 500 years, away from us by 100 light years, and this is the year 2014.
A man of God, or a scientist, has downloaded the film of years 2014 to 2414.
What is going to happen in year 2015 is exactly, and in every single detail,
recorded and can be viewed.
Let us play out the scenario of Swami Vivekananda telling
Dickenson that he will receive a silver cup from his guru (blog 102). This
event occurred 43 years later. Therefore, if Vivekananda foretold the event, he
must have seen, in his mind’s eye, what happened in the other planet; he must
have seen an image Vivekananda
telling image Dickenson that he will
get a silver cup, by seeing what happened in another ( third ) planet.
But
there is no other ( third ) planet! We assumed there were only two planets. Is
there a third planet? If we proceed on this path, there has to be a fourth, and
fifth planet. As a matter of fact, an infinity of mirror-image planets, ahead
of each other in time. We are entering the realm of absurdity.
Is that the end of our theorizing? If this mote is baffled,
he derives some satisfaction, that mightier minds and more advanced mystics
than him have similarly accepted defeat. Listen to what St Augustine had to say
in ‘Confessions’:
‘ Thou
then, Ruler of Thy creation, by what way dost Thou teach souls things to come?
For Thou didst teach Thy Prophets. By what way dost Thou, to whom nothing is to
come, teach things to
come; or rather
of the future, dost teach things present? For, what is not, neither can it be
taught. Too far is this way of my ken: it is too mighty for me, I cannot attain
unto it; but from Thee I can, when Thou shalt vouchsafe it, O sweet light of my
hidden eyes’
I have
another theory, which may be the correct solution, and satisfy the paradox
stated in blog 139. We will call it explanation 6.
6. The people who prophesied, and told about
future events have access to the Master screen play. In the drama of the universe,
God is not the writer, and director of the play, He is more like the
producer of the play. He had the idea to create the play. Whatever, the actors will do or say on stage,
how the plot will proceed, how the drama will end, is in the screen play. However,
He did not write the screen play. He knows by His infinite mind what is in the
screen play. He did not preordain the screen play but He has foreknowledge of
the screen play.
The
writer and director of the play are we, ourselves, and the Mother Nature.
The
people, who tell the future, do not travel into the future. They stay in the
present. They do not see the future, because the future does not yet exist.
Scenes are brought to their mind’s eye, or words are wrung from their mouths
without their forethought, by higher powers, which have access to the Master
screen play.
To be
continued
142. Fate versus Free Will.
Part Nine
We were discussing another theory, which may be the correct
solution, and satisfy the paradox stated in blog 139.
How
does God have foreknowledge? There are two possibilities:
1. He knows it because He has an infinite mind
that can compute all the possibilities.
2.
The play is being played a second time. First time in a computer, similar to
some sort of simulation, or actually in
our planet or some other planet. What is going to happen now, in our planet,
will be the same as happened the first time around. Suppose you are watching a
film second time, you can easily tell how the plot will proceed. What the
actors are going to say? If you play the film thousand times, every single
detail will occur exactly the same way. The drama of this world is something
like that, except that we write, direct and act in this drama, and not the
decrees of God.
Men of God tell a particular future
event. Because God wants them to tell. God gives them permission to tell and
they always seek permission from God before they tell, because they fully know
that it is a divine law to have the future hidden from mankind (otherwise
mankind would not put their full effort). They violate the law with divine
sanction. When Brunton asked Chandi Das to tell him his future, Chandi Das
rebuked him and said, “Why do you seek to know? The Creator has kept the future
hidden for a fit reason” (blog 91)
Let us now restate the paradox:
1. Some persons can see future, therefore it exists
somewhere
2. Future does not and cannot exist, because it has not been
made yet.
Both statements are true. There is no paradox!
What is required is to restate 1, as:
1. Some persons can see future, therefore it exists
somewhere, but not the actual future, but how is it going to transpire, in a
screen play, which these persons can access.
There is one small puzzle to be settled. When Chandi Das
told Brunton his future, he also said that he can only see a part of the
future:
“Only in part. The lives
of men do not move so smoothly that every detail is ordained for them.”
Did he mean the two-tier hypothesis of Ramakrishna?
‘Just as, when a cow is tied to a post with long tether, it
can go to a distance of one cubit, or it can go up to the full length of the
tether according to its choice, so too is the free will of the man….God has
given man some power and freedom to utilize it as he likes.
That is why the man feels himself free…’
This mote thinks that the solution to this problem is not
the two-tier hypothesis of religion but that the things get clearer as the
event approaches ( a seer told me this fact ). It is as if one was witnessing a
city from far distance. One can only see a mass consisting of thousands of
house. As one approaches nearer, one can see separate houses and buildings.
Still nearer, one can see the multiple storeys and windows in the buildings. As
one approaches further, one can see occupants of the houses and whether they
are men and women or children.
In the end, let us see what the components of hypothesis 2
(free will) are:
1. Man is free to choose his own fate
2. Nothing is preordained.
3. God started this play of universe for His inscrutable
reason.
4. God sometimes interferes in the screen play for His
unfathomable reason. This part appears contradictory to number 1. This will be
discussed in greater detail when I discuss the “system of the world” at some
future time.
5. God has foreknowledge of the future.
6. A Master screen play exists.
7. The future can be foretold by some men of God.
8. The difference from hypothesis one (fate) is that the
fate is not preordained. Everything happens by the interaction of free will with
Mother Nature. Future does not yet exist. The difference from hypothesis two
(free will) is that future can be foretold by selected persons.
Difference from modern scientists is:
(a). That there is God, who created everything
(b). Future can be foretold (according to science, future
cannot be foretold because it does not yet exist). It does not yet exist,
because it has not been made yet.
What are the flaws in the components of hypothesis 2?
It is based on many
suppositions but very little evidence.
Let us study this criticism. Component number one and two
are not in dispute by scientists and logicians. Components number 3-5 depend
upon the existence of God. I have written eighteen blogs (blogs 97-114) to
prove the existence of God. I presented lot of anecdotal evidence. The reader
is at liberty to read those blogs and make his/her own mind. I don’t want them
to be repeated over here. Personally, I do not have an iota of doubt.
I have also presented plenty of anecdotal evidence in
support of item number seven. I do not have any doubt left, after I learnt the
episode of lottery numbers (blog 135), by the seer himself.
The main supposition, for which there is zero evidence, is
the existence of a Master screen play. I arrived at it by logic. It is the only
way to reconcile the paradox. The seers have to see something in the present,
because as Saint Augustine repeatedly said (and this mote arrived at the same
conclusion, independently) that the future does not yet exist. How can anybody
see anything which does not exist? Therefore, it is logical to assume that
there exists, somewhere in present,
a record of future events (I called it screen play).
This mote prayed to God, even today, a way to access the
future, at least for once, so that I can then say that I have myself seen some
future event. For me, at least, then it won’t be hearsay.
143. System of the World.
Part One
When one thinks that how this universe is run, many
questions arise in one’s mind. For instance, who created this universe? Did the
universe create itself? Why was it
created? Is there a God? Is planet Earth, which we call our world, runs
on the same principles, as the rest of universe? Are we the only intelligent,
self-aware, sentient form of life, or are there other planets or moons where
there are similar life forms? What are the fundamental laws of nature? A
universe is governed by same laws of nature, are there other universes which
have different laws? Does true vacuum (where nothing is present) exist? And
there are many other questions which philosophers and astrophysicist have in
their minds.
This mote is a mystic, not a philosopher, astrophysicist, or
a religious scholar. Here I want to theorize, not on the universe, but on the
system of this world, our earth.
Basically, there are three hypotheses to explain the system:
1. There is no GOD or Creator. The universe was created at a finite
period of time. Nobody knows, for sure, what was before that time. Scientists
have theories about it, but essentially it is unknowable. Why was it created
and who created it is also unfathomable, but scientist surmise that it created
itself. After the creation of universe,
it is running on its own, by the laws of nature. Everything that happens in the
world happens, because of the law of cause and effect. For purposes of this
discussion we will name this, the “Materialistic theory”
2. There is a God or Creator. God created this
universe at a finite period of time. God was there before the universe was
created. He created it because of reasons only known to Him. Everything that
happens in the universe happens because of His will. The world runs by
fundamental laws of nature including the law of cause and effect. These laws
were created by God. We will call this the “Religious theory”
3. There is a God or
Creator. God created the universe at a certain period in time. God was there
before the universe was created. He created it because of unknown reasons.
However, after the creation of the universe he does not run the universe (but
He may intercede on some occasions if He so desires), it runs automatically by
the law of cause and effect and other laws of nature. We will call this ‘Materialism with God
theory’
Let us now examine these three hypotheses in greater detail.
Materialistic theory: I have discussed the origin of universe and
the evolution of life in some detail in my blogs 98-101, in Part Three.
According to the present knowledge, the universe started with a big explosion
called Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. Nobody knows what was there before Big
Bang. Was there a complete vacuum, with nothing in it? No matter and no energy.
If that is true then this huge universe came into existence out of nothing! I
think this is a preposterous notion. Nothing can arise out of nothing.
Science deals with this question in several ways:
1. It is useless to surmise without facts. Since we have no pre-Big
Bang data we are not going to think about it. Universe is just there.
2. There is no pre-Bing Bang,
because Time started at Big Bang. This is what St. Augustine also said 1600
years ago. Big objects such as planets and stars pull the fabric of time-space
towards themselves by their force of gravity. Time slows. A big object such as Sagittarius
A at the center of our galaxy has a mass of 4 million suns. Time must be slower
over there. At Big Bang the whole matter-energy of the future universe was
compressed in a singularity much smaller than an atom, the size of a Planck
length; a centimeter divided by 1 followed by 32 zeroes. The massive pull of
this singularity made the Time stand still.
3. As Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective, once said,
that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, is the truth.
Therefore, it follows that there must be the same amount of energy-matter
before Big Bang as it was at Big Bang, and is there now, 13.8 billion years
later, because the law of conservation of energy-matter states so. The law of
conservation of energy is a fundamental law of nature. According to this law,
energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be transformed.
One of the current popular theories is that most or all or
some of the energy-matter was in the form of extremely small ( the size of a
Planck length ) strings, or in the form of membranes (abbreviated as brans).
These strings ( like the strings of a guitar ) vibrated at different speeds,
all the time, giving rise to different types of particles, just like different
musical notes emerge by different tension and plucking of guitar strings. These subatomic particles caused the
formation of atoms.
If my writing, at this time lacks clarity, it is because the
subject itself is not clear.
To be continued.
144. System of the World. Part Two
We were discussing the Materialistic Theory
The trouble with string theory is its lack of data. However,
if we disregard this problem and discuss it just as a possibility, still there
are at least three problems with Materialistic Theory:
(a). How did the universe come into existence? Scientists
did not follow Sherlock Holmes dictum, because they did not consider all the possibilities. They should have
considered the possibility of a Creator, and then refuted it, if they could. It
cannot be refuted. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, in a debate with a bishop,
conceded that he cannot disprove the existence of God.
(b). Where did string/brans come from? You see the scientist
believe that universe was created out of nothing. But their nothing is not
really nothing (an absolute vacuum, where nothing is present). The nothing of
scientists is full of positive energy and an equal amount of negative energy,
cancelling each other.
Thus we are led to the next question, where did all these
particles, fields and energy come from? If there were precursors of them, where
did they come from? And so on. At some
point the process has to start from absolutely nothing.
That brings us to the point where we started.
Can this huge, infinite universe or for that matter anything start from nothing? Prove it. Create one particle in an
absolute vacuum.
(3). How do you
explain miracles, answering of prayers, foretelling the future, and the
existence of the spirits of dead persons who once inhabited earth, without a
God. I have dealt with these phenomena, in great detail, in my eleven blogs;
102-112 in part three. If I narrate them here again, it will be needless
repetition.
However, who, except
God (or His deputies) could transform sandy soil into candy (blog 104)?
Who, except God ( or
His deputies ) could answer the prayer of Mr Shevani’s to meet the greatest
Qalander of present time, or for that matter Giri Bala’s prayer to learn the
way to live without food or drink (blog 111)? Who, except God (or His deputies)
would have inspired Swami Vivekananda to tell Mr Dickenson, 43 years in
advance, that his guru will give him a silver cup? Who, except God (or His
deputies) could provide proof of life after death, in the form of spirit of
Bimla Kumari haunting a house in Cuttack, India?
A logician will say,
where did this Creator come from?
The answer is that
this mote does not know. This is an unanswerable question. Our small mind is not capable of answering
this question, just as a cow cannot learn to read.
This mote has offered
his arguments (blog 113). I will repeat them in an abbreviated form for purpose
of continuity:
1. God can be conceptualized as energy, or something even
more subtle than energy, with a supermind.
Human brain is an example. It is made, mainly, of nerve cells, created
and fed by our daily food. These cells have the power to think, feel, and
create movements and store as memory. These cells communicate with each other
instantaneously, at the speed of light. If our brain, a collection of billions
of cells, made of atoms, and atoms made of subatomic particles, such as
electrons and protons and neutrons, can have thoughts of pain, pleasure,
compassion, jealousy, and anger, why not God, a collection of pure energy, have
a mind?
2. How
can such supermind arise, out of sheer nothing? The answer is that the same
process of evolution, which caused
the atoms to combine with each other and make chemicals such as amino acids,
which led to the formation of a cell, and then to man, in 3-4 thousand million
years( blog 99), could have created God ( I shudder at my own temerity ) in a
limitless amount of time. It may have
happened with the same two engines of mutation and natural selection. There is
no logical or biological reason for evolution to stop at a certain point. If
not mutation, then deliberate experimentation, by the supermind, on the leptons
and quarks, to continue its improvement.
Religious theory. God created this universe. He runs it. He
is responsible for all the happenings in the world and universe, because
everything happens by His divine will. I have discussed this theory in great
detail in four blogs; 134-137. There is no need to repeat it. But, let me
reiterate the points against it.
Now, let us discuss the arguments against the Religious
theory:
1. It does not explain evil
2. It does not explain injustice
3. Makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust
4. Why is God hidden?
5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the
purpose of creation?
6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening
due to free will.
7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey.
8. All human effort is completely useless.
Each of the above mentioned points are examined in detail in
blogs 135-137.
This theory is not valid
To be continued.
145. System of the World. Part Three
Materialism with God Theory. This
hypothesis is an attempt to compromise the two basic observations that ordinary
human beings make. First, everything is made by somebody; thus, this highly
complex universe could not have come into existence just spontaneously.
Therefore, there has to be a Creator who created it. Secondly, one thing leads
to another, every action leads to its consequences. Every human being has
observed that such and such thing happened or happens due to such and such
thing. For ordinary human beings God never comes and plays any role in their
daily lives or anybody else’s daily life
This theory is an amalgam of hypothesis no 1
and 2. It accepts a Creator, and therefore answers the first criticism to the
“materialistic theory”, namely, that nothing can be created out of nothing. The
theory also explains the second criticism to the materialistic theory; i.e.
the phenomena of miracles, answering of prayers, foretelling of the future, and
the existence of the spirits of dead persons who once inhabited earth. God or
His deputies are responsible for these occurrences.
It also answers the criticism to the
religious theory (see details in blog 136), namely, why is there so much
suffering and injustice; the answer is, because they have nothing to do with
God. God ordinarily does not
interfere in the running of the world; therefore, whatever is going on in the
world is happening due to the law of cause of effect, just as it would happen
if there were no God. If people are poor, there are economic reasons for it. If
they suffer due to old age or disease, that is due to the limitation of their
body. If they are preyed upon by cruel or powerful people, it happens because
they are weak, or their government is not redressing this problem, and so on.
Even animal suffering is due to their weakness or old age. Remember, God does
not have to be good according to this hypothesis; at best, He is indifferent
and does not care.
God has to be hidden, because He wants human
beings to develop on their own, be their own masters, and learn from their own
mistakes. It complies with our daily experience of events happening due
to our free will interacting with environment.
Human effort is not useless. As a matter of
fact, it is the engine that propels us forward. The whole of human history is
due to human effort.
If we were to take this theory in its pure
form, then God created this universe 13.8 billion years ago, and since then it
is running on its own.
But things are not so simple. We still have
to answer three questions:
1. Does God ever interfere in the running of
this world?
2. What is the purpose of the universe?
3. Is God personal or impersonal?
Let us try to answer these questions:
1. Does God ever intervene in human affairs?
This is a difficult question to answer, because
logic will say No, while evidence points towards Yes. I don’t have the
answer.
If you try to place yourself in the position
of God, you will imagine Him as some form of tremendous energy with a mind. A
mind that is supermind. That Mind sets up an experiment with a set of basic
unchangeable rules, like the speed of light (nothing can exceed that limit );
charge of an electron; magnitude of strong nuclear force ( which holds the
atoms together ); principle of conservation of energy ( energy can be neither
produced or destroyed ); attraction of atoms to each other resulting in the
formation of chemicals and thus formation of life, including us; force of
gravity to be the weakest of the four forces of nature and yet the only one
which acts at long distances, 4-7 billion km in the case of Pluto. It is this
force which makes the earth revolve around the sun. Dark energy pushing the
galaxies apart; nuclear fusion atomic reaction that fuels
all stars (including our sun, which then provides solar energy to
the earth). Liquid
water, a source of energy from a nearby star, and oxygen, are the requirements
of life anywhere in the universe, etc.
The purpose of the experiment may be to see
the emergence of intelligent, self-aware (animals are not self-aware), sentient
(capable of feeling) life forms, and follow their progress over billions of
years. After the experiment is over, make necessary changes and start a new
experiment. Logically there should be no outside interference because it would
pollute the results.
But, this mote thinks that the evidence is to
the contrary. God (or His deputies) interferes in two ways:
(A). Minor way, when a person invites God in
his/her life
(b) Major way, when He interferes in human
development and history
(a) Minor
intervention. Everything in our lives happens by the interaction of our
free will with the environments through the law of cause and effect. God is not
concerned. He does not interfere, whether we are virtuous or evil, whether we
perform good deeds or bad deeds. To ask
God to interfere in your life, you have to invite God in your life. This is
a cardinal principle.
To be continued..
146. System of the World. Part four
We were discussing that you have to invite God in your life.
How do you invite
God in your life? By praying to Him. You have to beg God again and again. He
may or may not grant your prayer. But if you are earnest in your desire to
reach God (and God will look in your heart), this mote is certain, as certain
can be, that He will grant you your prayer. He will transform you. Some people
are lucky (because they are ready) and get transformed quickly; otherwise, most
often it is a gradual process and may take decades (two or three decades in the
case of this mote)
God enters your
life, often, in an unobtrusive way. Law of cause and effect is not
violated, although there are exceptions. For instance, in the case of Shahab, a
letter came from Germany, which was a supernatural event, because the spirit of
Fatima (daughter of holy prophet) could not have known the prayer of Shahab
(blog 65). There are other examples.
The principal that is never violated is that the sanctity of the overall experiment is
preserved. The rules of the game are not changed. One is not allowed to
interfere in God’s system. Let me give you some examples to illustrate this
important point.
Giri
Bala did not eat or drink for fifty six years (blogs 79- 80). Therese Neumann
did not eat and drink for twelve years (except for a wafer each day). When Sri
Yogananda asked Giri Bala that why didn’t she let the public know her secret of
living on air, it would eliminate hunger in the world, she was shocked. Her
answer was most revealing. She said it would be against God’s plan.
A seer
learnt the seven winning lottery numbers, one day in advance of drawing, by a
spiritual technique (blog 135). He was strongly warned by higher powers, never
to do it again. God’s laws, such as hiding the future, are for important
reasons. To look into future, without God’s permission, is against God’s plans
Jesus
Christ performed miracles left and right. Why didn’t he (or other powerful
mystics like Sri Yukteshwar, Data Sahib) disclose the secrets of making
electricity, or a fusion nuclear reactor, or disclose the existence of American
Continent, etc. Because, that would have interfered with God’s plans. It would
violate the sanctity of the experiment.
I used
to wonder in the past (I don’t anymore) that why don’t Data Sahib, the highest
saint of Pakistan, help the inhabitants of Lahore in a major way (Blog 62-63).
He helps in the form of daily free food for hundreds. Perhaps few dozen are
helped, monetarily, each day. In a city of 6-7 million, and in a country of 190
million, these efforts seem to be very insufficient. I used to wonder, why
doesn’t he eradicate the basic problem of poverty, and thus help millions.
Perhaps he could do that. He could provide the secret of cheap solar energy, or
to produce rain on demand, or reveal a cheap way to convert sea water into
fresh water. I don’t wonder anymore, because he is not allowed to do so. It
would interfere with the basic premise of the experiment, that human beings
should progress ( or regress, as in the case of 16 centuries of stagnation in
human thought from Greek period to Renaissance ) on their own.
Before we proceed any further we must address what is meant
by supernatural. Miracles are supernatural events, because they apparently do
not obey the existing laws of nature.
They may yet obey some other undiscovered
laws of nature.
It is clear that there are souls.
I have provided ample evidence (107-110). Now how do we explain souls
scientifically? We simply cannot. A dead body is no different from an inanimate
object like a lump of coal or a cup. Brain disintegrates after death. I suppose
if we were to ask this question to Mr Einstein who reportedly did not believe
in God, after showing him a soul and convincing him that there is life after
death in the form of souls, he might have answered in the following way. “There
must be physical laws governing the
existence of soul forms, just as there are laws which govern the visible
universe. It is just that we have not yet discovered those laws. After those
laws are discovered the explanation will be very simple. Think, how our ability
to predict solar eclipse to a second, might appear to a man living thousands of
years before Christ. Or what would he think of a man walking on the street
talking in a few inches long cellular telephone to another person who may be
thousands of miles away, and only the recipient, out of 7 billion inhabitants
of earth, can hear him. Think of a bird pecking at his own reflection in a
mirror, a reflection that looks and moves like real. Soul may be like a reflection in a mirror,
both real and unreal, but obeying the laws of nature.”
To be continued
147. System of the
World. Part Five
We were discussing the ways by which God
intervenes in human affairs.
b) Major way. When He
interferes with human development and history. Take the example of prophet
Muhammadpbuh. I have chosen prophet Muhammadpbuh because
his first encounter with a disembodied entity was very dramatic, and he told it
to so many people and it is mentioned in Koran also. And the event did not take
place in remote past but in 7th century, in a cave in Saudi Arabia.
The historical evidence is fairly authentic. But, I could have chosen Jesus or
Moses, except that there is no account of Jesus accosted by God or His
deputies, and encounter of Moses with, allegedly God, was close to 3500 to 4000
years ago____ a long time ago, we may have received a distorted
account.
“One day suddenly
the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came
to him and asked him to read. The Prophet (pbuh) replied, “I do not know how to read.” The Prophet (pbuh) added, “The angel caught me
(forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. He then
released me and again asked me to read and I replied, “I do not know how to
read.” Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time until I could
not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read but again
I replied, “I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)?” Thereupon he
caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released me
and said, “Read in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists), has created man from a clot. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.'“(96):1-3.
Then Allah's Apostle (pbuh) returned with the Inspiration and with his heart beating severely. He went to his wife, Khadijah and said, “Cover me!” she covered him until his fear was over. After that he told her everything that had happened and said, “I fear that something may happen to me.” Khadijah replied, “Never! By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kith and kin, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests generously and assist the deserving people afflicted with calamities.”
Khadijah then accompanied him to her cousin Waraqah Ibn Nawfal, who, during the pre-Islamic period became a Christian. Khadijah said to Waraqah, “Listen to the story of your nephew, O my cousin!”
Waraqah asked, “O my nephew! What have you seen?” Allah's Apostle described that which he had seen. Waraqah said, “This is the one who keeps the secrets (angel Gabriel) whom Allah had sent to Moses. I wish I were young and could live until the time when your people will turn you out.” Allah's Apostle asked, “Will they drive me out?” Waraqah replied in the affirmative. After a few days Waraqah died and the Divine Inspiration also paused for a while.”
and said, “Read in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists), has created man from a clot. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.'“(96):1-3.
Then Allah's Apostle (pbuh) returned with the Inspiration and with his heart beating severely. He went to his wife, Khadijah and said, “Cover me!” she covered him until his fear was over. After that he told her everything that had happened and said, “I fear that something may happen to me.” Khadijah replied, “Never! By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kith and kin, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests generously and assist the deserving people afflicted with calamities.”
Khadijah then accompanied him to her cousin Waraqah Ibn Nawfal, who, during the pre-Islamic period became a Christian. Khadijah said to Waraqah, “Listen to the story of your nephew, O my cousin!”
Waraqah asked, “O my nephew! What have you seen?” Allah's Apostle described that which he had seen. Waraqah said, “This is the one who keeps the secrets (angel Gabriel) whom Allah had sent to Moses. I wish I were young and could live until the time when your people will turn you out.” Allah's Apostle asked, “Will they drive me out?” Waraqah replied in the affirmative. After a few days Waraqah died and the Divine Inspiration also paused for a while.”
Source: www.christianforums.com/t7258400
This mote thinks that God, through His deputy, intervened
in a major way in human history that day, and also in the case of Moses,
because his account of the first encounter is similar to that of prophet Muhammadpbuh; confusion,
fear and chills.
God might have intervened at critical junctures in the
case of origin of life on planet earth. Early snowfall in the winter of 1941,
did contribute to German defeat in Second World War. Imagine the world history
for the next thousand years if Nazi Germany had won. Many biologists think that
life could not have erupted on earth without a Designer and DNA molecule is too
complex to have originated just at random, as if the first watch was made by a
blind watchmaker.
To be continued
148. System of the World. Part Six
This leads us to a paradox: On one hand mankind is
supposed to develop on their own, without outside interference, on the other
hand glaring examples of divine intervention. No doubt is left in the mind of
the participants (like prophet
Muhammadpbuh, Giri Bala, and Therese Neumann) and the people around
them, that this is the finger of God doing it, because the two women lived on
air for years, for everybody to see. God is supposed to be hidden. Why manifest
Himself by miracles?
I do not know the
answer, but I can try.
God intervenes in a
major and a minor way due to His three eminent qualities. I have picked these
three, in a litany of others, with some consideration. These are Goodness,
Mercy, and His desire that people should appreciate Him, and if possible love Him.
Goodness.
The proof of His goodness is that when He intervenes in a major way through
prophets like Moses, Jesus, Muhammadpbuh, Buddha, Krishna, the
ensuing teaching is to love the fellow man. To create a good society. All the
preaching of prophets and mystics, inspired by God, is to do good and make the
society better.
Mercy. Although He
appears indifferent, but He is merciful. If a society becomes selfish, a major
reformer, like Jesus, is sent. Here is a thoughtful verse in Gita, the Hindu scripture: Lord Krishna
(human incarnation of God, according to Hindu religion) said;
“Whenever dharma (Divine way) declines and the
purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. I am born in every
age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to re-establish dharma.”
The Bhagvad Gita. 4:7-8
Why would God take
the trouble of helping if not from mercy?
Consider the two
prayers of Mufti Sahib (blog 112). He begged God to help him in feeding his
guests. Prayer was immediately answered. Money was provided. His other request
was for helping him to spend Eid with his family. Again his request was
granted, and money came through the hands of a stranger. The person who wept so
much that skin under his eyes broke down.
He importuned God for a huge debt relief (blog 112). His request was
granted. All these three episodes denote mercy. Out of all the qualities of
God, this mote, appreciates His mercy the most.
To be appreciated if
not loved: When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he
replied; to love God.
There is something
in God which is attracted towards the people who love Him. The person, who
loves Him without any reward, and without any answer (from Him), is indeed
rare. Because it is very difficult to love somebody which is just an idea in
the mind in the form of infinite expanse of empty space; Dionysius the
Areopagite gave it the name of Divine Darkness. It is difficult to love a
concept. To love Goodness, Justice and Beauty. It is much easier if there was a
human form to love, such as Jesus, Muhammadpbuh, Buddha, Krishna,
and Ram, or an object such as Kaaba (
the holiest site of Islam ).
2. What is the
purpose of life? I don’t know.
3. Is God personal
or impersonal? By personal God is meant that He is approachable. He has human
qualities such as joy, sadness, love, and justice. Requests can be sent to Him
as supplications. He takes interests in the affairs of the world. And finally,
he interferes in the world.
By impersonal God it
is meant that He is somewhere, far, alone, absorbed in Himself. Nobody can
reach Him. He is not aware of the affairs of this world.
He is neither happy
nor unhappy
He is neither angry
nor jealous
He is neither just
nor unjust
He is neither
merciful nor cruel
He does not love or
hate
He is neither good
nor bad
From my own personal
experience and from centuries of mystical thought, I am certain, as certain can
be, that God is personal. To experience Him, one has to invite Him in one’s life. As I have said earlier, this
is a cardinal principal. I have narrated so many incidents of His (or His
deputies) interventions in blogs 102-112, that there is no doubt left of a
personal God.
But part of God is
impersonal. Unapproachable.
The only fact which
is still unclear is that what if all these instances of miracles, answering of
prayers, prophecies, spirits of dead connoting life after death, are
perpetrated by His deputies and not by Him? He may be remote and unattached to
this world. It is an unanswerable question, but it does not bother me at all,
because the system under which these deputies operate has been created by God,
and all the prophets and thousands of mystics have said the same thing ( except
Buddha ), on rooftops, at peril of life. These systems, such as spirits of
bygone human beings, (trillions of them, over millions of years) and life after
death, are huge systems. They cannot be created by humans, since they predate
them. The spirits could not have developed spontaneously, because brain, like
the rest of body, disintegrates.
Therefore, God is
both personal and impersonal. The great saint Sri Ramakrishna said that
impersonal and personal God cannot be separated; they are the same, like milk
and its whiteness.
This mote thinks
that the Holy Spirit in Christianity is based on the same principle; it is the
kinetic energy of God._____________________________________________________________________________________
(1) Dionysius the
Areopagite, ‘De Mystica Theologia’. Taken from the book, ‘Mysticism’ by Evelyn
Underhill
149. Development and
critique of religious thought. Part one.
I respect all religions, but believe in none. I think that
the religions are outdated now. Moral conscience of the society has
sufficiently developed. Today is the epoch of secular humanism, which this mote
believes (in my case, with the addition of fervent love of God and to reach Him
through mysticism).
The religions arose to fulfill the needs of a particular
society at a particular time in human history.
Why did man need religion? I have written about it in
various blogs (33, 36, and 98). Let me repeat them over here.
Human beings saw a flat, stationary earth. Sun and moon rose in the East and set in the
West. Stars filled the sky. Sunlight permeated the day and the moonlight
suffused the night. Cool breeze in a hot summer day was delightful. There was a
pregnant pause at dawn and dusk, as if the whole universe was holding its
breath. There was joy in watching the children play. There were myriad plants
and animals. Rain came to nurture the harvest. Fragrant flowers attracted
butterflies. Each season came with its own delights. Beautiful snowfall in the
winter, and fragrant flowers in the spring. There were blue lagoons, winding
rivers and deep oceans. Clouds scudded the blue sky. Fish swam in the water and
birds soared in the air. Cows and horses roamed in the pastures and camels in
the deserts. Bees supplied them with honey and quadrupeds with meat and milk.
Man was filled with wonder. Everything
moved with precision. Just as a house could not develop by itself, somebody had
to make it; similarly, the world had to be made by somebody. The thought of the
grand universe making itself never came in the imagination of humans. There had
to be a creator of the universe.
Against such beauty and grandeur, there was ugliness. There
was great suffering and injustice.
Famines were common. Just few years of drought were
sufficient to cause them in ancient times. Hundreds of thousands of people
would die, including women and children. Tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and
earthquakes would wipe out hundreds of villages and towns. There was the
constant misery of epidemics of smallpox, plague, malaria, cholera and many
other such diseases. Childhood sicknesses and birthing problems killed hundreds
of thousands each year. Most of the globe suffered from chronic malnourishment
in the poor.
Then there were the problems created by human beings
themselves, such as poverty, wars and slavery. The dark ages had cruel kings
like Tamerlane and Genghis Khan who would construct towers of heads. Last
century had unprecedented number of deaths by the hands of Hitler, Stalin,
Hutus and Pol Pot.
The problem of misery and injustice has plagued philosophers
and religious scholars for over two thousand years. The ancient Greek
philosopher, Epicurus posed what is now called Epicurean Paradox
“God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists”
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
It
was more natural to think that sufferings could not be explained by religious
arguments, so human beings thought about it and tried to reconcile the 3 powerful observations, which were before them.
Those 3 observations were the following:
(A) Huge universe is present, and
could not have possibly arisen, on its own.
(B)There is lot of suffering
(C) People do good things and bad things.
Cruel or bad persons are not necessarily punished, in fact they may have a
great life, and the good are not necessarily rewarded.
Since it
was obvious and unalterable fact
(to them) that there was a God, the need was to reconcile it
with the second observation, the suffering. The logical answer would have been that God was not such a kind entity; in
fact He appeared to be downright cruel. Even under the best circumstances He
had to be indifferent and uncaring. So the wise men convinced themselves that
there must be a life after death where justice will eventually be done. And to
explain the bad deeds in the presence of omnipotent God, the Devil (Satan) had
to be invented (bad deeds were the work of Satan and not of God). Hindu
religion used a different theory: ‘Your sufferings are due to the misdeeds done
by you in previous lives’. Oppressed people needed these dogmas, because that
way of thinking gave them strength and eased their burden in three ways: First,
because they may think that their suffering was due to God’s will, so it must be good,
since God is good. And religion taught unquestioned surrender to God. Secondly,
they may think that there may be a hidden benefit in the present calamity (
there is a silver lining in most clouds). And, through these trials, there may
be an improvement in the better part of one’s nature. Who were they to question
God’s wisdom? He knew better. Thirdly, if they were not rewarded here, then
God’s justice made it absolutely certain that they will be rewarded in the next
life.
To
be continued.
150. Development and
critique of religious thought. Part two
With
these subterfuges God was still good and powerful and had nothing to do with
the suffering. There was a third argument that suffering was not really
suffering, but an illusion of suffering, because this was a transitional
period; universe
was proceeding towards a noble goal, therefore some pain had to be borne.
Still it did not explain animal suffering by
a kind God. Also it did not explain the
suffering of children born with diseases, such as HIV: AIDS, or disabilities,
such as blindness (because it was not their fault. They had not yet lived long
enough on earth to commit sins)
And,
how about bad people having a good life? The answer to that was that these
people will be judged and punished on judgment day. But that brought in the
question of free will vs. fate, which is an unsolvable contradiction. In other
words, it was not their fault; because even if they had free will (and not
preordained results) it still boiled down to how much free will they really
had, because a lot depended on their inherited genes or their early
environments, none of them was in their own control (I have already discussed
this problem in nine blogs, 134-142)
Before
I proceed further, I must state what all religions (except Buddhism) believe;
(1). Religious
scriptures are either literally word of God (as Quran) or inspired by Him, as
Bible and Torah. Therefore no alteration in the religious tenets or religious
beliefs is allowed, because they are derived from the Holy Books. They are
perfect.
(2) The
followers of every religion think that their religion is the best, the others
have some defect. The other religions are either outdated, like an old edition
of a textbook, or polluted over the ages, so that the original teaching has
been lost.
(3). All
religions teach that each member should perform good deeds and avoid bad deeds,
such as stealing, looting, murder, or
coveting one’s neighbor’s wife. These teachings appeal to common sense because
they would be good for the tribe.
(4) All
religions teach that one should be good to others. If one is good to others,
the others are reciprocally, good to him. Again, very good for tribal society.
Apart
from all these good points, there were still philosophic problems with
religions:
(a) Satan appeared to be a human invention; to
explain the evil. How could Satan be so powerful, almost as powerful as God
Himself? Why did He make Satan and why did He allow Satan to put people on
wrong path? If Satan was created to test people, why should God be testing
people (how
they will react to adversities?)
when He should know the result beforehand, after all He is the All- Knowing
God? Is suffering
due to deeds in the previous lives?
If so, how
about poor animals who undergo suffering.
Why such cruelty in animal kingdom? The theory of suffering due to sins
of previous lives breaks down in case of animals because they have no concept
of sin.
(b)
Why so many religions (and not one religion), which differ with each other in
their instructions to mankind ( Hindus worship cow, Muslims eat cow; as founder
of Pakistan, Jinnah, famously said ), and thus cause doubt over their
authenticity and cause strife amongst human beings? Why did God not give clear
instructions to mankind in some unambiguous fashion?
(c)
The universe was so big and an individual was so small, that it did not appeal
to common sense that He was going to concern Himself into looking into what
every lowly person was doing (as most religions proclaim will happen on
Judgment Day).
After
considering all that I have written above, I decided not to follow any
religion. The moral compass of an enlightened modern man should be sufficiently
developed, that he should not need the crutch of religion. Belief in God is an
entirely different matter. One should not confuse God with religion. One can
believe in God without believing in any religion, as most secular humanists
(like this writer) do, and one can believe in a religion and not believe in
God, as most Buddhists do.
What makes the moral compass in us? It is the
mother (to a greater degree), father (to a lesser degree), the nuns in Catholic
Schools, teachers in general, fellow students, books, films, and the society in
general. I have talked to several people who got their education in Catholic
Schools. They told me that the nuns were a great role model; here were women
who had given up everything and accepted chastity, poverty and obedience, for
the sake of God. They taught that one should love and obey God and help other
human beings. One should not lie, rob, cheat, or steal. I am a great supporter
of religion. Core base of morality in human society has partially originated
from religion, and partially because the innate value of many practices such as
not to steal, rob or kill, not to covet neighbor’s wife, were beneficial to the
tribal society. The mission schools and hospitals in 19th and 20th
century spread light and helped the sick and downtrodden masses in the world.
This mote went to a missionary run college. My mother took a 5 hour journey,
from a village, by train, to go to a Holy Family hospital in a city, to undergo
serious abdominal surgery. What could she have done if there were no nearby
hospital where she could have had surgery? It would be fair to assume that, in
the last two hundred years, events like these must have happened to hundreds of
thousands of individuals in Asia and Africa. I think critics of missionary
activities in colonial period wrongly consider that these activities were just
a cloak to spread Christianity. Yes, spreading Christianity was their mission,
but helping the indigenous population was also their mission. The two missions
were not mutually exclusive.
To be
continued
151.
Development and critique of religious thought. Part three
To
understand the good that the religion has done, let us compare the Island of
Tahiti before and after missionaries came and spread Christianity. They
reformed the place. Here is an account of Darwin in 1835, when he visited the
island, and the history of arrival of missionaries:
On 5 March 1797, representatives of the London Missionary Society landed at Point Venus (Mahina) on board HMS Duff, with the intention of saving the native populations from paganism. The arrival of these missionaries marked a new turning point for the island of Tahiti, having a lasting impact on the local culture.
Excerpts from the Diary entry of Darwin:
November
20th. 1835—………….
I was very anxious to
form, from my own observation, a judgment of their moral
State……… (Darwin had read) that the Tahitians had become a
gloomy race, and lived in fear of the missionaries. Of the latter feeling I saw
no trace, unless, indeed, fear and respect be confounded under one name.
Instead of discontent being a common
Feeling, it would be difficult in Europe to pick out of a crowd
half so many merry and happy faces.
The prohibition of the flute and dancing is inveighed against
as wrong and foolish; — the more than Presbyterian manner of keeping the
Sabbath is looked at in a similar light. …….
On the whole, it appears to me that the morality and religion
of the inhabitants are highly creditable
There are many who attack, even more acrimoniously than
Kotzebue, the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced by it. Such
reasoners never compare the present state with that of the island only twenty
years ago; nor even with that of Europe at this day; but they compare it with
the high standard of Gospel perfection. They expect the missionaries to affect
that which the Apostles themselves failed to do. Inasmuch as the condition of
the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the
missionary, instead of credit for that which he has affected. They forget, or
will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous
priesthood — a system of profligacy (shamelessly
immoral or debauched) unparalleled in any other part of the world — infanticide a
consequence of that system — bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither
women nor children — that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty,
intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction
of Christianity. In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for
should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will
most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus
far.
In point of morality, the virtue of the women, it has been
often said, is most open to exception. But before they are blamed too severely,
it will be well distinctly to call to mind the scenes described by Captain Cook
and Mr. Banks, in which the grandmothers
And mothers of the present race played a part. Those who are
most severe, should consider how much of the morality of the women in Europe is
owing to the system early impressed by mothers on their daughters, and how much
in each individual
case to the precepts of religion. But it is useless to argue
against such reasoners; —I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field
of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a
morality which they do not wish to practice, or
to a religion which they undervalue, if
not despise.
Bloody wars, human sacrifices, idolatry, shameless
immorality of women were abolished in Tahiti.
My main quarrel (amongst many) with religions is
their intolerance. Each religion is considered the latest and final word of
God. So many wars have been fought in the name of religion, countless persons
have died. Even as I write these lines (July 2014), Muslims, Hindus, Christians
and Jews are fighting with each other.
There are not many countries in the world where there is no threat of
terrorism, or terrorist attacks have not taken place, in the name of religion (
and in some cases, the sects of same religion fighting with each other ); USA,
Russia, China, France, UK, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, Somalia,
Kenya, Chad, Mali, Algeria, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma Pakistan, India,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel, Palestinian Lands,
Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, are some of the examples.
Critics may say that I have let go religions too
lightly. I did not mention their numerous defects, especially some of their
wrong teachings, even if we disregard the practices. A tree should be judged by
its fruit. If intolerance and bigotry are the hallmarks of the fervent
followers of most religions, then why blame the followers and exculpate the
religions? It is the teachings which produced the followers. Critics are right.
I have purposely avoided it, due to two considerations: When I write, I ask
myself two questions ?
Is this writing appropriate for a
spiritual blog?
Does it bring harmony or strife
amongst human beings?
My
criticism of the teaching and practices of various religions will not bring
human beings closer but split them further apart.
I
must mention my two conclusions regarding social role of religion. I have
thought about it for some time.
1.
Religion should have no role in government. In other words, in the old debate
of church and state, I consider that the two should be separate. Religion is a
personal matter between an individual and God.
2.
In order for religion to maintain relevancy in the next thousands of years, it
must learn to innovate and adapt. Rigidity, which was its greatest strength in
surviving the upheaval of science and technology, is also its greatest
weakness. Scholars of all Middle East religions attempt to explain those
writings of their Holy Books which contradict science and common sense by
interpreting them in novel ways so that they are in accord with modern age (
one can derive any meaning from scriptures, by giving new meaning to the words
; a day can be one day or a million years ) . These attempts are laughable; for
instance, does anyone really believe that Eve was created from the rib of Adam?
All such attempts are bound to fail. To this mote, the answer is simple; People, ideologies, culture, books, almost
everything, should be judged in the context of their times. During the
Vietnam War soldiers in uniform were mocked with anti- war slogans, and called
baby killers, in many streets of America. Now the same soldiers are held
in high esteem, because they answered the call of their country.
People
were given examples, by prophets, which they could readily understand. Raging
fires of hell were contrasted with green gardens, trees with fruits , beautiful
women and cool canals of heaven.
Don’t
apply twenty first century standards on books, ideologies and people who lived
hundreds and thousands of years ago.
152. TWO BOOKS ON GOD (part
one)
I have recently read two books on God. One is ‘Tlash, (means Search)’ by Uxi Mufti, and
the other ‘Why science does not disprove God’ by Amir Aczel. Here are my
impressions. First about Tlash.
This book is written in Urdu language, and is actually a
translation of the original book, "Measuring
the Intangible”. Mr Mufti is a psychologist and a Pakistani folklorist. He is also the author of many books
and winner of many awards. The author must have been studying God for
decades, because when he
was studying in Prague in late sixties, the title of his thesis was ‘a
scientific hypothesis of God’. At that time he did not complete the development
of a scientific hypothesis, but now, in this book he claims that he has. So
what is the hypothesis?
The
hypothesis is that God can be proven by His ninety-nine names. These names are
mentioned in Quran, the holy book which, according to Muslim belief, is the
word of God Himself, and revealed to His prophet, in pieces, over years. Each
name denotes a quality of God. For instance the name AL-Raheem, means, the Compassionate; Al-Jabbar means, the Almighty; Al-Muntaqim
means the Avenger; and so on.
In the book, is there any proof or evidence regarding the
truth of this hypothesis?
None.
The author supports his hypothesis by the following
arguments:
1. Since these names of God are taken from Quran, and Quran
is the word of God, therefore there has to be a God.
This argument has of no value to the Non-Muslims
2. The premise is based on two very authentic traditions;
one is of Imam Tirmidhi, a famous ninth century Islamic scholar, and the other
a prayer called Ganj-ul-arsh (I had great trouble understanding what was meant
by Ganj-ul-arsh. The book itself does not explain it. First I thought it was a
book.). If his hypothesis was authenticated by these two, he should have at
least provided a text of the documents; there is none. Unfortunately, the book
lacks an index, which would have helped the reader to find out if the author
had explained them somewhere else in the book.
Again, this argument has of no value to Non-Muslims, and
even to many Muslim. Just because someone says that God can be scientifically supported by His names,
does not make it so. All Muslims and followers of other religions (except
Buddhists) believe in God, just by faith.
3. In the “introduction” the author states, that some
experimental support of this hypothesis will be provided in the second part of
this book. I searched diligently, because that would have been the clincher,
but there was none.
A great part of the book is spent on explaining the
properties of the ninety nine names of God. The entity of God possesses these
ninety nine qualities, amongst hundreds of other qualities, because He has
hundreds of other names also. Thus He emerges as a possessor of enormous powers
and qualities. Some of the properties are opposite to each other, but the
author claims, that it is the nature of God, and of the whole universe, like
the positive and negative poles of electricity. He is Restrainer as well as
Extender; the Humiliator and Downgrader as well as the Exalter, the
Upgrader..
Even if we accept at face value all the
qualities of God, as accorded to Him by the ninety nine names, it tells us what
God would look like, if there was a God. It does not prove or attempts to prove
that there is a God.
It is as if there was a myth that
somewhere there exists a building which holds all the treasures of the world.
The building has ninety-nine doors. Each door has a name (ruby, sapphire,
diamond, gold, etc) and leads to a room which contains the treasure mentioned
by the name of the door. Nobody has seen this building and nobody knows its
location. If somebody claims that the knowledge of the names proves that there
is such a building, we will not accept his claim, unless he provides some
proof. Mere saying is not evidence. One of the famous scientists of all times,
Charles Darwin claimed that species change and evolve. His grandfather, Erasmus
Darwin said the same thing and wrote a book named Zoonomia
. Nobody paid him any mind, because he was an armchair theoretician, with no
data. Whereas Charles, undertook an almost five years voyage around the world
and collected specimens of plants, animal and rocks. He collected more data for
another twenty years. He then published his theory, which was substantiated
with immense data.
The book deals with quantum physics and
spirituality. When I review the second book I will discuss how quantum physics
has been used as an alternative hypothesis to the theory of creationism (that
the universe was created by God). Its mention in this book points towards the
erudition of the author, but adds nothing (rather subtracts) to his central
hypothesis
The best part of this book, which I
heartily support, is his advocacy of Sufism
(mysticism) as a way of experiencing Reality. He admonishes science not to
disregard mysticism. Just as science is based on experiments, so is mysticism.
Mystics experiment every day, in the form of hours of meditation for decades.
What he/she sees and experiences cannot be demonstrated to others, but it can
be replicated. As we know replication is a necessity for validation of any
theory. The techniques have been passed from teachers to disciples for over 2-3
thousand years.
The book is difficult to read and
understand. But it is a noble and sincere effort. It fails in its objective
because God cannot be proven by science. God also cannot be proven by religion
or philosophy. Ordinary knowledge in the form of scholarly pursuits is useless.
God can only be realized by practicing mysticism. The path is open to all
creeds, even to a secular humanist like me.
To be continued
153. Shah Sahib. Part one
A man of God, died last week.
He was called Shah Sahib. His original name was Noor Alam.
My brother first met him a few years ago in Data Durbar (the popular name of
the shrine in Lahore, Pakistan, of Data Gunj Bakhash, , also called Data Sahib,
an 11th century mystic). At that time my brother was very sick. He was vomiting blood and had abdominal pain. He fell down in
streets couple of times and was taken to a hospital. He was diagnosed with
cancer (although that part is not documented). One day he met a durvesh (Muslim ascetic) in Data
Durbar. He brought some food
for the durvesh. The durvesh said do you have cancer? My
brother replied in affirmative. The durvesh
said that in a far flung area a Qalander lives; only he has the ability to
cure you. That durvesh was Shah
Sahib. My brother took that journey, and met the Great Mystic (see Foreword to
book 2, blog 53), who cured him.
On his second visit to the Great Mystic, the Mystic enquired
about the health of Shah Sahib. That shows that the mystic not only knew Shah
Sahib but held him in great regard.
When my brother had his meeting with the yogi who always
wore dark glasses (blog 64), Shah Sahib knew, on his own, that my brother had
met the yogi. He is the one who told my brother that the yogi’s glance can
burn.
On one occasion, he told my brother that he spent many years
in mountains of Kashmir with his spiritual guide.
Shah Sahib read Part one of my books. His remark to my
brother was that nobody will know anything about Islamic mysticism from this
book. He said it not in a critical way but in a sad way. I did not know
anything about Islamic mysticism; therefore I had briefly mentioned the little
that I knew in one blog (blog 32). It
was his remark that prompted me to read more about Islamic mysticism which
resulted in several blogs in parts 2, 3, and 4.
Shah Sahib read part 2 of my book. My brother told him that
I wanted his impressions about part 2. First he was amazed at the notion that I
wanted his opinion. He said, “It is a very good book. He has understood
mysticism correctly (blogs 93-95). He should not worry about other people’s
opinion. He has this duty, he should just do it.”
I made a tape of the Urdu translation of some of my poems
and recorded them in my own voice. I told my brother to ask Shah Sahib if he
would want to listen to them. He said “off course, I want to listen to them,
but in private. Give me two hours.” They were in Data Durbar. When my brother
came back he found Shah Sahib in Juzzab (smadhi).
Here are excerpts from my recent notes:
10/17/14. Shah
Sahib is very sick. He is likely to die. He has diarrhea. This is his second
such illness. On his previous sickness he stayed with my brother. My brother
looked after him. He washed Shah Sahib’s soiled clothes himself, instead of
giving them to a servant for washing, because the servant may have felt
repugnance.
He is not eating anything. He was sick prior to coming to
Lahore, but he insisted to coming to Data Durbar, as if he wanted to say
goodbye. He is staying with somebody else but it is my brother who is looking
after him for the last 5-6 days. He told his life story for the first time.
He was born near Pakputtan. His name is Noor Alam. Both his
parents died when he was a child. He had an elder brother who wanted him to
become a laborer, but Shah Sahib wanted to study. He was in fifth grade at that
time. He left the house and came to Pakputtan and lived there for several
years, because there was free food available in the famous shrine over there.
He did kitchen work (washing dishes, etc) in a hotel and also studied. He
passed his matriculation (10th grade) examination in 1970, by
getting about 550 marks.
He saw the people around the shrine and became disenchanted
with them because they were frauds and cheats. He hated the residents over
there because they preyed upon the gullible villagers.
He moved to Lahore and settled near Data Durbar, because
there was free food available at the shrine. There, also, he saw deceit, but to
a lesser degree. He bought some books and studied. He prepared for F.A.
examination. A leader of the Shrine Trust noticed him. He was touched by his
zeal for education and his poverty. He gave him a room in the Shrine. One day
he was sick, and the exam was very close. As he was weeping, a holy person came
to him and did a daam(a spiritual
prayer for healing ). He got well the next day. He passed his F.A (12th
grade) in 1972. He gravitated towards that holy person, who guided him towards
spirituality.
To be continued
154. Shah Sahib. Part Two
In 1978, he got a spiritual reward. That meant he had been
noticed by God. In 1980 he was given some reward by Data Sahib. Since 1970 he
has been established in Data Sahib and that holy man (who is deceased now).
In 2002, he had a tremendous advancement. He received what
he had always wished. He had the vision of God’s light. Now, he has become so
advanced that when he closes his eyes he can see the light very soon. It is a
bright light. It has a second quality that it gives Shah Sahib peace.
My brother asked him whether he had ever opened his eyes,
while he was seeing the light. Shah Sahib replied “No. I know by my own
knowledge that if I open my eyes, either I will go blind or die, because nobody
can see God”(see footnote )
My brother enquired,
“Are you aware of time and space when you are with this light?”
Shah Sahib smiled and replied, “How can one be aware of anything when one is with God?
If you are aware, then you are not with God. The light lasts for 10-20 minutes,
and then one comes back to his surroundings.”
He said he has only followed the path of Sufism (follow the
Shariat), and not that of Qalanders (independent of Shariat).
He said that the path
towards God is very difficult. The path of Qalandars is even more difficult
than that of Sufis. He said to Riaz that “you are a very rare person who is
close to the practitioners of both paths (because of approval from both Data
sahib, a sufi, and Baba lal Shah, a Qalandar, see blog 63)”. He talked about me
and said “Whatever duty he is given, he should keep on doing it. It is true
that he got less time, but that must have been God’s will”. On another occasion he had said that
spiritual powers helped your brother in his journey.
My brother said that he has been told several other things,
which he cannot divulge to me.
Shah Sahib said that he can receive messages from others,
but he does not have the capability to transmit messages. The spirit of Daata
Sahib has communicated to him many times. He said that to communicate with the
spirits of dead people, needs a separate and different technique and knowledge,
which Sufis should not learn.
Shah Sahib said a strange thing, that persons who are on
God’s path are closely monitored. My brother asked, that the fire which burnt
his building (see footnote), and his recent rickshaw accident in which he broke
his clavicle ), were they ordained by God, or just natural, random, events?
Shah Sahib said they were not random natural events. My brother said that then
how do you explain that 15-16 innocent persons died in the fire. Shah Sahib
said what is death to God? ( see footnote three )
My brother said that the face of Shah Sahib was shining and
radiant with spiritual glow. He could discern a halo around his face.
Shah Sahib now lives in a small village near Sahiwal, called
Saywa, where he helps people with daam.
Shah Sahib decided to go back to his home. A berth was
reserved in the train. My brother accompanied him in the journey. Shah Sahib
did not allow him to go all the way to his village. He put him in a horse
driven carriage.
11/4/2014. Today I talked to my brother. Shah Sahib
died 3-4 days ago. My brother received a message from somebody to go to Shah
Sahib’s village immediately. Meanwhile a man from village also arrived. When my
brother arrived at the village, Shah Sahib was still alive. Shah Sahib said ‘I
was waiting for you. My time has come. I can no longer see the Light of God on
closing my eyes. This vhachowra
(separation) is unbearable.’ My brother could still see the halo around Shah
Sahib’s face.
Shah Sahib said to him ‘I am not in a position to give you
any gift. Tell your brother (Mkadk) that God likes tearful prayers. He should beg God with tears (as if I have
not shed enough tears).’
Shah Sahib had called for the headman of the village. His
special disciple was also present. He told my brother to give Shah Sahib’s
handkerchief to the special disciple. He also told my brother that after his
death he should be buried as soon as possible, and my brother should lead the
prayer of the dead (Namaz-a-jinnaza). My brother told him that he has never
lead a prayer, but Shah Sahib did not listen to his plea. He said to the
special disciple “He ( my brother ) is your superior, never disobey him. I am
giving you these three orders/advices: always speak truth; don’t prey upon the
visitors who will come here, all of you ( there were 5-6 disciples/hanger-on’s)
will have enough for your needs; you ( the disciple ) give the final wash to my
dead body.” Shah Sahib told my brother to leave his books intact in the room
and to bury him in the coffin which was there in the room. He added, ‘there is
small amount of money also. Pay the grave-diggers from that money. If any money
is left, distribute it amongst the disciples.’
Shah Sahib soon died.
He recited Kalma (the first and
foremost tenet of Islam) before his death and said something like ‘Molah (God) I am coming’, or similar
words.
60-70 persons attended the Namaz-a-jinnaza. The headman gave
some sketchy details of Shah Sahib. He said “Shah Sahib arrived 10-15 years
ago. He was sitting, and was oblivious of his surroundings. The villagers
recognized that he was a majzoob (a
person who is in a state of juzzab,
or absorbed in God). They looked after
him. Once an important person’s daughter became very sick. Shah Sahib cured
her. That man gave this piece of land to Shah Sahib, where eventually two rooms
were built. He would disappear from time to time ( presumably went to the
shrines at Pakputtan and Lahore). His fame spread and supplicants started
coming.”
To be continued
155. Shah Sahib. Part Three
11/14/14. I talked to my brother today. He gave the
following news:
When he was in train with Shah Sahib, he asked Shah Sahib
whether he ever had any doubts about Islam.
Shah Sahib replied, “How can I even have an iota of doubt about Islam,
when I found the light of Allah through Islam. One can reach God through
different paths and creeds (same thing which Great Mystic of Khyber Pass, Yogi
from India, Sri Ramakrishna, and the Baba from Saudi Arabia had said)”. He said
that the study of the life of Prophet Muhammadpbuh cannot be done
without the study of Hadith ( sayings
of the Prophet), because his life was not a secret. It was open. He lived with
his companions, and had been observed by 20-25 thousands Muslims. Some of them
had known him since he was a young man. Most of the Hadiths are reliable. Certain aspects of his life, like marriages,
have been criticized. So be it.
Shah Sahib said a great thing, which delighted my heart. He
said he respects other religions too. They are true also. It is just that the
followers of the religions distort the message. However, the followers of each
religion must follow their commandments faithfully, like doing good, and
helping others. Thus Shah Sahib did not insist that Islam is the best, and the
only true creed, a cause of so much bloodshed and intolerance.
The other day my brother was sitting in Data Durbar when a
man approached him. He said are you Mr. …….? My brother replied in affirmative.
He said last night he had a dream. In the dream a venerable person appeared and
said “ Go to Data Durbar. There will be a person, ………, wearing white dress.
Give him five hundred thousand rupees. So here are five hundred thousand
rupees”. My brother asked him how did the person in the dream look like? That
man replied that he could not tell, the features were not clear.
Soon my brother received clear orders from a different
source. He learnt that this money is for enclosing the grave of Shah Sahib with
a quadrangular wall. It should have two doors, one in the North and the other
in the South side. So my brother went to the village of Shah Sahib. He gathered
two village elders and the special Disciple. He told them the plan of the wall
and gave the Disciple the money. It requires registration of the deed for the
land in a Government office. Money was put in a steel safe deposit.
This incident tells three things: a special spiritual site
at Sayva is being created, already supplicants have started coming. Secondly,
that Data Sahib, with the approval of God, takes care of his special disciples
even after they die. Through the tomb of Shah Sahib and this mote’s blog, Shah
Sahib’s name will be remembered, perhaps for a long time. Thirdly, it means
Shah Sahib was no ordinary person.
What can I say about the life of Shah Sahib? His life was an
embodiment of Sufism, at its best. Never married, lived in poverty, never
extended his hand to others. He met his expenses by accepting money from the
grateful persons helped by him. Acceptance of such donations is allowed in
mysticism, provided the money is given freely (mystics never asks for money,
their gift is free) and is small (bigger donations are accepted if many
students are attached to the shrine, or if free food is distributed). He even
set his own money aside for grave-diggers. He bought his own coffin. He loved
God. He got everything through Data Sahib. He helped the sick and the needy
that came to him. He was a spiritual guide to my brother and this mote,
although I never met him in person. I am honored that he mentioned this mote by
name minutes before his death.
I do not know what special powers
he had. He could cure some ailments. He had a receiver in his brain to receive
messages. He knew of events, such as my brother’s meeting with the yogi from
India. He could discern spirituality in others.
The Merciful God rewarded him for
his lifelong piety and gave him the great gift of His Light. Such a reward is
extremely hard to earn. As St Teresa of Avila (and Brother Lawrence) remarked
(see blog78):
“If there is a single thing to which a man clings, it is a sign
that he sets some value on it; and if he sets some value upon it, it will
naturally distress him to give it up, and so everything will be imperfection
and loss (also mentioned in blog 37)”. Probably Shah Sahib was close to
that stage.
Footnote one. Spiritual light is very powerful.
Nobody can endure it. Moses fell down unconscious. St Paul fell down from his
horse and became blind for three days. A Qalandar who has been my brother’s
mentor, and got injured in Data Durbar (blog 64), became oblivious to time and
space (Jazzab) for over three weeks.
Footnote two. My brother survived the fire with only
the clothes he was wearing. That was the greatest calamity of his life.
Footnote three. This mote has a different
interpretation of the incident of fire. The fire occurred due to electric
malfunction. It was a natural incident, not ordained by God. But he was saved by the intercession of spiritual
forces. I have called this Minor
Interventions in blog 145.
156. TWO BOOKS ON GOD (part
two)
I want to narrate my impressions of the book ‘Why science
does not disprove God’ by Amir Aczel. This is not a formal review.
The book is an answer to some atheist scientists, notably
Richard Dawkins (1) and Lawrence Krauss (2), who claim that since everything
can be explained without God, therefore there is no God. These scientists
actually do not prove that there is no God. Nobody can and nobody ever will,
because it is not true.
This is different from some scientists, such as Stephen
Hawking (3), who say that God is not necessary
to explain the beginning of universe and evolution, but there may be God.
Since Aczel refutes the arguments made by these scientists,
on a compelling scientific basis, I will narrate the main arguments, and
Aczel’s reply:
1. Universe had to
follow quantum rules. The world of Quantum Physics (world at subatomic
level) is bizarre, even the greatest mind of last century, Einstein, could not
understand it. One of the proposals by Noble laureate Feynman was that if a
particle had to travel from point A to point B, it will take all possible paths. Thus, the universe
had to do the same because it was like a particle during the Big Bang or a
fraction of a second later. This would have resulted in multiple universes, one
of them ours. The importance of multiple universes is an extremely important concept of ‘anthropic principle’, which will be
discussed later.
Since there is no way to prove or disprove this theory,
Aczel did the best he could; he talked to other physicists
Aczel’s talked to a particle physicist, Noble laureate
Gerald ‘t Hooft, who said ‘ we still
don’t understand at all what truly happens in the world of truly small___ all
we have may be shadows on the wall, cast by a mysterious “veiled reality”’
Aczel quotes another renowned quantum theorist, D’Espagnat:
“The Veiled Reality conception…merely involves the
conception …..(That they) are reflections or traces___ of the great
structure of “the Real”
So, people like Hawking, who have taken this theory of one
scientist about a particle, to absurd heights, and applied it to universes,
have no sense of proportionality and probability.
2. Universe arose out
of nothing. This is the heart of the case of the atheists. If there is no
Creator who created the universe, then the universe somehow had to create
itself out of nothing. This mote has
discussed this point in great detail in his blog 101.
The construction of their theory involves following steps.
(A). their nothing
is not really nothing. It is not a nothing that does not contain anything;
absolutely empty. Their nothing is full of energy (derived from quantum foam),
force fields (electromagnetic, gravitational), Higgs field, quantum tunneling,
and something in which all of these
are embedded (what is outside of this something;
more something? See footnote)
Where did quantum foam come from? Where did these fields
come from? If they came from something, where did that something come from? And
so on. At some point, it has to start from real
and absolute nothing. Nothing can be created from nothing, what to talk of
a whole universe, full of matter, space-time, fields, and energy.
Just changing the definition of nothing is a sleight of
hand. Real question remains unanswered.
The atheists have a similar argument; who created God? Our answer is that we don’t know. Our small mind is not capable
of answering this question, just as a cow cannot learn to read. This mote has
tried to answer it (blog113). Can God create things out of nothing? Absolutely.
(b). How is energy
changed to mass (particles or matter) to
create the universe. This mechanism is called paired production (matched pair
of virtual particles; matter and antimatter). It has to be remembered that
particles did not arise from nothing but from pre-existing energy.
3. Anthropic principle. Simply stated, it says that the universe is the way it is, because
if it were otherwise, we humans would not have arisen, to ask these intelligent
questions.
This is an evasive
answer. Penrose calculated that “the chance of intelligent life to arise was 1
followed by 10 raised to the power 117 zeros (if my math is correct it means 1
followed by 117 zeroes)”. This is an extremely small chance. Again quantum
physics comes to their rescue with its bizarre rules, because according to it, if anything can happen it will happen.
Instead of explaining how
the fundamental laws were so exactly right, for intelligent life to emerge, the
atheist just use the ruse that if they were not so finely tuned, we would not
be here. Is this a real argument? Or just a lawyerly subterfuge. I will discuss
the precision of laws of nature in another section.
If there are many
universes ( an infinity of universes ), in most of them intelligent life could
not emerge because the conditions would not be suitable, but in one of them (
one out of 10117) everything would be exactly right, and we will
emerge.
I quote from Aczel: “If you wanted to test
which hypothesis is true, a universe created
to specific requirements, or a universe just happens to satisfy the
requirements because we observe them, you would find that there is no specific
way to determine the answer”
To be continued
____________________________________________________________________________________
(1) The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
(2) A universe from
Nothing by Lawrence Krauss
(3) The Grand Design
by Stephen Hawking
157. TWO BOOKS ON GOD (part
three)
We had just finished
discussing the anthropic principle
4. Suitable environments. Everyone knows that in order for life to
emerge one needs liquid water, oxygen, a source of energy like sun, and a
temperature that is not too hot or too cold. Aczel discusses the consequences
of the alteration in the four fundamental forces of nature (gravity,
electromagnetism, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force) and the dark
energy. If dark energy (which propels the space and galaxies outwards) was
stronger it would not have allowed the galaxies to coalesce, if it were any
weaker, gravitational force would have won and collapsed the galaxies. In
either case sentient life could not emerge. If gravitational force were any
stronger, it would have crushed us. Integrity of atoms could not be maintained
if electromagnetic force was different, electrons would not orbit. If electrons
won’t orbit, no chemical bonds with other atoms could have formed. No chemicals___no
life. If strong nuclear force (which is the most powerful of all forces and due
to its attracting power holds the nucleus of an atom together) was any
different, quarks would either fly out of nucleus or be crushed. If weak
nuclear force had a different value, possibly everything would be radioactive
and stars won’t burn____no energy ____ no life.
Aczel has provided many
more examples. He was most impressed by the precise charge of quarks, a
fraction of a second after big-bang, and there gathering in triplets, to form
protons and neutrons. Why did they gather in triplets and not doubles or
quadruplets? An “up” quark has a 2/3 charge, and a “down” quark has a _1/3
charge. The proton has two up quark and one down quark. Thus the charge of a
proton is 2/3 + 2/3_ 1/3 = +1, which is exactly equal to the _
1 charge of the electron (for electron to circle). In neutrons there are
two down quarks and an up quark. The
charge is 2/3-1/3-1/3 = 0. It has no charge.
Isn’t God marvelous!
I could go on and on. He
has mentioned many unsolved riddles. Where did all the antimatter go? What is
dark energy? How are the constants of nature derived? (Strength of all
electromagnetic interactions is 1/137; gravitational constant is 6.67384 x 10-11)
His ideas of evolution
and religion are different from that of this mote. I am not going to discuss
them. That is why this is not a review of the book, but just my impressions.
These are the impressions of a secular humanist who also loves God very
passionately.
This is a great book. It
succeeds in its task of proving that science does not disprove God. This mote
has taken the task of proving that there is a God, in my eighteen blogs,
97-114, on the site www.afnta-questforallah.blogspot.com
Lastly I want to say again which I have said in the previous
blog. God cannot be proven by science, religion or philosophy.
Ordinary knowledge in the form of scholarly pursuits is useless. God can only
be realized by practicing mysticism. The path is open to all creeds, even to a
secular humanist like me.
____________________________________________________________________________________
(1) The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
(2) A universe from
Nothing by Lawrence Krauss
(3) The Grand Design
by Stephen Hawking
Footnotes: I quote from my blog 101, “If you ask the scientists,
what are these galaxies expanding into - outside the outermost limits of the
universe? Is there more empty space? The answers will seem either vague,
meaningless or couched with silence and irritability.”
“The
law of conservation of energy is a fundamental law of nature and has no
exceptions. It states “the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it
is said to be conserved over time. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but
can change form”. Therefore the total
energy pre-Big bang (for this discussion ignore Time. Time started at Big Bang,
so truly speaking, there is no before Big Bang ), at Big Bang, 13.8 billion
years after Big Bang, and 100 billion years after Big Bang should be the same.
But
scientists claim that universe started
from nothing. According to Guth, universe is the ultimate free lunch. So,
what is the truth - tremendous amount of energy or nothing?”
“Now,
Hawking is a brilliant scientist. Why would he believe in such a preposterous
idea? The reason is that he arrived at a conclusion first and then he went to
find the facts (there are no facts before Big Bang) which will support his
conclusion. Religion does this backward practice; scientist should not do such
cheating. His pre-conceived conclusion
was that there is no Creator. Therefore, it follows; the universe must have
emerged spontaneously. As Sherlock Holmes famously said “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
158. Mother of Saint
Augustine
Anybody who has read ‘Confessions’ (1) cannot help being
touched by the holiness of Monica, mother of Augustine. We have glimpses of her
life and even her actual words as narrated by her son in his book. She died in
Italy in 387 A.D.
Her husband was a man of short temper and unfaithful to her.
Wife beating was a common practice during those days but her husband,
‘ respected, loved, and admired her……….many women, whose
faces were disfigured by blows from husbands would complain the behavior of
their men-folk……They used to remark how surprising it was that they had never
heard, or seen any marks to show……….any domestic disagreement……even for one day
’(1)
Her mother-in-law was at first prejudiced against her, but
she won her over by ‘… dutiful attention and
constant patience and gentleness’ (1)
Her greatest desire in life was that her son should turn to
God. St Augustine writes:
“My mother, your faithful
servant, wept to you for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than
other mothers shed for the bodily death of a son”.
Augustine was leading
a sinful life and had a concubine.
One night she had a dream:
“She dreamt that she was
standing on a wooden ruler, and coming towards her in a halo of splendor she
saw a young man who smiled at her in joy, although she herself was sad and
quite consumed in grief. He asked her the reason for her grief and her daily
tears…………….When she replied that her tears were for the soul I had lost, he
asked her to take heart for, if she looked carefully, she would see where she
was, there also was I. And when she looked, she saw me standing beside her on
the same rule.”
“She always said that by some
sense…….she was able to distinguish between Your revelations and her own
natural dreams”
This was a divine
revelation. Augustine argued that it meant that she should not despair to be
like him, one day.
‘She said at once and without
hesitation “No! He did not say ‘Where he is, you are’ but ‘where you are, he
is’.
This dream gave her
great reassurance. She never doubted the veracity of the dream. She became
certain that her son Augustine would, one day turn to God, although it took
close to nine years. Despite the dream,
“ ……….never ceased to pray at
all hours and to offer to You the tears she shed for me…………but she gave no rest
to her sighs and her tears. Her prayers reached Your presence and yet You still
left me to twist and turn in dark”.
While she was
crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a ship, the ship came in danger.
“ It was she who put heart in
the crew…………She promised them that they would make the land in safety, because
You had given her this promise in a vision”
Once she kept on begging
a Bishop to talk to Augustine and show him the right path, but the Bishop kept
on refusing. He said,
“Leave him alone and just pray to God for him”.
But Monica would not
stop her entreaties.
“At last he grew impatient and
said ‘Leave me and go in peace. It cannot be that the son of these tears should
be lost”. In later years she used to say that she accepted those words as a
message from heaven”
Augustine turned to
God by a strange set of events, which I will narrate in detail when I write
about him. Her mother was overjoyed to hear it.
Five days before her
sickness which resulted in her death, after a long and tiring journey, mother
and son started talking about the eternal life of saints. It was a serene and
peaceful conversation. They talked of the material things and of heaven and of
love of God. Here are some excerpts:
“As the flame of love burned
stronger in us and raised us higher towards the eternal God……..up to the
heavens themselves, from which the sun and the moon and the stars shine down
upon the earth. Higher still we climbed………At length we came to our own souls
and passed beyond to that place of everlasting beauty…... There life is that
Wisdom by which all things that we know are made………But that Wisdom is not made:
it is as it has always been and as it will be forever…………..”
“And while we spoke of the
eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with the strength of our
hearts, for one
fleeting instant we reached it and touched it. Then with a sigh …we returned to the sound of our own speech…”
“And
then my mother said: ‘My son. For my part I find no further pleasure in this
life……. What I am still to do or why I am here in this world, I do not know,
for I have no more to hope for in this world. There was one reason, and one alone, why I wished to remain a
little longer in this life and that was to see you a Catholic Christian before
I died. God has granted my wish and more ………..What is left for me to do in this
world?”
It was about five days after this that she developed fever
and died after nine days of sickness.
She had expressed her wish to be buried beside her husband
in Africa, in a grave which she had provided and prepared herself. Because they
had lived in the greatest harmony, she wanted this extra happiness.
But she renounced her wish while she was sick, and told her
son as follows:
“You will bury your mother here
(Ostia)” And
then, speaking to both of us, she went on, ‘It does not matter where you bury
my body. Do not let that worry you! All
I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar
of the Lord’
She
was not frightened at the thought of leaving her body so far from her own
country. ‘Nothing is far from God, and I need have no fear that He will not
know where to find me when He comes to
raise me to life at the end of the world’
(1) ‘Confessions’ by St Augustine,
Penguin Edition
159. Saint Augustine. Part
One
What impresses a person the most about St. Augustine is his
love for God, and his habit of thinking. Both are overawing. He had a towering
intellect. He pondered over things which most people take for granted and never
give a second thought.
He wrote the book ‘Confessions’ in 397-8 (1), which is
considered a classic in spiritual literature. Whatever I am going to write
about him is taken from this book (except my personal opinions), and is
therefore 100% authentic. We may differ from his opinions, but we cannot doubt
his sincerity. He is unduly harsh upon himself throughout his book. Some of the
things for which he criticizes himself so severely were sort of trivial. For
instance he and his friends stole pears from a neighbor’s tree. He did not even
eat them. He was just a boy of sixteen, swept under peer pressure, to make
mischief. Nowadays, it won’t be considered stealing but the rowdy behavior of a
bunch of teenagers. But look at a sample of what he says, and carries on in
four pages:
‘It
is certain, O Lord, that theft is punished by Your law………..For no thief can
bear that another thief should steal from him, even if he is rich and the other
is driven to it by want. Yet I was willing to steal, and steal I did, although
I was not compelled by any lack….. a greedy love of doing wrong. For what I
stole I already had plenty………and I had no wish to enjoy the thing I coveted by
stealing, but enjoy the theft itself and the sin’.
Let us take the first point; his love for God. Every page of
this 347 pages book, mentions the magnificence of God and his love for Him.
Sometimes dozens of time in a single page. Let me give you an example; book 1:
“Who
will grant me to rest content in You? To whom shall I turn for the gift of Your
coming in my heart and filling it to the brim, so that I may forget all the
wrong I have done and embrace You alone, my only source of good?
Why
do You mean so much to me? Help me to find words to explain. Why do I mean so much to You, that You should command me to love You? O Lord, my God, tell me why
You mean so much to me. Whisper in my
heart, I am here to save you( Psalm, 34:3 )………….I shall hear Your voice and
make haste to clasp You to myself. Do not hide Your face from me, for I would
gladly accept death to see It, for not to see it would be death indeed”.
He is talking to God, all the time, in this book. He is telling
Him his problems. He is confessing his sins. He is begging for His mercy. He is
thanking Him for all the things that He has given him. He is asking him to show
him light on some of the thorniest issues of all times; such as, where does sin
come from? What is Time? How to reconcile passages of Bible to the scientific
discoveries of his time? How were the prophets able to predict future events?
He asks for His help to conquer lust, his major weakness.
The sentence that I highlighted (Why do I mean so much to You, that You should command me to love You?) carries an extremely
important point in mysticism. I want to explain what St. Augustine meant.
What he is saying is that God need not have bothered Himself
about him. He is just one human amongst billions of humans on planet earth,
which is one of perhaps hundred billions planets in our galaxy, which is one of
a hundred billion galaxies. It is God’s mercy to note Augustine
and help him. God could have kept on doing what He was doing, but He paused and
helped Augustine. This mote, only recently, understood God’s mercy, His
kindness, in noticing this speck. We, lovers of God, think that our love
somehow compels Him, as if He likes flattery (see footnote). Yogananda said as
much in his book (2), that God is drawn to the tears and sighs of a lover of
God. Nothing compels God; He just takes pity on His devotee. My interpretation
is that God likes a true devotee, because he cares about God and not the world
and is different from others. Such persons are rare, perhaps one in a thousand.
Their desire to reach God is noticed by God. How does God help them?
He puts, in
their heart, love for God. And that is what St Augustine meant.
So the sequence of events is somewhat like this: A person
wants to be near God and prays for it repeatedly, God notices it, God takes
pity on him, and He puts His love in his heart. The love for God gives great
strength to the person, and he travels on the path towards God despite
tremendous difficulties and sorrows.
To be continued
________________________________________________________________________________
(1) ‘Confessions’ by St Augustine,
Penguin Edition
(2). ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Yogananda
Footnote. This mote has written approximately 6 blogs on
Daata Gunj Bakhash, the 11th century mystic buried in Lahore,
Pakistan. I once asked, through somebody, an exalted saint who communicates
with spirit of Data Sahib, that did Data Sahib like my blogs. The saint replied
that Daata Sahib is beyond these things. Surely then, God is beyond censure or
praise.
160. Saint Augustine. Part two;
Conversion
St Augustine carried on his pursuit for worldly gains and
passions till he was 32 years old. He taught the art of public speaking to
pupils. He was studying for the law. He was at the top of the school for
rhetoric. He was pleased with his superior status and swollen with conceit. He
was vain and ambitious and wanted to cut a fine figure in the world. He was
eager for fame, wealth and marriage. He consulted imposters, the astrologers
(although he refused to consult sorcerers because they sacrificed animals and
prayed to spirits). He went to the theatre and watched the spectators enjoy
their sadness, by witnessing the tragedy and suffering on the stage (although
to his credit, he never liked the gladiatorial shows because of the cruelty).
He described himself: ‘But why do I talk of these things? I lived in
misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot
last and then is agonized to lose them’
He was a slave of
lust. He had a mistress and together they had a son. After she left him and
went back to Africa, he found another mistress. He describes those days:
“I had prayed to You for
chastity and said ‘Give me chastity and continence, but not yet’. For I was
afraid that You would answer my prayer at once and cure me too soon for the
disease of lust, which I wanted satisfied, not quelled”
His dear friend died. He mourned for him. He narrates his
grief in eight pages ‘What
madness, to love a man as something more than human! What folly to grumble at
the lot man has to bear! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs
that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind’
He wondered about the powers the astronomers possessed; they
could foretell eclipses of sun and moon many years before they happened, and
whether the eclipse would be total or partial.
But he still searched for truth. He read many books,
including Aristotle’s ‘Ten Categories’. He talked to many learned men but none
could satisfy him. He writes:
‘Truth!
Truth! How the marrow of my soul within me yearned for it’
And finally, he met a man of God; Bishop Ambrose, in Milan
(now called St. Ambrose), who was known throughout the world for his goodness.
He writes: ‘Unknown to
me, it was You who led me to him, so that I might knowingly be led by him to
You. This man of God received me like a father…….My heart warmed to him’.
Although he could not talk to Ambrose face to face, because
the Bishop was always busy, but at least, over a period of time, after
listening to the sermons of Ambrose he turned towards Catholic teaching. He
writes:
‘I
was glad too that at last I had been shown how to interpret the Holy Scripture
of the law and the prophets in a different light from that which I had
previously made them seem absurd’.
He narrates a strange incident. It is not clear whether it
was day or night, and whether he was asleep or awake.
‘I
entered the depth of my soul…….I saw the Light……….. What I saw was quite
different from any light we know on earth…... It shown above my mind……... It
was above me because it was the Light itself that made me, and I was below
because I was made by it. All who know that Light, and all who know this Light
know eternity’.
‘I
heard your voice calling from on high, saying “I am the food of full-grown men.
Grow and you shall feed on Me. But you shall not change Me into Your own
substance, as you do with the food of your body. Instead you shall be changed
into Me’”
He now started loving God! But he was amazed that he did not
persist in enjoying Him. He began to search the means to gain strength in
enjoying God. He found the strength through the mediator between God and men,
Jesus Christ.
He derived great joy and comfort in writing of Apostle Paul.
This mote has learnt that if one adopts the path of religion
to reach God (which unfortunately I could not) then due to certitude the task
becomes easier. St Augustine makes this point:
‘It
is one thing to catch sight of the land of peace……and unable to find the way to
it, struggle on through trackless wastes where traitors and runaways, captained
by their prince,……lie in wait to attack. It is another thing to follow the high
road to that land of peace, the way that is defended by the care of the
Commander’.
Two mystics (Shahab and the mystic from Bhaun, Pakistan,
blogs 65-6,103) have written in their books, that they were never assailed by
doubts.
Now, the chain of events which led to the most important
event of his life; the episode of the garden.
To be continued.
161. Saint Augustine. Part three;
Conversion
A fellow countryman of Augustine by the name of Ponticianus
visited him in his house and saw St Paul’s epistles at his table. His close
friend and fellow countryman from Africa, Alypius was also there. Ponticianus
told them the story of Antony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was held in high
honor. They were astonished to hear of the wonders You had worked so recently,
almost in their own times, and witnessed by so many. Then he told them of the
time when he and three of his companions were strolling in the gardens. Two of
them got separated and came to the house of some men, who were although poor in
spirit, but had the kingdom of heaven within them. In that house they found a
book containing the life of Antony. One of them started to read it. The book
had a profound impression upon him. Augustine writes:
“All
at once he was filled with the love of holiness. Angry with himself and full of
remorse, he looked at his friend and said, ‘What do we hope for the efforts we
make?.......Can we hope for anything better at court than to be Emperor’s
friends?.......’
While
he was reading, a cry broke from him. He said to his friend ‘I have torn myself
free of all ambitions and have decided to serve God. From this very moment,
here and now, I shall start to serve Him.’ The other answered that he would
stand by his comrade….. So these two, now Your servants, built their tower at
the cost which had to be made, that is, at the cost of giving up all they
possessed and following You.
Both
these men were under a promise of marriage, but once the two women heard what had
happened, they too dedicated their virginity to You.”
The story had a tremendous effect on Augustine. He writes:
‘In the heat of the fierce
conflict which I had stirred up against my soul……I turned to Alypius and
explained “What is the matter with us? What is the meaning of this story? These
men have not had our schooling, yet they stand up and storm the gate of
heaven,………….while we lie here groveling in this world of flesh and blood!’
Augustine took refuge
in the garden attached to the house. He was beside himself with madness. He was
frantic, overcome with violent anger with himself for not accepting His will.
He was wracked with indecision. He tore his hair and hammered his forehead with
fists. He locked his fingers and hugged his knees. He wanted to take the course
of serving God, but also he willed himself not to take it.
A great storm broke
into him, bringing with it a deluge of tears. He states:
“I
was asking myself questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow
in my heart, when all at once I heard the sing-song voice of a child in a
nearby house. Again and again it repeated the refrain
‘Take
it and read, take it and read ’. At this I looked up, thinking hard whether
there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these,
but I could not remember ever hearing it before. I stemmed my tears and stood
up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of
Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. For I had
heard the story of Antony who had heard in a church a counsel which he thought
was addressed to him. He heard ‘Go home and sell all that belongs to you. Give
it to the poor…………….then come back and follow me’.
He
had obeyed the counsel”.
He rushed back and
opened the book of Paul’s Epistles. He read the first passage on which his eyes
fell:
Not
in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrel and
rivalries. Rather, arm yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more
thoughts on nature and nature’s appetite
As he came to the end of sentence, a light of confidence surged in his
heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. He was now calm. He told
Alypius what had happened to him. Alypius asked to see what he had read. He
read on beyond the text Augustine had read. It said:
Find
room among you for a man of over-delicate conscience.
Alypius applied this to himself and told Augustine so. The admonition
was enough to give him strength and he also made his resolution without any
hesitation. And it very well suited his moral character, which had long been
far, far better than Augustine’s.
Then they went and told Monica (mother of Augustine), who was overjoyed.
As has been stated in a previous blog, she had been praying and weeping daily
to the Lord, for Augustine’s conversion.
162. Saint Augustine and
Time. Part Four
What is time?
St Augustine pondered
over this question. Why did he ponder over this question? Because, he pondered
over another question first. How have the prophets been able to predict future
events?
A modern man, even if he was a thinking man, like David
Hume, an 18th century Scottish philosopher, would simply deny that
prophets could do such a thing (Hume did not believe in anything supernatural).
However, Augustine believed in it.
If prophets could tell future then it exists somewhere, but
future cannot exist since it has not been made yet. Now, I hope you realize
Augustine’s difficulty. Let me quote his words from his book (1):
‘As
a boy I learnt that there were three divisions of time, past, present, and
future. But there might be people who would maintain that there are not three
divisions of time but only one, the present, because the other two do not exist. Another view might be that past and
future do exist, but time emerges from some secret refuge when it passes from
future to the present, and goes back into hiding when it moves from present to
the past. Otherwise how prophets see the future, if there is not yet a future
to be seen? It is impossible to see what
does not exist.
In
the same way people who describe the past could not describe it correctly
unless they saw it in their minds, and if the past did not exist it would be
impossible for them to see it at all. Therefore both the past and the future do exist!’
Is St Augustine contradicting himself? No, he is simply
thinking loud and exploring various theories. He is trying to think which of
the two is true, three divisions of time or only the present, and secondly he
is trying to figure out how could prophets see future?
He observes very succinctly, “How can two,
the past and future, be, when the past no longer is and the future is not yet?”
At
one point he even questions whether present exists. He writes: “ How can we say
that even present is, when the
reason it is is that it is not to be? In other words, we cannot
rightly say that time is, except by reason of its impending state of not being”
He observes the other attributes of time: it is never still,
that it derives its strength only from a great number of movements constantly
following one another into the past; once it becomes past it ceases to be. The
present has no duration (see footnote 1)
He arrives at a very important conclusion, that the past and
future wherever they are and whatever they are, it is only by being present they are.
This is a subtle point, that we do not see past and future
as such, both have to be converted to the present.
He floats a theory ( I do not know whether that was his
final conclusion about prophecies ) about how future may be foretold. Sometimes
future events give a sign of things to come. For instance, one can tell that
the sun is about to rise by witnessing the break of day. Nowadays, this theory
will not carry any weight. Weather forecasters do it every day. What we are
discussing, are future events that cannot be predicted by any scientific means.
He cannot solve this mystery. He surrenders. He writes:
“For it is utterly impossible that things which do not exist
should be revealed. The means by which You do this is far beyond our
understanding. I have not the strength to comprehend this mystery, and by my
own power I never shall.”
He asks God for help
(see footnote 2)
“My mind is burning to solve this intricate puzzle. O Lord
my God, good Father………..I long to find the answer. Through Christ I beseech
You……..Let Your mercy give me light”
He disagrees with some men who says that time is nothing but
the movement of heavenly bodies (one rotation of sun makes a day and a night).
He argues that everything moves in time,
it is not that their
movement constitutes
time.
Finally he states his solution. Remember, he had made an
important point which I have already mentioned; that the past and future
wherever they are and whatever they are, it is only by being present they are. We do not see past
and future as such, both have to be converted to the present.
He carries this point to its logical conclusion. Where is
the place where past and future exist, as present? The answer is; in the mind.
Past is memory, present is attention, and the future is expectation.
British Philosopher Bertrand Russell did not agree with his
analysis, because it made time something mental (2)
He still did not solve the riddle that how prophets had been
able to predict future.
____________________________________________________________________________________
(1) ‘Confessions’ by St Augustine
(2) A history of Western philosophy by Bertrand Russell
Footnote 1. Smallest unit of time is a Planck time; 10-43
seconds. It is the time for the light to take to travel a Planck length.
Footnote 2. This mote also begged God to help him to
understand how future can be foretold, by giving him such an experience. I
quote from blog 142; “this mote prayed to God, even today, a way to access the
future, at least for once, so that I can then say that I have myself seen some
future event. For me, at least, then it won’t be hearsay”.
163. Saint Augustine. Part
Five
St Augustine did not perform any miracles (he might have but
he did not record it in ‘Confessions’). However there are some incidents which
are miraculous.
1. Episode of the voice in the garden, which led to his
conversion. I have already narrated it.
2. He developed toothache. The pain was so great that he
could not speak. He asked all his friends who were with him to pray to God for
him. He wrote down the message and gave it to them to read, and as soon they
all knelt down to offer to God their humble prayer, the pain vanished. He
writes:
‘What was that pain? How did it vanish? My
Lord and my God, I confess that I was terrified, for nothing like this had ever
happened to me in my life. Deep within me I recognized the working of Your
will.’
3. St Augustine writes: “God revealed Bishop Ambrose, in a vision, where the
bodies of martyrs Protasius and Gervasius were hidden (see the footnote). All
these years (over two hundred) You had preserved them incorrupt.”
4. While the bodies were being carried, on the way, several
people who were tormented by evil spirits were cured. There was also a man who
had been blind for many years, a well known figure in the city. He asked why
the crowd was running wild with joy, and when they told him the reason, he
leaped to his feet and begged his guide to lead him where the bodies lay. When
he reached the place, he asked to be allowed to touch the bier with his
handkerchief. No sooner had he done this
and put the handkerchief to his eyes, his eyesight was restored. The news
spread.
What do the followers of David Hume, the Scottish
philosopher, say about this episode? St. Augustine was there in the city of Milan.
He would not have recounted it unless it was authentic. He may even have
witnessed it. Augustine was a highly rational man, as is clear from his
struggle to understand time, astrology, and how prophets could see future. He
was not likely to suffer from what Hume calls ‘superstitious delusion’.
5. I have already recounted the visions of Monica; crossing
of Mediterranean Sea, and Augustine and she on the wooden rule when she saw a
young man in a halo of splendor.
Astrology. People
used to consult sorcerers and astrologers, frequently, in St Augustine’s time.
Young Augustine did not go to sorcerers because he did not want the sacrifice
of any living thing to learn the future, but he frequented astrologers. He
became friends with a wise old man. When the old man learnt that Augustine was
an enthusiast for books of astrology, he told him to throw them away and waste
no further pains upon such rubbish. He asked him why it was that the future was
often correctly foretold by means of astrology. He gave him the only possible
answer that it was all due to the power of chance.
St Augustine still did not give up astrology, but he started
to have doubts.
One day a friend, Firminius, told him a story. The father of
Firminius and a friend of his father were deeply interested in astrology. So
much so, that they would note the exact time of birth of their domestic animals
and studied the position of stars at the time of birth. When Friminius’s mother
was pregnant, a female slave was also expecting a child. The two men made the
most minute calculations to determine the time of labor of both women, counting
the days, hours, even the minutes, and so it happened that both gave birth at
exactly the same moment. This meant that the horoscopes which they cast for the
two babies had to be exactly the same. If the horoscopes were the same, their
lives should be the same!
The one baby born of a rich family had a good life. His
wealth increased and high honors came his way. But the slave continued to serve
his masters. His lot never improved.
This story made the final end of St Augustine’s doubts.
Later on, he considered astrologers as imposters
Footnote. The
sons are said to have been scourged and then beheaded, during the reign of the
Emperor Nero, under the presidency
of Anubinus or Astasius, and while Caius was Bishop of Milan. Some
authors place the martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian, but others
object to this time, because it is not clear how, in that case, the place of
burial, and even the names, could be forgotten by the time of Saint Ambrose, as
is stated. It probably occurred during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180)
St Ambrose in
386 had built a magnificent basilica at Milan, now called the Basilica
Sant'Ambrogio. Asked
by the people to consecrate it in the same solemn manner as was done in Rome, he promised to do so if he could obtain the necessary relics. In a
dream he was shown the place where such relics could be found. He ordered
excavations to be made outside the city, in the cemetery Church of Saints Nabor and Felix, who
were at the time the primary patrons of Milan, and there found the relics of
Saints Gervasius and Protasius. In a letter, St Ambrose wrote: "I found
the fitting signs, and on bringing in some on whom hands were to be laid, the
power of the holy martyrs became so manifest, that even whilst I was still
silent, one was seized and thrown prostrate at the holy burial-place. We found
two men of marvelous stature, such as those of ancient days. All the bones were
perfect, and there was much blood
Source: Wikipedia:
St Protasius and Gervasius
164. Prophet Muhammadpbuh
Seen Over Centuries. Part one
Here are some visions of Prophet Muhammadpbuh,
over the centuries, all in dreams, narrated by the persons themselves, all
except one, in the books written by their own hands. Therefore, the
authenticity of the dreams is above board, except, if the writers were lying.
The readers have to decide for themselves.
1. Readers of my
blogs are familiar with Shahab. I have mentioned him in various blogs (9,
64-66). He was a mystic. He wrote his autobiography, ‘Shahabnama’, and the
dream is mentioned in the book.
Shahab was a boy of about fourteen when he had this dream.
He dreamt that he was in a vast desert. He was running in sand, which was
coming to his knees. He could not breathe due to running. When he could not run
anymore, he started crawling on his knees. Soon he could not even crawl on his
knees. Still he crawled with his trunk. He got very tired and short of breath.
There was severe pain in his chest. Suddenly his hands caught a corner of a
prayer rug. The rug was spread under a date tree, and on it the Holy Prophet
Muhammadpbuh was sitting. He smiled at him.
At that very moment he woke up. It was the bitterly cold
month of February. Despite the cold, his whole body was inundated with
perspiration. His throat was dry like a bone and breath was coming in and out
like a bellow. There was severe pain in both sides of his chest. The pain in
the chest remained for the rest of his life.
He sat in the bed dazed. Then he started weeping. His
weeping woke his mother. “Did you have a bad dream, child?”
“Yes, I had a strange dream” he replied.
She took deep breaths to smell the air in the room.
“I have told you so many times not to use fragrant oil in
your hair at night, but you don’t listen to me. Off course with fragrant oil
one gets bad dreams.”
“I have not used any oil”. And then he quickly told his
mother his dream.
Mother also started crying. Both mother and son wept
silently, at the profound grace that had fallen on him.
The room was redolent with fragrance.
2. The writer of the book, named Ghazi Ahmed, (1) had a
dream when he was a fourteen years old Hindu boy, living in a village in rural
Pakistan, in 1938. The village had Muslims and Hindu inhabitants. Hindus were
only a quarter of the total village population, but owned most of the land and
were richer than the Muslims. The school boys used to discuss about the merits
of Hinduism and Islam. The author happened to read a book in which Islam,
Hinduism, and Sikhism was compared. Religious ideas started swirling in his
head. His one Muslim friend took him to a pious Muslim scholar. He told the scholar
that he had been praying everyday to God and reciting his Hindu rosary. The
pious man was very pleased to hear his religious inclinations. He said the God
of Hindus and Muslims is the same. “I am not asking you to convert to Islam but
I am asking you to pray to God, every night, before going to sleep, the
following: O god! I am an ignorant
person, without friend or helper, please show me the right path, etc………….”
He started reciting the prayer every night. Nothing happened
for ten to fifteen days. Then one night he had a long and complicated dream. I
am only going to narrate the part related to Prophet Muhammadpbuh.
“………A large moon
appeared in the west. It was about fifteen times bigger than the full moon. The
light was so powerful that one could see for thousands of miles. We (the author
and his friend Sadiq ) started our journey. I felt that we have arrived at
Mecca. We reached Kaaba (the holiest site of Islam). Countless sahaba (companions of Prophet Muhammadpbuh)
were sitting in white dress, facing Kaaba. Prophet Muhammadpbuh was
sitting with his back resting on the wall of Kaaba. We recognized him from a
distance. I was walking behind Sadiq, because he was a Muslim and I was not, so
he had the right to meet the Holy Prophet first. We passed through the sahaba. Sadiq shook hands with the
seated Prophet.
When I extended my hand, the Holy Prophet stood up, and
embraced me; this lowly non-Muslim. Every pore of my body got filled with
happiness. Holy Prophet sat down with me sitting beside. He asked, ‘Why have
you come? ’
‘To become a Muslim’ I replied.
Prophet Muhammadpbuh took my right hand in his
hands and read something. Then he said “now you are a Muslim”
I was very happy to hear this, because I had been converted
to Islam by the Holy Prophet himself.
To be continued
(1) Mayra Qabool-a-Islam
( My conversion to Islam), by Ghazi
Ahmed (this book is in Urdu)
165. Prophet Muhammadpbuh
Seen Over The Centuries. Part Two
We were discussing the authentic dreams about Prophet
Muhammadpbuh. Next night Ghazi (see previous blog) had another
dream:
3. In the dream he saw that he was going home from the
school in the company of several students. They met an apparition of a jet
black, giant of a man, whose arms appeared to be about fifteen feet long and he
had a horn on his forehead. Everybody was shaking with fear. Ghazi recognized
that he was Dajjal, an evil figure,
who is supposed to come before the end of the world. Dajjal asked the first student that who did he belong to? He
replied ‘I belong to God’. Dajjal
killed him. The next student was asked the same question, and he answered ‘I
belong to you’. Dajjal was very
pleased with the answer and gave the boy sweets. Next he asked the same
question to Ghazi. Ghazi timidly replied that he belonged to God. Dajjal slapped him. He started weeping. Dajjal ordered him to come towards him.
Then he saw that prophet Muhammadpbuh was seated
nearby. The prophetpbuh called him to come near. A thought occurred
to Ghazi that he had seen the prophetpbuh just yesterday, in far
away Mecca, and today he was here. He saw the prophetpbuh this time
very clearly; his dress, his face, and a rosary in his hands. The prophetpbuh
was reciting something, facing Kaaba.
He said, “Son, listen, I have come so far only to help you.
Now stop crying.” He was also stroking his back with his holy hand, just as a
father would do to a weeping child. “Don’t ever accept the commands of Dajjal. He cannot hurt you anymore.
These worldly gains are nothing as compared to heavenly rewards. If you stay
steadfast in this test, you will get great boons in heaven. Pay no attention to
Dajjal’s offers. I am praying for
your success. By the grace of God, you will succeed. God will help you”
“Dajjal called me
again. I saw that the other boys were eating sweets. The other boys said, ‘obey
him, and enjoy like us.’ I said, ‘I will enjoy the bounty of next life’.
Hearing these words, Dajjal became
angry and lifted his hand to strike me. Out of fear, I woke up”
The prayer of prophetpbuh bore fruits throughout
Ghazi’s life. He succeeded in all the endeavors that he undertook. He had a
very successful and peaceful life. He did Masters in two subjects and stood
first in the university both times. He retired as principal of an Intermediate
College.
He did not waver during the severe tribulations caused by
his conversion to Islam. His mother would cry every day. All his relatives
would taunt him for giving up the religion of his ancestors, and be a source of
shame for the whole Hindu community in general and his parents in particular.
His parents and his grandmother would beg him repeatedly, not to dishonor the
family. His father beat him to a pulp with blood soaking his dress. The father
took him to the edge of a creek and threatened to throw him down into the
creek from a mountain in Kashmir. He
escaped with the help of a guide. They walked for about forty miles, over snow
covered paths, sometimes over crevasses in ice. They did not find food for
three days.
His father took the case to the court, and got the verdict
in his favor, after bribing the judge. He had to leave his house and live with
Muslims. During all this period he prayed to God and the holy prophetpbuh
to help him
In 1947, all his family members had to leave their ancestral
village and migrate to India, because they were Hindus. He was left all alone
in Pakistan with not a single relative because he was a Muslim. He never met
his father again. He talked to his mother and one brother, once, across the
barbed wire at the boundary between India and Pakistan. That was the last time
he saw his mother.
4. Ghazi’s son, Tahir Jamil had the following dream:
“I was with my father. I saw a man with naked sword coming
towards us. I felt that he was going to attack us. I moved forward to defend my
father. The man approached near. I looked back and my father was no longer
there, instead the holy prophetpbuh was standing there. I thought
this man is going to attack the prophetpbuh . I thought I should
sacrifice my life in order to defend the prophetpbuh. I was going to
step forward to fight with the man, but the prophetpbuh gestured me
to stop. I stopped as ordered. The sword fell from that person’s hand, and he
said, ‘make me Muslim’. He became Muslim. I was very happy. The prophetpbuh
said ‘Tahir Jamil is there a mosque nearby?’ I said ‘yes, there is an old
mosque’. The prophetpbuh said, ‘Let us say maghrib prayer’. The prophetpbuh led the prayer, with me
and that other person following. As I finished the prayer, I woke up.”
5. Tahir Jamil had another dream of the prophetpbuh.
“In the dream I was in Medina (where the prophetpbuh is
buried). I was reciting darood (a
prayer honoring the prophet Muhammadpbuh and prophet
Abraham), with great fervor, at the outer boundary of the prophet’spbuh
grave. The door to inner area opened by itself. I entered that door and kept on
reciting darood. Another door which
led to innermost room also opened. I saw three graves in that room. There was a
tablet at the head of one grave, which read ‘ Muhammad rasool ullah’
I continued reciting darood, very passionately, at the foot
of the prophet’spbuh grave. The grave opened and the prophetpbuh
came out. He asked me the reason of my coming. I said ‘to ask forgiveness for
my sins’
The prophetpbuh replied ‘God has forgiven your sins and so have I’
I started weeping
with happiness and gratitude.
Seeing the
prophetpbuh in such a kind mood I said ‘I want to do postgraduate
studies in medicine. I request your prayer for my successes
The prophetpbuh said ‘Son, study hard, I will
pray for your successes’
I woke up.”
6. Ghazi received a letter from a man, Nazir Hussin Shah of
Lalian, Pakistan. He thought that the man must have read his book and wanted to
talk about it. Once he was travelling near Lalian, he thought of meeting the
sender of the letter. He met Mr Nazir, an elderly man. He had never heard of
Ghazi Ahmed nor had he read his book. He said he had a message from the prophetpbuh
for Ghazi, but he was told to go to Ghazi and give the message.
Therefore, he would travel to Ghazi’s residence and will give the message.
Ghazi got upset that may be the prophetpbuh is upset with him, and
the message is a scolding for his dereliction.
To be continued
166. Prophet Muhammadpbuh
Seen Over The Centuries. Part Three
We were discussing the dream of Nazir Ahmed. One day Nazir
came to the town where Ghazi lived, and gave an account of his encounter, in a
dream, with the holy prophetpbuh. He told the following:
“I developed
cancer in my right leg. Blood would ooze from the wound. The leg became smaller
in circumference. I started using crutches. A friend took me to a doctor in
Mayo Hospital Lahore. The doctor examined the leg and said that it has to be
amputated. We rented a room in a hotel. The surgery was scheduled for the next
day. I went to a nearby mosque for night prayer. I prayed to God to save my
leg. At around 2 AM I fell asleep. In the dream I saw a beautiful house. Lot of
people were going in. I asked somebody that why were the people going in? He
replied ‘don’t you know the holy prophetpbuh is inside’. I walked
inside on my crutches. There I saw the holy prophetpbuh sitting
and many people around him also sitting, respectfully. I presented myself
to the holy prophetpbuh and said salaam,
with reverence.
He said ‘What brings you here?’
I replied ‘I have come to ask you to pray for cure of my
disease’
He said ‘Go to your home in the morning. The merciful God
will have pity on you.’
Hearing these words I became certain that my leg will get
better without any operation.
As I was turning to go, the holy prophetpbuh said
‘do you know the person standing with me.’
I said ‘No, sir’
He said ‘this is my companion Abu Bakar, listen to what he
has to say (see footnote)’
With great reverence I gave my salaam to Hazrat Abu Bakarru.
He answered my salaam affectionately and gave me a piece of paper from his
pocket. On the paper it was written; ‘Professor
Ghazi Ahmed Principal Government Intermediate College Bochal Kalan, Distt
Jhelum’
Abu Bakarru said “read the address and memorize
it”. I did it. Then he said, “Do you know this man”
I replied “I have never heard of him”
He said, ‘Ghazi Ahmed is the person who was given the gift of
Islam by the holy prophetpbuh. Go to the home of Ghazi and tell him
that he should gird up his loins for service of Islam’.”
When Nazir woke up, he told his friend that there was no
need of surgery. They checked out of the hotel. His leg eventually healed by
itself. He showed his leg to Ghazi,
his foot wound had completely healed.
Ghazi stated that whenever he was invited to address a
gathering he would remember the message of holy prophetpbuh.
This dream of Nazir is very important, because of three findings.
(a). It resulted in the miraculous cure of Nazir’s leg.
(b). He was given the name and address of Ghazi. Such a
person did exist at that address. He had previously never heard of Ghazi.
(c). Hazrat Abu Bakar verified the fact that Ghazi was
converted to Islam by the holy prophetpbuh. Before Mr Nazir’s
account of his dream, one had no independent confirmation of this fact.
Skeptics had claimed that this fourteen year old boy’s mind was filled with
thoughts gleaned from reading the religious books which resulted in that
fanciful dream; a creation of his own mind.
7. The readers of my blogs are aware of Data Gunj Bakhash, a
great 11th century mystic, who is buried in Lahore, Pakistan (blogs
62-4,115-6). His book (1) is an autobiography, and it influenced this mote.
Data Gunj Bakhash narrates two dreams in which he met the holy prophetpbuh.
He writes:
“In the country of Syria, I was sleeping at the grave of
Hazrat Blalru, the first muezzin (one who calls for prayer, in a
loud voice) in Islam. In the dream I found myself in Mecca (where kaaba is located). I saw the holy
prophetpbuh entering through Bab-a-Shiba. He was carrying a man in
his lap, like one would carry a child. With joy I ran towards the holy prophetpbuh,
and kissed his feet. I was wondering who this person might be, whom the holy
prophetpbuh was carrying. He surmised my thoughts, and said this is
your Imam (leader), and he belongs to
your order I realized that he must be Imam
Abu Hanifa (the greatest of all Imams
in Sunni Islam). It became evident by that dream that the innovative thoughts
of Abu-Hanifa were faultless, not because he was following the holy prophetpbuh
but the holy prophetpbuh was carrying him.”
8. Data Gunj Bakhash had one more dream of the holy prophetpbuh.
He narrates:
“I saw the holy prophetpbuh in my dream. I asked
him to give me some advice”
Now, are you not curious to know, that what was the advice
given by one of the greatest prophets of all times to one of the greatest
mystics of all times?
The advice was ‘Control
your senses’
Data Gunj Bakhash elaborates the advice in a whole page.
“This is a comprehensive ascetic practice (to try to reach
God), because all knowledge is acquired through the five special senses; see,
smell, taste, hear and touch. Knowledge and wisdom are acquired through
them……………”
I quote what St Teresa of Avila said (blog 75):
“It is most important, to
detach oneself from all kinds of pleasures”. This is the same teaching which
this mote has found in mystic practices of all religions; Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism, and others.
; Conquer one self.
9.
My friend Dr Manocha had two visions of prophet Muhammadpbum
both times in dreams. In the first vision the holy prophet pbum was
sitting on a mat or something. A black blanket was wrapped around him. He had
thick beard of white and grey hair. His head was covered with a black turban.
His face had pitted scars on it. Dr Manocha thought that Hazoor (a title
of respect) must have suffered from small pox sometimes. He watched the
holy prophet by walking in an arc. As he watched, he realized that those pits
were emitting light like stars. Second time he saw prophet Muhammadpbum
from a distance. He was walking with a group of people. When he visited India,
he specially went to a shop and bought a black shawl, as a token of his love
and respect
_________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote. Abu Bakarru was the closest companion
of the holy prophetpbuh, and became the first caliph of Muslims
after his death.
(1) Kashaf-ul Mahjoob by Data Gunj Bakhash.
