|
|
|
|
Life Beyond and the Single Principle
By Ali Sina Before I proceed I would like to make this disclaimer. The following is my personal views. My personal views however are good only for me. You should not accept them but doubt them. You should doubt everything and discover your own light. I
do believe that our soul survives after our body is
dead. What happens to our body is clear. It decomposes
and returns to Earth, “dust to dust, ashes to
ashes”. Nevertheless the reality of a human is not
his body but his or her soul. As Pierre Tielhard de
Chardin said, we are spiritual beings having a
physical experience. We are here in this world to
acquire spiritual insights. We are here to strengthen
our souls with love. Just as the purpose of life for
an embryo in the womb is to acquire physical body in
order to have an easy life in this world when he or
she is born, the purpose of our existence in this
world is to acquire a spiritual body in order to have
a better existence in the next. When we die, our soul
enters into a spiritual dimension. That world is not
separate from ours yet we are unable to see it. That
life is an extension of this life. Just as a fetus while in its mother’s womb, is in this world and yet
unaware of it, so we are part of the spiritual realm
but shut off from it as by a veil. In
a Flat World. There are those who say if something does not fall within the
purview of science it is superstition. Not so! If something is rejected by
science then that is superstition. But science deals with the contingent world.
It has no tools to measure realities that are beyond this world. Can science
measure love, define wisdom, explain philosophy, describe intuition? These are
all functions of human brain yet they are independent realities. Spiritual world
is a real world of different dimension. There is nothing unscientific about it
yet it does not fall within the purview of sience. Imagine there is a world with only two dimensions. In this
world everything is flat. The people are bi-dimensional, the houses are
bi-dimensional, trees, and mountains and everything else have only two
dimensions. This world looks like an animated drawing on a sheet of paper. Now suppose a three dimensional object crosses this world.
The bi-dimensional people can only see a section of this object that crosses
their world but they cannot see its thickness or its shape. The flat men and
women that are around suddenly see a flat shape appear out of nowhere and then
disappear with no trace. They cannot explain nor understand the phenomenon. They
talk about is to others but those who have never had such experience, won’t
believe them. Some will accuse them of hallucinating. Others will make stories
and try to explain with mumbo jumbo the phenomenon. The first group deny the
experience altogether and claim that their limited science, which deals only
with the bi-dimensional world, has no evidence of such phenomenon and therefore
those experiences are imaginaries and not real. However those who have had such
experiences will not be easily swayed. To them the experience has been real and
they need more satisfactory answers. Consequently, a few clever, charismatic
swindlers claim that there is indeed an invisible world and that they are the
intermediaries, the shamans, and the prophets of that world. This is what is happening in our three dimensional world. What we perceive as the spiritual world is in reality not but a real world with different dimensions. That world is parallel to ours, yet we are unable to see it. Once in a while this world comes in contact with ours and some of us get a glimpse of it. We see phenomena that are unexplainable. We see beings that appear out of the blue and disappear as they appeared. The whole thing to us, look like magic. We can make no sense of that and remain bamboozled. Some charlatans come forth claiming that these are sings of God and con us into believing in them as his messengers. They add tons of superstitions into it that often it become difficult to separate facts from fictions. Others try hard to negate the authenticity of these phenomena and bring all sort of absurd scientific gobbledygook to convince those who have had the visions of this unknown world that they have been hallucinating. Neither one nor the other has the answer. Both sides are
confused and both parties try to explain something unexplainable. The position of the skeptics is no less irrational than the
religious people. Each side tries to explain something that they do not
understand. The skeptics are not skeptic of their own irrational explanations
but have “faith” that no matter what the evidence the whole idea of a
spiritual reality beyond this physical world is false. They have written tons of
articles and books loaded with scientific jargons to demonstrate that there is
no reality beyond the material reality. And because this field is also loaded
with tons of superstitions created by the defenders of the supernatural, they
find no little evidence to prove that the claims of the other groups are
unfounded. However despite the centuries old superstitions that have
been accumulated and the mountains of rubbish that the credulous like to
believe, there is a kernel of truth that often, like a baby that is thrown out
with the bathwater is discarded. The skeptics with all their attempts and thousands of books
and articles written in style and form of science have not been able to explain
the phenomenon of dreams that come true. There are many dreams that mean nothing
but if you have one dream that foretell the future and it comes true in details;
if you dream a place and an event that later come to realize exactly as
you dreamed it, it throws out of the window the whole explanation of the
skeptics who deny the existence of the soul or a reality that cannot be
explained by today’s science. There are people who have had out of body
experiences; there are patients who have reported having seen their doctors and
even their relatives in the waiting room and heard their conversations while
being under the knives in the operating room. I was surprised to hear a very
skeptic scientist who denied the existence of the soul telling that once he saw
himself fallen on the ground with his leg broken just a few yards ahead. He
looked carefully and it was him. Then he walked ahead and fell exactly at that
spot and broke his leg. He still did not believe in the existence of the soul. Hundreds of articles and books
have been written to deny that the near death experiences and the out of body
experiences are real. Yet none of them satisfy those who had such phenomena. The books of these “scientists” is no less unreliable
than the books of some modern day Islamic scientists like Dr.
Maurice Bucaille Dr.
Keith Moor, Dr.
Shamsher Ali, Dr. Mrinal Dasgupta who have also written books to prove that Quran is scientific. … As
Abul Kasem cleverly put it: “What a cruel joke!” Imagine a meteorite falling from the sky 1000 years ago.
There were those who built a whole story around it, believing it to be a stone
fallen from the heaven, a sign from God and even worshipped it. But what would the
skeptics of those days have said? (I
am not sure is there were any skeptics in those days; but let us assume that
there were). They probably would have denied it altogether calling it a hoax and
perhaps ridiculing those who claimed having seen a stones falling from the
heaven. Falling stones from the heaven would probably seemed outlandish to those who were not familiar with Copernicus and Galileo’s theories and did not know that the space is full of rocks that are just floating. It certainly fell out of the purview of those days' known science. But the future science proved that there is nothing superstitious or “divine” about falling stones from the sky. It is not illogical to assume that there are worlds that
are real, as real as ours; yet of different nature with different dimensions.
There is nothing unscientific about them, yet they do not fall within the
purview of science. Our science simply is not equipped to define them. The
science that we know is about the world that we know. The world of which, we
know nothing, cannot be defined by our science. Just as we do not measure the length of something with a thermometer, we cannot measure many realities like the human spirit in the laboratory. The desperate attempt of some scientists to define everything by the yardstick of science, which is an excellent tool for unraveling the mysteries of the natural world, is indicative of their close mindedness reminiscent of religious bigots, especially Muslims who claim that all known and unknown knowledge is already in Quran. It proves once more that beliefs are easier to change than attitudes. The
world beyond is not divided in paradise and hell. This
is a very puerile idea. You don’t need to go there
to find out that this concept that is so much
emphasized in Quran is absurd. It presumes that people
are either very good or very bad. In reality, no one
is absolutely good or absolutely bad. There are
different grades of goodness and some are better than
others. Our station in the other world depends on our
spiritual evolution in this world. The only way we can
evolve spiritually here is through love and service to
humankind. Love of humanity is the ladder by which we
climb spiritually. Our
belief in one religion or the other is absolutely of
no relevance. Our faith is of no value. What counts
are our actions. If we hate another human being, it
burns the flower of love in our heart and affects our
spiritual growth. Jealousy, anger, greed, lust, fear,
also hinder us from loving and therefore are obstacles
to our spiritual evolution. Those
who are not enlightened fear death. The person who is
awake does not. There is light and life, joy and bliss
expecting us in the other world. Although
the concept of reward and punishment, paradise and
hell is absurd, the idea of justice is not. The divine
justice takes place automatically, i.e. without the
intervention of a judge or a jury. The divine laws,
just like physical laws apply to all beings. They are
manifestations of the Single Principle underlying the
creation. Our position in the next world does not
depend on our beliefs but on our deeds. How much we
loved other people, how much we helped others and what
we did determines the strength of our soul. Our faith,
time wasted in worshipping this or that god, our
religious knowledge and practice do not count. But
small acts of goodness, our sense of fairness, our
kindness, our love for humanity, our caring for the
needy, our concern for the animals and our respect for
life determines our spiritual growth. There
is nothing to fear from death. Death is the birth of
the soul to a spiritual world full of light, love and
bliss. Muhammad’s depiction of hell and heaven are
physical and denotes his lack of understanding of our
spiritual dimension. It reflects, his own fears. He
even thought that the dead is punished in “the
grave”. That hell and paradise are physical places.
That we will survive in our physical form; would eat
and copulate just as we do it in this world. The
Single Principle The
laws of the other world work in unison with the laws
governing this world. In fact there is only One Law. I
call that The Single Principle. We humans tend to
dissect everything and classify them. That is because
we can digest it only if we take it one bite at a
time. This
does not mean that there is no God or that god is an
unintelligent law. There is a Principle underlying the
creation. All attributes manifested in this world are
reflections of that Principle. Intelligence, for
example, is a manifestation of a higher Intelligence.
And that is the Single Principle. God is not a person.
It is not a being. It is not a thing. But to say God
is not a thing does not mean that God is nothing! God
is The Single Principle underlying the creation. It is
The Principle and the creation is the process. God is
how and the creation in what! That is all there is;
the “how” and the “what”! However, as I said at the beginning, what I write is my own understanding of God. God can be understood but It cannot be defined. Therefore this is not an attempt to define God but to stimulate thinking. So that people can find God through their own efforts and in their own way. God is a Reality. Reality is not a thing, it is not a being; and it cannot be defined. Say for example Love. Love is a reality, not a thing nor a being. You cannot define Love but you can understand it and you can feel it. You can feel love but you cannot “ask” love to enter into your heart. Love enriches the lives of those who receive it but It is indifferent to them. Love is not forgiving, it is not intelligent, and it is not loving; because Love is not a being. And so is God. It is us who need God and have to live by It. We have to live God. Praising him, worshiping him and praying to him, is waste of time. An anthropomorphic God either physically or psychologically as described by Semitic religions is absurd. Yet no one can describe God just as no one can describe love. We all can know God. It is a one-to-one relationship. This is a path that no guru or prophet can show you. Those who pretend that they can are impostors. God is the Truth and Truth is pathless. God is love and love needs no intermediaries. You have to discover it yourself. It is your personal journey. But once you know God, you are enlightened. The instance of enlightenment is the most exhilarating and soul transforming moment in one’s life. It can never be described nor it can be conveyed by any words or means. How can you describe the beauty of the sunset to a born blind? My only advice to all those who seek enlightenment are those words of Buddha, “Doubt everything, find your own light”.
|
