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Allah says:.
"Allah doth wish to make clear to you and
guide you by the examples of those who were before you, and would turn to you
in mercy. Allah is Knower, Wise."
(Surah An-Nisa: Verse 26)
Everything needs to be explained in an
allegorical way, and expressing in least words makes that thing easy to
comprehend. We try to make the boys and girls (students) comprehend the complex
phenomenon of time and space.
Two travelers....two friends....two men....were
walking on the road.
One of them was short whereas the other one was
tall in stature. Apparently both walked at the same pace but when the shorter
one would take step he would cover less distance and the taller one's step
would help him cover more.
Both were walking. Their steps would take them
forward and the road would fold like a suff (sheet) behind them as if someone
was wrapping up the suff (sheet) from the back....They started talking to each
other during their walk. When one spoke the other responded. Then the other
responded to the first. After covering a long distance they came across the
third man... He joined them listening to their talk while coming from behind
and then he also started talking to them.
Now the two turned to be three friends....three
travelers.....and three men.
This man was also tall in stature. The shorter
man came in between the two taller men and they started walking... While
walking ahead the road started getting backward and before their eyes, ..the
road started spreading. When they would take two steps...the third step would
make the road leave behind...and the steps got walking ahead...During the walk
as the parts of space or road were being left behind, the hands of the watch
were moving at the same rate. One man looking at his watch said that they had
been walking since twenty minutes.
When we walk, the earth pushes us forward.
It means that when the road in yards and
furlongs underwent the steps similarly twenty minutes also passed by.
Of the three the shorter one asked....Chums!
Since we have started walking the road has been skipping back...we have been
getting forward...the road has been leading backward...We can also say that the
road has been pushing us forward.
The second man spoke....Friends! If the road
has been pushing us forward twenty minutes have elapsed since then. What after
all, if this is the phenomenon of twenty minutes?
The third man said....I could fairly say that when
we take up first step our second step is placed on the road...when we take up
second step our third step is placed on the road and whatever is there in
between the taking up of these steps, it is the SPACE....and if a friction of a
second elapses between these steps it is the TIME.
All the three men stood still, ...and sat down
under a shady tree on the bank of the road. After a short pause one of them
spoke.
Chums! Our company naturally has shaped in a
form of a triangle.
Is such shaping up of a triangle a
coincidence...or is there some insight behind it?
The shorter man said wonderingly....look up!
The earth is round.
It seems as if this triangle is either under a
round circle or an umbrella. But it is queer that there exists an umbrella over
the earth and we three are sitting on the earth.
When we were walking the earth was getting
backward. Now since we are sitting the earth is holding its place...the
roundness of the tree (umbrella) and our sitting in a triangle is somewhat
synonymous.
The third man intervened...he said....
"Friends!, ..the roundness of the tree exists on a stem and the stem of
the tree exists on the earth, .. is there any message in the formation of the
round umbrella from the earth, the stem, leaves and the branches of the
tree?"
There must appear some wisdom in it....
The three of them got so much involved in
solving this riddle that they could not sense the passing time. When they
sensed of it an hour had elapsed...one traveler spoke... "When we were
walking on the road...since we were taking up our steps...the road was
therefore leading backward. We were moving forward...between our successive
taking up the steps and falling on the earth when the road was left far behind
we found that twenty minutes had elapsed; but now we are talking while sitting
here...not walking then how did one hour get passed by?.. Is the passing of
time associated with the movement or the time passes by without
movement"...The traveler who had joined the other two on the way...said...
"Brothers! It is worth- wondering that when we were walking the time
passed by and now when we are sitting the time passed by, ..it means that time
is secondary and space is supreme.
It was such a complex and difficult analysis
that both the friends remained bewildered, ..that when there is SPACE there
will be movement and time. When there is no SPACE time will not pass by.
Of the three one said....
"Man was born in SPACE. The mother's womb
is not less than SPACE... When the clot gets in there time also starts. It has
never happened that a clot does not get in the womb and birth takes place after
nine months..."
It has also never happened that the earth is no
SPACE and a child turns youth...and a youth turns age...If a man turns sixty
year old or then a hundred...there will be if SPACE is there...No man can tum
sixty or hundred without SPACE...The spreading or compressing of the SPACE
determines time.
When Adam and Eve committed disobedience they
felt themselves to be nude...so that they felt themselves stripped off. It
means that the embodiment of Adam is a SPACE. Before committing disobedience
they could not see those features of their body that come under satar and soon
as they committed it. The SPACE of Adam's embodiment also changed. It means that
Adam entered the inferior SPACE from the superior SPACE. If there had been no
embodiment of Adam he would not have felt himself nude.
Of the three one spoke... "As it is the
matter of Adam and Eve, we would solve the riddle of TIME and SPACE through
Divine books only...it is so for the Divine Books have introduced Adam and Eve
to us.
Thinking about the vastness of the skies the
third traveler said...
"Day and light are SPACE." Allah
says:
• My
one day will be of fifty thousand years
• My
one day will be of ten thousand years
• And
my one day will be of one thousand years
It means that the length and shortness of a day
is related to its spreading or shrinking.
Allah says:
"I have revealed the Quran in
Shab-e-Qadr."
As Quran was completed in twenty three
years...it means that one night got equal to twenty three years. Moses was
called upon by Allah for thirty nights and kept him for forty nights at
Koh-i-Toor. Here only the SPACE of nights has been described whereas Moses
stayed at Koh-i-Toor for forty days and forty nights. It means that Moses
remained in the SPACE of forty days and forty nights. Time spreads in the SPACE
of a night. Time shrinks in the SPACE of a day.
One of them spoke... "I remember two
examples related to this subject matter."
The other two travelers unanimously said...
"Describe them please"
He said... When we read newspaper we use our
eyes for it. Simultaneously we read newspaper aloud. It means we use the SPACE
of eyes and when we read it aloud we use the SPACE of speech. If the newspaper
is a bit away from us, the SPACE of eyes could see merely insects on its
surface and would not read it correctly. If the distance between man and
newspaper is widened, the forms of the words would get diminished and if the
newspaper could get still farther away from the capacity of touching it whereas
touching is possible only when there is SPACE then there would appear no word
on the surface of the newspaper. This proves that the existence of everything,
and dimension in every existence and the formation of every dimension depends
on SPACE.
We would name it by the word SPACE. It is so
because nomenclature is the identification of SPACE, .. if
SPACE...body...dimension...are not there we won't call it by any name. For
instance we are three travelers. We have got three names...My name is
Mahmood...your name is Zaid...and my third brother is called Ayaz...All these
three names are indicative of SPACE.
And this SPACE is an embodiment. And every
embodiment carries brain to think, eyes to see...ears to listen, a heart to
feel, a blood circulatory system to touch...a nose to smell...pores on body to
feel the heat or cold...tension or satisfaction in environment to feel sad or
happy...Environment, ..is subordinate to the earth...the earth is SPACE...SPACE
spreads or shrinks.
A Parwana (Moth) covers all the stages its life
span i.e. childhood , youth and old age with in six hours. Whereas a whale
completes all the stages covered by a parwana in one thousand years... a parwana
lives only for six hours whereas the life of a whale lasts for one thousand
years.
A snake swallows a very large sized mouse for
to it the mouse appears very small. If a mouse appears to snake as big as it
appears to man then a snake will never dare swallowing it. It is clear then
that a mouse does not appear as big to snake as it appears to a man.
A lion is bigger in size than an elephant.
Though an elephant overweighs a lion yet it feels afraid of the lion. An
elephant does· not fight a lion. It runs away inf ear from the lion.
As per this analysis we can say that when a man
enters inferior SPACE from superior SPACE he starts feeling fear and it is that
fear which checks him from entering the superior SPACE. If a man rejects the
inferior SPACE then he automatically enters the superior SPACE and entering
into the superior SPACE is the life of paradise on earth. There does not exist
any feeling of fear or grief in paradise.
Allah says in the Holy Quran:
"O Adam and Eve! Thou live in paradise without any dimension of space; eat merrily where ever from thou like."
Sound wisdom is inherent in the above ayah of the Quran that happiness is a
superior space and of course sadness is an inferior one. In order to get into the
superior SPACE the right way told by the prophets is tawakal, trust, contentment,
detachment (istighna)... and belief in tawheed and risalaat.
We can see the body made of matter and flesh
but on what ground this body of flesh is founded our apparent eye cannot see
it. If matter is transformed into the extreme extent of destruction then merely
separate gleams of colours will be left. The physical life of all the creatures
and phenomena is based on this chemical process. In fact the congregation of
specific number of waves gives birth to different forms through different
processes.
The true purpose of describing this formula is
to suggest that the quintessence of man is not matter; rather the true
quintessence of man is the texture of waves. On one side these waves present
the human body in physical form whereas on the other side these waves introduce
man to the body of lights. Until and unless man is confined to that matter he
lives the life of imprisonment and oppression. And when he is introduced to the
genuine body of lights, he gets rid of imprisonment, fret and fever, and
complex and cureless diseases.
The true man that is his awareness of the man
of light is symbolically considered his freedom from the phenomenon of Time and
Space. It is the same life where unseen knowledge is dawned upon and the doors
of the will of Allah are opened.
Knowledge means to know, or to acquire
information about anything. There is not a single creature of all the living
creations in the universe that may escape the circle of knowledge. Every
creature , virus, ant, honey bee, deer, beautifully adorned bird, zebra, lion,
elephant or ten thousands of years older and bigger in size than elephant i.e.
dinosaur...all of them cater to knowledge. It means that all of them have got
the knowledge of living their lives, garnering their edibles and then
benefiting from the garnered edibles.
When we look at the residential place and the
security measures of a honey bee we can see a complete code of life and a
thorough administration. The same situation applies to an ant.
Allah says in the Holy Quran:
"The ant queen looking at the great army
of Hazrat Suleiman said to her subject ants that you at once get into your
burrows otherwise you would be killed under the steps of the horses and
peddlers of the king Suleiman."
The labour ants garner grain and store it in
the separately made cells in the earth, a labour ant can pick ten times heavier
weight than that of its own body. Engineer ants prepare royal palace for the
queen ant, this royal palace is interconnected through gallerie s from every
side. The palace made by engineer ants is durable like a fort so that water
does not affect it and extreme heat also does not affect it. It is so because
the palace in a fort and the galleries in the palace are centrally
air-conditioned. A kind of ant does know about how to transform into the waves.
As a picture is seen on TV after getting transmitted through waves in a TV station,
similarly ants reach far off places by transforming into waves. It means that
scientist ants know how to transform into waves since hundred of thousand of
years.
In the Quran, the incident of Queen Saba is
very interesting. In the incident, the sagacity of a bird has been described.
In the same way every creature on the surface of the earth is endowed with the
wealth of knowledge. Some have got the wisdom and consciousness in abundance,
some have little but in almost eleven hundred thousand creatures on the surface
of the earth and there does not exist a single one out of these billions of
creatures that does not know.
It is said that man is a social animal. If by
social animal we mean that man is bound to group system and a man lives with
the other, chats, hates, loves and when one eats something the other also eats
the same then such a way of expression is in fact the ego of the man; whereas
every man knows and sees that a sheep is also a social animal. A sheep always
sits in the herd of sheep; a goat always lives with its own herd. An elephant
lives with elephants. It has never happened that an elephant has sat with a
buffalo or the some one has seen a buffalo sitting with a camel. AIi these
animals keep themselves aware of the others of their sort. They · help one
another; share their happiness and sadness. Since a man is the victim of his
own sense of superiority, he has introduced himself to be a social animal to
the rest of the creations.
Paving the paths of meditation, Hazrat Ibrahim
(Abraham) saw a bright star in a starry night and said this was my God, but
when that star disappeared Hazrat Ibrahim (Abraham) said he did not believe in
a thing to be God that could disappear. Then he looked at the cool and full
ruddy moon, but as soon as the time of dawn approached near, the upon also
started eclipsing. Hazrat also negated to believe the moon to be God. After the
dawn when the sun started eclipsing and it eclipsed to the extent that it also
disappeared.
Then Hazrat Ibrahim (Abraham) concluded with
conviction through the God-gifted knowledge:
"My God is the One Who never hides and
never gets eclipsed." The king Nimrod came to know of it. He used to
consider himself to be God of his subjects and the subjects considered him god
and worshipped him. It was customary to bow before him in his court. Hazrat
Ibrahim (Abraham) asked the religious preachers and followers of wrong
theologies, the men of high status and the public:
"Why do you worship the wrong gods instead
of the Owner and
Creator of the universe, the Sovereign Allah,
why don't you use your wisdom?"
When a person gets detracted of the knowledge
of sufi'ism and spiritualism then his consciousness gets limited to the extent
that his consciousness turns dull. A thick layer freezes on the index of
consciousness. He tries to see but cannot; he tries to listen but cannot, and
at last the aimless life becomes his sole destination.
Scientists consider human mind to be the
fountainhead of force and energy. It has got an amazing capacity of collecting information.
Fore-mostly it makes new and unique inventions out of this collected
information. But if life does not flow man is just like robot made of iron that
does not have any current.
When man was not on the earth, he was then at
the place where
everything could be got without any effort. He
was not used to hard work. After coming on the earth he had to face the life
full of struggle. Man has ever been desirous of leading the heavenly life; and
he has been impassioned by this desire of leading the heavenly life. This
impatience bore fruit and invented machine, by exploiting his inherent talent.
He did so to lead a care- free life by utilizing it. All this happened but man
never thought over what after all was the source of his inherent capabilities;
and where from the current comes to mobilize these capabilities?
After the invention of wheel, man could pave
the way of acquiring facilities and by moving forward he slowly and gradually
entered the computer age. Now man has become aware of the fact that no machine
can work without a current. Since the day man stepped on the earth he has been
endeavoring to bring down the heavenly life on it.
As long as man pondered over, the implanted
computer in, man has been leading him. As a result robots have been invented.
Man gets fed up of working a monotonous piece of work whereas robot can
repeatedly perform the same deed day in and day out. Robots are relatively less
affected by changing weather than a human being. Many a factory in Europe and
America has been utilizing robots. Like men, industrial robots are busy in
welding, painting, moulding and picking up and placing things; but if they are
not switched on, they cannot even move. Every movement theirs is determined by
a control panel board through electric devices. When it is switched off the
supply of information is disconnected through the control panel and the
movement of the robot ceases.
The same situation applies to a human being. If
man is not provided with the information regarding the life and its needs then
the supply of current is disconnected.
Robots have been utilized in agriculture,
construction and nuclear plant besides extremely sensitive and dangerous departments
in space research as well. The research started with making simple robots of
compiling the data has reached the state where work is on progress to make the
robot with the capabilities of human mind.
Allah says"
"Behold! I taught thee the Book and
Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel and behold! thou makest out of clay, as it were,
the figure of a bird, by My leave, and thou breathest into it and it becometh a
bird by My leave, and thou healest those born blind, and the lepers, by My
leave. And behold! thou bringest forth the · dead
by My leave."
(Surah Al-Maida:Verse 110)
After making the struggle of hundreds and
thousands of years the scientists could not reach the state where at a Muslim
can easily reach by pondering over the Quran.
.. Hazrat Essa (Christ) used to make sparrow of
clay and then he used to breathe into it and the sparrow made of the clay would
fly away and perch at a tree. What is the difference between such a sparrow and
a robot made of iron?
The difference is this that electricity is
being made current in the robot and in the sparrow the blowing of Hazrat Essa
(Christ) is taking the form of life.
"Or like him who, when passing by a ruined
and desolate city, remarked: 'How shall Allah give life to this city after its
death?' Thereupon Allah caused him to remain in a state of death for a hundred
years and then raised him to life. Allah asked: 'How long have you tarried
here?' He replied: 'I have tarried a day, or a part of a day.' Allah said: 'No,
but you have tarried a hundred years. Now look upon your food and drink: they
have not rotted; and look at your ass. We will make you a sign for all men: and
look at the bones, how we raise them erect and then clothe them with flesh.'
And when this was made clear to him, he said: 'Now I know that Allah has power
over all things."
(Surah Al-Baqarah: Verse 259)
Looking at the spectacle of the Realm of Behest
(Aalam-e Amar),Hazrat Uzair said,
"I acknowledge that no doubt Allah is
ruling supreme over everything."
A sixty year old man died; is heart, kidneys,
brain, eyes—all the limbs were there in his body but none of them was working.
In this system, all of us have got the same status...be he a great. scholar or
an ignorant, be he a poor or rich when all the limbs are present in the body,
why does that man not move then.
A simple answer to this is that a system within
the body has gone fused. Though there still is electricity or oxygen in the air
but the body has turned dead...It means that man is operating upon
lights...light is engulfing light...light is talking to light, people become
parents only when there is light with in them...when light goes off everything
else goes off.
"Allah is the Light of the heavens and the
earth. The Parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a
Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit
from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the east nor of the est, whose oil is
well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth
guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and
Allah doth know all things"
(Surah Al-Noor: Verse 35)
When man becomes aware of this formula as
described in the Quran, then he won't need dependence upon the heavier robots
any longer in his life. He won't need to switch it on and off. His thinking
will play the role of a robot, whatever will he desire and he will get it by
His leave.
The waves emitting out from the projector are
not only felt but can also be seen. But no meaning is produced in our minds by
seeing at them. We are watching in the cinema that a layer of lights, waves or
gleams is coming and these waves or gleams
> are striking at the curtain. When these
waves or gleams strike against the curtain then we can see many a different
form, shape and colour.
We can compare these waves with thinking and
then we can attribute the process of waves striking at the curtain to
knowledge. Whatever colours or shapes formed out of the process of the waves
striking at the curtain or screen, we can call them meaning or sense. We can
learn through observation and experience that until and unless thinking strikes
at any screen to manifest itself no sense or meaning can be produced in
knowledge till then.
KHWAJA SHAMS-UD-DEEN AZEEMI
Many a scholar has written a lot about
spiritualism and pantheism. One school of thought is of the view that as saints
often used to wear wooly dresses therefore people would call them sufis. Wool
is called sauf in Arabic. They used to wear such a dress, for it had been the
habit of many a prophet, saints and pious people. According to some people, as
they have been associated with the Ashaab-e-suffa that is why they are called sufis;
whereas according to yet another school of thought the word sufi is linked with
suf a.... but all these explanations are not satisfactory.
In fact, the terminological meaning of Sufi'ism
(tasawaf) is self cleansing. It is the name of a true spirit that is related
to conscience and the light of conscience is always inherent. A sufi always
thinks in the context of Allah. His talk moves around Allah. He lives with
Allah and dies in the name of Allah. He recites His words and always praises
Him and remains enmeshed in His love. He sacrifices everything in order to see
and meet Allah.
