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Science
and After Life- Part Two
by
Safiya Teja
"To
God belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth whether you
bring out what is in your own selves or conceal it, God calls
you to account for it,
He [through his full justice and knowledge of each
individual] will forgive whom He wills, and will punish whom He
wills, And God has the power over all things"
[Surat ul Baqarah -2;284]
Aristotle,
the father of logic, viewed the universe as a very noble animal, while
Kant, the mathematician and physicist, viewed it as highly
complicated and admirable machine. According to Shelley, the
poet and mystic, 'life like a dome of many coloured
glass stains the white radiance of eternity', to Hegel, the atheist
and materialist, the universe seems to follow no law and its
part seems to be 'shot out of pistol' at us, each
asserting itself as a 'simple brute fact; uncalled for by the
rest arbitrary, foreign, jolting discounting'. And yet
from out the bosom of it, according to William James,
physiologist and psychologist 'a partial ideality constantly
arises, which keep alive aspirations that the whole may some day
be constructed in ideal form.,' according to him, the
mainspring of philosophical activity is to show that the real is
identical with the ideal. prophetic revelation, however, asserts
this in no unmistakable terms, provided life is treated as one
continuous inclusive whole, i.e., inclusive of life on both
sides of the grave a pre-requisite of which is a belief in the
after-life or, in popular parlance, in human immortality.
Immortality
sciences one of the great spiritual needs of man. The subject of
life after death has its prime roots in personal feelings, on
which cold sciences frowns in her superior way, confronting us
with certain difficulties, which bar the way to the old faith.
The first of these difficulties is relative to the absolute
dependence of our spiritual life, as we know it here, upon the
brain. One hears not only scientists, but even laymen who are
slightly conversant with so called popular science, saying: how
can we believe in life hereafter when science with a capital S
has proved beyond possibility if escape,
that our inner life is a function of that famous material, the
grey matter of brain? How can the function possibly  persist
after its organ has undergone decay? Further, the latest
advances in medical science have shown not only that though in
general is one of the brain's functions, but that the various
special forms of thinking are functions of special portions of
the brain.
Let
us then, for the sake of argument, adopt the general doctrine
that 'thought' is a function of the brain, as it had been
established absolutely, with no possibility of restriction. The
question then arises: Does this doctrine logically compel us to
disbelieve in immortality? Ought it to force the scientist, or
the scientifically minded laymen, to sacrifice his hopes of an
hereafter to his self-imposed duty of accepting all the
consequences of a scientific truth? I think not. It is not at
all impossible, but on the contrary quite possible, that our
present life may still continue when the brain itself is dead.
The
supposed impossibility arises from too superficial a look at the
admitted fact of functional dependence. You are thinking of the
matter just as you think when you say that steam is a function
of the tea kettle, or that is a function of the electric
circuit, or again that, power is a function of the waterfall. But
a little reflection will show that these functions in the nature
of a "productive function" and you illogically
assume that the function of the brain is of a similar kind but
in the world of physical nature, this function' with which we
are familiar. We have also "releasing" or "permissive"
functions and we have "transmissive" functions. The
trigger of the gun, when released, permits the explosion in the cartridge
to take place. The electric switch similarly has a releasing
function. When closed, it constitutes an obstacle to the flow of
the electric current or energy, which is already there. When the
switch is on, it merely permits the current to flow for writing
the lamp or running the motor. It does not generate the current
but only acts as a doorway for its passage.
In
the case of a coloured glass, a prism, or a refracting lens, we
have the transmissive function. The energy of light, no matter
how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in colour, and
by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape.
Similarly, the keys of an organ or harmonium have only a
transmissive function. They open successively the various pipes
and let the wind is the air-chest escape in various ways, but
the air is not generated in the organ, which is only an
apparatus for letting portions of its loose upon the world in
peculiarly limited in shape. Therefore, when we think of the law
that thought is a function and we certainly are entitled also to
consider permissive or transmissive functions.
Now
let us for a moment suppose the whole universe of material
things to be a mere surface veil of phenomena, hiding and
keeping back the world of genuine realities. Such a supposition
is foreign neither to commonsense nor to philosophy. Indeed all
religions are unanimous in teaching us to believe in realities
behind the veil even too superstitiously, and idealistic
philosophy declares the whole world of natural experience to be
but a time mask, shattering or refracting the one infinite
thought, which is the sole reality, into those millions of
finite streams of consciousness known to us as our private selves. This
is what the poet Shelley meant when he spoke of the dome of many
coloured glass, staining the white radiance of eternity.
Pursuing
Shelley's idea to its logical conclusion, let is imagine that
the dome is opaque enough, most of the time, to the super-solar
blaze, but could, at certain times and places, grow less so.
For whatever reason, and let certain beams pierce through. these
would vary in quality and quantity as the opacity varied in
degree. Only at particular times and places would it seem that,
as a matter of fact, the veil of nature can grow thin and
rupturable enough to enable such things as glows of
feelings, glimpses of insight, intuitions, streams of knowledge
and perception, even prophetic revelation, to float into our
finite world. Admit, now, that our brains are such thin and half
transparent places in the veil. What will happen? As the
white radiance comes through the dome, with all sorts of
staining distortion imprinted on it by the glass, even so the
genuine matter of reality the life of souls as it is in its
fullness will break through our several brains into this world
in all sorts of restricted forms, and with all the imperfections
and queernesses that characterise our finite individualities
here below.
According
to the state in which the brain finds itself, the barrier of its
obstructiveness may also be supposed to rise or fall, like a
gate in a hydraulic dam. When the brain is full activity, the
barrier or the threshold, as it is technically called, sink so
low, that a comparative flood of spiritual energy pours
over but at other times, only such occasional waves of
thought as heavy sleep permits get by. And when finally a brain
stops acting altogether, as in death, that particular stream of
consciousness will vanish entirely from this natural world. But
the spheres of being that supplied the consciousness might, in
ways unknown to us, continue still. Death would thus be
tantamount to shutting of the gate to the flow of water, or to
switching off the electric current.
You
see, on all these suppositions, our soul's life, as we here know
it, would none the less, in literal strictness, be the function
of the brain. The brain would be the independent variable, the
mind would vary dependently on it. But such dependence on
the brain for this natural life would, in no wise, make
immortal life impossible it might be quite compatible with the
super nature veil hereafter. The conclusion which
materialism draws is due solely to its one-sided way of talking.
The
word 'function' to be 'productive' and not "transmissive".
Ask for any indication of the exact process either of 'production'
or of 'transmission', and sciences confesses her
imagination to be bankrupt. Physiologists admits that a production
of a such a thing as a consciousness in the brain is the
absolute world enigma.
The
theory of 'production' is therefore not a jot more simple
or a credible in itself then any other conceivable theory, but
if we consider the theory of transmission in a wider way, we
shall see that it has certain positive superiorities.
Consciousness in this process does not have to be generated in a
vast number of places. It exists already behind the scenes,
coeval with the world. The transmission theory not only avoids
in this way multiplying miracles, but it puts itself it touch in
general idealistic philosophy better then the production theory
does. It should always be reckoned a good thing when science and
philosophy thus meet.
Kant,
the strict mathematician, expresses this idea in terms that come
singularly close to those of the transmission theory. The death
of the body, he says, may indeed be the end of the cessational
use of our mind, but only the beginning of the
intellectual use. "The body", he continues, "would
thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but merely a condition
restructive thereof and, although essential to our sensuous and
animal consciousness, it may be regarded as an impeder of our
pure spiritual life".
The
transmission theory also puts itself in touch with a whole
class of experience, that are with difficulty explained by
the production theory viz. These and exceptional phenomena, such
as a religious conversations, providential leadings in answer to
prayers, instantaneous healings, premonitions, apparitions at
the time of death, clairvoyant visions or impressions, the
whole range of mediumistic capacities, to say nothing of
prophetic revelation. On the productions theory, one does not
see from what sensations such phenomena are produced. On the
transmission theory, they do not have to be 'produced' ,
the exist ready made in the transcendental world, and all that
is needed is an abnormal lowering of the psychophysical
threshold may be likened to that of the renal threshold
which allows the inflow of mere sugar into the urine in diabetic
patients.
In
the cases of conservations, providential leadings, sudden mental
healings, it seems to the subjects themselves of our experiences
as is power from without, quite different from the ordinary
actions of the senses, or the sense led mind, came into their
life, as if the later suddenly opened into the greater
life in which it had its sources. All such experiences, quite
paradoxical and meaningless on the production theory, fall
very naturally into place on the other theory. We need only to
suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a Mother
see, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over
the dam. Of course, the causes of these odd lowering of the
brain's threshold still remain a mystery, like all the other
mysteries which science has so far failed to solve, and
which, in their very nature, will ever remain insoluble.
However
insoluble to the cold reasoning of the scientist, who is
naturally bound by an orthodox methodology, evolved during
the centuries of scientific progress, the vision of the poet, who
is under inspiration which different way of saying that he is in
contact with the life beyond his physical Kant, sees the
reality in a flash, like Wordsworth, from two of whose
immortal poems viz., 'Tintern Abbey' and 'Intimations
of Immortality';
I
would like to quote to you.
But
oft, in the lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of
towns and cities, I had owed to them,
In
hours of weariness, sensation sweet
Fold
in the blood and felt along the heart;
And
passing even into my purer mind
With
tranquil restoration; feelings, too,
Of
unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As
have no sight or trivial influence
On
that best portion of a good man's life,
His
little nameless unremembered acts
of
kindness and love.
[Tintern
Abbey]
Our
birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The
soul that rises with us, or life's star,
Hath
had else were his setting
And
cometh from afar;
Not
in entire forgetfulness
And
not in utter nakedness
But
trailing clouds of glory do we come:
From
God who is our home:
heavens
lies about us in our infancy!
[Intimations
of Immortality]
I
am sure you could match any passages from many other poets, both
in English and in Persian languages, not to speak of Urdu. But
while the poet's vision is vouchsafed to him only in occasional
flashes, and the ordinary man sees reality, now and again,
through a many coloured dome of glass, the prophet receive his messages
resplendent white light direct by revelation from its very
source.
The
only book of revelation of undoubted authenticity, which is existent
today, is Quraan. I keep reading it over and over again, as no
doubt you all do, and every time I read it, I have a better
understanding of it, in the light of my own expanding knowledge
of the latest advances made in the field of science. On the
other hand my constant perusal of the Quraan gives me a
true appreciation of every new discovery made by scientists
everyday in multifarious fields of activity, and I hope I have
succeeded in whatever little I have in communicating my sense of
wonder and understanding to you. If I have, I feel amply
rewarded.
This
lecture was given by Mr Mohsin Ali
Reference:-
"Light Knowledge Truth"
If
you would count God's bounties, you cannot compute them,
Verily Allah is oft-forgiving, the most merciful. (16;18).
All
praise is for ALLAH (swt) only.
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