A Glimpse of Human Nature in and Beyond Reality (Womb. Reality. Afterlife)
Inspired by concepts from The Holy Quran and Mufakir-e-Azam Ayatullah Ustad Shaheed Murtaza Mutahiri, as presented by Maulana Muhammad Raza Dawoodani.
Bismillah.
A blank hard-drive is meant to store data. Initially it is blank, but is it really? No. A brand new hard-drive of any kind posses implementation of technological leaps that a single man can probably never derive from scratch. This is the design of something that will merely store ones and zeroes. It is this design that enables the drive to perform its function over its lifetime.
If we replace the brand new drive with a brand new human, will it possess a design? yes, it’s nature. It is the human nature that we are born with, and interestingly it performs more or less the same function for the body’s life. A baby knows how to cry when it is hungry, it is not taught, it just knows it.
This programming is coming from somewhere. There has to be an existence behind the sound meant to be an interrupt being felt as one of the most beautiful duties of life to a parent being on the receiving end of that cry. If someone has programmed humans the way they are and provided free will, a set of laws must be provided.
A example of this would be, hunger is a built in function for a human since birth but there are laws for what is right and wrong to eat throughout the human life. If the set of laws is in conflict with the basic human programming, something has a flaw.
It is a human desire to reproduce. now if someone views one of the ingredients of that process to be inferior yet allows marriage just because it as a lesser evil, that someone is violating the inherent human design. If that someone takes a 180 degree turn and reproduces uncontrollably without any boundaries for right and wrong, the whole exercise is just plain wrong.
Maybe that someone thinks lack of commitment is freedom and lack of that lack is imprisonment. A true system would imprison the gaze of a bachelor and set him free by making someone his own in the form of a commitment. This is a system created by the one who programmed the human in the first place for reality. It is us who do not see this bigger picture or get to look within ourselves.
We just gain conscience and want to maintain it endlessly. We don’t want any consequence to exist for the fulfillment of our desires.
We have to understand that we will move on from reality and that the day of judgment is eminent where everyone will be answerable for what do, just in another realm.
Wherever you are today, you were not always there. You were once in a womb, each and every single one of the billions alive right now were. Just imagine, if the internal organs of a mother could talk among themselves, they might not be able to comprehend the new entity forming among them. They might even be worried about the distribution of resources in the long run. The problem can be solved if one of them could deduce that this new entity is not meant to stay here because it has eyes and eyes need light to see and there is no light in here, its ears need sounds to listen to, hands need objects to grip, feet need ground to walk on, this thing is in the womb but is not for the womb.
This sounds like something Ali ibne abi talib said, “The world is for you but you are not for the world.”
How man can desire the fountain of youth, advance his knowledge gained through observations and experiments for the purpose but not attain immortality sounds funny to me.
This desire to live forever is a basic part of the inherent human design. Quran says that every soul shall taste death. What appears to be a deadlock is actually just a mistake.
Let me ask you this, is death = void ?
No. death is merely a transfer of realms. A move from reality to afterlife. Are we scared, yes we are.
One way to explain this fear could be to look at the other transfer of realms. Hypothetically if one could speak to the baby in the hypothetical womb with a full-duplex connection, and ask the baby if it wanted the transition from womb to reality, does it have a reason to not be afraid of the unknown new realm? What is the possible information it can have? Even if you give the most accurate description of the sky to this child at best the image in that mind will be the inner wall of the womb. Similarly we are just as incapable of perceiving the next realm as this child!
Do we correctly perceive what this realm is? Allow me to demonstrate with aid from Mutahiri’s concepts.
People exist who classify being in reality as being a bird trapped in a cage or a prisoner in a prison. It sounds fascinating, but can’t be held true because in such a case escape should be encouraged, not prohibited. The value of life is more than nothing.
Ancient Greek philosophers have estimated the value of life to be so high that even if they had the body of a worthless animal such that they were just allowed to breathe, they would gladly accept such a life. The problem here is lack of things like dignity and respect. The value of life is less than everything.
What exactly is this life in the reality? Maybe the answer lies in what is it for?
The Holy Prophet p.b.u.h.p. solved this problem by saying “ad duniya mazhartul aakhira” This world is to you what a market is to a trader, or farm is to a farmer, or a school is to a student. All of these people spend what they have today, be it energy or resources, in hope for a great return one day. The entire real world is not more than that. The profit, yield, or result is the “youm e deen”, the Judgment day.
A big problem this visualization solves is that if a pupil has finished school, he needs to move on to college. A case of such a person being obsessed with the school walls beyond a certain threshold will not be acceptable. Eternal life is a legitimate desire, it is just not meant for the limited real world.
When talking of rewarding the ones that have faith and do good deeds the Quran repeatedly talks of them being in the heaven where they will live forever, and the same duration is specified for the ones in a very painful place. This makes sense with the set of laws regarding right and wrong provided by the one who designed the human nature.
Let me take you on a one last hypothetical trip. We move form womb to reality to afterlife. 9 months, 60–70 years, and forever, respectively. Now if a mistake happens in the 9months, let’s say eyes don’t form properly or there is something wrong with the ears, most probably the whole 60–70 year life will suffer…
For how long do you think one will suffer for the mistakes of these 60–70 years?
You still have the chance to fill the hard-drive with the right kind of content for the next realm.
Wasi A. Rizvi.
26 June 16 / 21 Ramadan 1437.
2 July 16
Based on words of Maulana Mauhamad Raza Dawoodani from three occasions:
(1)Seminar on “Surah noor mutahiri ki nazr main” at bhojani, 10 ramadan 1437 and
(2)Tafseer e quran “fana aur baqa” (part 1) on sach tv, 22 june 2016 and
(3)Tafseer e quran “fana aur baqa” (part 2) on sach tv, 23 june 2016.
