Eternity is Hidden in God's Memory
Not one moment lived by a person is lost.
Each one remains hidden forever in all its vitality in God's memory. |
Some of those who do not completely understand
that matter is actually a complex of perceptions formed in the brain fall
into error and draw wrong conclusions. For example, some people understand
the explanations about matter being an illusion to mean that matter does
not exist. Others think that matter exists as an illusion only when we
are looking at it, but when we are not looking at it, it does not exist.
Neither of these ideas is correct.
First, to say that matter does not exist, or that people, trees or birds
do not exist is definitely wrong. All of these things exist and have been
created by God. But, as we have explained from the beginning of this book,
God has created all these things as an image or a perception. That is
to say, after God created these things, He did not give them a concrete
independent existence. Every one of them continues to be created at every
moment.
Whether we see them or not, all these things are eternal in God's memory.
All those things that have existed before us, and that will exist after
us, have already been created by God in one single moment. As has been
explained in the earlier chapter, time is an illusion; God created time
and He is not bound by it. Therefore, those things that will exist for
us in the future have been created in one moment in God's sight and they
currently exist. But we cannot see them yet because we are bound by time.
Just as those things we will see in the future (or will exist in the
future for us) are present every moment in God's memory, so, in the same
way, things in the past do not cease to exist, but are present in God's
memory. For example, when you were a fetus in your mother's womb, the
day when you started to learn how to read and write, the moment you picked
up your first school report, the moment you first drove a car, the time
an old lady smiled at you when you gave her your seat on a bus, and other
such things you experienced in the past, together with all the moments
you will experience in the future, are at this moment in God's memory
and will remain there for eternity.
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EVERY MOMENT OF OUR LIVES IS KEPT
IN GOD'S SIGHT. NONE IS LOST, THEY ALL REMAIN VIVID 
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Suppose you kick a stone as you walk along a path. The time when you
would kick that stone was determined and created in your fate even before
you were born. The fact that this stone fell off a larger piece of rock,
and every stage at which each of its cracks and recesses was formed-all
of these were present in the sight of God even before you kicked the stone.
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Every state of the butterfly
you see in the picture-from the time it is an egg to when it
enters its cocoon, from the time it leaves the cocoon and begins
to fly to the time it dies-is vividly present in God's sight.
In God's sight the butterfly is leaving the cocoon now, beginning
to fly now and dying and falling to the ground now |
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The same thing is true of a dead butterfly you see in a garbage can or
a dry leaf falling from a tree onto your head. From the time the butterfly
was still a caterpillar to the time it left its cocoon, from the time
its wings dried to the time it fell into the garbage, everything was predetermined
in its fate. In God's sight, the living butterfly and the dead butterfly
continue continue to exist and will continue to exist eternally.
Everything Is Recorded In The Mother Of The Book
As we explained in the foregoing section, God created in one moment every
event and every creature that we perceive as past and future. In the Koran
it is revealed that the fates of every human being and every other creature
are hidden in the Mother of the Book:
And truly, it is in the Mother of the Book, in
Our Presence, high in dignity, and full of wisdom. (The Koran, 43: 4)
… We possess an all-preserving Book. (The Koran,
50:4)
Certainly there is no hidden thing in either heaven
or earth which is not in a Clear Book. (The Koran, 27: 75)
In other verses, God says that everything that happens in heaven and
on earth is recorded in this book.
Those who disbelieve say, "The Hour will never
come." Say: "Yes, by my Lord, it certainly will come!" He is the Knower
of the Unseen, Whom not even the weight of the smallest particle eludes,
either in the heavens or in the earth; nor is there anything smaller or
larger than that which is not in a Clear Book. (The Koran, 34: 3)
It is revealed in these verses that, since the universe was created,
everything animate and inanimate, every event which happens are the creation
of God and are therefore in His knowledge. In other words, all these things
are in God's memory. The Mother of the Book is a manifestation of God
as the Preserver (Al-Hafiz).
Past And Future Are Actually Experienced In The Present
Because time does not exist in the sight of God, all things happen in
a single moment, that is in the "present". All events which we think of
as past and future are present to God; in His sight everything is much
more clear and vital than we can perceive. For example, at this moment
Jonah is being cast into the sea as a result of the drawing of lots; Joseph
is being thrown in to the well by his brothers; he is eating his first
meal in prison and leaving the prison. At this moment Mary is speaking
with Gabriel; Jesus is being born. At this moment Noah is driving the
first nail into the ark and leaving the ark with his family at the place
God chose for them.
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Events in the past are vividly
and clearly experienced in God's memory as present events. For
example, the workers making the pyramids are carrying their
materials now, getting tired now, getting thirsty and drinking
water now. |
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The mother of Moses is putting his cradle into the water, Moses is receiving
his first revelation from God in the bush, he is dividing the sea and
the believers are passing through it. At this moment Pharaoh and his army
are being drowned as they cross through the sea and Moses is speaking
with Khidr, Khidr is repairing the walls of the orphan children. Those
who asked Dhu'l-Qarnayn to build a barrier to protect them are at this
moment presenting their request and Dhu'l-Qarnayn is building the rampart
that was not to be breached until the Day of Judgment. Abraham is at this
moment warning his father, breaking down the idols of the pagans, and
the fire they threw at him is giving Abraham coolness. Muhammad is at
this moment receiving a revelation from Gabriel and he is being taken
from Masjid al-Haram to Masjid al-Aqsa. At this moment an earthquake is
destroying the people of 'Ad. The dwellers in Paradise are on their thrones
engaged in mutual conversation; the dwellers in Hell are being consigned
to the flames suffering in great sorrow for which there is no remedy or
recourse.
God sees and hears all these things, in this moment, with a far greater
clarity than we can imagine. God can hear sounds at frequencies that we
cannot hear and He can see things that we cannot see. All the events and
sounds that we can perceive and not perceive are all present in the sight
of God and experienced at every moment in all their vividness. None of
these things is ever lost but continue in God's memory with all their
details.
This is also true of all the events in your life. For example, the foundation
of the house left to you by your grandfather is at this moment being constructed.
Your father is now being born in this house. The moment you first started
to talk is happening now. You are now eating the meal you will "actually"
eat ten years from now.
The reality that all these examples present us with is this: no moment,
no event or no existing thing has ever, or will ever cease to exist. As
a film we are watching on television is recorded on a film strip and composed
of several frames, and as our not seeing some of the frames does not mean
that they do not exist, so it is with what we call "the past" and "the
future".
It is very important to understand one point correctly: none of these
images is like a memory or a dream. All of them are vivid as if you were
experiencing them at this moment. Everything is vitally alive. Because
God does not give us these perceptions, we see them as past. And God can
show us these images whenever He wants to; by giving us the perceptions
proper to these events, He can make us experience the events.
From these examples it can be seen that for God, past and future are
both the same. For this reason, nothing is hidden from God, as is pointed
out in this verse;
(Luqman told his son): "My son, even if something
weighs as little as a mustard-seed and is inside a rock or anywhere else
in the heavens or earth, God will bring it out. God is All-Pervading,
All-Aware." (The Koran, 31: 16)
Every moment of the demolition of this building
is present in God's memory. Every moment--from the laying of the
foundation to the moment when it is destroyed--will remain present
forever without being lost. |
To Those In Paradise Who Desire To See It, God Can Show
The Past Just As It Happened
If a servant of God in Paradise wishes, God can show him things from
the earthly life just as they happened. For example, if a person in Paradise
asks God to let him see his dead dog alive again, his burned house before
it was destroyed, or the Titanic before it sank, God can show it all to
him even more vivid that it was before. For example, as the Titanic makes
its way on the sea, the fish surrounding it will all be in the same place
as at that moment and the passengers will be discussing the same things
using the same words. Or ancient great civilizations can be seen in the
high point of their splendor and wealth. A person who is curious about
the Inca civilization can see any period of this civilization whenever
he wishes. Because every event continues to be lived eternally with the
same vividness in God's memory, the person who wants to see an event will
find everything present the same as it was.
NO MOMENT THAT IS EXPERIENCED
DISAPPEARS IN GOD'S SIGHT
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In one verse, God reveals that in Paradise people will have everything
they desire:
... You will have there all that your selves could
wish for. You will have there everything you demand. (The Koran, 41: 31)
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MAN WATCHES EVERY MOMENT HE LIVES
WHEN IT OCCURS, JUST LIKE THE FRAMES OF A FILM 
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If those in Paradise wish it, God will show them every worldly image
and occurrence that will give them sorrow but will make them happy and
joyous. This is a great blessing that God has prepared for His worthy
servants in Paradise.
The Importance Of This Matter For Human Beings
This matter is of great importance for human beings because everything
that happens to us in a day, even things we have forgotten by the time
evening comes, the way we act, our attitudes and every thought that crosses
our minds are unforgotten and kept in God's sight.
For example, a person gossiping with his friend forgets this; it is not
important to him. But that moment when he gossiped remains forever in
God's sight. Or if a person has a negative thought about Muslims, that
thought, the moment he thought it, the expression on his face and the
sentences he used all remain forever in God's sight. Or the self-sacrifice
with which a person feeds his friend although he himself is hungry will
remain eternally in God's sight together with the circumstances of that
moment, and the attitude and the thoughts that were expressed. Or a person
who remains patient in a difficulty for God's sake and speaks kind words
to the one who is troubling him will not have his fine moral behavior
lost, but kept for eternity. And on the Day of Judgment, God will question
all the good and evil deeds that a person has committed; those things
which people have done but forgotten will confront them unforgotten and
unchanged. Some people will even be surprised that the book they are given
in the course of the reckoning is so detailed and they will say,
The Book will be set in place and you will see
the evildoers fearful of what is in it. They will say, "Alas for us! What
is this Book which does not pass over any action, small or great, without
recording it?" They will find there everything they did and your Lord
will not wrong anyone at all. (The Koran, 18: 49)
For this reason, a person aware of this reality must never forget that
his every act and thought are locked for ever in God's memory and will
continue to exist there; he must take care and fear the Day of Judgment.
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A PHYSICIST WHO EXPLAINS TIMELESSNESS
AND ETERNITY
In an interview in Discover magazine with the
famous physicist Julian Barbour, author of The End of Time, it is
shown that the subjects we have touched in this section are scientifically
verifiable. Some of the topics which Barbour explained in the article
entitled "From Here to Eternity" are reported by Tim Folger, a writer
for Discover:
In his view, this moment and all it holds- Barbour
himself, his American visitor, Earth, and everything beyond to the
most distant galaxies- will never change. There is no past and no
future. Indeed, time and motion are nothing more than illusions.
In Barbour's universe, every moment of every individual's life-
birth, death, and everything in between- exists forever. "Each instant
we live," Barbour says, "is, in essence, eternal."
Every possible configuration of the universe,
past, present, and future, exists separately and eternally. We don't
live in a single universe that passes through time. Instead, we-or
many slightly different versions of ourselves-simultaneously inhabit
a multitude of static, everlasting tableaux that include everything
in the universe at any given moment. Barbour calls each of these
possible still-life configurations a "Now." Every Now is a complete,
self-contained, timeless, unchanging universe. We mistakenly perceive
the Nows as fleeting, when in fact each one persists forever. Because
the word universe seems too small to encompass all possible Nows,
Barbour coined a new word for it: Platonia. The name honors the
ancient Greek philosopher, who argued that reality is composed of
eternal and changeless forms, even though the physical world we
perceive through our senses appears to be in constant flux.
Julian Barbour says that none of a person's moments is lost
and that every one of them continues to exist forever along
with others. The place where man's life continues to be lived
is God's memory. |
He likens his view of reality to a strip of movie
film. Each frame captures one possible Now, which may include blades
of grass, clouds in a blue sky, Julian Barbour, a baffled Discover
writer, and distant galaxies. But nothing moves or changes in any
one frame. And the frames-the past and future-don't disappear after
they pass in front of the lens.
"This corresponds to the way you remember highlights
of your life," Barbour says. "You remember very vividly certain
scenes as snapshots. I remember once, very tragically, I had to
go to a man who
had shot himself.
And I still have no difficulty in recalling the
scene of opening the door just to where he was at the foot of the
stairs and seeing him there with the gun and the blood. It's still
imprinted as a photograph on my mind. Many other memories I have
take that form. People have strong visual memories. If it's not
just a snapshot, it might be a few stills of a movie you recall.
Think of perhaps your most vivid memories. You don't think of them
as just lasting a second. You see them as snapshots in your mind's
eye, don't you? They don't fade-they don't seem to have any duration.
They're just there, like the pages of a book. You wouldn't ask how
many seconds a page lasts. It doesn't last a millisecond, or a second;
it just is."
Barbour calmly awaits the inevitable sputtering
objections.
Don't we then somehow shift from one "frame"
to another?
No. There is no movement from one static arrangement
of the universe to the next. Some configurations of the universe
simply contain little patches of consciousness-people-with memories
of what they call a past that are built into the Now. The illusion
of motion occurs because many slightly different versions of us-none
of which move at all-simultaneously inhabit universes with slightly
different arrangements of matter. Each version of us sees a different
frame-a unique, motionless, eternal Now. "My position is that we
are never the same in any two instants," Barbour says.
The parish church next to Barbour's home contains
some of the rarest murals in England. One painting, completed in
about 1340, shows the murder of Thomas à Becket, the 12th-century
archbishop whose beliefs clashed with those of King Henry II. The
mural captures the instant when a knight's sword cleaves Becket's
skull. Blood spurts from the gash. If Barbour's theory is correct,
then the moment of Becket's martyrdom still exists as an eternal
Now in some configuration of the universe, as do our own deaths.
But in Barbour's cosmos, the hour of our death is not an end; it
is but one of the numberless components of an inconceivably vast,
frozen structure. All the experiences we've ever had and ever will
have lie forever fixed,
set like crystalline facets in some infinite,
immortal jewel. Our friends, our parents, our children, are always
there.
"We're always locked within one Now," Barbour
says. We do not pass through time. Instead, each new instant is
an entirely different universe. In all of these universes, nothing
ever moves or ages, since time is not present in any of them. One
universe might contain you as a baby staring at your mother's face.
In that universe you will never move from that one, still scene.
In yet another universe, you'll be forever just one breath away
from death. All of those universes, and infinitely many more, exist
permanently, side by side, in a cosmos of unimaginable size and
variety. So there is not one immortal you, but many: the toddler,
the cool dude, the codger. The tragedy- or perhaps it's a blessing-
is that no one version recognizes its own immortality. Would you
really want to be 14 for eternity, waiting for your civics class
to end? (Tim Folger, "From Here to Eternity", Discover, December
2000, p.54)
These explanations of Julian Barbour's theories
illustrate very well the scientific aspect of what has been related
in this section. From this point of view, Barbour's theories parallel
the subject of this book. But the important point that must be explained
is this: Barbour explains that nothing that has happened in the
past will be lost, and that every event is present in this moment
as a series of photographs. Certainly, past and future are present
every moment in God's memory but not as a series of photographs;
they are actually being experienced at this moment. For example,
Joseph's brothers are actually putting Joseph in the well at this
moment. The Egyptian pyramids are actually being constructed at
this moment and the workers are putting the stones in place. Just
as we are experiencing this moment actually and vividly, so all
the past and future are being experienced in God's sight as actual
and vivid.
Today these facts have been scientifically proven
by developments in modern physics and there is a great correspondence
between them and what is said in the Koran about timelessness and
eternity. This great wonder in God's creation is a sign of God's
eternal power and majesty; it is a reality which must be carefully
considered and understood.
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