Stop Brooding and Start
Functioning
Syed Iqbal Zaheer
The question "why we are here" has
worried mankind from the earliest times. We have dealt
with this question earlier in this column several times
over, and have answered variously. But the questions of
this kind keep coming in; which is the reason why we
call them "the perennial questions." There are several
questions related to this Master Question. Mankind has
no answer for them.
These questions are the strongest demonstration of human
mind's limitations. Humans seem to be clever enough to
ask these questions. But if a mind is clever enough to
raise questions, it should be clever enough to answer
them too. If it cannot, then, after all, it is not
clever enough.
This is important to note; because behind these
questions lie the assumption of self-importance. Man
thinks he is great. He can make or break. He can do
wonderful things. He pats himself for the things he does
and pumps himself up like a frog. He is proud. If he is
knocked down, another takes his place and begins to
croak as high. If you gathered together a good many
millions of the same class, the croaking can be
deafening. "We are a great nation" they croak up
together and strut before the cameras. (Remove the
camera, and lo! they are stealing oil and raping women
in prisons).
So, these questions originate with the arrogant ones.
(Simpler people pick them up from them and pass them on
to each other's agony). But the arrogant ones must be
dealt with disdainfully. The Prophet has referred to one
of their by-products as "dung-beetles." They raise these
questions out of pride. When they are told there are no
answers to their questions, they say, "See. We were
right. God does not exist." If it is suggested, "What if
He exists?" they answer, "Then he should usher us – the
great ones - into His Paradise!" Such is their
arrogance.
So, the right answer would be to belittle the proud
ones. They need to be told they are too tiny to ask such
questions. Is that a fact? No. It is an understatement
of a fact.
Take the example of a bacterium. It has a life cycle. It
needs nourishment to live on. There are things harmful
to it (unlawful). It avoids them. There are things
beneficial to it (lawful). It finds them, feeds on them
and completes its life cycle. When the time comes for it
to go, it (takes a deep sigh and) gives up its ghost.
Burial does not follow its death and nobody weeps for
it. Those who deny God and sing songs of self-glory, are
no better than an ameba: so wrote one of their wise
ones, Bertrand Russell - or something close to it.
The bacterium-kind do not ask: why are we here? That is
because they do not have a brain. Supposing they were
given one; and one of them asked its proud fathers and
family bards, thinkers and community leaders, artists
and scientists, "Why am I here?" What is the answer it
will get? Of course, several. But none would be the
right answer. We know why. Bacteria are too tiny to be
asking and replying such big questions. With reference
to them, these are absurd question. They have not been
designed to ask such questions. Let alone understanding
their role in the world of creation, they do not even
know the world around them. Their universe is, perhaps,
a few feet wide. And that little universe too, they have
been denied the ability to understand.
So, what's the right answer for the bacterium? It is:
"My friend! You haven't been using your little brain
properly. Stop brooding, and start functioning."
But the comparison of bacterium with reference to its
world, with that of the humans with reference to their
world, is absurd. Why? Because a human is tinier with
reference to the known universe, than a bacterium is
when compared to its "few-feet-wide" world. The world
around the humans is so large, they have no means to
express how large it is. Traveling at the speed at which
they do in space, about 10 km per second, they will need
135,000 years to reach the next star; which, by cosmic
standards, is as close to the sun as two bacterium on
the head of a pin. To cross their own Milky Way Galaxy,
the humans will need 3,000,000,000 years (3 billion).
And how many galaxies are there? Billions.
Is that all to the world that there is? No. It is the
visible world. Are there others? Definitely there are.
But they cannot be known, because they are out of range.
A beam of light, traveling from there at the speed of
300,000 km. a second, will never reach us. Why? Because,
the distance would have doubled up: before the beam
could traverse the present distance – from 14 billion
light years to 28 billion light years. The beam will
keep traveling towards us, and the world will keep
flying apart at a greater speed, to defeat its dream of
ever landing upon us.
Is that all to the world that there is? No. We were so
far talking of the visible world. Is there an invisible
world? Yes, we live in one of the universes of a
multiverse. How many universes could there be in this
multiverse? Well, billions upon billions. But we shall
never see the universes other than ours. Why? Because
they are made up of more than four dimensions. We will
never observe them even if we passed through one of
them.
Is that all to the world that there is? Not at all. So
far, we have been talking of real worlds. Is there any
other kind of universe apart from the real universe?
Yes, and they are known as the virtual universes or, the
fake worlds, or, the simulated universes (terms used by
cosmologists). How many? Well, infinite in number.
Writes Paul Davies, the much acclaimed physicist and
cosmologist with several international awards to his
credit, in a recent publication, "Our universe may be a
fragment of a vast (probably infinite) and heterogeneous
system called the multiverse. The other 'universes', or
cosmic regions, may be observationally inaccessible to
us. Their existence would be inferred from theory plus
some indirect evidence."
This is the latest on (infinite number of) universes
other than ours. They are inaccessible to us - thus
spake the scientists.
Davies also writes: "The laws of physics and the initial
state of the universe could vary from one 'universe' to
another. What we have taken to be absolute laws might be
more akin to local by-laws, with key features, including
those relevant to life, which 'froze' out of the hot big
bang in the first split second." And, "Some features of
the more complicated laws we experience now – features
that resulted from symmetry-breaking – might be random.
Therefore they could be different in other regions."
(The Goldilocks Enigma, Allan Lane publication, 2006, p.
215-16).
Here is another scientist, a professor of physics and
mathematics and a Pulitzer Prize finalist: "The basic
idea rests upon the following possibility. Imagine that
what we call the universe is actually one tiny part of a
vastly larger cosmological expanse, one of an enormous
number of island universes scattered across a grand
cosmological archipelago."
And, "Linde... argues (that) the conditions for
inflationary expansion may happen repeatedly in isolated
regions peppered throughout the cosmos, which then
undergo their own inflationary ballooning in size,
evolving into new, separate universes. And in each of
these universes, the process continues, with new
universes sprouting from far-flung regions in the old,
generating a never ending web of ballooning cosmic
expanses.. And so we can imagine that physics varies
from one universe to another." (Brian Greene, The
Elegant Universe, Vintage Books, New York, p. 366-67)
This is the latest on laws governing the possibly
infinite number of universes. They could be different in
universes other than ours – an added reason why we will
never observe those other universes.
Thus it can be seen that the universe in which the
humans live is tinier in comparison to the multiverse,
real or virtual, fake or simulated, than a microscopic
bacterium is when compared to its "few-feet-wide" world.
If the bacterium is denied the answer to the question
why it happens to be in this world, why it comes to
life, why it dies, where goes its soul when it dies, and
so on, then humans are all the more disqualified from
asking such questions. They are barred from asking these
questions because of the very nature of their form and
existence. If they find it hard to understand how they
can be in what the physicists and cosmologists call as a
simulated universe, how do they expect to get an answer
for why they are here? The bacterium has every
possibility of understanding its infinitesimally narrow
world. Humans do not enjoy the same possibility.
Ironically, it is not the question of human brain
capacity. It is the simple case of impossibility. Never
ask a man a question about what he has never seen,
heard, felt, or calculated. Never should man ask himself
a question that he cannot, and will never be able to
answer. Never let him ask questions such as, what was
before the big-bang; why the big-bang at that moment,
why not earlier, what is the nature of space that is
appearing in our known world by billions of km square
every second, where did the laws governing our world
come from.. and so on. If he did, he will make a fool of
himself.
As regards us Muslims, our attitude is that of
resignation and submission. We too do not know who we
are, where we are from, why we are what we are, where
shall we go from here .. to the end. All that we know is
that our great grandparents were in another world, in a
place called Paradise, that they were removed for an
error, and that we – as their progeny - are to prove our
worth for re-entry. Thus, this life is a test, during
which we are required to worship none but our Creator –
who does what He will; Who cannot be questioned for what
He does, but we shall be questioned for what we do.
Therefore, we better follow the Revelation to the point
– to avoid all hassles. Our next point of stop will be a
place called Barzakh, then on to the Field of Judgment,
and then, hopefully, Paradise. This is all that we know,
of course, in quite vague terms, but in complete
certainty – thanks for the Revelation.
In a way we are luckier than a few billions, who do not
know even as little as we know, and, unable to answer
the questions to any degree, sometimes say this is
virtual world, at others that it is a fake world, yet
others that it is a simulated world, and so on. Every
time you question them, they give you mathematical
equations that came out direct from super-computers.
Thus they stumble around blindly, struggling in an
archipelago of quagmire, managing to keep a smile on
their faces, but in deep agony that leaves them fit for
no true joy in life, except for what materials and
minerals can afford.
We Muslims are luckier that at least we know a few
landmarks of our future world, and how to get across to
the promised ever-lasting bliss – of course, on good
behavior. What we need to do is to stop brooding and get
functioning. top^
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