An Understanding Of The Real Nature of Matter Will Lead People To Faith

     People who will come to realize that they have been watching images shown to their spirits throughout their lives, will believe with certainty that it is God who created both their spirits and these uninterrupted images.

     The reason why some people stubbornly refuse to accept the secret of matter is their unwillingness to conceive of the magnitude of God's greatness and to accept their own nothingness. But even if these people do not want to accept it, there is an indisputable truth: Everything in heaven and on earth is God's and a manifestation of God. The only absolute Being is God. The other beings that God has created are not absolute beings but appearances. All the 'I',s , that is individuals, who observe the appearances that God has created are all spirits from God.

     When people grasp the great secret of this knowledge, they will attain great clarity of consciousness and the haze enshrouding their spirits will lift. Everyone who understands it will freely submit to God, love Him and fear Him. In addition, human feelings of pride and self-satisfaction will be replaced by humility and modesty. This is what God wants from human beings. Those who understand this amazing fact will look at things from a different point of view and start out on a totally different life. They will acknowledge God's power appropriately, and distance themselves from the kind of person described by this verse;

     They do not measure God with His true measure. The whole earth will be a mere handful for Him on the Day of Rising and the heavens folded up in His right hand. Glory be to Him! He is exalted above the partners they ascribe! (The Koran, 39: 67)

     Understanding The Reality Of Matter Removes Worldly Ambitions

     What we have described so far is one of the most profound truths that you have heard in your whole life. We have shown that the whole material world is really a shadow, and that this is the key to understanding the existence of God, His creation, and the fact that He is the one absolute Being. At the same time, we have presented a scientifically undeniable demonstration both of how helpless human beings are and a manifestation of God's wonderful artistry. This knowledge compels people to belief making it impossible for them not to believe. This is the main reason why some people avoid this truth.

Everything a person thinks he possesses, his house, car, family, job and all his friends are all composed of images and sensations which occur in the brain. A person who understands this will also understand that the One who has created these images in his brain is God, to whom all things belong. For that reason, those who are emotionally attached to the life of this world fear this reality greatly.

     The things that are being explained here are as true as a physical law or a chemical formula. When necessary, human beings can solve the most difficult mathematical problems and understand many very complex matters. However, when these same people are informed that matter is an appearance formed in the human mind, and that they have no connection with it, they have no desire at all to understand. This is an exaggerated case of an inability to understand, because the idea discussed here is no more difficult than the answer to the questions, "What is two times two?" or "How old are you?", If you ask any scientist or professor of neurology where they see the world, they will answer you that they see it in their brains. You will find this fact even in high school biology text books. But despite the fact that it is clearly evident, information pertaining to the fact that we perceive the material world in our brains and the results that this information entails for human beings can be overlooked. It is of major significance that one of the most important scientifically proven facts is so carefully hidden from people's eyes.

     The fundamental reason why people easily accept all scientific facts, yet are so afraid to accept this one, is that learning the truth about matter will basically change the way everyone looks at life. Those who believe that matter and the self are absolute beings will discover one day that everything they have worked for and protected based on this idea - their spouses, their children, their wealth, even their own personalities - is an illusion. People are very afraid of this reality and pretend not to understand it even if they do. They try with determination to disprove the facts, which are simple enough for even a primary school child to understand. The reason behind this opposition is that they are afraid to lose what this world offers.

     For someone who is attached to his possessions, his children, or the transient offerings of this world, the illusory nature of matter is cause for great fear. At the moment such a person understands this, he will have died before his natural death, and he will have surrendered his possessions and his soul. In the verse, "If He did ask you for it (all your wealth) and put you under pressure, you would be tight-fisted and it would bring out your malevolence." (The Koran, 47: 37), God reveals how human beings will behave with meanness and rancor when He demands their possessions from them.

     But when a person learns the real nature of matter, he will understand that his soul and his possessions already belong to God. If he knows that there is nothing to give or to resist giving, he will submit himself and all he possesses to God before he dies. For sincere believers, this is a beautiful and honorable thing and a way to draw nearer to God. Those who do not believe or whose faith is weak cannot recognize this beauty and stubbornly reject this reality.

     Those Who Own Factories, Yachts Or Land, Which Are Images In The Brain Worry Themselves For Nothing

     In this section we will consider the example of a heedless factory owner who has lived all his life with the ambition of being rich, and who worked day and night since he was young, thinking that he would earn everything by the sweat of his brow. This example will show us a very important truth.
   

     The person whom we shall describe is middle-aged. He has two children, a boy and a girl, whom he sends to good schools. He owns a few cars, a yacht, some houses and some land. This man thinks he has everything that is admired in the life of this world. He thinks he has attained everything that a person could hope for in this life. Besides his wealth, he has gained a great deal of respect. Everyone who knows him regards him as a person who is respected, and has standing and position in society.

     This opinion is shared by the servants who attend him in the morning, the chauffeur who bows as he opens the car door for him, the security guards who greet him with respect when he enters the company building, and the employees who stand to attention from the moment he enters the factory until he gets to his office. He has many close friends and acquaintances in high places and positions. Every day he runs from meeting to meeting; he is a member of some boards and societies, and even chairman of others.

     In the course of a day he gives orders to hundreds of individuals. In his bank and private safe he has more money, stocks and bonds that he can count. As he adds up these things from time to time, he gains even more satisfaction; he is proud of himself and congratulates himself. What gives him a special feeling of satisfaction and self-confidence is the fact that he earned everything himself by his own hard work, and that he attained what he had devoted his whole life to achieving.

     One day, while he is sailing on a yacht with his friends, someone comes up to him and says: "Everything you see here at this moment-all these people, this yacht, the sea, the factories, the houses, the employees who jump to your command-are all appearances happening in your brain. You do not know whether the originals of these appearances exist outside your brain or not. If the nerves entering your brain were severed, this yacht, the people on it, their voices and conversations, the smell of the sea, the taste of the fruit juice you are drinking, in short, everything would cease to exist in a moment. All of these things as well as everything you have owned in your whole life are in your mind. There is no difference between your houses, cars, yachts, factories and companies and things you own in your dreams. It is like having a dream about going to Europe in your own private airplane and waking up in the morning to find that there is no airplane, and that you are not in Europe but in bed. If one day you wake up from this sleep you call your life; how can you be sure that you will not be in a completely different place observing images pertaining to this life? "

     This rich man will react strongly to what he is being told. If these facts were told to him plainly with all scientific proof, even if he understood he would not accept the truth. In his mind, to accept that everything he owned was a dream-like fantasy would mean that he had been following an illusion his whole life. Then, everything for which a person is praised, everything that gives him a sense of pride and self-importance is an illusion. The situation of that person will be as humiliating and ridiculous as that of a person who is rich in his dreams and puts on airs because of this imaginary wealth.

     When the rich man in our example goes into his company after he has grasped this truth, he will not be moved to arrogance by the respect and esteem shown to him. This is because he now knows that those who show him respect and bow to him are only facsimiles in his mind. Or when these things are told to him, he will not be able to "show off" to his guests with his yacht because both the yacht and the guests on it are appearances in his brain.

A person who counts his money with a great deal of satisfaction is actually counting money in his brain. He does not realize that the yacht he sails with so much pride and ostentation, the people he tries to impress and the scenery are all impressions formed in his brain. If the truth were told to him, he would forcefully reject it in order not to lose all the things he owns and the esteem he enjoys. However, the same person can dream that he owns all these things and, in that dream, never doubts their reality. If he were told in his dream that he is not the real owner of these things, he would not accept it. But when he woke up, he would understand that it was all a fantasy.

     When he is told that matter is an illusion and that he can have no connection at all with the source of material existence, the farm he bought the day before will come into his mind. In that case, the money he counted out bill by bill and gave to the vendor, the farm he bought with all its fixtures, the surrounding area surveyed as he made the purchase-all would exist only in his mind. It would be exactly as if he had dreamed the night before that he had won an important contract and made a lot of money from it. When he woke up nothing would be left, and what he thought was real would be a dream.

   If this is the case, he is not in the yacht now. The yacht is an appearance inside him. When he thinks he is going into his house furnished in the latest style, in fact, he is opening a big garden gate and entering a house in his brain. The house, the furnishings, the garden and the garden gate are in his mind.

     If this person is aware that what he is being told is clearly true, he will come to realize that everything he owns at that moment are fundamentally shadow beings. All these things are images shown to him by God who created him. In order to test him, God created his life and the appearances of the things that he would think he owned. But forgetting that God gave him these things and blessed him with the wealth of these appearances, he became arrogant and spoiled by these things, gave himself airs and regarded people as his inferiors. Then, he has spent his life vainly clambering after an illusory dream world. But one day he realizes that he has been caught up in illusions and wasting his time, that none of these things has absolute existence and that only God exists.

     In one verse, God calls attention to those who have refused to accept this reality throughout history and those who have pretended not to know it:

     But the actions of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in the desert. A thirsty man thinks it is water but when he reaches it, he finds it to be nothing at all, but he finds God there. He will pay him his account in full. God is swift at reckoning. (The Koran, 24: 39)

     As we can see in this verse, God compared the deeds of deniers to a mirage or a phantom. When these people attach themselves to these phantoms and discover that they cannot expect help from them, they understand that the phantoms are not real and that God alone is the one absolute reality.

     One of the main reasons why people are so afraid of this reality and do not wish to accept it is that they understand, like the man in the example above, that everything they own, their respect, their wealth will pass away in one moment. Here we call your attention to one point: we are not saying here that "everything a person owns will stay behind after death and do him no good". By saying that "everything a person owns is an appearance", that person, in a sense, loses what he owns while still alive. When he sees that what he has striven for throughout his life, has troubled him and made him sad, and that he has tried to beat down other people in the process, he realizes that it was all an empty deception. In one verse, the Koran reveals that heedless people live in deception. The greedy attachment of people to property is related in a verse as follows:

     To mankind the love of worldly appetites is painted in glowing colours: women and children, and heaped-up mounds of gold and silver, and horses with fine markings, and livestock and fertile farmland. All that is merely the enjoyment of the life of this world. The best homecoming is in the presence of God. (The Koran, 3: 14)

     In another verse it is revealed that the life of this world is a game, a waste of time and a deception:

     Know that the life of this world is merely a game and a diversion and ostentation and a cause of boasting among yourselves and trying to outdo one another in wealth and children: like the plant-growth after rain which delights the cultivators, but then it withers and you see it turning yellow, and then it becomes broken stubble. In the hereafter, there is terrible punishment but also forgiveness from God and His good pleasure. The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion. (The Koran, 57: 20)

     When people realize that these appearances they thought they owned during this life are actually an illusion, they understand that they have struggled and worried in vain, and that they have wasted their time. There are those who jealously guard what they own, and for the sake of these things become angry and abuse others, get irritated and pound the table with their fist. But when they realize that they have no connection with the actual material things, they are ashamed and deeply sorry that they are like be someone who, in a dream, assaults other people, gets angry and shouts at them. They immediately understand that they should act in a way that will be pleasing to God, the Origin of all the appearances shown to them. Those who comprehend this reality, that is, believers say:

     Say: "My prayer and my rites, my living and my dying, are for God alone, the Lord of all the world." (The Koran, 6: 162)

     It is important never to forget this important point: It does not matter at which point in his life a person comes to understand this reality; it is never too late. He can change his way of looking at life right away and reorder his way of living according to this principle; he can begin to live not for illusions but for our Lord, the One Absolute Being. God is always forgiving to His servants.

     Those who slyly pretend not to know this reality, and refuse to accept the fact that God is the One Absolute Being, have fallen into a powerful trap. God describes their state:

     ... What they achieved here will come to nothing. What they did will prove to be null and void. (The Koran, 11: 16)

     Even if a person does not want to accept this reality now and prefers to deceive himself by believing that the things he owns are absolute things, everything will become very clear after he dies on that Last Day when he is raised again to life. On that day, as it says in the verse, his "sight is sharp" (The Koran, 50: 22), and he will come to a much clearer awareness of everything. But if he has spent his worldly life running after illusory goals, he will wish that he had never lived in that world. He will perish saying, "If only death had really been the end! My wealth has been of no use to me. My power has vanished." (The Koran, 69: 27-29)

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