WARNING

WARNING !

The chapter you are now about to read reveals a crucial secret of your life. You should read it very attentively and thoroughly for it is concerned with a subject that is liable to make a fundamental change in your outlook on the external world. The subject of this chapter is not just a point of view, a different approach, or a traditional philosophical thought: it is a fact which everyone, believing or unbelieving, must admit and which is also proven by science today.

 The Secret Beyond Matter

The concept of "the nature of matter" is one liable to change one's outlook on life, and indeed, one's whole life, once its essence is known. This subject is directly related to the meaning of your life, your expectations from the future, your ideals, passions, desires, plans, the concepts you esteem, and the material things you possess.

The subject matter of this chapter, "the nature of matter," is not a subject raised today for the first time. Throughout the history of humanity, many thinkers and scientists have discussed this concept. Right from the start, people have been divided into two groups on this issue; one group, known as materialists, based their philosophies and lives on the substantial existence of matter and lived by deceiving themselves. Another group acted sincerely, and being unafraid of thinking more profoundly, led their lives by grasping the essence of the "things" to which they were exposed and the deep meaning lying beyond them. However, advances in the science and technology of our age have finally ended this controversy by indisputably proving the self-evident fact that matter has no substantial existence.

The Long Discussed Question: What is the Real Nature of Matter?

Someone who conscientiously and wisely contemplates the universe he inhabits, the galaxies, the planets, the balance therein, the willpower in the structure of the atom, the order he comes across in every part of the universe, the countless living species around him, the way they live, their amazing traits, and finally his own body, will instantly realize that there is something extraordinary about all these things. He will readily understand that this perfect order and the subtleties around him could not have originated by themselves, but must certainly have had a Creator. As a matter of fact, Darwinism and the materialist philosophy which deny creation are great errors as we have analysed throughout this book.

By Whom then were all these things created?

It is obvious that "the fact of creation," which is self-evident in every domain of the universe, cannot be an outcome of the universe itself. For example, a peacock, with its coloring and design implying a matchless art, cannot have created itself. The miniscule equilibriums in the universe cannot have created or organized themselves. Neither plants, humans, bacteria, erythrocytes (red-blood corpuscles), nor butterflies can have created themselves. Moreover, the possibility that all these entities could have originated "by chance" is not even imaginable.

It is evident that everything that we see has been created, but none of the things we see can themselves be "creators." The Creator is different from and superior to all that we see with our eyes. He is invisible, but everything He has created reveals His existence and attributes.

This is the point at which those who deny the existence of God demur. Such people have been conditioned not to believe in His existence unless they see Him with their eyes. In their view, there is a heap of matter throughout the whole universe, spreading out until eternity and God is nowhere in this heap of matter. Even if they traveled thousands of light years, they think they would not meet God. This is why they deny His existence. Therefore, these people, who disregard the fact of "creation," are forced to reject the actuality of "creation" manifest throughout the universe and try to prove that the universe and the living things in it have not been created. However, it is impossible for them to do this, because every corner of the universe overflows with the evidence of God's being.

Impulses from an object are converted into electrical signals and cause an effect in the brain. When we "see," we in fact view the effects of these electrical signals in our mind. Whatever we see, hear, know, recognize or, get used to in this world throughout our lives is merely comprised of electrical signals our sense organs transmit to our brain.

The basic mistake of those who deny God is shared by many people who do not really deny the existence of God but have a wrong perception of Him. They do not deny the signs of "creation" which are everywhere manifest but have superstitious beliefs about "where" God is. Most of them think that God is up in the "sky." They tacitly and wrongly imagine that God is behind a very distant planet and interferes with "worldly affairs" once in a while, or perhaps does not intervene at all. They imagine that He created the universe and then left it to itself, leaving people to determine their fates for themselves.

Still others have heard the fact stated in the Qur'an that God is "everywhere," but they cannot conceive of what exactly this means. In accordance with the distorted thought in their subconscious, they think that God surrounds everything-like radio waves or like an invisible, intangible gas.

However, this and other beliefs that are unclear about "where" God is (and maybe because of that deny Him) are all based on a common mistake. They are prejudiced without reason and so are liable to have wrong opinions of God.

What is this prejudice?

This prejudice is about the nature and characteristics of matter. Man is so conditioned in his suppositions about the existence of matter that he never thinks about whether it does or does not exist, or whether it is only a shadow. Modern science demolishes this prejudice and discloses a very important and revealing reality. In the following pages, we will clarify this great reality to which the Qur'an points.

We Live in a Universe Presented to Us by Our Perceptions

According to Albert Camus, you can grasp and count happenings through science, but you cannot grasp the universe. Here is the tree, you feel its hardness; here is the water, you taste it. Here is the wind, it cools you. You have to be satisfied with all that.397

All the information that we have about the realness of the world in which we live is conveyed to us by our five senses. The world we know of consists of what our eyes see, our hands feel, our noses smell, our tongues taste, and our ears hear. We never think that the "external world" could be anything other than that which our senses present to us, as we have been dependent solely on those senses since birth.

Modern research in many different fields of science points to a very different fact and creates serious doubt about our senses and the world that we perceive with them.

Bundles of light coming from an object fall on the retina upside-down. Here, the image is converted into electrical signals and transmitted to the center of vision at the back of the brain. Since the brain is insulated from light, it is impossible for light to reach the center of vision. This means that we view a vast world of light and depth in a tiny spot that is insulated from light. Even at the moment when we feel the light and heat of a fire, the inside of our brain is pitch dark and its temperature never changes.

According to scientific findings, what we perceive as "the external world," is only the result of the brain being stimulated by the electrical signals sent to it by our sense organs. The multi-hued colors you perceive with your sense of sight, the feeling of hardness or softness conveyed by your sense of touch, the tastes you experience on your tongue, the different notes and sounds you hear with your ear, the variety of scents you smell, your work, your home, all your possessions, the lines of this book, and moreover, your mother, your father, your family, the whole world you have always seen, known, got used to throughout your life, are comprised purely and simply of electrical signals sent by your sense organs to the brain. Though this seems difficult on the first analysis, this is a scientific fact. The views of renowned philosophers like Bertrand Russell and L. Wittgeinstein on this subject are as follows:

For instance, whether a lemon truly exists or not and how it came to exist cannot be questioned or investigated. A lemon consists merely of a taste sensed by the tongue, an odor sensed by the nose, a color and shape sensed by the eye; and only these features of it can be subject to examination and assessment. Science can never know the physical world.398

Frederick Vester explains the point that science has reached on this subject:

The statements of certain scientists that "man is an image, everything experienced is temporary and deceptive, and this universe is a shadow," seem to be proven by science in our day.399

The thoughts of the famous philosopher, George Berkeley, on the subject can be summarized like this:

We believe in the existence of objects just because we see and touch them, and they are reflected to us by our perceptions. However, our perceptions are only ideas in our mind. Thus, objects we captivate by perceptions are nothing but ideas, and these ideas are essentially in nowhere but our mind… Since all these exist only in the mind, then it means that we are beguiled by deceptions when we imagine the universe and things to have an existence outside the mind. So, none of the surrounding things have an existence out of our mind.400

In order to clarify the subject, let us consider our sense of sight, which provides us with the most extensive information about the external world.

How Do Our Sense Organs Work?

Few people think deeply on how the act of seeing takes place. Everyone answers the question "How do we see?" by saying "with our eyes for sure." However, when we look at the technical explanation of the process of seeing, it seems that that is not the case. The act of seeing is realized progressively. Light clusters (photons) travel from the object to the eye and pass through the lens at the front of the eye where they are refracted and fall upside down on the retina at the back of the eye. Here, impinging light is turned into electrical signals that are transmitted by neurons to a tiny spot called the centre of vision in the back of the brain. The act of seeing actually takes place in this tiny spot in the posterior part of the brain, which is pitch-dark and completely insulated from light.

Now, let us reconsider this seemingly ordinary and unremarkable process. When we say, "we see," we are, in fact, seeing the effects of impulses reaching our eyes and induced in our brain, after they are transformed into electrical signals. That is, when we say, "we see," we are actually observing the aggregate of the electrical signals in our mind. Therefore, seeing is not a process terminating in the eye; our eye is only a sense organ serving as a means in the process of seeing.

All the images we view in our lives are formed in our center of vision, in the size of a nut, which only comprises a few cubic centimeters of the volume of the brain. Both the book you are now reading, and the screen of your computer, and the boundless landscape you see when you gaze at the horizon, and the seamless sea, and a crowd of people who participate in a marathon, fit into this tiny space. Another point that has to be kept in mind is that, as we have noted before, the brain is insulated from light; its inside is absolutely dark. The brain has no contact with light itself. The place called the center of vision is a place which is pitch-dark, where light never reaches, so dark that maybe you have never been somewhere like it before. However, you watch a bright, multi-colored world in this complete darkness. A multi-colored nature, a glowing landscape, all tones of green, the colors of fruits, the patterns on flowers, the brightness of the sun, all the people in a crowded street, vehicles moving fast in the traffic, hundreds of clothes in a shopping mall, and everything else are all images formed in this pitch dark place. Even the formation of colors in this darkness has still not been discovered. Klaus Budzinski comments:

… Chromatists cannot answer the question of how the network in the eye that perceives light as well as colours transmits this information to the brain through sight nerves and what kind of physical-physiological stimulations this creates in the brain.401

We can explain this interesting situation with an example. Let us suppose that in front of us there is a burning candle. We can sit opposite this candle and watch it at length. However, during this period, our brain never has any direct contact with the original light of the candle. Even as we feel the heat and light of the candle, the inside of our brain is completely dark and its temperature never changes. We watch a colorful and bright world inside our dark brain.

The same is true of sunlight. Your eye's being dazzled in sunlight or your feeling the scorching heat on your skin does not change the fact that these are mere perceptions and the center of vision in your brain is completely dark.

R. L. Gregory gives the following explanation about the miraculous aspects of seeing - something that we take so much for granted:

We are so familiar with seeing, that it takes a leap of imagination to realize that there are problems to be solved. But consider it. We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle.402

The same situation applies to all our other senses. Sound, touch, taste, and smell are all perceived as electrical signals in the brain.

The sense of hearing works in a similar manner to that of sight. The outer ear picks up sounds by the auricle and directs them to the middle ear. The middle ear transmits the sound vibrations to the inner ear and intensifies them. The inner ear translates the vibrations into electrical signals, which it sends into the brain. Just as with the eye, the act of hearing finally takes place in the center of hearing in the brain.

What is true of the eye is also true of the ear, that is, the brain is insulated from sound just as it is from light. Therefore, no matter how noisy it is outside, the inside of the brain is completely silent. Nevertheless, even the subtlest sounds are perceived in the brain. This process is so precise that the ear of a healthy person hears everything without any atmospheric noise or interference. In your brain, which is insulated from sound, and where there is dead silence, you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, hear all the noises of a crowded place, and perceive all the sounds within a wide frequency range, from the rustling of a leaf to the roar of a jet plane. However, if the sound level in your brain were to be measured by a sensitive device at that moment, it would be seen that complete silence prevailed within it.

Our perception of odor works in a similar way. Volatile molecules emitted by things such as vanilla or a rose reach the receptors in the delicate hairs in the epithelial region of the nose and become involved in an interaction. This interaction is transmitted to the brain as electrical signals and perceived as smell. Everything that we smell, be it pleasant or unpleasant, is nothing but the brain's perception of the interactions of volatile molecules after they have been transformed into electrical signals. You perceive the scent of a perfume, a flower, a food that you like, the sea, or other odors you like or dislike, in your brain. The molecules themselves never reaches the brain. Just as with sound and vision, what reaches your brain as you sense an odor is simply a set of electrical signals. In other words, all the odors that you have assumed-since you were born-to belong to external objects are just electrical signals that you experience through your sense organs. Berkeley also said:

At the beginning, it was believed that colours, odours, etc., "really exist," but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in dependence on our sensations.403

Similarly, there are four different types of chemical receptors in the front part of a human being's tongue. These pertain to the four tastes: salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. Our taste receptors transform these perceptions into electrical signals through a chain of chemical processes and transmit them to the brain. These signals are perceived as taste by the brain. The taste you experience when you eat a chocolate bar or a fruit that you like is the interpretation of electrical signals by the brain. You can never reach the object in the external world; you can never see, smell or taste the chocolate itself. For instance, if the taste nerves that travel to the brain were cut, the taste of things you ate would not reach your brain; you would completely lose your sense of taste.

At this point, we come across another fact:

We can never be sure that what we experience when we taste a food and what another person experiences when he tastes the same food, or what we perceive when we hear a voice and what another person perceives when he hears the same voice are the same. Lincoln Barnett says that no one can know whether another person perceives the color red or hears the note C in same way as does he himself.404

We only know as much as our sense organs relate to us. It is impossible for us to reach the physical reality outside us directly. It is again the brain that interprets it. We can never reach the original. Therefore, even when we talk about the same thing, others' brains may be perceiving something different. The reason for this is that what is perceived depends on the perceiver.

The same logic applies to our sense of touch. When we touch an object, all information that will help us recognize the external world and the objects in it is transmitted to the brain by the sense nerves on the skin. The feeling of touch is formed in our brain. Contrary to general belief, the place where we perceive the sense of touch is not at our fingertips, or on our skins, but at the center of touch perception in our brains. Because of the brain's interpretation of the electrical stimuli coming to it from objects, we experience those objects differently, e.g. they may be hard or soft, hot or cold. We derive all the details that help us recognize an object from these stimuli. The renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell comments in relation to this:

As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.405

That the outside world can be identified completely through the senses is a scientific fact. In his book, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley comments as follows:

By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance. ...Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds. ...And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things. . .406

Therefore, by processing the data in the centers of vision, sound, smell, taste and touch, our brains, throughout our lives, do not confront the "original" of the matter existing outside us but rather the copy formed inside our brain. It is at this point that we are misled by assuming these copies are instances of the real matter outside us. However, as seen throughout the book, there are also thinkers and scientists who have not been misled by such a misconception, and who have realized this fact.

Even Ali Demirsoy, one of the most famous Turkish materialists, also confessed this truth:

In truth, there is neither light as we see it, nor sound as we hear it, nor heat as we sense it in the universe. Our sense organs mislead us between the external world and brain and give rise to interpretations which are irrelevant to reality in the brain.407

Do We Spend Our Entire Life in Our Brains?

From the physical facts described so far, we may conclude the following. Everything we see, touch, hear, and perceive as "matter," "the world" or "the universe" is only electrical signals occurring in our brain. Therefore, someone drinking an orange juice does not confront the actual drink but its perception in the brain. The object considered by the onlooker to be a "drink" actually consists of electrical impressions of the orange color, sweet taste, and liquid feeling of the orange juice in the brain. The situation is no different while eating chocolate; the electrical data pertaining to the shape, taste, odor, and hardness of the chocolate are perceived in the brain. If the sight nerves traveling to the brain were suddenly to be severed, the image of the chocolate would just as suddenly disappear. A disconnection in the nerve traveling from the sensors in the nose to the brain would completely interrupt the sense of smell.

Put simply, the tree that you see, the objects you smell, the chocolate you taste, and the orange juice you drink are nothing but the brain's interpretation of electrical signals.

Another point to be considered, which might be deceptive, is the sense of distance. For example, the distance between you and this book is only a feeling of space formed in your brain. Objects that seem to be distant from the human viewpoint also exist only in the brain. For instance, someone who watches the stars in the sky assumes that they are millions of light-years away from him. Yet, what he "sees" are really the stars inside himself, in his center of vision. During a trip, one looks at the city below from a plane and thinks that it is kilometers away from him. However, the whole length and breadth of the city are inside one's brain along with all the people in it.

Today, all scientific data prove that the image we perceive is formed in our brain.

There is yet another misleading, but very important factor. While you read these lines, you are, in truth, not inside the room you assume yourself to be in; on the contrary, the room is inside you. Your seeing your body makes you think that you are inside it. However, you must remember that your body, too, is an image formed inside your brain. Bertrand Russell states the following on the subject:

What we can say, on the basis of physics itself, is that what we have hitherto called our body is really an elaborate scientific construction not corresponding to any physical reality.408

The truth is very clear. If we can feel the external world only through our sense organs, then there would be no consistent reason for us to consider our body to be separate from the external world, that is, to concede that our body has a separate existence.

Our body is also presented to us by the electrical stimulations (impulses) reaching our brain. These impulses, just like all others, are converted into certain sensations, or feelings in our brain. For instance, the feeling of touch occurring when we touch our body with our hand, the feeling of weight caused by the force of gravity, the feeling of seeing caused by the light rays reflected from our body, etc… all these are assessed as a "collection of feelings" by the brain, and we "feel" our body. As revealed by these scientific facts, throughout our lives, we are exposed not to our original body, but to the impulses reaching our brain pertaining to our body. These impulses are identified as "our body" in our perception.

The same applies to all your other perceptions. For instance, when you think that you hear the sound of the television in the next room, you are actually experiencing the sound inside your brain. You can prove neither that a room exists next to yours, nor that a sound comes from the television in that room. Both the sound you think to be coming from meters away and the conversation of a person right next to you are perceived in a center of hearing in your brain which is only a few square centimeters in size. Apart from within this center of perception, no concept such as right, left, front or behind exists. That is, sound does not come to you from the right, from the left or from the air; there is no direction from which sound comes.

The smells that you perceive are like that too; none of them reaches you from a great distance. You suppose that the end-effects formed in your center of smell are the smell of the objects in the external world. However, just as the image of a rose is in your center of vision, so the smell of the rose is in your center of smell; there is neither a rose nor an odor pertaining to it in the external world.

The same facts hold true also for heat. One of the foremost philosophers of his age, George Berkeley, clarifies with the following example that senses like coldness and hotness cannot be judged to exist outside the mind:

Suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state; will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other?409

Berkeley is right in his analysis. Had heat or cold been present in the matter itself, both hands would have felt the same thing.

The findings of modern physics show that the universe is a collection of perceptions. Thus the well-known science journal New Scientist asks:"Beyond Reality:Is the Universe Really a Frolic of Primal Information and Matter Just a Mirage?"

The "external world" presented to us by our perceptions is merely a collection of electrical signals reaching our brains. Throughout our lives, our brains process and interpret these signals and we live without recognizing that we are mistaken in assuming that these are the original versions of things existing in the "external world." We are misled because we can never reach these entities themselves by means of our senses. This point is extremely important.

Moreover, again our brains interpret and attribute meaning to signals that we assume to be the "external world." For example, let us consider the sense of hearing. Our brains transform the sound waves in the "external world" into a rhythm. That is to say, music is also a perception created by our brains. In the same manner, when we see colors, what reaches our eyes is merely a set of electrical signals of different wavelengths. Again our brains transform these signals into colors. There are no colors in the "external world." Neither is the lemon yellow, nor is the sky blue, nor are the trees green. They are as they are just because we perceive them to be so. The "external world" depends entirely on the perceiver. Color blindness is important evidence for this. Even the slightest defect in the retina of the eye causes color blindness. Some people perceive blue as green, and some red as blue. At this point, it does not matter whether the object externally is colored or not.

According to the prominent thinker Berkeley:

If the same things can be red and hot for some and the contrary for others, this means that we are under the influence of misconceptions and that "things" only exist in our brains.410

In conclusion, the reason we see objects as colored is not because they are colored or because they have an independent material existence outside ourselves. Had colors existed outside us, a deficiency called color blindness would not have existed. The truth of the matter is rather that all the qualities we ascribe to objects are inside us and not in the "external world."

Is the Existence of the "External World" Indispensable?

So far, we have been speaking repeatedly of the existence of a world of perceptions formed in our brains, and making the assertion that we can never actually reach this world. Then, how can we be sure that such a world really exists?

Actually, we cannot. Since each object is only a collection of perceptions and those perceptions exist only in the mind, it is more accurate to say that the only world that really exists is the world of perceptions. The only world we know of is the world that exists in our mind: the one that is designed, recorded, and made vivid there; the one, in short, that is created within our mind. This is the only world of which we can be sure.

We can never prove that the perceptions we observe in our brain have material correlates. Those perceptions could conceivably be coming from an "artificial" source.

We can visualize this with such an example:

First, let us imagine that we take your brain out of your body and keep it alive artificially in a glass cube. Next to it, let us place a computer with which all kinds of electrical signals can be produced. Then, let us artificially produce and record in this computer the electrical signals of the data related to a setting, such as image, sound, odor, hardness-softness, taste, and body image. This experiment with your brain, which we have taken out of your body, will be carried out on the peak of a deserted mountain. Finally, let us connect the computer to the brain with electrodes that will function as nerves and send the pre-recorded data to your brain which is now high above the clouds. As your brain (which is literally you) perceives these signals, it will see and experience the corresponding setting. For instance, let us suppose that every detail that comes to mind about a football match in a stadium be produced or recorded-in a way to be perceived through the sense organs. In your brain, all by itself at the summit of the mountain, with this recording instrument connected to it, you would feel as if you were living in this artificially created setting. You would think that you were at the match. You would cheer, you would sometimes get angry and sometimes be pleased. Moreover, you would often bump into other people because of the crowd, and therefore feel their existence, too. Most interestingly, everything would be so vivid that you would never doubt the existence of this setting or your body. Or if we sent to your brain the electrical correlates of senses such as seeing, hearing, and touching which you perceive while sitting at a table, your brain would think of itself as a businessman sitting in his office. This imaginary world will continue so long as the stimulations keep coming from the computer. It will never become possible to understand that you consist of nothing but your brain. This is because what is needed to form a world within your brain is not the existence of a real world but rather the stimuli. It is perfectly possible that these stimuli could be coming from an artificial source, such as a recording device or a different kind of perception source. Experiments carried out about this subject demonstrate this fact.

In the U.S.A., Dr. White from Cleveland Hospital, along with his colleagues, all experts in electronics, performed a great feat in making "Cyborg" survive. What Dr. White succeeded in doing was isolating an ape's brain from his skull and feeding it with oxygen and blood. The brain, which was connected to an artificially produced "Heart Lung Machine," was kept alive for five hours. The device, called an Electro Encephalogram, to which the isolated brain was connected, identified in E.E.G. records that the noises made in the surroundings were heard by this brain and that it reacted to them.411

As we have seen, it is quite possible that we perceive an external world through externally given artificial stimuli. The symbols you would perceive with your five senses are sufficient for this. Other than these symbols, there is nothing left of the external world.

It is indeed very easy for us to be misled into believing perceptions, without any material correlates, to be real. We often experience this feeling in our dreams, in which we experience events, see people, objects and settings that seem completely real. However, they are all, without exception, mere perceptions. There is no basic difference between the "dream" and the "real" world; both of them are experienced in the brain.

Who Is the Perceiver?

As we have related so far, there is no doubt that the world we think we inhabit and know as the "external world" is perceived inside our brain. However, here arises the question of primary importance. Is the will that perceives all these perceptions the brain itself?

When we analyze the brain, we see that it is comprised of lipid and protein molecules, which also exist in other living organisms. As is well known, the essence of these proteins is, in fact, atoms. This means that within the piece of meat we call our "brain," there is nothing to observe the images, to constitute consciousness, or to create the being we call "myself."

R. L. Gregory refers to a mistake people make in relation to the perception of images in the brain:

There is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye to see it-but this would need a further eye to see its picture… and so on, in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.412

This is the very point that puts materialists, who do not hold anything but matter to be true, in a quandary: to whom belongs "the eye inside" that sees, that interprets what it sees and reacts?

Karl Pribram also focused on this important question, about who the perceiver is, in the world of science and philosophy:

Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I-the entity that uses the brain? Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking."413

Now, think of this: The book in your hand, the room you are in, in brief, all the images in front of you are seen inside your brain. Is it the atoms that see these images? Blind, deaf, unconscious atoms? How would lifeless and unconscious atoms feel, how would they see? Why did some atoms acquire this quality whereas others did not? Do our acts of thinking, comprehending, remembering, being delighted, being unhappy, and everything else consist of the electrochemical reactions between these atoms? No, the brain cannot be the will that performs all of these.

In previous sections, we have pointed out that our body is also included in the collection of perceptions we call the "external world." Therefore, since our brain is also a part of our body, it is also a part of that collection of perceptions. Since the brain itself is a perception, therefore, it cannot be the will that perceives other perceptions.

In his book, The ABC of Relativity, Bertrand Russell focuses attention on this subject by saying:

Of course, if matter in general is to be interpreted as a group of occurrences, this must apply also to the eye, the optic nerve and the brain.414

It is clear that the being that sees, hears, senses, and feels is a supra-material being. For matter cannot think, feel, be happy or unhappy. It is not possible to do all these with the body alone. Therefore, this being is neither matter, nor image, but it is "alive." This being relates to the "screen" in front of it by using the image of our body.

An example about dreams will illuminate the subject further. Let us imagine (in accordance with what has been said so far) that we see the dream within our brain. In the dream, we will have an imaginary body, an imaginary arm, an imaginary eye, and an imaginary brain. If during our dream, we were asked, "Where do you see?" we would answer, "I see in my brain." If we were asked where our brain is and what it looks like, we would hold our imaginary head on our imaginary body with our imaginary hand and say, "My brain is a hunk of meat in my head weighing hardly more than a kilo."

THE WORLD IN DREAMS For you, reality is all that can be touched with the hand and seen with the eye. In your dreams you can also "touch with your hand and see with your eye", but in reality, you have neither hand nor eye, nor is there anything that can be touched or seen. There is no material reality that makes these things happen except your brain. You are simply being deceived. What is it that separates real life and the dreams from one another? Ultimately, both forms of life are brought into being within the brain. If we are able to live easily in an unreal world during our dreams, the same thing can equally be true for the world we live in. When we wake up from a dream, there is no logical reason for not thinking that we have entered a longer dream that we call "real life". The reason we consider our dream to be fancy and the world as real is nothing but a product of our habits and prejudices. This suggests that we may well be awoken from the life on earth which we think we are living right now, just as we are awoken from a dream.

Yet, actually there is not any brain to talk about, but an imaginary head and an imaginary brain. The seer of the images is not the imaginary brain in the dream, but a "being" that is far "superior" to it.

We know that there is no physical distinction between the setting of a dream and the setting we call real life. So when we are asked in the setting we call real life the above question: "Where do you see?" it would be just as meaningless to answer "in my brain" as in the example above. In both conditions, the entity that sees and perceives is not the brain, which is after all only a hunk of meat. Realizing this fact, Bergson said in his book, Matter and Memory, in summary, that "the world is made up of images, these images only exist in our consciousness; and the brain is one of these images."415

Therefore, since the brain is a part of the external world, there has to be a will to perceive all these images. This being is the "soul."

The aggregate of perceptions we call the "material world" is nothing but a dream observed by this soul. Just as the bodies we possess and the material world we see in our dreams have no reality, the universe we occupy and the bodies we possess also have no material reality. The famous British philosopher David Hume expresses his thoughts on this fact:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.416

The real being is the soul. Matter consists merely of perceptions viewed by the soul. The intelligent beings that write and read these lines are not each a heap of atoms and molecules and the chemical reactions between them, but a "soul."

The Real Absolute Being

All these facts bring us face to face with a very significant question. If the thing we acknowledge to be the material world is merely comprised of perceptions seen by our soul, then what is the source of these perceptions?

In answering this question, we must consider the following: matter does not have a self-governing existence by itself. Since matter is a perception, it is something "artificial." That is, this perception must have been caused by another power, which means that it must have been created. Moreover, this creation must be continuous. If there were not a continuous and consistent creation, then what we call matter would disappear and be lost. This may be likened to a television screen on which a picture is displayed as long as the signal continues to be broadcast. So, who makes our soul see the stars, the earth, plants, people, our bodies, and all else that we see?

It is very evident that there is a Creator, Who has created the entire material universe, that is, the sum of perceptions, and continues His creation ceaselessly. Since this Creator displays such a magnificent creation, He surely has eternal power and might.

This Creator introduces Himself to us. He sent down a book and through this book has described to us Himself, the universe, and the reason for our existence.

This Creator is God and the name of His book is the Qur'an.

The facts that the heavens and the earth, that is, the universe is not stable, that their presence is only made possible by God's creating them and that they will disappear when He ends this creation, are all explained in a verse as follows:

It is God Who sustains the heavens and the earth, lest they cease (to function): and if they should fail, there is none-not one-can sustain them thereafter: Truly, He is Most Forbearing and Oft-Forgiving. (Qur'an, 35: 41)

As we mentioned at the beginning, some people have no genuine understanding of God and so they imagine Him as a being present somewhere in the heavens and not really intervening in worldly affairs. The basis of this logic actually lies in the thought that the universe is an assembly of matter and God is "outside" this material world, in a faraway place.

However, as we have considered so far, matter is composed only of sensations. And the only real absolute being is God. That means that only God exists; all things except Him are shadow beings. Consequently, it is impossible to conceive of God as separate and outside this whole mass of matter. For there is actually nothing such as matter in the sense of being. God is surely "everywhere" and encompasses all. This reality is explained in the Qur'an as follows;

God, there is no deity except Him, the Living, the Self-Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep. Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them but they cannot grasp any of His knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool encompasses the heavens and the earth and their preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the Magnificent. (Qur'an, 2: 255)

Since material beings are each a perception, they cannot see God; but God sees the matter He created in all its forms. In the Qur'an, this is stated thus: "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision." (Qur'an, 6: 103)

That is, we cannot grasp God's being with our eyes, but God has thoroughly encompassed our inside, outside, looks and thoughts. For this reason, God says that "He controls hearing and sight" (Qur'an, 10: 31). We cannot utter a single word without His knowledge, nor can we even take a breath.

While we watch these sensory perceptions in the course of our lives, the closest being to us is not any one of these sensations, but God Himself. The following verse of the Qur'an asserts this reality: "It is We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein." (Qur'an, 50: 16) When a person thinks that his body is made up only of "matter," he cannot comprehend this important fact. If he takes his brain to be "himself," then the place that he accepts to be the outside is 20-30 cm away from him. According to this reasoning, nothing can be nearer to him than his jugular vein. However, when he understands that there is nothing such as matter, and that everything is imagination, notions such as outside, inside, far or near, lose their meaning. God has encompassed him and He is "infinitely close" to him.

God informs men that He is "infinitely close" to them in the verse: "When My servants ask you about Me, tell them I am indeed close (to them)." (Qur'an, 2: 186). Another verse relates the same fact: "We have told you that your Lord encompasses all men." (Qur'an, 17: 60). However, man is misled in thinking that the being closest to him is himself. God, in truth, is even closer to us than ourselves.

He has called our attention to this point in the verse: "Why is it that when it (the soul) comes up to the throat, and you at that time look on, We are nearer to him than you, but you do not see this." (Qur'an, 56: 83-85).

The only conclusion to be derived from the sum total of the facts presented here is that the only and real and absolute being is God. With His knowledge, God encompasses man, who is a shadow being, as well as everything else.

Quite the reverse is true of man, who is nothing but a shadow being, and who is so wholly dependent on God, that it is impossible for him to have any independent power or will: "You will not will unless God wills." (Qur'an, 76: 39). Another verse showing that everything we experience takes place under God's control runs: "God has created you and what you do!" (Qur'an, 37: 96). In the Qur'an, this reality is stated at many points and with the verse "You did not throw, when you threw, it was God who threw" (Qur'an, 8: 17), it is emphasized that no act is independent of God.

This is the reality. The individual may not want to concede this and may think of himself as a being independent of God; but this does not change a thing. Of course his unwise denial is again subject to God's will and desire. In the Qur'an, this fact is addressed thus:

It is other than the religion of God that you desire, when everything in the heavens and earth, willingly or unwillingly, submits to Him? To Him you will all be returned. (Qur'an, 3: 83)

Conclusion

The subject we have explained so far is one of the greatest truths that you will ever be told in your lifetime.

You can explore beyond this point by dint of personal reflection. For this, you have to concentrate upon, devote your attention to, and ponder on the way you see the objects around you and the way you feel their touch. If you think heedfully, you can feel that the intelligent being that sees, hears, touches, thinks, and reads this book at this moment is only a soul, who watches the perceptions called "matter" on a screen. One who comprehends this is considered to have moved away from the domain of the material world that deceives a major part of humanity, and to have entered the domain of true existence.

This reality has been understood by a number of theists and philosophers throughout history. Islamic intellectuals such as Imam Rabbani, Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi and Mawlana Jami realized this from the signs of the Qur'an and by using their reason. Some Western philosophers like George Berkeley have grasped the same reality through reason. Imam Rabbani wrote in his Maktubat (Letters) that the whole material universe is an "illusion and supposition (perception)" and that the only absolute being is God:

God… The substance of these beings which He created is mere nothingness… He created all in the sphere of senses and illusions… The existence of the universe is in the sphere of senses and illusions, and it is not material… In reality, there is nothing on the outside except the Glorious Being, (Who is God).417

Mawlana Jami stated the same fact, which he discovered by following the signs of the Qur'an and by using his wit: "All phenomena of the universe are senses and illusions. They are either like reflections in mirrors or shadows."

However, the number of those who have understood this fact throughout history has always been limited. Great scholars such as Imam Rabbani have written that it might not be wise to tell this fact to the masses, because most people are not able to grasp it.

In the age in which we live, this has been established as an empirical fact by the body of evidence put forward by science. The fact that the universe is a shadow being is described for the first time in history in such a concrete, clear, and explicit way.

For this reason, the twentyfirst century will be a historical turning point, when people will generally comprehend the divine realities and be led in crowds to God, the only Absolute Being. The materialistic creeds of the nineteenth century will be relegated to the trash-heaps of history, God's being and creating will be accepted, spacelessness and timelessness will be understood; humanity, in short, will cast aside the centuries-old veils, deceits and superstitions which have been confusing them.

It is not possible for this unavoidable course to be impeded by any shadow being.

397 Orhan Hançerlioðlu, Düþünce Tarihi (History of Idea), Remzi Kitabevi, Ýstanbul: 1987, p.432.
398 Orhan Hançerlioðlu, Düþünce Tarihi (History of Idea), Remzi Kitabevi, Ýstanbul: 1987, p.447.
399 Frederick Vester, Denken, Lernen, Vergessen, vga, 1978, p. 6.
400 George Politzer, Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, pp. 38-39-44.
401 Bilim ve Teknik Magazine (Science and Technology), No. 227, p. 6-7.
402 R.L.Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 1990, p.9. (emphasis added)
403 George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710, Works of George Berkeley, vol. I, ed. A. Fraser, Oxford, 1871. (emphasis added)
404 Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, William Sloane Associate, New York, 1948, p. 20. (emphasis added)
405 Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, pp. 161-162. (emphasis added)
406 George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710, Works of George Berkeley, vol. I, ed. A. Fraser, Oxford, 1871 p. 35-36. (emphasis added)
407 Ali Demirsoy, Kalýtým ve Evrim (Inheritance and Evolution), p.4. (emphasis added)
408 Bertrand Russell, What is the Soul?, Works of George Berkeley, vol. I, ed. A. Fraser, Oxford, 1871. (emphasis added)
409 Bertrand Russell, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Works of George Berkeley, vol. I, ed. A. Fraser, Oxford, 1871. (emphasis added)
410 George Politzer, Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, p. 40.
411 Bilim ve Teknik Magazine (Science and Technology), No:111, p.2. (emphasis added)
412 R.L.Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 1990, p.9.
413 Ken Wilber, Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, p.20. (emphasis added)
414 Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, pp. 161-162. (emphasis added)
415 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Zone Books, New York, 1991. (emphasis added)
416 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Section IV: Of Personal Identity. (emphasis added)
417 Ýmam Rabbani, Hz. Mektuplarý (Letters of Rabbani), Vol II, 357. Letter, p. 163. (emphasis added)