Page 656 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

tronomers who never questioned their as-
sumption that the Earth was the center of the
universe, we never question our assumption
that the external world is physical in nature.
Indeed it was quite startling to me when I

realized that the answer might be staring us
straight in the face. Maybe there really is not-
hing there. No “thing,” that is. No physical

aspect. Maybe there is only a mental aspect
to everything. 46

Research into the brain can never answer
questions regarding who or what does the
perceiving, because what scientists are see-
king in the brain is actually something very

different from human beings’ physical bodi-
es—something that exists in their own identity.
American author Marilyn Ferguson notes this important search in the world of science and philosophy
for who or what it is that performs such perceiving:

Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the “ghost in the machine” the “little man inside the litt-

le 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.” 47
Consciousness is a property belonging solely to the soul bestowed on human beings by Allah. It is thro-

ugh the soul that man becomes an entity able to think, perceive and decide. The mind and consciousness
possessed by human beings are properties bestowed on them by the soul. In one
verse Allah tells us that:

Accordingly, We have revealed to you a Spirit by Our command. You
had no idea of what the Book was, nor faith. Nonetheless We have
made it a Light by which We guide those of Our servants We will.
Truly you are guiding to a Straight Path. (Qur’an, 26:52)
This subject will be clarified in detail later.

654 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4