Page 698 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

It is im por tant that ma te ri al ist sci en tists should be aware of this fact, be cause the ques tion “Who
is it who per ceives?” has on ly one an swer, and that an swer is no longer a phys i cal one. It is the so-
ul be stowed on man by Allah that per ceives. So long as peo ple fail to re al ize this or be have as if they
did not, none of their state ments or de scrip tions re gard ing con scious ness are of any con se quence.

The ev i dence so clear ly re vealed by quan tum phys ics will have been ig nored. It is ob vi ous that what
makes hu man be ings hu man goes far be yond any an a tom i cal con cept claimed by ma te ri al ists. To se-
ek a ma te ri al ex pla na tion is to ig nore the facts, and is a waste of time. The soul ob serves the im a ges
in the brain. It is the soul that smells and tast es, that feels when one touch es some one, that lis tens

to the words of an oth er per son. The fact which we have set out with end less proofs and that has be-
en sci en tif i cal ly proved in the present day is that the brain does not per ceive. As the well-known
French phi los o pher Henri Bergson has stat ed: "the world is made up of images, these images only
exist in our consciousness; and the brain is one of these images." 112

That be ing so, it is on ly the soul that ob serves, re joic es, thinks, feels af fec tion, finds food de li -
cious and feels soft ness. The prop er ty that makes hu man be ings hu man is some thing in de pend ent
of the body. It is the hu man soul that en joys look ing at a land scape, that feels com pas sion to wards
a ti ny spar row, that re al iz es that a meal tast es de li cious, that en joys lis ten ing to beau ti ful mu sic, that

can make dif fi cult de ci sions, that can think and dis cov er the truth, that can in ves ti gate its own iden -
ti ty and ar rive at con clu sions.
The phys i cist Erwin Schrödinger de scribes how the ma te ri al body can not be the ex pla na tion of
the per cep tu al world:

. . . recall the bright, joyful eyes with which your child beams upon you when you bring him a new toy,

and then let the physicist tell you that in reality nothing emerges from these eyes; in reality their only
objectively detectable function is, continually to be hit by and to receive light quanta. In reality! A
strange reality! Something seems to be missing in it. 113

Is it log i cal to as sume that the abil i ty to make judg ments and de ci sions, and emo tions such as
joy, ex cite ment and dis ap point ment are the re sult of the ac tiv i ties of the neu rons in the brain? Can
un con scious at oms com bine to know about re joic ing, sor row, fla vor, friend ship and the joys of go-

od con ver sa tion? Can un con scious at oms com bine to give rise to sci en tists who in ves ti gate the bra-
in, in ter pret their find ings, strug gle to un der stand con scious ness and strive to come up with an an -
swer? Is it just the elec tri cal sig nals trav el ing through the brain that make hu man be ings hu man and

per mit them to per ceive the ex ter nal world?
Which neu ron in the brain de cides on some thing, feels long ing or sym pa thy, or is amazed at a
sun set’s beau ty? If con scious ness does all these things, then in which neu ron in the brain does con -
scious ness lie? Where is it? Which chem i cal re ac tion gives rise to con scious ness? What chem i cal re -
ac tion de cides that a per son should like ap ples, but dis like spin ach? If ev ery thing is in the brain,

which neu ron thinks? Which one de cides? Where is the neu ron that is ex cit ed by its de ci sions?
Materialists have to an swer all these ques tions. If they ar rived at the con clu sion that “Consci-
ousness is the source of ev ery thing,” then they must in di cate where in the brain con scious ness re -

sid es. If ev ery thing con sists of mat ter, they should be able to do that. If they can not, it means that
hu man be ings do not con sist of a col lec tion of neu rons and at oms. Consciousness does not re side in
som e se cret re gion of the brain. Neither is it con cealed any where in the body. It is some thing be yond
all ma te ri al ist con cepts. Man is met a phys i cal, and the soul he pos sess es makes him hu man. This so-
ul be longs to Allah alone.

The fa mous Swiss psy chologist Carl Jung, a col league of Sigmund Freud, made the fol low ing
state ment on the sub ject:

All science however is a function of the soul, in which all knowledge is rooted. The soul is the greatest
of all cosmic miracles, it is the conditio sine qua non [an essential condition] of the world as an object. It

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