Page 98 - Eternity Has Already Begun
P. 98
ETERNITY HAS ALREADY BEGUN
as stated earlier, because all the information that you have about the
world is conveyed to you by your five senses, and because you have
such a dependency on your senses and no information pertaining to
this image is kept in your memory, you do not see such a scene. This
is true of everything you experience in life. The day you enrolled in
primary school, one of the birthdays you celebrated, an event you
experienced, the day you graduated from high school, your wed-
ding day and similar other "turning points" in your life are each, in
the Sight of Allah, merely a moment. None of these events disap-
peared; they will exist forever.
Similarly, the sweet taste you discovered in chocolate when you
were only a five year old, the anxiety you felt when you woke up to
the first day of the primary school, the boredom you felt in one of
the classes in high school, the difficult equations your maths teacher
wrote on the blackboard, the pain you felt when you lost a close a
friend in a traffic accident, the pride you took in your academic ac-
complishments, the glow of happiness you felt when you succeeded
in having something you had dreamed of for years, in brief, all your
experiences and feelings remain just as they were; they are not sim-
ply kept in your memory. You perceive what is kept in your memo-
ry simply as memory or the past. Though they exist right now, the
brain does not perceive these scenes, since this is the way man is be-
ing tested on earth. Believing they are bound by a steady, unvarying
time flow, streaming from the past to the future, people assume
their lives are divided into distinct sections, namely, past, present
and future. This actually poses a major hindrance to their grasp of
particular events like the existence of the hereafter, when and where
Paradise, Hell and the Day of Judgment will take place. They cannot
relate the concept of time in the Sight of Allah to the concept of time
people are bound by. However, knowing that every living being,
every event and everything is created eternally square by square
just like the squares making up a film roll and brought into being si-
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