Page 158 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

determined in fate and everyone will experience those things that are written
in his fate. And in this verse, God reveals to human beings that the purpose of
the things created in their fate is to test them and to purify their hearts. In the

Koran it is said that everyone's death is determined in the sight of God and that
the conception of a baby happens with the permission of God.
God created you from dust and then from a drop of sperm and then
made you into pairs. No female becomes pregnant or gives birth except

with His knowledge. And no living thing lives long or has its life cut
short without that being in a Book. That is easy for God. (Surah Fatir: 11)

In the verses below it is revealed that everything a person does is written
sentence by sentence and what those in paradise experience are also things that
have already been experienced. As we said earlier, the real life of paradise is for
us in the future. But the lives of those in paradise, their conversations and
feasting is in God's memory at this moment. Before we were born, the future
of humanity in this world and the next had been experienced in God's sight in
a moment and is being kept in God's memory.

Everything they did is in the Books. Everything is recorded, big or
small. The heedful are amid Gardens and Rivers, on seats of honour in

the presence of a Competent Sovereign. (Surat al-Qamar: 52-55)
We can understand from this way of speaking in the Koran that, in God's
sight, time is a single moment and for Him there is no past or future. As we see,
some events that will be for us in the future, are understood in the Koran as
being long passed. This is because both the past and the future are created by
God as a single moment. Therefore, an event which is related to occur in the
future, in fact, has already occurred, but, because we cannot understand this, we
think of them as future. For example, in the verses where the account to be given
to God by human beings is described, it is understood as a long passed event.

And the trumpet is blown, and all who are in the heavens and all who
are on the earth swoon away, save him whom God wills. Then it is

blown a second time, and behold them standing waiting! And the earth
shone with the light of her Lord, and the Book is set up, and the
prophets and the witnesses are brought, and it is judged between them
with truth, and they are not wronged. Every self will be repaid in full
for what it did. He knows best what they are doing. Those who
disbelieve will be driven to Hell in companies and when they arrive

156 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION