Page 178 - Allah is Known through Reason

THE EXAMPLE OF DREAMS
The best example to explain this reality is the dream. A person can
experience very realistic events in dream. He can roll down the stairs and
break his leg, have a serious car accident, become stuck under a bus, or
eat a cake and be satiated. Similar events to those experienced in our daily
lives are also experienced in dreams with the same persuasive sense of
their reality, and arousing the same feelings in us.
A person who dreams that he is knocked down by a bus can open his
eyes in a hospital again in his dream and understand that he is disabled,
but it is all a dream. He can also dream that he dies in a car crash, angels
of death take his soul, and his life in the hereafter begins. (This latter event
is experienced in the same manner in this life, which, just like the dream,
is a perception.)
This person perceives very sharply the images, sounds, feelings of solid-
ity, light, colours, and all other feelings pertaining to the event he experi-
ences in his dream. The perceptions he perceives in his dream are as nat-
ural as the ones in "real" life. The cake he eats in his dream satiates him
although it is a mere dream-sense perception, because being satiated is
also a dream-sense perception. However, in reality, this person is lying in
his bed at that moment. There are no stairs, traffic, or buses to consider.
The dreaming person experiences and sees perceptions and feelings that

do not exist in the external world. The fact that in our dreams, we experi-
ence, see, and feel events with no physical correlates in the "external
world" very clearly reveals that the "external world" of our waking lives
also consists absolutely of mere perceptions.
Those who believe in materialist philosophy, particularly Marxists, are
enraged when they are told about this reality, the essence of matter. They
quote examples from the superficial reasoning of Marx, Engels, or Lenin
and make emotional declarations.
However, these persons must think that they can also make these dec-
larations in their dreams. In their dreams, they can also read "Das Kapital",
participate in meetings, fight with the police, be hit on the head, and feel
the pain of their wounds. When asked in their dreams, they will think that

178 Allah is Known Through Reason