Page 801 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

The pain and wetness when someone cuts
her hand all form in the brain. That same
person might dream she has cut her hand
and might experience the same sensations in
that dream. Yet in her dream she is simply
seeing an illusion, and there is no real knife
or bleeding wound. That being the case, the
feeling of pain does not alter the fact that we
see all our lives as images within our brains.

object. He might even say: "I am a materialist. I do
not believe in such claims. There is a physical reality in

everything I am now seeing. Look, can't you see the blood?"
Those who insist that matter does actually physically exist out-
side are like the person we have just been considering. In the world of per-
ceptions they live in, they hear the words, "All these things are perceptions, and you can never reach the
original sources of these perceptions, nor can you know whether these originals even exist or not," yet

they violently oppose this truth.
Yet we must not forget that nobody who cuts his hand just says, "This is only an image" and sits
down without doing anything about it. That is because God has created effects binding people to the im-

ages they perceive. For instance, someone who cuts his hand puts something on it, bandages it or goes to
the doctor. However, all of these processes again happen as images in the brain. The bandage and the
medicine he puts on are all images that form inside the brain.

Objection: "Is saying that matter is an illusion we perceive in our minds compatible with Islam?"
Reply: Some Muslims suggest that the fact that matter is an illusion is not compatible with Islam, and

maintain that religious scholars in the past rejected this fact. That is not actually the case, however. On
the contrary, what we are saying here is in complete conformity with the verses of the Qur’an. Many of
the verses that imply matter is an illusion are exceedingly important for a definite understanding of sub-
jects revealed in the Qur’an, such as heaven and hell, timelessness, infinity, resurrection and the here-
after.

Unquestionably, even if he is unaware of this subject, a person can still live in complete faith. He can
have faith, with all his heart and feeling no doubt, in what God has revealed in the Qur’an. We must still
make it clear, however, that an awareness of this subject allows such a person to deepen his faith and cer-

tainty. A number of Islamic scholars of the past looked on the matter from that same point of view. The
only factors that prevented what they had to say from being widely spread and known were 1) the fact
that the level of science when they lived was unable to totally clarify the subject and 2) the existence of
trends that were apt to lead to its being misunderstood.
The most important of those Islamic scholars who explained the true nature of matter was Imam

Rabbani, who has been widely respected in the Islamic world for hundreds of years and is seen as "the
greatest reformer of the 10th century according to the Muslim calendar." In his book Letters, Imam
Rabbani provides a detailed commentary on this very subject. In one of his letters, Imam Rabbani says

that God created the entire universe at the level of perception:

I have used the following sentence above, "God's creation is at the sphere of senses and perceptions." This
means "God's creation is at such a sphere that at that sphere, there is no permanency or existence for objects
apart from senses and perceptions." 46

On close examination, Imam Rabbani is careful to emphasize that the world we see, in other words
all that exists, has been created on the level of perception. All that exists outside this level of perception
is the Being of God. Actually, this concept of "outside" is a hypothetical one, because a perception has no

body, and takes up no volume. Imam Rabbani explains that things (in other words, matter) have no exis-
tence on the outside:

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