Page 818 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

and future have been lived and come to an end in an instant in His sight. However, God allows us to expe-
rience these tests and causes so that people should witness their own attitudes and understand why they go
to heaven or hell. Someone who knows that God is his friend—that He is infinitely just, compassionate and
loving— will accept this creation of His.

God shows us things that have already happened in His sight. He gives people the feeling that they are
doing these actions themselves, of their own free will. Within that feeling, He announces by means of the
Qur’an that we are responsible for everything He reveals. That responsibility is to obey all of our Lord's
commands. We can learn beyond this only if God wills. If He wishes, God can reveal this secret and wisdom

to us either in the world or in the hereafter. Or if He wishes, never at all. As stated in a verse, 'they cannot
grasp any of His knowledge save what He wills'. (Surat al-Baqara: 255) Whatever happens, God is our
Lord and Protector. It is therefore our duty to trust in Him, who gives us so many blessings, and to be
pleased with everything He creates.

Some people in the past have grasped the truth about the essence of matter, yet because their faith in
God and their understanding of the Qur’an have been weak, they have produced deviant ideas. Some have
said, "Everything is an illusion, so there is no point in worship." Such ideas are twisted and ignorant. It is
true that everything is an image presented to us by God. However, it is also true that God charges us to

abide by the Qur’an. What we have to do is to carefully abide by His commands and prohibitions.
In the Qur’an, God reveals that He has provided very little information about the soul. God has created
this image of a test for a certain cause:

We will test you with a certain amount of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and life and fruits. But give
good news to the steadfast. (Surat al-Baqara: 155)

You will be tested in your wealth and in yourselves and you will hear many abusive words from those given
the Book before you and from those who associate others with God. But if you are steadfast and do your duty,
that is the most resolute course to take. (Surah Al 'Imran: 186)

There is considerable wisdom within this test. One of these is that we are tested and then sent to heaven or
hell for all eternity as a result. Further wisdom could lie in the way people can witness what they do through-
out their lives, and see why the morality by which they have lived should lead them to heaven or hell at the
Day of Judgment. But God knows best. All we can do is to pray that He will reveal His knowledge to us.

Objection: "From what we have seen so far, our perception will continue even after death. Will that last for-

ever? Are heaven and hell nothing but totalities of perception?"
Reply: God has created the people in such a way that we can only perceive the world by means of im-
ages presented to our souls. In other words, we can still see the images presented to us, whether there is a
real physical world out there or not. However, after death God will create the individual in a different man-

ner, although we can never know what that is.
Nevertheless, the fact that heaven and hell are experienced as perceptions does not in the least detract
from the pleasure received from the former, nor the suffering from the latter. In the same way that someone
in this world feels pain when he burns his hand, so he will also feel the reality of this perception in the here-

after. As has already been mentioned, feelings such as pain are also perceived in the brain. However, this
perception, which everybody experiences, has been created to be exceedingly realistic, just like all our other
perceptions. People can even faint from the violence of the pain they feel. In the same way, some images can
cause people intense discomfort, even though they are created as perceptions in our minds. For instance, an

unpleasant sight or sound, or a bad smell can cause great discomfort. The fact these are perceived in the
brain changes nothing. Therefore, even though hell will be presented to the soul as a perception, that fact
does nothing to lighten the torment that will be experienced there. In the same way that God creates the
life of this world to be so clear and convincing that people assume it to be "a definite fact," He has the power

to do exactly the same thing in the hereafter. God reveals in several verses that the torments of hell are quite
unbearable:
... My punishment is the Painful Punishment. (Surat al-Hijr: 50)

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