The morning had withheld its sunlight and left only a gray hue to open its doors when the man turned aside to his wife facing him, her Cantu-scented curls waving in his face. The sunlight compliments her already perfect face even though the gray brings gloom to others, but not him. The sounds of breakfast cooking brew an ambience that acts as lenses onto her beauty while her eyes secure her innocence. The appreciation of sunlight comes natural for those who don’t have it, but alternatives are the only option with no availability. As a result, he finds the sunlight captured in her beauty while her eyes take the picture.

“Want some eggs,” she asks, her words softly layered.

“With syrup please,” he replies as his words stick to his mouth.

Her response echoes through the whole house, her laughter bounces off the walls. Her eyes close when she laughs and he wonders what she sees. The sight she sees contains an expression of her love with him at the center of her photograph. In the meanwhile, a whole dictionary was consumed in the process of describing what she feels towards what she sees.

The day passes them by in a swirl of heartfelt emotions. A haze of old music lingers in the house as she takes two steps back while he takes two steps forward.

She asks, “Where did the day go?”                                                                                      

“With you in my arms,” he responds.

“Ha-Ha-Ha,” she says sarcastically.

Her laugh gets softer and softer as he feels the heat escape her body. Her eyes flash red not with pain but with a warning. “Low Battery! Charge Now!” but a recharge isn’t possible, at least not in an electrical sense. With this he holds her memory tightly, tighter than the grip of death itself. He carries her soul in his heart as he steps to the cellar. Her brown hair now twisted with curls, rooted in the insecurities of others. The door creaks open to deliver a gust of contempt for death and a sense of resurrection. Human sized tubes litter the wall. The same face stares back at him at least a dozen times, providing twelve instances of relief. A transaction is made with his heart and mind, and one of the tubes opens. He feels elated but the air still chills around him, and an aura steps out followed by a hand reaching for him.

The morning withholds its sunlight and leaves only the gray to open its doors when the man turns aside to his wife facing him, her strawberry scented hair waving in his face.

We woke at the thud, panicked.

My wife and I had been dozing in bed, squeezing the last seconds of sleep out of our pillows before the inevitable onslaught of little people. It’s something of a delicious defeat when you hear the door creak open and steps on the carpet. You know you’re trading something so precious to you (sleep) for someone so precious, who you just wish would be precious elsewhere. But then they’re all warm and soft and tousle-headed and snuggly and saying things like “daddy, can we have special cereal?” and poking their knees into your side and sitting on your face with a full diaper and sticking cold toes into your armpits.

This morning they didn’t get to do all those precious, horrible things to us because we woke up to the sound of something thwacking against our window. After shaking off the confusion (no, it’s not a child on the roof; they can’t reach the window), I recalled why I knew the sound. It was a bird. And from the sound, a pretty sizable one.

I said as much to my wife, as I tried to open my eyes but managed only a half-squint. She half-muttered sympathy, as if she cared deeply inside but couldn’t get past the early morning fog. I added that since it was a big bird, it probably got away a little dazed, no harm done. I tried to find her to give her a reassuring pat, but I was too drowsy and missed completely. I also couldn’t pry my eyelids open still; they ached a little, as if I hadn’t used them for a week instead of approximately six hours.

I’ve read that birds, reptiles, and some mammals have something called a nictitating membrane, a third eyelid that acts as a translucent shield when they are diving or flying. They can draw it horizontally across each eye to moisten and protect it. For instance, many birds use it when they are regurgitating food for their kids so they don’t get their eyes poked out by little beaks.

I think of things like this when I’m abruptly disturbed from sleep. Things like this, and demonic children’s songs that will not be exorcised for hours.

We turned over and buried ourselves in the blankets for three more minutes before the precious, horrible people came and got us.

Nadia was playing hopscotch out on the sidewalk later in the morning when she found the bird. Robins are always the first birds my children encounter and remember. It was easy for her to name the body she stumbled upon, one story below our window, and quite dead. We had a little flurry of don’t-touch-that’s and daddy-is-it-going-to-be-okay’s, and I managed to deposit it into a small terrarium for them to look at. Animals can die of diseases communicable to humans, but this one died upon impact, and it was still warm. So the kids and I examined it carefully.

It was larger than any bird I’d seen this close. The wings were tucked in beside its impossibly light body. Many of its bones were hollow, for ease of flight. The neck was at a weird angle, a wrong angle. The death in front of me was at a wrong angle. It always has been, but it just felt much more wrong suddenly, because it was also in front of my children. Blood speckled its beak, a dark decoration above the warm red tinges on its chest.

I realized that it was a young one, probably a teenager in robin years. Its feathers were perfect, straight and sleek, pinions just slightly larger and smaller on each side, forming beautiful strong wings. And the roses on the sides under the wings were just barely forming up into a speckled breast. It was about the size of an adult but without the experience, which is why it probably hit our window.

One eye was slightly open and looking like black jelly, like it would spill out of the socket as liquid if you tipped the bird over slightly. The other eye was closed. This teenage robin had eyelashes on the under-lid. It had whiskers. Its feet were curled and delicate.

It was too beautiful. It was too sad.

Nadia was watching me. She told me she was sorry that it died because she could see the sadness in my eyes; but I wasn’t really mourning after the bird. We touched its wings, feeling its perfect form beneath our fingers: the surreal softness, the preciousness of a young fleeting life snuffed out. Not a sparrow falls but that He sees it. God saw this.

Woodpeckers will close their nictitating membrane, then tighten it a millisecond before they hit the tree so that their eyeballs don’t fall out on impact. Perhaps we need similar shields.

Only a few days earlier we had discovered a young robin hopping around the pine tree down in the yard. We took pictures. The kids enjoyed watching it hop around. There was a hawk above, circling around, and I like to think we saved that little robin’s life. There was a little one then, alive and bouncing, and then a bigger one, dead and stiff.

God saw this.

What is it about seeing that is comforting? Wouldn’t catching the sparrow be more comforting? Wouldn’t solving the problem, ending the great horror – death – wouldn’t this be a more lasting comfort? You see me, God. You see my children. But if you were to let them fall…

Sharks close their third eyelid when they attack. This way they can see their victims without getting blood in their eyes.

Kai got out of the house when he was only one year old. We noticed when it was too quiet. He had slipped out the screen door moments after I arrived home from work, and neither Linnea nor I had seen him. I locked the door. It was five minutes before we noticed he was gone, and in those five minutes he was down the outer stairs of the apartment building and toddling along the street.

The terror in my heart: I was running down the sidewalk in my dress slacks, socks, and undershirt, desperately looking for my son, expecting to see him lying in the street, expecting to be one of those parents we pray for, expecting to live with the knowledge that we didn’t see him, we didn’t see him, and then it was too late to see him…

He liked stairs, so he had kept to the house side of the sidewalk, and a kind and observant couple had pulled over and were with him four houses down when I ran up. The man was on the phone with the police, and I heard him say, “Oh never mind, it’s okay. The father’s here.” I thanked them, breathless, and held my son, and held him walking back, and held him up the stairs, and held him for another hour until he didn’t want to be held anymore, promising him I would see him, always, I would see him.

God saw this. How can I say it differently, to ease the pain? God sees… me?

If we mourn this way, how must God mourn at all He sees, at all the flickering lights snuffed out, the bruised reeds broken, the sheep silent before the shearer? Death is nothing new to Him, and in fact, He knows it as an old friend, an old foe, better than us all.

Today, this day, my children are alive and real, perfect in form and surreally soft. They are the preciousness of young life, fleeting, and my God sees them. Lest you think me morbid, think on why this is precious, why as a parent, as a child, as a human I am determined to cherish this thing we call life, why I must defend it for those I love, why death is such an aberration and a destiny and a defeated foe. The thought of death is morbid, maybe, but so is the thought of life without the thought of death. For now, we need both. And God sees us, in both.

God sees us.

Peregrine falcons see too, because as they dive at over 200 miles per hour, they blink their nictitating membranes repeatedly to clear away the debris and clean each eye.

In the midst of holding onto my family’s break-neck life, I find that I am unable to bring myself to accept such a thing as death, and yet… I know that it’s what I must do, for we will all encounter it, sooner or later. This dark thing I wish to dismiss by forgetting, or fighting, or examining on the operating table of a small terrarium: Death will come for us all.  I know, in my spirit, it is good – a gift given so that our difficult, fallen lives will not last forever, but it will never lose its dread, even when it has lost its sting. And perhaps I will embrace it as a friend when more years have passed beneath my feet, or perhaps I will embrace my Savior, and He will carry me through it into the place where it cannot enter.

And my heart holds its breath for all the times I must try to prepare my children for that moment – the one I feel certain I will never be fully prepared for, the one that God sees. I know I am actually only trying to prepare myself. I know it is not up to me, and I wish I could take more comfort in that. Perhaps someday I will. Every day is another reminder that I am not in control, and death is the great Out-of-My-Control.

But I know this. Each day that I walk in the sight of God, He will train my eyes, and my sight can be strengthened by seeing life and knowing it itself is but a shadow of the life to come.

Nadia, my little avian maven, knows that birds need nests. So she settles herself in a patch of fragrant clover and picks flowers as a pillow for the bird. She is kneeling in her pink flowered dress, a lily ringed with gingham, examining the ground and plucking appropriate stems carefully, precisely, preparing for burial. Perhaps, preparing for flight.

And I blink back a tear.

“For he who has but one tool, the hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.”

Since the time of Copernicus, natural philosophers have commonly assumed there is a real, physical world that exists prior to and independent of the human mind, and they have set themselves the task of penetrating “beyond the veil” of subjective impressions to that external “objective” world. Thus, the real world is viewed as something devoid of subjective experience. On the other hand, though the causes of experiences are thought to be objective and available to everyone, the experiences themselves are only available to the person experiencing them. This makes it almost impossible to draw a clear boundary between what constitutes objective or subjective experience.

Paulson, in his article “The Nearing Death Process and Pastoral Counseling,” proposes the acknowledgement of multiple domains for humans. He argues that reducing everything into one domain, either into the objective or subjective domain, causes problems: “This situation was illustrated by Viktor Frank through the aid of a three-dimensional model. In three-dimensional space, a cylinder is a cylinder, containing both rectangular and spherical components. But, when presented in two-dimensional space, the cylinder provides two conflicting views: it is either a sphere or a rectangle. One must be right and the other wrong (Fig. 1). In life, when a subject is reduced to the objective domain, consciousness, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are viewed merely as biochemical reactions. That is, under the laws of science (physics, biology, and biochemistry), conscious thoughts, feelings, and perceptions cannot exist, whereas they do. Conversely, many postmodern philosophers reduce both subjective and objective domains into the cultural domain of shared meaning. In this view, the world we live in is completely relative.”

Attaining empirical knowledge through one’s sense-based experiences, one frames an individual view of the colorful face of creation. The constant flow of views and perceptions maps the external world in the human mind on two axes, one subjective and the other objective. This mapping process causes every individual living under the same sky to have a world of their own. For example, a despairing, lamenting, weeping person sees beings as weeping and in despair, while a cheerful, optimistic, merry person sees the universe as joyful and smiling.

This brings subjectivity to our attention. One can use this subjective point of view with the aim of strengthening faith in God’s existence and regarding every creature as part of the great fellowship of this faith, worshipping God. For a reflective person who is engaged in solemn worship and glorification discovers and sees to a degree the certain, truly existent and worship and glorification performed by all beings, while a person who abandons worship through neglect or denial sees beings in a state of idleness, as playthings in the hands of coincidence and mere accidents.

One should sometimes take the side of subjectivity to be able to feel joy and happiness in this worldly life. Although there is seemingly a dark and ugly face of existence, everything, stemming from Divine beauty, will eventually return to the same source. Although not everyone can fully understand this reality, everybody should always look at the brightest side of existence. As the famous scholar, Said Nursi, points out, “Those who attend to the good side of everything contemplate the good. Those who contemplate the good enjoy life.”

There is no doubt that all of us should view the created with an educated look. Eyes are the windows through which the soul sees outer space. One should be selective when it comes to where one opens those windows to. The thinking mechanism generates outputs depending on the inputs it receives. Everything is beautiful in itself or in its outcomes, thus the explorer of the universe should always beam his censors towards this beautiful side of the existence. One should support this subjective perception of the universe by every possible means, tolerating his ignorance and shortcomings in seeing the objective beauty of the universe.

As we all are human beings, we all have our own weaknesses in our personal realms. We can categorize the weaknesses embedded in our natures as follows: worldly ambition (that can result in forgetting about the Creator), greed, fear (which can make us sacrifice even our honor and integrity), racism and negative nationalism (which can mean one only feels satisfied at swallowing the rights of other nations), and selfishness. The main source feeding these weaknesses is thinking that one will live forever in this worldly life. This thought or feeling is completely subjective. None of us applies the concept of “death” to ourselves; everyone thinks it only applies to others. We see the mountains as stable, our surroundings as unchanging, and this observation leads us to think we will also remain unchanged. This deceptive subjectivity paralyzes sincerity and opens ways to the corruption and moral suicide of society. Explorers of the universe should spoil the poisonous sweetness of this subjectivity with the bitter taste of the contemplation of death itself. The reality of death is so vivid that it cannot be denied.

The example of a man in a small room of which four walls are mirrors can demonstrate this fact further. The man thinks that the small room is an infinitely large space, looking at its reflections in the mirrors. When the man stretches out his hand, touches the surface of the mirror and breaks it, he understands the inevitable reality. There is death, an end to unlimited wants and wishes for eternity on the earth. This objective fact exists regardless of what human minds think about it.

Human beings exist in impotence on this earth. It is as foolish to say that nature obeys our will or command as to say that a baby’s parents serve him due to his own power. Whenever delusions cause humans to think that they have a godly existence, they should remember Pharaoh’s fate and never forget that even a tiny microbe can defeat and force them to lie down for weeks. Hospitals, prisons and graveyards tear off this subjective mask of power and show the objective pure face of human beings’ underlying impotence.

Another important drawback of subjectivity is “familiarity.” Our lack of information and knowledge about a particular topic is our ignorance on that topic. However, if we do not even know that we lack that knowledge, this is called “compound ignorance.” For example, the rising and setting of the sun every day and spring’s appearing with bouquets of flowers at our doorsteps every year are not understood or appreciated by most people, as these natural events happen continuously without any interruption. People become blinded by a veil of “subjective familiarity.” They do not see the true value of events which appear to be usual and ordinary but in fact are extraordinary.

Another misuse of subjectivity is seen in the ways that people put a distance between each other and build a solid wall of enmity that blocks the way to peace and harmony in society. The reasons for putting up these barriers are far from being objective; they are only the dark shadows of our subjective caprices. Let us say that there is a ship carrying ten people out of whom nine are murderers and one is innocent. No one with right thinking would try to sink that ship in order to get rid of the nine murderers at the expense of the life of the one innocent. A judge looking at the incident through the lens of objectivity would demand the securing of the rights of the innocent.

Similarly, every human being on this earth is a spectacular ship built by the Creator. Everybody has good and bad sides. Nobody has the right to hate another person just because that person has some bad qualities. Hatred means sinking that hated ship of the individual in the eyes of the one committing the deed of hatred. Most of the arguments people use to support turning their backs on one another are as small as a pebble compared to arguments that are as great as mountains and that would bring apparently opposing sides together. All of us were created by the same God. This is a reason –for most- for fellowship stronger by far than the relation between the children of the same father. All of us are sharing the same slice of time out of thousands of years, a very small probability if one thinks of the millions of years since the beginning of creation. We all have a longing for love, tenderness, warmth, openness, honesty, and integrity. We are all afraid of clashes, tears, fears, the unpredictability of darkness, and sorrows. We, as fellow human beings, have so much in common.

The human being’s objective and subjective view of the universe should be a perspective illuminating both the soul and body. That perspective adds a third dimension to the two-dimensional picture in most of our minds. It highlights the wonders of this universe and the depth and richness hidden under the flat, quiet, calm ocean of creation.

Notes

1. Wallace, B.Alan, , “The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion,” from Science, Religion and Human Experience, Oxford University Press, 2005.
2. Frankl, V. E. (1959). The will to meaning, New York: New American Library
3. Paulson, Daryl S, “The Nearing Death Process and Pastoral Counseling,” Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 52, No. 4, March 2004.
4. Nursi, Said, The Letters, NJ: Tughra Books, 2007, p. 450.
5. For more discussion on human weakness see Nursi, 2007, pp. 399–413.
6. See Nursi, 2007, p. 282.

The other man takes the left fork for the sake of freedom. He appears outwardly comfortable, but feels no inner tranquillity. Reaching a desert, he hears the terrible sound of a beast getting ready to attack her. Running away, he sees a dry well 60 meters deep and jumps into it. Halfway down, he grabs a tree growing out of the wall. The tree has two roots, both of which are being gnawed away by two rats, one white and the other black. Looking up, he sees the beast waiting for him. Looking down, he sees a horrible dragon almost at his feet, its large mouth open to receive him. Looking at the wall, he notices that it is covered with laboring insects. Looking again at the tree, he sees that many types of fruits are growing on it, although it is only a fig tree.

He does not understand what has happened. He cannot imagine that somebody has caused all of this, for he cannot reason. Although inwardly distressed, and despite his spirit’s and heart’s complaints, his evil-commanding self pretends everything is fine and so ignores their weeping. Pretending to enjoy himself in a garden, he starts eating the fruits-for free. But some are poisonous and will harm him.

In a hadith qudsi, God says: “I will treat My servants in the way they think of Me.”¹ This man sees everything happening to him as unimportant, and thus that is the way it is for him. He neither dies nor lives well, but merely persists in an agony of suspense.

The wiser and well-disciplined brother thinks of the good, affirms the law, and feels secure and free. Finding beautiful flowers and fruits or ruined and ugly things in a garden, he focuses on what is good and beautiful. His brother cannot, for he concerns himself with evil and finds no ease in such a garden. The wise brother lives according to: “Look on the good side of everything,” and thus is generally happy with everything.

He also reaches a desert and encounters a beast, but is not so afraid because he thinks that it must be serving someone. He also jumps down a well and, halfway down, catches hold of some branches. Noticing two rats gnawing at the tree’s two roots, as well as the dragon below and the beast above, he finds himself in a strange situation. But unlike his brother, he infers that someone has arranged everything as a sign. Thinking that he is being watched and tested, he understands that he is being directed and guided as a test and for a purpose. His curiosity aroused, he asks: “Who wants to make me know him?” Meanwhile, he remains patient and self-disciplined. This curiosity arouses his love for the sign’s owner, which makes him want to understand the sign and the events, and to acquire good qualities to please its owner.

He realizes that the tree is a fig tree, although it bears many kinds of fruit. He is no longer afraid, for he realizes that it is a sample catalogue of the unseen owner’s fruits prepared for guests. Otherwise, one tree would not bear so many different fruits. He starts to pray earnestly and, as a result, the key to the secret is inspired in him. He declares: “O owner of this scene and events, I am in your hands. I take refuge in you and am at your service. I desire your approval and knowledge of you.” The wall opens, revealing a door (the dragon’s mouth) opening onto a wonderful, pleasant garden. Both the dragon and the beast become two servants inviting him to enter. The beast changes into a horse upon which he rides.

So, my lazy soul and imaginary friend, see how good brings good and evil brings evil. The brother who followed self-trust and self-willed freedom is about to fall into the dragon’s mouth. Anxious and lonely, considering himself a prisoner facing wild beasts, he increases his distress by eating apparently delicious but actually poisonous sample fruits. Their

function is to draw people toward the originals, not to be eaten for their own sake. He changes his day into darkness. Wronging himself by changing his situation into a hell-like one, he does not deserve pity and has no right to complain.

In contrast, the other brother is in a fruitful garden and surrounded by servants. He studies each different and beautiful incident in awe, and sees himself as an honored guest enjoying his generous host’s strange and beautiful servants. He only samples the fig tree’s fruits and, understanding reality, postpones his pleasure and enjoys the anticipation.

The first brother is like one who denies his favored situation in a summer garden with friends, and instead, becoming drunk, imagines himself among wild beasts in winter and complains thereof. Wronging himself and insulting his friends, he deserves no mercy. The other brother, who accepts trustingly what is given and observes the law, sees and accepts reality, which for him is beautiful. Respecting the owner of reality, he deserves mercy. Thus can we attain a partial understanding of: Whatever good befalls you is from God, and whatever ill befalls you is from yourself'(4:79). Upon reflection, we see that one’s inner self prepared a hell-like situation for him, corresponding to his own attitude of reality, whereas the other’s potential goodness, positive intention, and good nature led him to a very favored and happy situation. Now, I say to my own inner self as well as to the reader’s: If you desire success, follow the Qur’an’s guidance.

The Gist of the Allegory

One brother is a believer; the other is an unbeliever. The right road is that of the Qur’an and faith; the left road is that of unbelief and rebellion. The garden is human society and civilization, which contain both good and evil, cleanliness and pollution. A sensible person “takes what is clear and pleasant, leaves what is turbid and distressing, and proceeds with a tranquil heart.” The desert is the Earth, the beast is death, the well is our life, and 60 meters is our average lifespan of 60 years. The tree in the well is life, and the two rats gnawing on its roots are day and night. The dragon is the grave’s opening. For a believer, it is a door opening onto the Garden. The insects are the troubles we face, gentle warnings from God not to become heedless. The fruits are this world’s bounties presented as samples from the Hereafter’s blessings, inviting customers toward Paradise’s fruits.² The sign shows the secret will of God in creating. It is opened with faith, and its key is: “O God, there is no god but God; God, there is no god but He, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsistent.” For one brother, the dragon’s mouth (the grave) changes into a door to the Garden (Paradise). For the other, as for all unbelievers, the grave is the door to a place of trouble (Hell). The beast changes into an obedient servant, a disciplined and trained horse. In other words, for unbelievers death is a painful detachment from loved ones, an imprisonment after leaving the Paradise-like Earth. For believers, it means reunion with dead friends and companions. It is like going to their eternal home of happiness, a formal invitation to pass into the eternal gardens, an occasion to receive the wage bestowed by the Most Compassionate and Merciful One’s generosity for services rendered to Him, and a retirement from life’s burdens. In conclusion, those who pursue this transient life place themselves in Hell, even though they stay in what appears—to them—as a paradise on Earth. Those who seek the eternal life find peace and happiness in both worlds. Despite all troubles, they thank God and patiently conclude that all of this is merely a waiting room opening onto Heaven.

Adapted from Bediuzzaman’s Eighth Word.

Footnotes

1. Hadith Qudsi: This is a specific category of sayings from the Prophet. The wording is the Prophet’s, but the meaning belongs to God.
2. The tree with various fruits shows the seal of Divinity, Whose unique virtue is “to create everything out of one thing” and “to change everything into one thing”; to make various plants and fruits from the same soil; to create all living things from one drop of water; and to nourish and sustain all living things in the same manner but through different foods.

Sound of leaves

Beating in the ear with the force of strong, cold winds

A music of fall

The roses of poetical spring weep everywhere

Colours are plaintive

Nightingales in quiet lands lament

Single melancholy notes

Fountains are lost in thick mists of sorrow

Waters drip tenderly

Swans draw in their slender necks

In the search for spring

Plains groan in tears, hills weep in pangs of separation

Every sound is an elegy

Blue, green, pink and orange colours are in mourning

Each is groaning deeply

Like the last minutes of a life about to terminate

Every wail is a farewall

When looked to carefully, the end of the world is visible

What an alarming scene!

Spring and summer are each an enchanting memory

Lost in romantic fancies

Yet those fancies open to hopes stirring in the conscience

Diverse routes to the realms beyond

Eternity is sensed in each impression of transience,

Until man catches sight of it

Reason and logic are refined to seek out that other world

Reaching the realm of inspiration

Man feels the mysterious silence of death

Problems are resolved finally

Everyone sees the end of the way he treads

Kneels down trembling

Tongue-tied with dread of going into non-existence

Faith opens up a way to new horizons

Sobbing that his inevitable end is at last at hand

Every sends out lights

Thought falls into earth like a seed

To prepare itself for spring

It hastens to where it reaches gardens of Eden

To meet with the beloved

Without feeling pain or anguish

As treasured as a welcome bride,

One overflows with delight to feel eternity

As enrapturing as eternity itself

Fall is the sign that a new birth is on the way

Coming at the break of down

Hope resounds throughout fall without ceasing at all

Spring awaits a few steps away

For every normal human being, there is awareness of himself and of a world outside. Through a learning process a child recognizes the existence of different types of colours and shapes around him. Example: there are some red apples which his mother has just washed and put on the table; he recognizes their likeness to the ball his father bought him to play with: the likeness is one of outward form, roundness and some degree of firmness or solidity. His sight and touch of the objects in question suffice for him to attain the general concepts of a colour called ‘red’ and a shape called ‘sphere’. But is there ‘red’ for a child who is blind? And if the blind child also has an impaired sense of touch, what is the meaning of ‘red’ or ‘round’ or ‘solid’? Few of us who do not ourselves suffer, or have direct contact with, such disability spend much time reflecting on its consequences for perception and understanding.

If the child in our example could understand what it means to be blind or to have impaired sense of touch, he would be inclined to ask: Is the red that I see inside or outside me? Is the roundness that I see and touch inside or outside me?

At school most of us are taught that a red apple is made of atoms which have neither the quality of redness nor of roundness. We are also learning from recent developments in studies of the brain that neither light nor sound reaches our brain: what the brain receives is certain electrical quantities produced by our eyes, ears or other senses. [1] It, the brain, then processes these electrical quantities into meaningful sense-impressions like colour and shape. If we stimulate the brain with an artificial electrical source, it soon becomes apparent that the brain cannot distinguish between a real or artificial stimulus. Using this technique we can make the brain ‘see’ wholly imaginary pictures which it processes and responds to as if they were wholly real. During brain surgery some patients can be excited by artificial impulses and ‘see’ quite unreal pictures (something like what we see in dreams) and even, having seen, giggle at them. To return to the child of whom we said, he sees red apples. What, in fact, does he see? What is the meaning of the reality of the red apples? Are they there outside him, or do his senses play a trick on him, or is the world presented to him in some other way?

Throughout history most scientists and philosophers have started from the assumption that space and time are absolutes, as defined by Aristotle [2] and formulized by Newton [3]. According to this assumption, the space we inhabit existed before us and will continue to exist after us, and time flows over and through it at a uniform rate. However, developments over the last hundred years, particularly Einstein’s relativity theory [4], have undermined that assumption. Time and space are not absolute; they exist with us, in part because we ourselves invest them with reality and meaning.

Now, with the latest developments in computer and multimedia technology, we are able to understand the relativity of time and space much better. We are able to make a human brain believe that it is experiencing the real world by exciting the five senses attached to it. The excitement to the brain is provided by a computer of the latest techniques of simulation and modelling can almost handle all five of our human senses. How is this done? And what are its implications?

It is done, essentially, by applying advanced forms of imaging familiar from 3D virtual reality games like DOOM and Heretic. In order to train F16 pilots, LCD-masks or helmets have been designed that show the pilot a three-dimensional picture of the aircraft such that, as he moves his head up and down, it feels to him as if he were really in the aircraft. With the addition of a perfect sound system and a seat that moves in sensitive accord to what is represented through the LCD-helmet, all the thrills and sensations of flying can be ‘experienced’ by the trainee pilot. [4,5]

A current PhD project in Manchester is experimenting with virtual reality imaging using a robot 40 miles away from the laboratory [6]. The robot’s ‘hand’ is equipped with sensors to read temperature, pressure and humidity. It is wired to send, via a fast communication net, the data it obtains to a glove worn by a technician/operator in the lab. The operator wearing the glove ‘feels’ what the robot ‘feels’. The system is communicative both ways: the operator can send commands to the robot and cause the robot ‘hand to move by moving the glove. Also, through two video cameras positioned in the robot’s ‘eyes’, the operator can see whatever the robot ‘sees’. So, when the operator wants to touch an object near the robot, he needs only to move the glove to the image of the object: this movement sends a command to the robot’s ‘hand’ which grabs the object. As before, the operator really feels the object as the robot-hand’s sensors pass on the relevant data in real time. Once the robot touched a hot object and the operator’s hand felt the burn.

This robot-hand, cameras and glove combination is being developed for medical applications. When the technique is perfected, it is hoped that a surgeon in Houston will be able to operate on a patient in St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester. In this research project there is a real robot obtaining and relaying data about a real patient or other real objects around the patient. The operator receives that data and the associated images and sensations thanks to a computer programme. But it is entirely possible for the computer programme to generate the data, images and sensations without reference to a real robot or real objects. In other words, if the computer sends to the glove temperature, pressure and humidity data (just as the robot ‘hand’ did), the operator wearing the glove will be none the wiser. He or she will operate as if there were a real robot at a certain location communicating real data through its real hand’. In fact, everything would be not real at all, but only ‘virtual’: the surgeon in Houston could thus be made to perform a life-saving operation in Manchester, to undergo all the tension and drama thereof, whereas in fact only a virtual life, not a real one, would be saved if the operation was successful.

In the Manchester research project, only the hand communicates a virtual world through the glove worn by the operator. Scientists are now studying the feasibility of extending the idea to a garment that would cover the whole body. Suppose that I put on such a garment, with the attached LCD-helmet and a perfect sound system, and go to a place (underwater, for example) where there is no gravitational force. Since every part of my body is covered by the garment, every part of it will feel the virtual world as generated and managed by the computer. For example, when the LCD-helmet shows me that there is a nail sticking up on the ground and I tread on it, the sensor worn under my foot will actually feel pain. I will start responding to and behaving in my virtual world as my helmet commands me to: any outsider seeing me underwater will think me crazy, as I will be making strange movements that make no sense. However, within the virtual world, all my movements are perfectly sensible and rational.

Let us now suppose two such garments. I wear one, and my friend the other. If the programmes running in our helmets communicate, we can speak to each other, even shake hands. Although I cannot really see my real friend underwater, I can, while wearing that special garment see him virtually, as my helmet shows him to me: the programme running in the helmet communicates to me what my friend is wearing and what he is saying and how, and the conditions and changes in our environment, etc. But the computer could also introduce me to other, imaginary friends in the helmet-run world. If it did so, it would not be easy for me to distinguish the real from the virtual beings. Actually, it would be impossible. Let us take the example further. Imagine a shepherd who is asleep on a mountainside near his flocks. Let us go to him and, without waking him up, dress him in that special garment. Then, let us simulate every person and object the shepherd has a relationship with in his real world of the sun, the mountains, his flocks, family, friends, and so on. Our programme starts by waking the shepherd up. When he wakes, he looks around and is seeing his flocks, the mountain side, the sun, etc. all virtually. Everything seems to him quite normal. In fact, of course, the flocks, the mountain-side, the sun, etc. have all been produced by our computer, the shepherd is nowhere near his flocks, he is in our underwater laboratory, wearing the special garment. And in that virtual world, he duly goes home, sees his virtual wife, and lives his life normally, as before. It is assumed that a normal brain stores at least 1018 bits and processes information at about 1015 bits per second [7].

This is how the shepherd”s brain can easily handle a time adjustment done by the programme running in the helmet. The shepherd, let us say, spends one our in the lab but thinks in his virtual world that he has lived a year. He truly believes he has aged whereas he has hardly been absent long enough for even his sheep to notice. We simply simulate a world for him, and if we do it well enough, he must think it real. He sees his sheep, touches them, smells the odour coming from them, hears them bleat, even tastes their milk — all virtually. He looks up and sees the sun simulated by the helmet and thinks it real. He sees the shadows of the trees shrink or lengthen and he thinks the sun makes them do so. As the programmers of the computer running in his helmet, we know that in fact the shadows of trees and the sun are drawn quite independently of each other, but the programme displays them according to the familiar cause-effect rules so that the shepherd will not be worried. Otherwise, if in designing the programme we had forgotten those familiar rules, if we had forgotten the sun-shadow relationship we are used to, the shepherd would start to think he was growing crazy, seeing trees without shadows, or shadows without trees, etc. Here, a particularly relevant Qur’anic verse (25.45) comes to mind: Have you not seen how your Lord spread the shadow — if He willed He could have made it still — thus We have made the sun its guide. The meaning of the verse is that as the sun rises towards midday, the shadow shrinks, then begins to lengthen again as the sun declines. Here, it leads us to affirm that the whole of our real world in all its complexity and fullness and actuality is created, not by itself, but by One hidden from it, outside of it and other than it.

As long as, in the shepherd”s virtual world, the virtual sun and the virtual shadows of trees are designed perfectly, the shepherd will believe that he is living in a real world. Of course we do not, perhaps cannot ever, design our simulation perfectly or completely — the shepherd”s body has its internal mechanisms and, to put it bluntly, the shepherd could not live very long on virtual food (the only kind we could supply him within the virtual world) even if we could make his brain believe that he had really eaten. If our shepherd said that the sun in his world created the shadows of the trees, causing them to shrink or lengthen, we would know for certain that the shepherd was wrong. Because we know that the trees and the sun are merely images drawn by our computer. The shepherd”s statement is as incorrect as if he had said the shadows created the sun or the mountians created his flocks of sheep. It is only the perfection of our designing into the programme the rules of light and shadow that lead the shepherd to believe that it is the sun that creates the shadow. We can make the shepherd understand the meaning of the light-and-shadow rules written into the programme by ordering the programme to stop generating shadows. Underwater, the shepherd has only the capability of willing. He can want something to happen or not happen according to the terms and within the limits of the computer programme. For example, if he wants to throw a stone at the mountain, he only wills it and the computer generates the necessary images and sensations: he thinks and feels as if he sees and picks up and then throws a stone.

Of course, he in fact only throws virtually: all he really does is to make some strange-looking movements underwater. Again, a verse of the Qur’an (8.17) comes to mind for its striking relevance to our discussion: You killed them not, but God killed them. And you threw them not when you did throw, but God threw — that He might test the believers by a fair trial from Him. Surely God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. While the shepherd is still under the control of our programme, let us apply a test to him. Let us design a virtual person and send him into the shepherd”s virtual world with this mission: to explain to the shepherd that he is not really living his real life now but, instead, living a virtual life in a laboratory; that the programmer who designed the virtual world he is living in desires him to conduct his life according to certain rules — for example, the shepherd must not commit any crimes such as theft — and if he transgresses these rules, he will be punished directly there and then or, after the programme is stopped, at the discretion of the programmer. Clearly. it would be a major mistake on the shepherd”s part to deny the virtual messenger we have sent to him: if he denies the possibility of any such event as the whole programme terminating, or denies the existence of a programmer who could or would take him to task for transgressing the programmers rules, none could rescue the shepherd from any punishment we may decide for him. We may have powerful, irresistible guards obedient to our commands, ready to lay hold of the shepherd, should we command it. Or we might so amend the programme that the virtual sun will not rise on another virtual morning, and the shepherd is left in the darkness of a perpetual virtual night.

It is reasonable to imagine that, after the programme is shut down, we can explain and demonstrate to the shepherd that he has been living in a virtual world which we projected for him. Then, no doubt, he would accept that the virtual messenger we sent to him was telling him nothing except the truth, that, behind the virtual world that seemed so real to him, there really was a programmer with a will who could, at his choice, invite or compel the shepherd”s obedience. Finally, two verses from the Qur’an (6.71; 2.28) which show that our speculations on virtual reality have led us to the conclusion that our experiences of the reality of this real world are not so different from the shepherd”s in the virtual world underwater: Say: “Tell me, if God made night perpetual for you until the Day of Resurrection, who is a god beside God who could bring you light? Will you not then pay heed? How can you reject faith in God? Seeing that you were without life and He gave you life; then He will cause you to die and will bring you again to life; and to Him you will return?

References

1. The Brain Tumor Foundation of Canada. http://oncolink.upenn.edu/disease/brain/btfc/pchp3.html
2. Aristotle, METAPHYSICS, 350 BC, translated by W. D. Ross, http://paul.spu.edu/—hawk/aristotle.html
3. Isaac Newton, http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/–history/ Mathematicians/Newton.html
4. The Virtual Reality Store, http://www.thevrstore.com/ main.htm
5. Information about 3D-MAX, http://www.threed-max.udac.se/Info/infoindex.html
6. Kocak, Osman Ph.D Project, 1996, Salford University.
7. Adam, J. A., Bert Kasko., IEEE Spectrum, February 1996.