Before I proceed I would like to make this disclaimer. The following is my personal views. My personal views however are good only for me. You should not accept them but doubt them. You should doubt everything and discover your own light.

I do believe that our soul survives after our body is dead. What happens to our body is clear. It decomposes and returns to Earth, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes”. Nevertheless the reality of a human is not his body but his or her soul. As Pierre Tielhard de Chardin said, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. We are here in this world to acquire spiritual insights. We are here to strengthen our souls with love. Just as the purpose of life for an embryo in the womb is to acquire physical body in order to have an easy life in this world when he or she is born, the purpose of our existence in this world is to acquire a spiritual body in order to have a better existence in the next. When we die, our soul enters into a spiritual dimension. That world is not separate from ours yet we are unable to see it. That life is an extension of this life. Just as a fetus while in its mother’s womb, is in this world and yet unaware of it, so we are part of the spiritual realm but shut off from it as by a veil.   

In a Flat World. 

There are those who say if something does not fall within the purview of science it is superstition.  Not so! If something is rejected by science then that is superstition. But science deals with the contingent world. It has no tools to measure realities that are beyond this world. Can science measure love, define wisdom, explain philosophy, describe intuition? These are all functions of human brain yet they are independent realities. Spiritual world is a real world of different dimension. There is nothing unscientific about it yet it does not fall within the purview of sience.   

Imagine there is a world with only two dimensions. In this world everything is flat. The people are bi-dimensional, the houses are bi-dimensional, trees, and mountains and everything else have only two dimensions. This world looks like an animated drawing on a sheet of paper. 

Now suppose a three dimensional object crosses this world. The bi-dimensional people can only see a section of this object that crosses their world but they cannot see its thickness or its shape. The flat men and women that are around suddenly see a flat shape appear out of nowhere and then disappear with no trace. They cannot explain nor understand the phenomenon. They talk about is to others but those who have never had such experience, won’t believe them. Some will accuse them of hallucinating. Others will make stories and try to explain with mumbo jumbo the phenomenon. The first group deny the experience altogether and claim that their limited science, which deals only with the bi-dimensional world, has no evidence of such phenomenon and therefore those experiences are imaginaries and not real. However those who have had such experiences will not be easily swayed. To them the experience has been real and they need more satisfactory answers. Consequently, a few clever, charismatic swindlers claim that there is indeed an invisible world and that they are the intermediaries, the shamans, and the prophets of that world. 

This is what is happening in our three dimensional world. What we perceive as the spiritual world is in reality not but a real world with different dimensions. That world is parallel to ours, yet we are unable to see it. Once in a while this world comes in contact with ours and some of us get a glimpse of it. We see phenomena that are unexplainable. We see beings that appear out of the blue and disappear as they appeared. The whole thing to us, look like magic. We can make no sense of that and remain bamboozled. Some charlatans come forth claiming that these are sings of God and con us into believing in them as his messengers. They add tons of superstitions into it that often it become difficult to separate facts from fictions. Others try hard to negate the authenticity of these phenomena and bring all sort of absurd scientific gobbledygook to convince those who have had the visions of this unknown world that they have been hallucinating.

Neither one nor the other has the answer. Both sides are confused and both parties try to explain something unexplainable. 

The position of the skeptics is no less irrational than the religious people. Each side tries to explain something that they do not understand. The skeptics are not skeptic of their own irrational explanations but have “faith” that no matter what the evidence the whole idea of a spiritual reality beyond this physical world is false. They have written tons of articles and books loaded with scientific jargons to demonstrate that there is no reality beyond the material reality. And because this field is also loaded with tons of superstitions created by the defenders of the supernatural, they find no little evidence to prove that the claims of the other groups are unfounded. 

However despite the centuries old superstitions that have been accumulated and the mountains of rubbish that the credulous like to believe, there is a kernel of truth that often, like a baby that is thrown out with the bathwater is discarded. 

The skeptics with all their attempts and thousands of books and articles written in style and form of science have not been able to explain the phenomenon of dreams that come true. There are many dreams that mean nothing but if you have one dream that foretell the future and it comes true in details; if you dream a place and an event that later come to realize exactly as you dreamed it, it throws out of the window the whole explanation of the skeptics who deny the existence of the soul or a reality that cannot be explained by today’s science. There are people who have had out of body experiences; there are patients who have reported having seen their doctors and even their relatives in the waiting room and heard their conversations while being under the knives in the operating room. I was surprised to hear a very skeptic scientist who denied the existence of the soul telling that once he saw himself fallen on the ground with his leg broken just a few yards ahead. He looked carefully and it was him. Then he walked ahead and fell exactly at that spot and broke his leg. He still did not believe in the existence of the soul. Hundreds of articles and books have been written to deny that the near death experiences and the out of body experiences are real. Yet none of them satisfy those who had such phenomena. 

The books of these “scientists” is no less unreliable than the books of some modern day Islamic scientists like Dr. Maurice Bucaille  Dr. Keith Moor, Dr. Shamsher Ali, Dr. Mrinal Dasgupta who have also written books to prove that Quran is scientific. … As Abul Kasem cleverly put it: “What a cruel joke!” 

Imagine a meteorite falling from the sky 1000 years ago. There were those who built a whole story around it, believing it to be a stone fallen from the heaven, a sign from God and even worshipped it. But what would the skeptics of those days have said?  (I am not sure is there were any skeptics in those days; but let us assume that there were). They probably would have denied it altogether calling it a hoax and perhaps ridiculing those who claimed having seen a stones falling from the heaven. 

Falling stones from the heaven would probably seemed outlandish to those who were not familiar with Copernicus and Galileo’s theories and did not know that the space is full of rocks that are just floating. It certainly fell out of the purview of those days' known science. But the future science proved that there is nothing superstitious or “divine” about falling stones from the sky.

It is not illogical to assume that there are worlds that are real, as real as ours; yet of different nature with different dimensions. There is nothing unscientific about them, yet they do not fall within the purview of science. Our science simply is not equipped to define them. The science that we know is about the world that we know. The world of which, we know nothing, cannot be defined by our science. 

Just as we do not measure the length of something with a thermometer, we cannot measure many realities like the human spirit in the laboratory. The desperate attempt of some scientists to define everything by the yardstick of science, which is an excellent tool for unraveling the mysteries of the natural world, is indicative of their close mindedness reminiscent of religious bigots, especially Muslims who claim that all known and unknown knowledge is already in Quran.  It proves once more that beliefs are easier to change than attitudes.

The world beyond is not divided in paradise and hell. This is a very puerile idea. You don’t need to go there to find out that this concept that is so much emphasized in Quran is absurd. It presumes that people are either very good or very bad. In reality, no one is absolutely good or absolutely bad. There are different grades of goodness and some are better than others. Our station in the other world depends on our spiritual evolution in this world. The only way we can evolve spiritually here is through love and service to humankind. Love of humanity is the ladder by which we climb spiritually. 

Our belief in one religion or the other is absolutely of no relevance. Our faith is of no value. What counts are our actions. If we hate another human being, it burns the flower of love in our heart and affects our spiritual growth. Jealousy, anger, greed, lust, fear, also hinder us from loving and therefore are obstacles to our spiritual evolution.  

Those who are not enlightened fear death. The person who is awake does not. There is light and life, joy and bliss expecting us in the other world. 

Although the concept of reward and punishment, paradise and hell is absurd, the idea of justice is not. The divine justice takes place automatically, i.e. without the intervention of a judge or a jury. The divine laws, just like physical laws apply to all beings. They are manifestations of the Single Principle underlying the creation. Our position in the next world does not depend on our beliefs but on our deeds. How much we loved other people, how much we helped others and what we did determines the strength of our soul. Our faith, time wasted in worshipping this or that god, our religious knowledge and practice do not count. But small acts of goodness, our sense of fairness, our kindness, our love for humanity, our caring for the needy, our concern for the animals and our respect for life determines our spiritual growth. 

There is nothing to fear from death. Death is the birth of the soul to a spiritual world full of light, love and bliss. Muhammad’s depiction of hell and heaven are physical and denotes his lack of understanding of our spiritual dimension. It reflects, his own fears. He even thought that the dead is punished in “the grave”. That hell and paradise are physical places. That we will survive in our physical form; would eat and copulate just as we do it in this world.  

The Single Principle 

The laws of the other world work in unison with the laws governing this world. In fact there is only One Law. I call that The Single Principle. We humans tend to dissect everything and classify them. That is because we can digest it only if we take it one bite at a time.

Take for example the law of gravity. It is a manifestation of the Single Principle in the physical world. It applies to everything; it encompasses all things and rules over all the material existence, from the smallest particles to the biggest objects in the universe all abide by it. You can use this law and fly. Now suppose while in the air you drop yourself from the airplane, you have broken that law and you will pay for it. There is no one to punish you nor your prayers on the way down will avail you. The law is the law. It is not cruel nor it is merciful. The same law that allows you to fly will kill you when you transgress it. The ignorance of the law is no excuse. It is up to you to understand it and obey it.

This is a simplified but perhaps adequate example of the laws of this universe. Spiritual laws work in the same way. When you break a spiritual law you pay for it. There is no one to punish you! There is no sadistic god to put you into a burning pit and pour boiling waters on your head! But by breaking the spiritual laws you have hindered the spiritual growth of your own soul. Just like a child who is born in this world with some physical defects, you will enter the realm of spirits with a defective spiritual “body”. And just as the handicapped child will find life more challenging in this world than the one who is born with a healthy body, a defective soul will find his stance in the other world more unbearable than the person who in born there with a healthy spiritual body.

This does not mean that there is no God or that god is an unintelligent law. There is a Principle underlying the creation. All attributes manifested in this world are reflections of that Principle. Intelligence, for example, is a manifestation of a higher Intelligence. And that is the Single Principle. God is not a person. It is not a being. It is not a thing. But to say God is not a thing does not mean that God is nothing! God is The Single Principle underlying the creation. It is The Principle and the creation is the process. God is how and the creation in what! That is all there is; the “how” and the “what”!

Our beliefs mean nothing! Our actions count! All the fasting and prying, all our religious devotion, all our personal sacrifices for our Faith, are waste of time and energy. In the course of our intellectual evolution we sacrificed humans at the altars of various gods, we waged wars in the name of various gods, we suffered self-mortifications to please various gods, and we killed and gave martyrs to glorify various gods.

“Forgotten lie the martyrs in their dusty catacombs
And the faiths, for which they died, are cold and dead.”
(Margaret A Murray in The Genesis of Religion)

The only thing we have to do is to learn how to love. Love is the law of the universe. And the Golden Rule is our infallible guide. 

However, as I said at the beginning, what I write is my own understanding of God. God can be understood but It cannot be defined. Therefore this is not an attempt to define God but to stimulate thinking. So that people can find God through their own efforts and in their own way. God is a Reality. Reality is not a thing, it is not a being; and it cannot be defined. Say for example Love. Love is a reality, not a thing nor a being. You cannot define Love but you can understand it and you can feel it. You can feel love but you cannot “ask” love to enter into your heart. Love enriches the lives of those who receive it but It is indifferent to them. Love is not forgiving, it is not intelligent, and it is not loving; because Love is not a being. And so is God. It is us who need God and have to live by It. We have to live God. Praising him, worshiping him and praying to him, is waste of time. An anthropomorphic God either physically or psychologically as described by Semitic religions is absurd. Yet no one can describe God just as no one can describe love. We all can know God. It is a one-to-one relationship. This is a path that no guru or prophet can show you. Those who pretend that they can are impostors. God is the Truth and Truth is pathless. God is love and love needs no intermediaries. You have to discover it yourself. It is your personal journey. But once you know God, you are enlightened. The instance of enlightenment is the most exhilarating and soul transforming moment in one’s life. It can never be described nor it can be conveyed by any words or means. How can you describe the beauty of the sunset to a born blind?

My only advice to all those who seek enlightenment are those words of Buddha, “Doubt everything, find your own light”.

By Ali Sina