Well, I am not a scholar. I have read some books on various things and subjects, numerous people, real and fictional both. And I feel that it is my responsibility as a human being of this planet, I should express my views on different topics of this sleeping world.
STARTING POINT
From the beginning of human history, I feel, that three questions had propagated in every thinker's mind.
1. Who am I?
2. Why am I?
3. How am I?
The primitive man thought about these questions and most of them found the answers by believing in some sort of religious belief system. As I read Bertrand Russell, one of the honorable philosopher of twentieth century, I find myself having serious doubts on various subjects those were straightforward to me previously. After reading his scholarly written logic against the existence of God, I find myself in a hopeless situation.
Being born in a Muslim family, I brought up with some certain moral and theological value ingrained in every building block of my existence. The first thing that I learned is that there is only one God and Muhammad is His last prophet. This is the very fundamental belief of Islam. One has to believe this doctrine without any hesitation at all.
And I believed it wholeheartedly. I prayed five times a day, did fasting for thirty days on the month of Ramadan, etc. As I became more matured, crossed my teen-age years, I began to feel those three questions whirling around my tired head.
I asked my father, a very honest and respectable man of his time, about these troubling questions. I found my father had a very open mind. He told me that to understand these basic questions of life, I need to read and read, learn and learn and then find out the honest answers for those blinding questions. I honored his advice.
THE BUILDERS OF STATUES
I am these statues' builder. I have no name.
I have no countenance. My face was averted until it led
Into the brambles and climbed the walls
To impregnate them: they bear my petrified exterior,
The grave aloneness of my land, the skin of Oceania.
They mean nothing, they never meant
Anything, but to be born in all their volume of sand,
Survive their destiny to silent time.
By: Pablo Neruda
I feel the same way Pablo Neruda felt fifty years ago. When I read this poem, "The Builders of Statues"(Rapa Nui), specially the above stanzas, I feel that Neruda is trying to portray God. The God who created us, organic and inorganic creatures, but we never meant anything, we never mean anything and we will never mean anything to the omnipotent God, who might have created us but simply does not care about us anymore. When I see around me, through time, through spaces beyond my circular windows, I can feel that all the senseless misery, violence, injustice and painful deaths, broken coffin of my helpless father, under twenty feet darkish ground, trying to tell me something, trying to wake me up from my ignorant sleeping state.
Pablo Neruda speaks to me again through his immortal verses:
This flesh and the other will be consumed,
The flower will doubtless perish without residue,
When death - sterile dawn, desiccated dust-
Comes one day into the girdle of the haughty island,
And you, statue, daughter of man, will remain
Gazing with the empty eyes that rose
Up through one and another hand of the absent immortals.
Yes, I know I shall perish one day, my flesh and bones will be melted in the lifeless rock. Thousand years later, if the civilization still survives, some supersonic anthropologist may find my remaining residue on the layer of historical limestone. I ponder what may happen then. If science progresses thousand years from now, new discoveries flood the world, can the human of year 3000 build me back again from my scattered DNA? What will happen then? Is it possible? Probability says, I shall never know.
THOUGHTS OF PHILOSHERS
Anaximander, the second philosopher of the Milesian school, thought that all things come from a single primal substance. This single substance is infinite, eternal and ageless, and "it encompasses all the worlds". Anaximander thought our world only one of many. He said that the primal substance is transformed into the various substances with which we are familiar, and these are transformed into each other. According to him, the worlds were not created, but evolved. Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief do not agree with Anaximander's belief. The trio believe that the world was created by the lonely God of Universe. Actually, how can there be any universe before anything was created? I guess God has to stay somewhere, some place, probably heaven. But if there were not anything, then where was God?
If God is listening, I would like to make one thing clear to Him. Well, western world taught me to get insurance on every possible valuable you have. As an ordinary human being of this unknown world, my puzzled life and the possible residence in the heaven of hereafter are too dearest to me. I consider my dear life and the I am tryng to find the truth. I am not trying to disprove his existence. I just want to satisfy my restless mind that the knowledge I have is correct, not woven by blind faith. If God really exists and He is really omnipotent and all-hearing and all-seeing, I am humbly seeking His guidence in finding the ultimate truth of those three puzzling questions: Who am I? Why am I? How am I? PLEASE HELP ME!
LIFE, DEATH, IMMORTALITY & OTHER PUZZLES
So fragile our life is. In a blinking moment it can wither away like a frisker. While I am writing this sentence, somewhere on this planet, someone is taking his last breath before closing his moistened eyes for one last time. Yellow phlegm is sprouting out from his struggling throat, every muscles of his or her poor body is twitching, heaving the last tremor to dislodge uncanny duress of death. And he surrenders with all miserable humiliation, living the last drops of sullen tears for the lively world. Good bye. Adios.
From the depth of my shaken consciousness arises a thought. This is it. No matter how much money I make, how much influential I may be with the world of dynamic buroucracy and how much resplendent beautiful aura I may have, in the end, it boils down to struggling for breath, asking mercy from the devilish angel of merciless death. All of my fancy clothes, brand new car, platinum credit cards or invaluable mansion of exquisite marbles, will be meaningless, like some tenuous and brackish mud balls.
I know, this subject has been touched by so many people that it is not new to anyone. Though, I would like to say it a thousand time more. From the beginning of any plausible history, men thought about life, death and immortality. Now here is the subject that I would like to talk about. Immortality. A sweet and pleasant word in any known language. Oh! How I wish to be immortal! I could not put it in writing at all. Anyway, lets talk about immortality in some historical and philosophical perspective.
The ending life of Socrates puzzles me. He was punished by death. Socrates had many friends in Greek society. They wanted to help him evading the punishment by fleeing the country. But Socrates declined the idea of evasion at once because evasion was not virtuous to him.
In his last hour before taking the poisonous drink, Socrates was allowed to converse freely with his close friends and associates. Socrates told his friends that anyone who has the spirit of philosophy, will not fear death. On the contrary, a true philosopher shall welcome death. Socrates maintains that though the true philosopher should welcome his oncoming death, he is not allowed to take his own life, because it is not lawful.
Socrates said, " There is a doctrine whispered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand." He explains that the relationship between a man and God is like an ox and its owner. If the ox flee from the owner, the owner would be angry. So Socrates goes,
" there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as he is now summoning me."
Socrates was not grieved for his closing death. He believed in life after death. He was convinced that he was going to the world of better gods, and to his old friends who had departed the world earlier. He said, "I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, some far better thing for the good than for the evil."
The last words pronounced by Socrates make me feel good. I feel that Socrates was correct, there is something beyond death after all. Then my confused mind begins to ask some tasteless questions: Is it really true? Science tells me that all of my thought processes, every movement that I make with my stubborn legs, are directed by my oval shaped head. The yellowish brain inside my head sends all the accurate orders through its various sophisticated channels to the broken tip of my uncut toenail.
As it is professed to me by various authors of numerous science books that when a person dies his heart stops. And when the heart stops, blood flow stops also. As I was standing beside the hospital bed of my poor father who had just died two minutes back, I saw that his left earlobe became bluish. Also I noticed that his right fingernails I was holding on my palm, became whitish, a sign of lack of blood flow. At that specific moment, I wanted to believe that there is something after death, and my father crossed this dimension and reached another dimension of universe which I can not see or perceive with my limited human eyes.
My father's mouth was filled with yellowish phlegm. I cleaned his lifeless open mouth with a white towel. And unbearable grief grabbed my entire existence. I could not show my tears to my grieving mother and sisters. So I left the room and went to a solitary corner beside the abandoned staircase.
I was sitting there, all alone, and thinking about my father's death. The grief that I had wanted to talk to me from my inside. And it began to tell me all the horrible realities of this pungent world. I realized the truth of nature. My father, my mentor and my genetic predecessor died. The solemn part was, at that particular moment my inquisitive mind did not stop asking questions. What happened to my father? What happened to his virtuous soul? I knew when a person dies his brain dissolves and all the activities in the physical body ceases to exist. My father wanted me to know the truth by seeking the knowledge and wisdom of everyday surroundings, nature and unknown universe of matter and substances. And still I remain ignorant as I was before when I was born in this ignorant world of fools.