Loh o Qalam [37]

Lecture 37

Diurnal and Nocturnal Senses

God is the Creator and the universe is the creation. After this creation came into being man was given this knowledge that man is such a member of the cosmic family who at the one hand is infinitude and on the other the finitude.

Analysis helps us to observe that the human conscious is aware of the sorrow and delight from the very first day of its life. The process of childbirth by itself is one of the most painful things but this pain is tolerated to enjoy the delightful aftermath of this pain. Pain and misery, comfort and joy; both types of feelings transfer to the child immediately after his birth in this world.

Achievement of anything is comforting and deprivation from any belonging is the sorrow, therefore, man is striving to find out the actual cause of joy and sorrow since the advent of civilization in this world so that he could avoid sorrow and enjoy the pleasures of happiness continuously. He does not want to lose the comfort and since he is not ready to let any comfort slip away from him, the fear of the loss of comfort and joy also does not leave him. He wants, somehow or the other, the assurance to stay close to comfort and joy and to stay away from any displeasure and sorrow. He understands that worries and accidents are unavoidable in life and, because of the human shortcomings and weaknesses; he is unable to overcome the disastrous incidents. When he is convinced that he is unable to control the worrying situations due to his frailty, he tends to seek the protection of such a power that could guarantee him comfort and joy. This very quest and search is named as belief. It is the basic requirement of human beings that they have to live their lives according to certain beliefs. In the wake of the crises encountered in life this thought overpowers his mind that there must someone who is capable of protecting him from accidents and mishaps. The desire to remain safe from disasters and accidents compels a person to have one or the other belief as an article of his faith.

Whether it is the feelings of joy or sorrow, these are not lasting. These are short-lived and limited to one or the other occasion only. These are not permanent. A person who is sorrowful today is bound to be happy tomorrow. Similarly a person who is happy today may not be happy tomorrow and this is such a thing from which man cannot get away at any cost. It is our routine observation that nobody can be indifferent to pleasure and displeasures, sorrow and joys although he can act confident. This confidence does not means that he enjoys the immunity from troubles and worries but it does give him a certitude regarding his betterment and well-being when he starts believing in the Unseen, which helps him to understand that the One who has given him life controls the affairs of whole the universe. This knowledge comes to him when he studies the life of other creatures of this world, which helps him to have this faith that believing the Unseen means having an assurance of his betterment because the Unseen is better than this because the unseen is being controlled by the Merciful and Beneficent God.

God has stated, “It is not for man that God should speak to him except by inspiration or from behind a veil or by sending of a messenger to reveal.”

This verse suggests that man enjoys the senses having the range and capacity to enable him to have the opportunity of conversing with God. Certainly, there are ways and means for having this conversation but the reach and extent of these senses cannot be doubted by any chance. When God talks to a person, He does so using some signs, talks from behind a veil or sends a messenger angel to deliver His message.

When God addresses man, he witnesses the messenger because of the range of the senses that he is bestowed upon with. When God displays Himself in some other form, it is technically known as Veil. For instance, a person witnesses God in a luminant form but this form is not God because any form is associated with limits and boundaries whereas God is limitless and infinitude. What a person sees then? The Attributes of God embodied in a form and figure and not the holy being of God.

Stay of the senses on a point is known as an object (thing) and everything has to have an individual shape and form. When the senses point out towards an object, the features existing within become the features without.

When the senses announcing themselves say ‘I’, this first person singular pronoun ‘I’ is merely a void. It means that by saying ‘I’ the senses are referring to a colorless outline and not to their features. When the features and the vibrant colors of the senses are to be pointed out it is said, I did this, I did that, I saw the moon, I see the stars, etc. In this way the senses witness their own personal movement nearby and far away. These are the senses that becoming ‘I’ repeat themselves by pointing here and there, near and away.

The statement of God “Had there not been a time upon man when he was not worthy to be mentioned”,

Means that there was a time when there was no repetition in the senses and then he was introduced with that state whence the repetition was there. This helps us to identify two agencies, the senses and their repetition. Both these agencies behave as a single unit. Testimony in support of this thing is found in the holy books where telling about the mode of action God has stated, “God makes the night to enter into the day and the day is entered in the night. He draws the life from the death and the death from the life.”

Night is one type of senses and the day is another type of senses. In nocturnal senses the spatio-temporal distances become non-existing and in the diurnal senses these distances become alive.

To elaborate this thing it would be said that life and death are interpolating in the day and nigh, conscious and unconscious. The nocturnal senses enter into the diurnal senses and vice versa. The diurnal senses remain confined in the spatio-temporal restraints but the nocturnal senses are free from any such limitations.

When we analyze our life activities, it is observed that we daily see day and night, daily we perform the same duties, have the same food daily and say we are having a new dish, we travel the same route to our office and yet consider it a new day in our life. This all is due to the weakness and the frailty of the senses. Actually senses are the same but a continuous repetition is making them appear different every day.

The repetition of the senses is also of two types. When the senses are operating at one speed, we say it is the daytime and when the speed of the senses is altered these become the nocturnal senses. The spatio-temporal distances become non-existent during the nocturnal senses and in the diurnal senses these become alive once again.

God has stated, “It is He who draws life from the death and the death from the life.”