The Real Essence of Matter

People who contemplate their surroundings conscientiously and wisely realise that everything in the universe-both living and non-living-must have been created. So the question becomes that of "Who is the creator of all these things?"

It is evident that "the fact of creation", which reveals itself in every aspect of the universe, cannot be an outcome of the universe itself. For example, a bug could not have created itself. The solar system could not have created or organised itself. Neither plants, humans, bacteria, erythrocytes (red-blood corpuscles), nor butterflies could have created themselves. The possibility that these all could have originated "by chance" is not even imaginable.

We therefore arrive at the following conclusion: Everything that we see has been created. But nothing that we see can be "creators" themselves. The Creator is different from and superior to all that we see with our eyes, a superior power that is invisible but whose existence and attributes are revealed in everything that exists.

This is the point at which those who deny the existence of God demur. These people are conditioned not to believe in His existence unless they see Him with their eyes. These people, who disregard the fact of "creation", are forced to ignore the actuality of "creation" manifested all throughout the universe and falsely prove that the universe and the living things in it have not been created. Evolutionary theory is a key example of their vain endeavours to this end.

The basic mistake of those who deny God is shared by many people who in fact do not really deny the existence of God but have a wrong perception of Him. They do not deny creation, but have superstitious beliefs about "where" God is. Most of them think that God is up in the "sky". They tacitly imagine that God is behind a very distant planet and interferes with "worldly affairs" once in a while. Or perhaps that He does not intervene at all: He created the universe and then left it to itself and people are left to determine their fates for themselves.

Still others have heard that in the Qur'an it is written that God is "everywhere" but they cannot perceive what this exactly means. They tacitly think that God surrounds everything like radio waves or like an invisible, intangible gas.

However, this notion and other beliefs that are unable to make clear "where" God is (and maybe deny Him because of that) are all based on a common mistake. They hold a prejudice without any grounds and then are moved to wrong opinions of God. What is this prejudice?

This prejudice is about the nature and characteristics of matter. We are so conditioned to suppositions about the existence of matter that we never think about whether or not it does exist or is only a shadow. Modern science demolishes this prejudice and discloses a very important and imposing reality. In the following pages, we will try to explain this great reality to which the Qur'an points.

The World Of Electrical Signals

All the information that we have about the world we live in is conveyed to us by our five senses. The world we know of consists of what our eye sees, our hand feels, our nose smells, our tongue tastes, and our ear hears. We never think that the "external" world can be other than what our senses present to us as we have been dependent only on those senses since the day of our birth.

Stimulations coming from an object are converted into electrical signals and cause an effect in the brain. When we "see", we in fact view the effects of these electrical signals in our mind.

Modern research in many different fields of science however points to a very different understanding and creates serious doubt about our senses and the world that we perceive with them.

The starting-point of this approach is that the notion of an "external world" shaped in our brain is only a response created in our brain by electrical signals. The redness of the apple, the hardness of the wood, moreover, your mother, father, your family, and everything that you own, your house, your job, and the lines of this book, are comprised only of electrical signals.

Frederick Vester explains the point that science has reached on this subject:

Statements of some scientists posing that "man is an image, everything experienced is temporary and deceptive, and this universe is a shadow", seems to be proven by science in our day.198

The famous philosopher George Berkeley's comment on the subject is as follows:

We believe in the existence of objects just because we see and touch them, and they are reflected to us by our perceptions. However, our perceptions are only ideas in our mind. Thus, objects we captivate by perceptions are nothing but ideas, and these ideas are essentially in nowhere but our mind… Since all these exist only in the mind, then it means that we are beguiled by deceptions when we imagine the universe and things to have an existence outside the mind. So, none of the surrounding things have an existence out of our mind.199

In order to clarify the subject, let us consider our sense of sight, which provides us with the most extensive information about the external world.

How Do We See, Hear, And Taste?

The act of seeing is realised in a very progressive way. Light clusters (photons) that travel from the object to the eye pass through the lens in front of the eye where it is broken and falls reversely on the retina at the back of the eye. Here, the impinging light is turned into electrical signals that are transmitted by neurons to a tiny spot called the centre of vision in the back part of the brain. This electrical signal is perceived as an image in this centre in the brain after a series of processes. The act of seeing actually takes place in this tiny spot at the posterior part of the brain which is pitch-dark and completely insulated from light.

Now, let us reconsider this seemingly ordinary and unremarkable process. When we say that "we see", we are in fact seeing the effects of the impulses reaching our eye and induced in our brain after they are transformed into electrical signals. That is, when we say that "we see", we are actually observing electrical signals in our mind.

All the images we view in our lives are formed in our centre of vision, which makes up only a few cubic centimetres of the volume of the brain. Both the book you are now reading and the boundless landscape you see when you gaze at the horizon fit into this tiny space. Another point that has to be kept in mind is that as we have noted before, the brain is insulated from light; its inside is absolutely dark. The brain has no contact with light itself.

Even the moment when we feel the light and heat of a fire, the inside of our brain is pitch dark and its temperature never changes.

Bundles of light coming from an object fall on the retina upside-down. Here, the image is converted into electrical signals and transmitted to the centre of vision at the back of the brain. Since the brain is insulated from light, it is impossible for light to reach the centre of vision. This means that we view a vast world of light and depth in a tiny spot that is insulated from light.

We can explain this interesting situation with an example. Let us suppose that there is a burning candle in front of us. We can sit across from this candle and watch it at length. However, during this period of time, our brain never has any direct contact with the candle's original light. Even as we see the light of the candle, the inside of our brain is solid dark. We watch a colourful and bright world inside our dark brain.

R.L. Gregory makes the following explanation about the miraculous aspect of seeing, an action that we take so very much for granted:

We are so familiar with seeing, that it takes a leap of imagination to realise that there are problems to be solved. But consider it. We are given tiny distorted upside-down images in the eyes, and we see separate solid objects in surrounding space. From the patterns of simulation on the retinas we perceive the world of objects, and this is nothing short of a miracle.200

The same situation applies to all our other senses. Sound, touch, taste and smell are all transmitted to the brain as electrical signals and are perceived in the relevant centers in the brain.

The sense of hearing takes place in the same manner. The outer ear picks up available sounds by the auricle and directs them to the middle ear; the middle ear transmits the sound vibrations to the inner ear by intensifying them; the inner ear sends these vibrations to the brain by translating them into electrical signals. Just as with the eye, the act of hearing finalises in the centre of hearing in the brain. The brain is insulated from sound just like it is from light. Therefore, no matter how noisy it is outside, the inside of the brain is completely silent.

We see everything around us as coloured inside the darkness of our brains, just as this garden looks coloured from the window of a darkened room.

Nevertheless, even the subtlest sounds are perceived in the brain. This is such a precision that the ear of a healthy person hears everything without any atmospheric noise or interference. In your brain, which is insulated from sound, you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, hear all the noises in a crowded place, and perceive all the sounds within a wide frequency ranging from the rustling of a leaf to the roar of a jet plane. However, if the sound level in your brain were to be measured by a sensitive device at that moment, it would be seen that a complete silence is prevailing there.

Our perception of odor forms in a similar way. Volatile molecules emitted by things such vanilla or a rose reach the receptors in the delicate hairs in the epithelium region of the nose and become involved in an interaction. This interaction is transmitted to the brain as electrical signals and perceived as smell. Everything that we smell, be it nice or bad, is nothing but the brain's perceiving of the interactions of volatile molecules after they have been transformed into electrical signals. You perceive the scent of a perfume, a flower, a food that you like, the sea, or other odors you like or dislike in your brain. The molecules themselves never reach the brain. Just as with sound and vision, what reaches your brain is simply electrical signals. In other words, all the odours that you have assumed to belong to external objects since you were born are just electrical signals that you feel through your sense organs.

All we see in our lives are formed in a part of our brain called "vision center" at the back of our brain, which makes up only a few cubic centimetres. Both the book you are now reading and the boundless landscape you see when you gaze at the horizon fit into this tiny space. Therefore, we see objects not in their actual size existing outside, but in the size perceived by our brain.

Similarly, there are four different types of chemical receptors in the front part of a human's tongue. These pertain to the tastes of salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. Our taste receptors transform these perceptions into electrical signals after a chain of chemical processes and transmit them to the brain. These signals are perceived as taste by the brain. The taste you get when you eat a chocolate bar or a fruit that you like is the interpretation of electrical signals by the brain. You can never reach the object in the outside; you can never see, smell or taste the chocolate itself. For instance, if taste nerves that travel to your brain are cut, nothing you eat at the moment will reach your brain; you will completely lose your sense of taste.

At this point, we come across with another fact: We can never be sure that what we feel when we taste a food and what another person feels when he tastes the same food, or what we perceive when we hear a voice and what another person perceives when he hears the same voice are the same. On this fact, Lincoln Barnett says that no one can know that another person perceives the color red or hears the C note the same way as he himself does.201

Our sense of touch is no different than the others. When we touch an object, all information that will help us recognise the external world and objects are transmitted to the brain by the sense nerves on the skin. The feeling of touch is formed in our brain. Contrary to general belief, the place where we perceive the sense of touch is not at our finger tips or skin but at the center of touch in our brain. As a result of the brain's assessment of electrical stimulations coming from objects to it, we feel different senses pertaining to those objects such as hardness or softness, or heat or cold. We derive all details that help us recognise an object from these stimulations. Concerning this important fact, the thoughts of two famous philosophers, B. Russell and L. J. J. Wittgeinstein are as follows;

For instance, whether a lemon truly exists or not and how it came to exist cannot be questioned and investigated. A lemon consists merely of a taste sensed by the tongue, an odor sensed by the nose, a colour and shape sensed by the eye; and only these features of it can be subject to examination and assessment. Science can never know the physical world.202

It is impossible for us to reach the physical world. All objects around us are a collection of perceptions such as seeing, hearing, and touching. By processing the data in the centre of vision and in other sensory centres, our brain, throughout our lives, confronts not the "original" of the matter existing outside us but rather the copy formed inside our brain. It is at this point that we are misled by assuming that these copies are instances of real matter outside us.

"The External World" Inside Our Brain

As a result of artificial stimulations, a physical world as true and realistic as the real one can be formed in our brain whithout the existance of physical world. As a result of artificial stimulations, a person may think that he is driving in his car, while he is actually sitting in his home.

As a result of the physical facts described so far, we may conclude the following. Everything we see, touch, hear, and perceive as matter", "the world" or "the universe" is nothing but electrical signals occurring in our brain.

Someone eating a fruit in fact confronts not the actual fruit but its perception in the brain. The object considered to be a "fruit" by the person actually consists of an electrical impression in the brain concerning the shape, taste, smell, and texture of the fruit. If the sight nerve travelling to the brain were to be severed suddenly, the image of the fruit would suddenly disappear. Or a disconnection in the nerve travelling from the sensors in the nose to the brain would completely interrupt the sense of smell. Simply put, the fruit is nothing but the interpretation of electrical signals by the brain.

Another point to be considered is the sense of distance. Distance, which is to say the distance between you and this book, is only a feeling of emptiness formed in your brain. Objects that seem to be distant in that person's view also exist in the brain. For instance, someone who watches the stars in the sky assumes that they are millions of light-years away from him. Yet what he "sees" are really the stars inside himself, in his centre of vision. While you read these lines, you are, in truth, not inside the room you assume you are in; on the contrary, the room is inside you. Your seeing your body makes you think that you are inside it. However, you must remember that your body, too, is an image formed inside your brain.

The findings of modern physics show that the universe is a collection of perceptions. The following question appears on the cover of the well-known American science magazine New Scientist which dealt with this fact in its 30 January 1999 issue: "Beyond Reality: Is the Universe Really a Frolic of Primal Information and Matter Just a Mirage?"

The same applies to all your other perceptions. For instance, when you think that you hear the sound of the television in the next room, you are actually experiencing the sound inside your brain. You can neither prove that a room exists next to yours, nor that a sound comes from the television in that room. Both the sound you think to be coming from meters away and the conversation of a person right near you are perceived in a few centimetre-square center of hearing in your brain. Apart from this center of perception, no concept such as right, left, front or behind exists. That is, sound does not come to you from the right, from the left or from the air; there is no direction from which the sound comes.

The smells that you perceive are like that too; none of them reach you from a long distance. You suppose that the end-effects formed in your center of smell are the smell of the objects in the outside. However, just as the image of a rose is in your center of vision, so the smell of this rose is in your center of smell; there is neither a rose nor an odour pertaining to it outside.

The "external world" presented to us by our perceptions is merely a collection of the electrical signals reaching our brain. Throughout our lives, these signals are processed by our brain and we live without recognising that we are mistaken in assuming that these are the original versions of matter existing in the "external world". We are misled because we can never reach the matter itself by means of our senses.

Moreover it is again our brain that interprets and attributes meaning to the signals that we assume to be the "external world". For example, let us consider the sense of hearing. It is in fact our brain that transforms the sound waves in the "external world" into a symphony. That is to say, music is also a perception created by our brain. In the same manner, when we see colours, what reaches our eyes are merely electrical signals of different wavelengths. It is again our brain that transforms these signals into colours. There are no colours in the "external world". Neither is the apple red nor is the sky blue nor the trees green. They are as they are just because we perceive them to be so. The "external world" depends entirely on the perceiver.

Even a slightest defect in the retina of the eye causes colour blindness. Some people perceive blue as green, some red as blue, and some all colours as different tones of grey. At this point, it does not matter whether the object outside is coloured or not.

The prominent thinker Berkeley also addresses this fact:

At the beginning, it was believed that colours, odours, etc., "really exist", but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in dependence on our sensations.203

In conclusion, the reason we see objects coloured is not because they are coloured or because they have an independent material existence outside ourselves. The truth of the matter is rather that all the qualities we ascribe to objects are inside us and not in the "external world".

So what remains of the "external world"?

Is The Existence Of The "External World" Indispensable?

So far we have been speaking repeatedly of an "external world" and a world of perceptions formed in our brain, the latter of which is the one we see. However since we can never actually reach the "external world", how can we be sure that such a world really exists?

Actually we cannot. Since each object is only a collection of perceptions and those perceptions exist only in the mind, it is more accurate to say that the only world that really exists is the world of perceptions. The only world we know of is the world that exists in our mind: the one that is designed, recorded, and made vivid there; the one, in short, that is created within our mind. This is the only world we can be sure of.

We can never prove that the perceptions we observe in our brain have material correlates. Those perceptions may well be coming from an "artificial" source.

It is possible to observe this. False stimulations can produce in our brain an entirely imaginary "material world". For example, let us think of a very developed recording instrument where all kinds of electrical signals can be recorded. First, let us transmit all the data related to a setting (including body image) to this instrument by transforming them into electrical signals. Second, let us imagine that you can have your brain survive apart from your body. Lastly, let us connect the recording instrument to the brain with electrodes that will function as nerves and send the pre-recorded data to the brain. In this state, you will feel yourself as if you are living in this artificially created setting. For instance, you can easily believe that you are driving fast on a highway. It never becomes possible to understand that you consist of nothing but your brain. This is because what is needed to form a world within your brain is not the existence of a real world but rather the availability of stimulations. It is perfectly possible that these stimulations could be coming from an artificial source, such as a recorder.

In that connection, distinguished science philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote;

As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.204

It is indeed very easy for us to be deceived into deeming perceptions without any material correlates as real. We often experience this feeling in our dreams. In our dreams, we experience events, see people, objects and settings that seem completely real. However, they are all nothing but mere perceptions. There is no basic difference between the dream and the "real world"; both of them are experienced in the brain.

Who Is The Perceiver?

As we have related so far, there is no doubt of the fact that the world we think we are inhabiting and that we call the "external world" is created inside our brain. However, here arises the question of primary importance. If all the physical events that we know of are intrinsically perceptions, what about our brain? Since our brain is a part of the physical world just like our arm, leg, or any other object, it also should be a perception just like all other objects.

An example about dreams will illuminate the subject further. Let us think that we see the dream within our brain in accordance with what has been said so far. In the dream, we will have an imaginary body, an imaginary arm, an imaginary eye, and an imaginary brain. If during our dream we were asked "where do you see?", we would answer "I see in my brain". Yet, actually there is not any brain to talk about, but an imaginary head and an imaginary brain. The seer of the images is not the imaginary brain in the dream, but a "being" that is far "superior" to it.

We know that there is no physical distinction between the setting of a dream and the setting we call real life. So when we are asked in the setting we call real life the above question of "where do you see", it would be just as meaningless to answer "in my brain" as in the example above. In both conditions, the entity that sees and perceives is not the brain, which is after all only a hunk of meat.

When the brain is analysed, it is seen that there is nothing in it but lipid and protein molecules, which also exist in other living organisms. This means that within the piece of meat we call our "brain", there is nothing to observe the images, to constitute consciousness, or to create the being we call "myself".

R.L. Gregory refers to a mistake people make in relation to the perception of images in the brain:

There is a temptation, which must be avoided, to say that the eyes produce pictures in the brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of some kind of internal eye to see it - but this would need a further eye to see its picture… and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd.205

This is the very point which puts the materialists, who do not hold anything but the matter as true, in a quandary. To whom belongs "the eye inside" that sees, that perceives what it sees and reacts?

Karl Pribram also focused on this important question in the world of science and philosophy about who the perceiver is:

Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I -the entity that uses the brain?Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking."206

Now, think of this: The book in your hand, the room you are in, in brief, all the images in front of you are seen inside your brain. Is it the atoms that see these images? Blind, deaf, unconscious atoms? Why did some atoms acquire this quality whereas some did not? Do our acts of thinking, comprehending, remembering, being delighted, being unhappy, and everything else consist of the electrochemical reactions between these atoms?

When we ponder these questions, we see that there is no sense in looking for will in atoms. It is clear that the being who sees, hears, and feels is a supra-material being. This being is "alive" and it is neither matter nor an image of matter. This being associates with the perceptions in front of it by using the image of our body.

The brain is a heap of cells made up of protein and fat molecules. It is formed of nerve cells called neurons. There is no power in this piece of meat to observe the images, to constitute consciousness, or to create the being we call "myself".

This being is the "soul".

The aggregate of perceptions we call the "material world" is a dream observed by this soul. Just as the body we possess and the material world we see in our dreams have no reality, the universe we occupy and the body we possess also have no material reality.

The real being is the soul. Matter consists merely of perceptions viewed by the soul. The intelligent being that writes and reads these lines is not a heap of atoms and molecules-and the chemical reactions between them-but a "soul".

The Real Absolute Being

All these facts bring us face to face with a very significant question. If the thing we acknowledge to be the material world is merely comprised of perceptions seen by our soul, then what is the source of these perceptions?

In answering this question, we have to take the following fact into consideration: matter does not have a self-governing existence by itself. Since matter is a perception, it is something "artificial". That is, this perception must have been caused by another power, which means that it must in fact have been created. Moreover, this creation should be continuous. If there was not a continuous and consistent creation, then what we call matter would disappear and be lost. This may be likened to a television on which a picture is displayed as long as the signal continues to be broadcast. So, who makes our soul watch the stars, the earth, the plants, the people, our body and all else that we see?

It is very evident that there exists a supreme Creator, Who has created the entire material universe, that is, the sum of perceptions, and Who continues His creation ceaselessly. Since this Creator displays such a magnificent creation, he surely has eternal power and might. This Creator introduces Himself to us. He has sent down a book and through this book has described us Himself, the universe and the reason of our existence.

This Creator is God and the name of His Book is the Qur'an.

The facts that the heavens and the earth, that is, the universe is not stable, that their presence is only made possible by God's creation and that they will disappear when He ends this creation, are all explained in a verse as follows:

It is God Who sustains the heavens and the earth, lest they cease (to function): and if they should fail, there is none -not one- can sustain them thereafter: Verily He is Most Forbearing, Oft-Forgiving. (Surah Fatir, 41)

As we mentioned at the beginning, some people have no genuine understanding of God and so they imagine Him as a being present somewhere in the heavens and not really intervening in worldly affairs. The basis of this logic actually lies in the thought that the universe is an assembly of matter and God is "outside" this material world, in a far away place. In some false religions, belief in God is limited to this understanding.

However, as we have considered so far, matter is composed only of sensations. And the only real absolute being is God. That means that it is only God that exists: everything except Him are shadow beings. Consequently, it is impossible to conceive God as a separate being outside this whole mass of matter. God is surely "everywhere" and encompasses all. This reality is explained in the Qur'an as follows;

God! There is no god but He, the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permits? He knows what (appears to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He wills. His Throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory). (Surat al-Baqara, 255)

The fact that God is not bound with space and that He encompasses everything roundabout is stated in another verse as follows:

To God belong the east and the west: Whithersoever you turn, there is the presence of God. For God is all-Pervading, all-Knowing. (Surat al-Baqara, 115)

Since material beings are each a perception, they cannot see God; but God sees the matter He created in all its forms. In the Qur'an, this fact is stated thus: "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision" (Surat al-Anaam, 103)

If one ponders deeply on all that is said here, he will soon realise this amazing, extraordinary situation by himself: that all the events in the world are but mere imagination…

That is, we cannot perceive God with our eyes, but God has thoroughly encompassed our inside, outside, looks and thoughts. We cannot utter any word but with His knowledge, nor can we even take a breath.

While we watch these sensory perceptions in the course of our lives, the closest being to us is not any one of these sensations, but God Himself. The secret of the following verse in the Qur'an is concealed in this reality: "It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein." (Surah Qaf: 16) When a person thinks that his body is made up of "matter", he cannot comprehend this important fact. If he takes his brain to be "himself", then the place he accepts to be the outside will be 20-30 cms away from him. However, when he conceives that there is nothing such as matter, and that everything is imagination, notions such as outside, inside, or near lose meaning. God has encompassed him and He is "infinitely close" to him.

God informs men that He is "infinitely close" to them with the verse "When My servants ask you concerning Me, I am indeed close (to them)" (Surat al-Baqara, 186). Another verse relates the same fact: "We told you that your Lord encompasses mankind round about." (Surat al-Isra, 60).

Man is misled by thinking that the being that is closest to him is himself. God, in truth, is closer to us even more than ourselves. He has called our attention to this point in the verse "Why is it not then that when it (soul) comes up to the throat, and you at that time look on, We are nearer to him than you, but you see not." (Surat al-Waqia, 83-85).As informed in the verse, people live unaware of this phenomenal fact because they do not see it with their eyes.

On the other hand, it is impossible for man, who is nothing but a shadow being, to have a power and will independent of God. The verse "But God has created you and your handwork!" (Surat as-Saaffat, 96) shows that everything we experience takes place under God's control. In the Qur'an, this reality is stated in the verse "When you threw, it was not your act, but God's." (Surat al-Anfal, 17) whereby it is emphasised that no act is independent of God. Since a human being is a shadow being, it cannot be itself which performs the act of throwing. However, God gives this shadow being the feeling of the self. In reality, it is God Who performs all acts. So, if one takes the acts he does as his own, he evidently means to deceive himself.

This is the reality. A person may not want to concede this and may think of himself as a being independent of God; but this does not change a thing. Of course his unwise denial is again within God's will and wish.

Everything That You Possess Is Intrinsically Illusory

As it may be seen clearly, it is a scientific and logical fact that the "external world" has no materialistic reality and that it is a collection of images perpetually presented to our soul by God. Nevertheless, people usually do not include, or rather do not want to include, everything in the concept of the "external world".

If you think on this issue sincerely and boldly, you come to realise that your house, your furniture in it, your car-perhaps recently bought, your office, your jewels, your bank account, your wardrobe, your spouse, your children, your colleagues, and all else that you possess are in fact included in this imaginary external world projected to you. Everything you see, hear, or smell-in short-perceive with your five senses around you is a part of this "imaginary world" the voice of your favourite singer, the hardness of the chair you sit on, a perfume whose smell you like, the sun that keeps you warm, a flower with beautiful colours, a bird flying in front of your window, a speedboat moving swiftly on the water, your fertile garden, the computer you use at your job, or your hi-fi that has the most advanced technology in the world…

This is the reality, because the world is only a collection of images created to test man. People are tested all through their limited lives with perceptions bearing no reality. These perceptions are intentionally presented as appealing and attractive. This fact is mentioned in the Qur'an:

Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: Women and sons; Heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence); and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this world's life; but in nearness to God is the best of the goals (to return to). (Surat Aal-e Imran, 14)

Most people cast their religion away for the lure of property, wealth, heaped-up hoards of gold and silver, dollars, jewels, bank accounts, credit cards, wardrobe-full clothes, late-model cars, in short, all forms of prosperity they either possess or strive to possess and they concentrate only on this world while forgetting the hereafter. They are deceived by the "fair and alluring" face of the life of this world, and fail to keep up prayer, give charity to the poor, and perform worship that will make them prosper in the hereafter by saying "I have things to do", "I have ideals", "I have responsibilities", "I do not have enough time", "I have things to complete", "I will do them in the future". They consume their lives by trying to prosper only in this world. In the verse, "They know but the outer (things) in the life of this world: but of the End of things they are heedless." (Surat ar-Room, 7), this misconception is described.

The fact we describe in this chapter, namely the fact that everything is an image, is very important for its implication that it renders all the lusts and boundaries meaningless. The verification of this fact makes it clear that everything people possess and toil to possess, their wealth made with greed, their children with whom they boast, their spouses who they consider to be closest to them, their friends, their dearest bodies, their rank which they hold to be a superiority, the schools they have attended, the holidays they have been are nothing but mere illusion. Therefore, all the efforts put, the time spent, and the greed felt prove to be in unavailing.

This is why some people unwittingly make fools of themselves when they boast of their wealth and properties or of their "yachts, helicopters, factories, holdings, manors and lands" as if they ever really existed. Those well-to-do people who ostentatiously saunter up and down in their yachts, show off with their cars, keep talking about their wealth, suppose that their post rank them higher than everyone else and keep thinking that they are successful because of all this, should actually think what kind of a state they would find themselves in once they realise that their success is nothing but an illusion.

In fact, these scenes are many times seen in dreams as well. In their dreams, they also have houses, fast cars, extremely precious jewels, rolls of dollars, and loads of gold and silver. In their dreams, they are also positioned in a high rank, own factories with thousands of workers, possess power to rule over many people, put on clothes that make every one admire them… Just as boasting about one's possessions in one's dream causes a person to be ridiculed, he is sure to be equally ridiculed for boasting of images he sees in this world. After all, both what he sees in his dreams and what he relates to in this world are mere images in his mind.

Similarly the way people react to the events they experience in the world is to make them feel ashamed when they realise the reality. Those who fiercely fight with each other, those who rave furiously, who swindle, who take bribes, who commit forgery, who lie, who covetously withhold their money, who do wrong to people, who beat and curse others, raging aggressors, those who are full of passion for office and rank, who practice envy, who try to show off, who try to sanctify themselves and all others will be disgraced when they realise that they have committed all of these deeds in a dream.

Since it is God Who creates all these images, the Ultimate Owner of everything is God alone. This fact is stressed in the Qur'an:

But to God belong all things in the heavens and on earth: And He it is that Encompasses all things. (Surat an-Nisa, 126)

It is a great foolishness to cast religion away at the cost of imaginary passions and thus lose the eternal life.

At this stage, one point should be well grasped: it is not said here that the fact you face predicates that "all the possessions, wealth, children, spouses, friends, rank you have with which you are being stingy will vanish sooner or later, and therefore they do not have any meaning". It is rather said that "all the possessions you seem to have in fact do not exist at all, but they are merely a dream and composed of images shown to you by God to test you". As you see, there is a big difference between the two statements.

Although one does not want to acknowledge this fact right away and would rather deceive himself by assuming everything he has truly exists, he is finally to die and in the hereafter everything is to become clear when he is recreated. On that day "sharp is one's sight" (Surah Qaf, 22) and he is apt to see everything much more clearly. However, if he has spent his life chasing after imaginary aims, he is going to wish he had never lived his life and say "Ah! Would that (Death) had made an end of me! Of no profit to me has been my wealth! My power has perished from me!" (Surat al-Haqqaa, 27-29)

What a wise man should do, on the other hand, is to try to understand the greatest reality of the universe here on this world, while he still has time. Otherwise, he is to spend all his life running after dreams and face a grievous penalty in the end. In the Qur'an, the final state of those people who run after illusions (or mirages) on this world and forget their Creator, is stated as follows;

But the Unbelievers, their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing: But he finds God (ever) with him, and God will pay him his account: and God is swift in taking account. (Surat an-Noor, 39)

Logical Deficiencies Of The Materialists

Since the beginning of this chapter, it is clearly stated that matter is not an absolute being as the materialists claim but rather a collection of senses created by God. Materialists resist in an extremely dogmatic manner this evident reality which destroys their philosophy and bring forward baseless anti-theses.

For example, one of the biggest advocates of the materialist philosophy in the 20th century, an ardent Marxist, George Politzer, gave the "bus example" as the "greatest evidence" for the existence of matter. According to Politzer, philosophers who think that matter is a perception also run away when they see a bus and this is the proof of the physical existence of matter.207

When another famous materialist, Johnson, was told that matter is a collection of perceptions, he tried to "prove" the physical existence of stones by giving them a kick.208

A similar example is given by Friedrich Engels, the mentor of Politzer and the founder of dialectic materialism along with Marx, who wrote "if the cakes we eat were mere perceptions, they would not stop our hunger".209

There are similar examples and impetuous sentences such as "you understand the existence of matter when you are slapped in the face" in the books of famous materialists such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others.

The disorder in comprehension that gives way to these examples of the materialists is their interpreting the explanation of "matter is a perception" as "matter is a trick of light". They think that the concept of perception is only limited to sight and that perceptions like touching have a physical correlate. A bus knocking a man down makes them say "Look, it crashed, therefore it is not a perception". What they do not understand is that all perceptions experienced during a bus crash such as hardness, collision, and pain are formed in the brain.

The Example Of Dreams

The best example to explain this reality are dreams. A person can experience very realistic events in his dream. He can roll down the stairs and break his leg, have a serious car accident, get stuck under a bus, or eat a cake and be satiated. Similar events to those experienced in our daily lives are also experienced in dreams with the same persuasiveness and rousing the same feelings in us.

A person who dreams that he is knocked down by a bus can open his eyes in a hospital again in his dream and understand that he is disabled, but this all would be a dream. He can also dream that he dies in a car crash, angels of death take his soul, and his life in the hereafter begins. (This event is experienced in the same manner in this life, which is a perception just like the dream.)

This person very sharply perceives the images, sounds, feeling of hardness, light, colours, and all other feelings pertaining to the event he experiences in his dream. The perceptions he perceives in his dream are as natural as the ones in "real" life. The cake he eats in his dream satiates him although it is a mere perception, because being satiated is also a perception. However, in reality, this person is lying in his bed at that moment. There are no stairs, no traffic, no buses to consider. The dreaming person experiences and sees perceptions and feelings that do not exist in the external world. The fact that in our dreams, we experience, see, and feel events with no physical correlates in the "external world" very clearly reveals that the "external world" absolutely consists of mere perceptions.

Those who believe in the materialist philosophy, and particularly the Marxists, are enraged when they are told about this reality, the essence of matter. They quote examples from the superficial reasoning of Marx, Engels, or Lenin and make emotional declarations.

However, these persons must think that they can also make these declarations in their dreams. In their dream, they can also read "Das Kapital", participate in meetings, fight with the police, get hit on the head, and moreover, feel the pain of their wounds. When they are asked in their dreams, they will think that what they experience in their dreams also consists of "absolute matter"-just as they assume the things they see when they are awake are "absolute matter". However, be it in their dream or in their daily lives, all that they see, experience, or feel consists only of perceptions.

The Example Of Connecting The Nerves In Parallel

Let us consider the car crash example of Politzer: In this accident, if the crushed person's nerves travelling from his five senses to his brain, were connected to another person's, for instance Politzer's brain, with a parallel connection, at the moment the bus hit that person, it would also hit Politzer, who is sitting at his home at that moment. Better to say, all the feelings experienced by that person having the accident would be experienced by Politzer, just like the same song is listened from two different loudspeakers connected to the same tape recorder. Politzer will feel, see, and experience the braking sound of the bus, the touch of the bus on his body, the images of a broken arm and shedding blood, fracture aches, the images of his entering the operation room, the hardness of the plaster cast, and the feebleness of his arm.

Every other person connected to the man's nerves in parallel would experience the accident from beginning to end just like Politzer. If the man in the accident fell into a coma, they would all fall into a coma. Moreover, if all the perceptions pertaining to the car accident were recorded in a device and if all these perceptions were transmitted to a person, the bus would knock this person down many times.

So, which one of the buses hitting those people is real? The materialist philosophy has no consistent answer to this question. The right answer is that they all experience the car accident in all its details in their own minds.

The same principle applies to the cake and stone examples. If the nerves of the sense organs of Engels, who felt the satiety and fullness of the cake in his stomach after eating a cake, were connected to a second person's brain in parallel, that person would also feel full when Engels ate the cake and was satiated. If the nerves of Johnson, who felt pain in his foot when he delivered a sound kick to a stone, were connected to a second person in parallel, that person would feel the same pain.

So, which cake or which stone is the real one? The materialist philosophy again falls short of giving a consistent answer to this question. The correct and consistent answer is this: both Engels and the second person have eaten the cake in their minds and are satiated; both Johnson and the second person have fully experienced the moment of striking the stone in their minds.

Let us make a change in the example we gave about Politzer: let us connect the nerves of the man hit by the bus to Politzer's brain, and the nerves of Politzer sitting in his house to that man's brain, who is hit by the bus. In this case, Politzer will think that a bus has hit him although when he is sitting in his house; and the man actually hit by the bus will never feel the impact of the accident and think that he is sitting in Politzer's house. The very same logic may be applied to the cake and the stone examples.

As is to be seen, it is not possible for man to transcend his senses and break free of them. In this respect, a man's soul can be subjected to all kinds of representations although it has no physical body and no material existence and lacks material weight. It is not possible for a person to realise this because he assumes these three-dimensional images to be real and is absolutely certain of their existence because everybody depends on perceptions that are caused to be felt by his sensory organs.

The famous British philosopher David Hume expresses his thoughts on this fact:

Frankly speaking, when I include myself in what I call "myself", I always come across with a specific perception pertaining to hot or cold, light or shadow, love or hatred, sour or sweet or some other notion. Without the existence of a perception, I can never capture myself in a particular time and I can observe nothing but perception.210

The Formation Of Perceptions In The Brain Is Not Philosophy But Scientific Fact

Materialists claim that what we have been saying here is a philosophical view. However, to hold that the "external world", as we call it, is a collection of perceptions is not a matter of philosophy but a plain scientific fact. How the image and feelings form in the brain is taught in all medical schools in detail. These facts, proven by the 20th-century science, and particularly by physics, clearly show that matter does not have an absolute reality and that everyone in a sense is watching the "monitor in his brain".

Everyone who believes in science, be he an atheist, Buddhist, or anyone who holds another view has to accept this fact. A materialist might deny the existence of a Creator yet he cannot deny this scientific reality.

The inability of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Georges Politzer and others in comprehending such a simple and evident fact is still startling although the level of scientific understanding and possibilities of their times were insufficient. In our time, science and technology are highly advanced and recent discoveries make it easier to comprehend this fact. Materialists, on the other hand, are flooded with the fear of both comprehending this fact, though partially, and realising how definitely it demolishes their philosophy.

The Great Fear Of The Materialists

For a while, no substantial backlash came from the Turkish materialist circles against the subject brought up in this book, that is, the fact that matter is a mere perception. This had given us the impression that our point was not made so clear and that it needed further explanation. Yet before long, it was revealed that materialists felt quite uneasy about the popularity of this subject and moreover, felt a great fear all about this.

For a while, materialists have been loudly pronouncing their fear and panic in their publications, conferences and panels. Their agitated and hopeless discourse implies that they are suffering from a severe intellectual crisis. The scientific collapse of the theory of evolution, the so-called basis of their philosophy, had already come as a great shock to them. Now, they come to realise that they start to lose the matter itself, which is a greater mainstay for them than Darwinism, and they experience an even greater shock. They declare that this issue is the "biggest threat" for them and that it totally "demolishes their cultural fabric".

One of those who expressed this anxiety and panic felt by the materialist circles in the most outspoken way was Renan Pekunlu, an academician as well as a writer of Bilim ve Utopya (Science and Utopia) periodical which has assumed the task of defending materialism. Both in his articles in Bilim ve Utopya and in the panels he attended, Pekunlu presented the book Evolution Deceit as the number one "threat" to materialism. What disturbed Pekunlu even more than the chapters that invalidated Darwinism was the part you are currently reading. To his readers and (only a handful of) audience, Pekunlu delivered the message "do not let yourselves be carried away by the indoctrination of idealism and keep your faith in materialism" and showed Vladimir I. Lenin, the leader of the bloody communist revolution in Russia, as reference. Advising everyone to read Lenin's century-old book titled Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, all Pekunlu did was to repeat the counsels of Lenin stating "do not think over this issue, or you will lose track of materialism and be carried away by religion". In an article he wrote in the aforementioned periodical, he quoted the following lines from Lenin:

Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism-and that is all that fideism requires. A single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machists have all become ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted, subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took "sensation" not as an image of the external world but as a special "element". It is nobody's sensation, nobody's mind, nobody's spirit, nobody's will.211

These words explicitly demonstrate that the fact which Lenin alarmingly realised and wanted to take out both from his mind and the minds of his "comrades" also disturbs contemporary materialists in a similar way. However, Pekunlu and other materialists suffer a yet greater distress; because they are aware that this fact is now being put forward in a far more explicit, certain and convincing way than 100 years ago. For the first time in world history, this subject is being explained in such an irresistible way,.

Nevertheless, the general picture is that a great number of materialist scientists still take a very superficial stand against the fact that "matter is nothing but an illusion". The subject explained in this chapter is one of the most important and most exciting subjects that one can ever come across in one's life. It is rather unlikely that they would have faced such a crucial subject before. Still, the reactions of these scientists or the manner they employ in their speeches and articles hint how shallow and superficial their comprehension is.

It is so much so that the reactions of some materialists to the subject discussed here show that their blind adherence to materialism has caused some kind of a harm in their logic and for this reason, they are far removed from comprehending the subject. For instance Alaattin Senel, also an academician and a writer for Bilim ve Utopya, gave similar messages as Rennan Pekunlu saying "Forget the collapse of Darwinism, the real threatening subject is this one", and made demands such as "so you prove what you tell" sensing that his own philosophy has no basis. What is more interesting is that this writer himself has written lines revealing that he can by no means grasp this fact which he considers to be a menace.

Turkish materialist writer Rennan Pekunlu says that "the theory of evolution is not so important, the real threat is this subject", because he is aware that this subject nullifies matter, the only concept he has faith in.

For instance, in an article where he exclusively discussed this subject, Senel accepts that the external world is perceived in the brain as an image. However, he then goes on to claim that images are divided into two as those having physical correlates and those that do not, and that images pertaining to the external world have physical correlates. In order to support his assertion, he gives "the example of telephone". In summary, he wrote: "I do not know whether the images in my brain have correlates in the external world or not, but the same thing applies when I speak on the phone. When I speak on the telephone, I cannot see the person I am speaking to but I can have this conversation confirmed when I later see him face to face." 212

By saying so, this writer actually means the following: "If we doubt our perceptions, we can look at the matter itself and check its reality." However, this is an evident misconception because it is impossible for us to reach the matter itself. We can never get out of our mind and know what is "outside". Whether the voice on the phone has a correlate or not can be confirmed by the person on the phone. However, this confirmation is also imagery experienced by the mind.

As a matter of fact, these people also experience the same events in their dreams. For instance, Senel may also see in his dream that he speaks on the phone and then have this conversation confirmed by the person he spoke to. Or, Pekunlu may in his dream feel as facing "a serious threat" and advise people to read century-old books of Lenin. However, no matter what they do, these materialists can never deny the fact that the events they have experienced and the people they have talked to in their dreams were nothing but perceptions.

By whom, then, will one confirm whether the images in the brain have correlates or not? By the shadow beings in his brain again? Without doubt, it is impossible for materialists to find a source of information that can yield data concerning the outside of the brain and confirm it.