The Truth of the Qur’an Series

Introduction:

https://beyondtime2017.wordpress.com/2017/05/30/truth-of-the-quran-introduction/

Part 1 – Beyond a Book:

https://beyondtime2017.wordpress.com/2017/06/01/the-truth-of-the-quran-part-1-beyond-a-book/

Towards Taqwah (Practical Applications of Principles in Worship):

https://beyondtime2017.wordpress.com/2017/06/03/towards-taqwah-in-worship-applying-reflection-into-action/



Part 2: Beyond Time

To Follow below.



In the name of God most merciful, most compassionate



In Part 1 of this series, I began in earnest my exploration of the nature of Qur’an, and looked at some examples of what makes it Beyond a Book.

In that post, I also began to touch on the notion of the Qur’an (and by extension the Reality beyond our own), as being Timeless. On that, I concluded, Eternity is not time that simply goes on forever, but rather, it is the very absence of Time.

In order to explore these ideas further, as I mean to do here, we must first attain a very basic understanding of the current scientific theories on time and how it functions. Only then can we begin to discuss in earnest any visions of Timelessness, in the context of God, the Qur’an and the Afterlife.

Time and Dimensions: A Crash Course in Quantum Mechanics

To imagine Timelessness, we must first understand what Time is and how it functions- only by knowing what its presence means can we begin to glimpse the possibility of its absence

Time, simply put, is a dimension, beyond which lies many further dimensions- as features heavily in our present understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

In order to explain this, I have adapted this section from a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Gotl9vRGs) that provides an introduction to imagining dimensions, all the way up to the tenth. Below I have attempted to provide in simplified form the basic tenets from it that we will require for our discussion.

I would however, highly recommend watching the video as well, for a fuller grasp of what time is and how it functions, as well as for a glimpse of what the further dimensions, above time itself, might consist of. For the sake of this article I will only be discussing up to the fourth dimension of Time itself, but Part 3 of this series, when God-willing it might come, will continue the exploration of the dimensions that lie beyond.

So let us begin our discussion of dimensions, starting from the first.

The first dimension is a line, between two imaginary points, or dots. It has no height (the second dimension), or width (the third dimension). If we imagine every individual dot that forms this line to be one-dimensional beings, they can only move in one direction, along this line with no width (and therefore no sideways motion) and no height (therefore no upward motion): they are neither capable of going upwards, sideways nor backwards: only forwards along this line.

Distance

In the second dimension when we add width as well as length, we can visualise this as a split in the line:

The dots are no longer constrained to a single axis of movement- now both length and height exist, and these dots have the options of moving in two directions: left and right, as well as upwards and downwards.

Old video games would function in two dimensions, such as Pong: the pixel ball could move sideways and upwards/downwards.

The same goes for the old two-dimensional Mario, who could move left and right, as well as up and down by jumping. Two-dimensional Mario, however, could not move towards us or away from us on the screen. It is worth noting that even 3D games only really exist in the two dimensions that make up our monitors, and the third dimension, depth, is merely an illusion that works from within the two dimensions that a screen contains. But for our purposes now, it is enough to consider that two-dimensional creatures are capable of moving in four directions: upwards, downwards, left and right.

The third dimension is the easiest for us to visualise, because it is the basis for our understanding of space and direction. It contains height, length and depth. We can move our hands upwards and downwards, left and right, as well as towards us and away from us. We have length (our height), width (the span of our body, from left to right) and depth (the bulge of our bellies, from stomach to back).

We can therefore immediately move on to the next dimension, the fourth: simply put, it is the passage of time from one moment to the next.

Every second that passes is considered movement in the fourth dimension- instead of being a line from one dot to another, it’s a line from one instant of existence to the next.

If I were to clap my hands, I would therefore draw a line in time, stretching from the moment before I moved my hands, and going through every position my hands are in until they come together, and every position they are in when they come apart, and ending in the moment they return to their natural position.

But I can only move in one direction along this line- we are only capable of progressing always further in time. We cannot move sideways in time, and we cannot move backwards in time.

This is because we are four-dimensional beings- and as such, we, very much like the imaginary one-dimensional creatures, are constrained along their single line.

We too are constrained to a similar line- not one that goes from dot to dot, but one that goes from one point in time to the next.

Time

Time, the fourth dimension, is to us, just like the second and third dimensions are to one-dimensional beings: we are fixed to move in a single direction in Time, just like one-dimensional beings are fixed to move only in a single direction in Space.

So, to summarise- just like one-dimensional creatures in Space, we can only move forwards in Time: not backwards, and not sideways between different iterations of time- we are only capable of progressing in a single direction.

For these one-dimensional creatures, we would seem impossibly complex, and infinitely impossible for them, along their one line of existence, to comprehend. But if we were to look upon them, in their simplicity we would find them very easy to understand- because we exist further up along the hierarchy of dimensions.

As such, when we look at that “one-dimensional” line, we see it from the first point to the last- we see the first point that these one-dimensional creatures start from, and we see the last point that they reach- and we see all these states at the same time, represented to us as that line.

We see it all at once: we see the start, we see the progression, and we see the end of the line in one glimpse. That hypothetical one-dimensional creature can only exist along one point on that line at once, and can only move along that line in one direction- but we, as four-dimensional creatures, can see the entire sum of their lives, and their timeline: we see its start, its middle and its end.

So now let us imagine a being that exists in a higher dimension than us. Just like we can see the entirety of a one-dimensional beings existence, and just how they could never hope to comprehend our complicated, multi-dimensional existence, so too in theory here the roles would be reversed: we would have no real hope of fully understanding this being who exists further along the dimensional plane to us- but to them, they would be capable of entirely understanding our entire lives and world.

Indeed- recall how we can see the entirety of that one-dimensional creatures world with just a glance at that line?

Distance

So too, would a being from a dimension beyond our own see us:

Time

They would see us from our first point of existence- our birth, to our end in our grave- they would see us as a long line, like a long, connected snake that is made up of our every instance in time of our entire lifetimes. Every motion in time, to such a being, would seem to be connected to the one before, and to the one that follows, from the very start to the very end.

Moreover, to such a being, there would not necessarily be any fixed order to this passage of time.

Recall the one-dimensional line: we, as four-dimensional creatures, have no limitation on how we can look at this line- we can see it from left to right and from right to left with the same ease.

So too, would a being from beyond our dimensions be able to see our lives- they need not see us going from the past to the future- but can just as easily see our lives going backwards- and, ultimately, can look upon the entire sum of our lives at once, just as we can look at the entirety of that one-dimensional line at once.

So then, we are only constrained in time because we are four-dimensional beings, stuck moving in the same direction and at the same speed along Time.

In Quantum Mechanics there are many more dimensions than this, some of which the video from which I extrapolate looks into, and they too are worth studying in the context of Islam and the Qur’an, but are presently too complex to delve into within this work.

For the time being, we need only concern ourselves with this vision of Time- that is, to any being that exists on a higher dimension, outside of Time (and surely God must exist on the highest dimension, or beyond it), the lives of Time-bound creatures appear to all be happening at once.

The implications of this, as one might imagine, are quite massive.

Even if this is only a very brief and basic unpacking of dimensional theory, it provides, I think, a chilling potential explanation for how God might exist outside of Time, and so too the Quran, being His Word, not being bound by any of the limitations of Time, but rather as something that can treat the past, future and present as one. Likewise, we know that the Hereafter is eternal, and as such must exist outside of time, so though we are 3-dimensional beings for now, our future existence will eventually be one outside of Time.

As for the dimensions beyond the fourth- those may have to wait for my next blog, Beyond Dimensions (more seriously, they will likely be the focus of the next instalment of this series, and possible many instalments beyond that- and only God alone knows).

The Timelessness of Dreams



We can now, therefore, begin to understand what the implications of the nature of Time are upon our understanding of our world, and of the Qur’an.

The first way we can see this in action, is by looking to our dreams.

In dreams, we are removed from this earthly world, and taken to God. When we awaken, we are returned to him. It is thus spoken in the Qur’an:

He [God] it is Who gathereth you at night and knoweth that which ye commit by day. Then He raiseth you again to life therein, that the term appointed (for you) may be accomplished. And afterward unto Him is your return. Then He will proclaim unto you what ye used to do.

{Al-An’am, 6:60}

In another Ayah, this is given even more emphatically:

It is Allah that takes the souls (of men) at death; and those that die not (He takes) during their sleep: those on whom He has passed the decree of death, He keeps back (from returning to life), but the rest He sends (to their bodies) for a term appointed verily in this are Signs for those who reflect.

{Al-Zubar, 39:42}

Let us then be among those who reflect, insha’Allah.

We can then combine this fact, with our work so far determining that the Qur’an in fact not only speaks of a Timelessness beyond our time- but itself comes from that Timeless realm.

We can thus extrapolate from these findings the following:

Our present existence is one that is bound in time. By His nature, God Himself is bound by nothing, and thus certainly not by time. The Qur’an comes from God, and thus from a realm not bound by time (and we have seen examples of how this Timelessness manifests itself within it). Beyond our deaths, the Eternity that we will be taken to is not one of infinite time, but rather that exists entirely out of time, as it will, insha’Allah be in a realm near to God. Finally, even in sleep, just as we will be in death, we are taken nearer to God- and thus, in sleep we are taken to a realm outside of time, before we are returned to our waking, worldly existence.

If we are able to accept each of this points individually, and then accept the ways in which they are interlinked, we might thus then be able to make some fascinating hypotheses.

We can now determine that the closest that we are able to experience Timelessness whilst we are on earth is in our sleep, as we are in a realm beyond our own, even if we are not fully conscious within it.

And thus the primary artefacts that we bring back from us from this realm are dreams, and in them we can find glimpses of Timelessness.

I do not think that is not mere conjecture- consider, if you will, the nature of dreams.

In dreams, there is no real order to things. Events happen out of sequence. The best way to experience this for yourself is to keep a dream journal. Even in the act of trying to pin down the sequence of events for some of your dreams, you will often find yourself wondering which event came before the other.

In some strange way, it feels like there are several logical courses of progression that could take place within these dreams- it is not Event 1, then Event 2, then Event 3- but rather, each discrete event feels like it could originate from several others, and can flow into several others.

This is best understood and accepted by trying yourself to keep a dream journal, and noticing this effect for yourself.

In some sense, then, when we attempt to write down our dreams (experienced in our sleeping, external state) within our waking world (our worldly, Time-bound state), we in fact find ourselves flattening extra-dimensional experiences into the limited four-dimensional space of our waking consciousness.

Just like a theoretical two-dimensional creature would need to flatten a three-dimensional world in order to experience it (seeing merely a cross-section, rather than the full dimensions of it), so to do we need to flatten our extra-dimensional sleeping experiences into a limited space in order to understand them from within our waking realm.

And of course, just as the two-dimensional cross-section cannot possibly describe the fullness of the three-dimensional experiences (but merely shows a limited sketch of it), so too are we incapable of fully comprehending the entirety of our dream experiences when we are awake, except in a limited manner.

Thus, we can conclude, we have on earth two main ways to understand Timelesness- the first is the Qur’an itself, which comes from Beyond Time- and the second is our dreams, which by considering what the Qur’an tells us, might also be taking place in a realm Beyond Time.

The Quran as a Dream-Narrative



We can now take both these concepts further- both the notion of Timelessness, as well the specific Timeless totality of the Quran.

As we have seen, on earth we have two specific examples of Timelessness. One comes from our dreams, which themselves are born in a place Beyond Time- and the second comes from the Qur’an which itself comes from a similar realm, not bound by Time.

Thus then, we should not be surprised to find some similarities between the nature of these two instances of Timelessness that we are able to taste in this life.

Let us look to Sura 18, where we are told a narrative of the prophet Moses.

It begins abruptly:

And when Moses said unto his servant: I will not give up until I reach the point where the two rivers meet, though I march on for ages

[Al-Kahf, 18:60]

And within the next Ayah becomes all the more abrupt:

And when they reached the point where the two met, they forgot their fish, and it took its way into the waters, being free

[Al-Kahf, 18:61]

The fish appears out of nowhere, with no forewarning. It is mentioned as though we might already have known about it- they forgot their fish, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have forgotten one’s fish. And the rest of the narrative is no less confusing.

And when they had gone further, he said unto his servant: Bring us our breakfast. Verily we have found fatigue in this our journey.

He said: Didst thou see, when we took refuge on the rock, and I forgot the fish – and none but Satan caused me to forget to mention it – it took its way into the waters by a marvel.

He said: This is that which we have been seeking! So they retraced their steps again.

[Al-Kahf, 18:62-4]

This passage, and the appearance of the fish specifically (but also the entire Surah, and by the extension the Quran itself), has often been likened to something out of a dream.

Norman O. Brown says:

The fish appears suddenly from nowhere, as in dreams; no causal explanation, no narrative coherence. The fish becomes a symbolic, or the archetypal fish, the same one you see on California bumper-stickers; or in the mediaeval jingle piscis assus Christus passus.

It is, to Brown, an archetype as well as a literal fish. There is no narrative coherence, but there doesn’t need to be- this is not a story, not, like our lives, a narrative with a beginning and an end- it is beyond that.

The comparison to a dream, I think, is particularly apt; perhaps more so than Brown himself realises.

In dreams images flow back and forth, scenes flow from one to the other without any apparent reason or order; objects appear without their entrance having been prepared for by the narrative. And I don’t think this comparison between the Qur’an and dreams is a trivial or coincidental one.

In fact, dreams might be the closest we can come to understanding the nature of Timelessness, existing without the rigorous, single-directonal passage of time which we are powerless to escape.

As we have seen above, the Qur’an describes sleep in this manner:

It is Allah that takes the souls (of men) at death; and those that die not (He takes) during their sleep: those on whom He has passed the decree of death, He keeps back (from returning to life), but the rest He sends (to their bodies) for a term appointed verily in this are Signs for those who reflect.

{Al-Zubar, 39:42}



According to the image painted by this Ayah, in sleep we are taken in some way to God, or at least out of our current plane of existence, to which we are returned by Him once we awaken- “raised to life” again.

Sleep, then, is like a temporary state of death- and to Muslims, death is not termination, but ascendance to the next stage of life.

On the basis of this Ayah, I do not think it is a stretch at all to suggest that our experience when sleeping might be considered in some way Timeless, a time when we are removed from this reality- just like we will be on the Day of Judgement, taken to an eternity that is not bound by Time; sleep is but a preview of this.

And so it is that in dreams we find ourselves freed from time: there is no particular order to dreams. Dream episodes, when remembered the next morning, can make sense in any number of orders: there is no set passage from scene to scene, but rather, they flow into one another, and seem to make sense in a number of chronologies.

But when the waking mind attempts to make sense of what it dreamt, because it is bound once more by Time, it can only find meaningless chaos simply because we are creatures of the fourth dimension, in our waking state.

As such, the comparisons that have called Qur’anic narratives “dream-like” make perfect sense: the Quran is not bound by time, just like briefly by night in our dream-landscapes we experience something that is in some way outside of our waking understanding of Time.

Our experience of dreams and our experience of the Quran might seem so alike precisely because they are the two ways in which we are able to glimpse Timelessness within our three-dimensional earthly lives.

Closing Words

The Qur’an, being God’s word, transcends time, but instead represents an annihilation of human thinking, in the way that it is structured, with no order- no start or beginning. Tenses in the Qur’an are used interchangeably, as a reminder that our Lord exists outside of Time- and in Eternity, a concept largely unimaginable to us.

This is not seen just in the use of tense, but in the very nature of the Qur’an, which seems entirely dream-like at times- and as we have seen, the fact that dreams are perhaps the closest we can get to being time-less, such a comparison is very fitting indeed.

The message of the Quran is not only in its words, but in its very form and structure itself.

And nor is it just a part of its message, but a necessary consequence of the fact that it is the word of God, brought into the realm of humanity for the sake of human understanding.

Just as our recollections of dreams seem like a mish-mash because we can only review them when we are in our waking, four-dimensional state, so too, given our limited chronological standpoint, some parts of the Qur’an then seem completely unlike anything we experience in our own lives, and completely unlike any other books we might read. The Reality it describes is one that is beyond our own.

When we take all that into consideration, we see the true majesty of the Quran. The Quran shatters all we know- our understanding of reality, our human language, our knowledge of existence and its rules- as befits a book from God; for it cannot be like any other book.

I have only touched upon a surface of an endless expanse of knowledge, within which there is a huge amount more that can be said, and beyond it there is even more that might be looked at which I have not even began to touch upon, or indeed dream of.

There is much more to be said, by both myself and others- both on these same topics, as well as countless others, if only we use our minds and are lose our fear of entering unfamiliar ground- for despite the danger of leaving the trodden road, what we find there will surely be of far more worth than the same paths we have been trekking back and forth along for centuries.

Through simply studying both the words and the structure itself of the Qur’an, and combining this with our present scientific knowledge of our physical world, we have seen that not only do Science and the Qur’an have the potential to exist in complete harmony- but also that, when we use both together, we are able to reach conclusions we might not have dreamed of otherwise.

The Road Ahead

As far as I am concerned, this is only the beginning, and only a glimpse of what we might be able to achieve by using this kind of methodology, and this, I hope, and pray to God to guide me, will be something that I will explore as far as I can within this blog, building on the principles that I have established over these posts, to reach some understanding still further beyond.

I will, insha’Allah, follow this post up with one that summarises the principles that we have established thus far, and anticipating how I will God-willing use them in order to attain, if God grants us it, still further knowledge.

In the next installment of this particular series, on The Truth of the Qur’an, I plan to follow up what I have established today about Time, dreams, the Qur’an and the Reality of the afterlife- in order to show how some of us, in fact, are able to glimpse the future in our dreams. I will introduce, insha’Allah, and explore, the phenomenon of Precognitive Dreams, and show how they fit within this narrative that we have established.

Beyond that- I believe we have a vast breadth of untapped knowledge beyond our own, and God-willing, I mean to stride into it as far as God will allow my metaphysical legs to carry me.

References:

Brown, N. O. (1983). The apocalypse of Islam. Social Text, 155-171.