Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 288
BELIEF IN THE UNSEEN. Likewise when the Quran speaks of the hereafter and warns man that he cannot truly understand the nature of what is being described, it is the inadequacy of man and not that of. God which is being highlighted. The implication is loud and clear. There have to be some new senses added in the hereafter to the senses we possess here on earth. All our present knowledge of the hereafter, therefore, is at best a shadowy vision of some unknown realities like that of a blind man who has some concept at least of what colour and light may have been. What can really make you understand (O man) what it really is?. The broadening of our senses, whenever it will take place, will perhaps completely transform beyond recognition the perception of what we seemed to have already experienced here on earth. We think we know what love is and we think we are familiar with suffering but what love would be in the hereafter and what suffering would be, one shudders to visualize. No wonder that the Quran reminds us that despite the vivid picture of heaven it portrays, no eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard the like of it. So also, despite clearly describing the chastisement of hell, it hastens to warn 'but what can make thee understand O man, what the Hellfire is?' The more one ponders over the meaning of the unseen, the more avenues of undreamt of possibilities begin to loom before one's vision. But to grasp what lies beyond in the unexplored avenues of hidden realities, man shall always stand in need of Divine revelation. The limitation of our perception, however, is not the only hindrance which impedes our enquiry. Even within the domain of our senses what lies hidden from us is far more than what we see. Whatever the belief in the unseen is, it is certainly not a belief in nothingness. A belief in nothingness is only a rejection of the belief in the unseen. 282