off topic: Rebirth: Surah 4:97-99 Al Nisa (The Women)

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Rebirth: Surah 4:97-99 Al Nisa (The Women)

 

When angels take the souls of those who die in sin against their

souls.

Except those who are weak and oppressed — Men, women and children

who have no means in their power,

Nor ( a guide post) to direct their way.

For these, there is hope that Allah will forgive:

For Allah doth blot out (sins) and forgive again and again.

 

surah 4:97-99 Al Nisa (The Women)

(Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989.)

 

 

All humans who are mentally incapable, ignorant, or still

uncivilized will be forgiven for not being able to able to attain

everlasting life. With a single stroke the Qur'an excuses those

unfortunate to realize HIM — the infirm, sick, mentally retarded,

ignorant, those dying prematurely, illiterate tribes and other

disadvantaged beings. When the Qur'an was revealed 1,400 years ago

there were many backward communities and some still exist today. All

these souls will be forgiven again and again for not being able to

fulfill their obligation to Allah. But they will not be allowed to

enter His Kingdom. Repeatedly (rebirth after rebirth) they will be

forgiven as they slowly evolve towards increasing enlightenment in

each succeeding life, until they realize the Ultimate Reality (Al-

Haqqah).

 

Every human being will be given repeated chances, depending on his

actions on Earth, to attain HIS Promised Paradise. Their past good

karma unfailingly rewards them in each successive life and they are

inexorably drawn higher up the Spiritual Spiral, no matter under

what circumstances they are born. There are no short cuts or

exemptions; all are equal in HIS eyes and have to perform their

duties. Those unable will be forgiven again and again. His Mercy is

only possible through rebirth, again and again. If this is not the

case then Allah has already condemned hundreds of millions to hell

through absolutely no fault of theirs. This is an outright atrocity

and a deliberate mass genocide from a murderous, psychopathic god.

Muslims should know even corrupt humans are capable of far better

judgement and genuine compassion.

 

Homo sapiens have no knowledge of the number of times they are

reborn before attaining complete spiritual Knowledge and purity. For

primitive people such a state of being is still far away, but they

will be forgiven again and again through repeated rebirths till they

attain God-Realization. The Islamic interpreters have given no clue

as to what will happen to these unfortunate souls; will they be

allowed into Paradise or not? If the Qur'an says that they are

eligible, then where is it stated? And if they are not allowed to

enter then how are they going to redeem themselves? They have no

answer and never will.

 

 

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" Death is defined differently according to what people believe

themselves to be. If they are only the body and brain (as with

humanists or atheists), then death is the end of sensory experience,

of self. If we live once, death ends our only sojourn on Earth and

is naturally dreaded. If we are born again and again, it loses its

dread in light of the soul's pilgrimage to eternity. No matter how

ill, how infirm our condition, there is a serene and consoling

center of our being to which we can adjourn, the Source within. It

is more us than our body, more us than our mind and emotion. It will

not die. It does not hurt or fear. As physical debility and death

draw near, we seek this center, whether we call it Paramatma, God,

Self or Divine Consciousness. In the Krishna Yajur Veda, Katha

Upanishad, Yama, Lord of Death, explains: " Death is a mere

illusion which appears to those who cannot grasp Absolute Reality.

The soul is immortal, self-existent, self-luminous and never

dies. " "

 

Himalayan Academy, 1998,

www.hinduismtoday.kauai.hi.us/welcome.html

 

 

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" I know I am deathless. We have thus far exhausted trillions of

winters and summers. There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead

of them. "

 

Whalt Whitman, Leaves of Grass,

The Viking Press, New York 1965, p. 43.)

 

 

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" I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I

have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of

millenniums. . . . All my previous selves have their voices, echoes,

promptings, in me. . . . Oh! Incalculable times again shall I be

born. . . . There is no death. "

 

Jack London, The Star Rover,

Macmillan Co., 1943, p. 241-42.

 

 

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" I did not find it at all difficult to imagine that I might have

lived centuries ago; and that I encountered problems that I still

not able to solve at that time; therefore I had to get born again

for not having been able to accomplish the task received. "

 

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections,

Pantheon, 1963, p. 323.

 

 

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" We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. . .

.. But you, you learned so much at one time that you didn't have to

go through a thousand lives to reach this one. "

 

Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston,

Pan Books Ltd., 1973, p. 54.

 

 

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" There is inhalation, there is exhalation; there is death, there

is rebirth. Such is the drama of continuity that sustains the all-

pervading process in which we are enveloped. As the catalyst of

transformation on which the evolution of all matter and spirit

depends, reincarnation is ceaselessly within us and around us. From

the tiniest micro to the macro most huge, cycles that hinge on

rebirth and regeneration are proceeding at every conceivable level

of life.

 

The idea of palingenesis (a word of Greek and Latin origin literally

meaning " again, birth " ) is as old as the human race. Eastern

mystics have long viewed the universe in terms of samsara, or

continuous death and rebirth . . . The rational West, trussed for

centuries in a strait-jacket tailored by scientific concepts that

impeded any meeting of matter and spirit, looked condescendingly

upon this exotic interpretation. Until, that is, science was pushed

into a magnificent transformation of its own perceptions. The

transformation was triggered by Einstein's theories of relativity

which showed that there was much to time, space and motion in the

universe than classical Newtonian physics allowed. Next came the

development of quantum mechanics and its rigorous inquiry into the

nature of subatomic phenomena . . . Writes Gary Zukav in The Dancing

Wu Li Masters:

 

Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the

original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The

subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation,

of mass changing to energy and energy changing to mass. Transient

forms sparkle in and out of existence creating a never-ending,

forever-newly-created reality.

 

In other words, science advances the hypothesis that a microscopic

form of rebirth underlies everything in the physical world. In The

Tao of Physics Fritjof Capra refers to these subatomic particles as

being " destructible and indestructible at the same time. "

This is precisely what is being implied by reincarnation: even as we

die we are capable of activating another body. Destructible yet

indestructible. Dead yet very much alive.

 

A similar process is taking place among the fifty trillion cells in

the human body. At a rate that defies imagination, old cells perish

and new ones are created from a mixture of the dead material and

freshly absorbed nutrients. Every second, two million oxygen-

carrying red cells are dying and being replaced while the hundreds

of millions of cells in the human gut renew themselves completely

every one or two days. Tracer studies have shown that, in the course

of a year, approximately 98 per cent of the atoms in the human body

are replaced by other atoms ingested with air, food and drink. Colin

Wilson argues in his work The Occult that . . . Life is not at the

mercy of death. It is in control of death. Half a billion years ago,

it learned the secret of reincarnation.

 

Shooting far beyond the body into the vastness of space, the same

principle appears to be at work in the most macroscopic of worlds.

While agreeing to disagree on the finer points of theory, many

cosmologists and astro-physics suggest that the universe is

oscillating, forever dying in order to be reborn . . . Renowned

astro-physicist John Gribben says he believes the universe " rolls

on forever in an eternal cycle in which death is merely the

necessary prelude to rebirth. " "

 

Joe Fisher, The Case for Reincarnation,

Collins Publishers, 1984, p. 23-5.

 

 

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" 7. East meets West. When the Beatles brought meditation and the

sitar back from India, they helped popularize the Eastern spiritual

and healing traditions that have changed the way the West thinks.

Since then, Eastern methods and beliefs have become household words:

meditation and yoga, yin-yang (non-dualist thinking), karma (the law

of cause and effect), maya (belief that the world is only one

insubstantial manifestation of reality), prana or chi (the life

force flowing through the body), and nirvana (the state on non-

attachment, i.e. enlightenment.) Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in

reincarnation, and their appreciation for the present moment, differ

from the Western model of redemption in the afterlife and encourage

us to relax into the mysterious unfolding of eternity. "

 

New Age Journal, The 10 Best of the New Age,

January/February 1997, p. 131.

 

 

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" Individual action (karma) plays a key role in the preservation

of universal harmony, but it also significantly affects a person's

involvement in the social and material world. According to the law

of karma, every deed generates a result that contributes to a

person's further involvement or withdrawal from this world. The

Hindu tradition recognizes a cycle of rebirth (samsara) in which the

individual soul (atman) is repeatedly reincarnated. The actions

performed in this life also contribute to an individual's fate in

his or her next life. As the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad explains, one

becomes virtuous by virtuous action, evil by evil action.

Although karma ties a person to the pleasures as well as to the

pains of this world, it is believed that the soul ultimately longs

to escape from the cycle of rebirth. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna

teaches that one cannot simply avoid acting, but one can strive to

avoid attachment to actions and their results. Through virtuous

living and detachment from the consequences of one's behavior —

that is, acting disinterestedly, free of egotistical concern and

desire — an individual can advance through a series of lives

until he or she reaches spiritual perfection, realizing the final

goal of moksa and achieving release from samsara. "

 

Professor Mary McGee, Eastern Wisdom,

Duncan Baird Publishers, England, 1996, p. 26.