Space Technology

By: Kamran Qureshi
For me, one's spirit and the spiritual contact with God, is the true essence of a religion. Although my religion, which is Islam, is a complete way of life and provides guidelines for both the body and the soul, yet I have always felt that the body is no more than an armour for the soul, which it will eventually shed off one day and move on.

Hence while having a similar discussion with my cousin who had just arrived a few days ago from Albany, New York to celebrate Eid with me and my family at our home in Lahore, I said "Let me explain my theory with an example". "Suppose a person like myself, who does not know how to swim, is asked to take a written test on comparative study of 'breast stroke' and 'butterfly' styles of swimming." My cousin seemed to be listening with great interest as I went on. "My guess is that given both the study material and the time to prepare it, I would have a chance of passing that written test, agreed"? He said "agreed". I continued, "However if afterwards someone asks me to provide an actual demonstration of either one of the swimming styles in a pool, you can very well guess what might happen." "Hence my point is that reading, questioning, thinking, can all at times, add up to zero without experiencing. To know is actually to experience."

Now swimming, as I was telling my cousin is yet a very tangible, a very physical exercise. And yet one fails to truly find out about it, to actually learn and know about it without experiencing it. However when we talk about religion and it's spiritual relationship with the human soul, since the entire experience is non-physical and intangible, the chances of ever assessing the true worth or gravity of a religion without actually experiencing it are next to nothing.Love, kindness, tolerance, humility, generosity, politeness as opposed to hatred, meanness, prejudice, pride, stinginess, rudeness and the list goes on, are all qualities and attributes of mankind with their seeds planted deep in the spiritual domain and from there-on stems out all the beauty and ugliness, casting shadows into our physical realm, defining and shaping our ever changing world, in which we live today.

No wonder the Quran says that; "Surely he alone will attain success who purified himself (his soul and his heart)" chapter 87, verse 14. "Surely he attained success who purified his soul . . ." chapter 91, verse 9.

Today is an age of science and skepticism as it was never before, it seems to me. And I might be wrong in my assessment but to me it seems that, the only way we know now of searching for answer to the same old question i.e. 'what else is there?', is to perform a biopsy on the surface of the matter. And I am not saying that this approach has not got it's merit. After all look at all the advancements we have made in all physical sciences. We have more professors, doctors and scientists publishing their research paper work than ever before.But my question is this, okay, where as 'A brief history of time' might take us to a new horizon in cosmology, can truly speaking 'A history of God', take the place of a Holy Book? Can it lead us to God?