Edited: Israr Hasan
13th September, 2015
Most of the organized religions of the world believe that their
prophets and holy men received Revelation, Inspiration and Prophecies direct from
God. Some religions have religious texts which
they view as divinely revealed or
inspired. For instance, Orthodox
Jews believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical
Mount Sinai. Most
Christians believe that both the "Old
Testament and the New
Testament were inspired by God. “The revelations of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show
to His servants—things that must shortly take place.” (Revelation 1:1. Bible NKJV). Muslims believe
the Qur’an was revealed by God to Muhammad, word by word, through His arch-angel Gabriel (Jibril). : “We have sent you the
revelation, as We sent it to Noah, and the Messengers after him: We sent
revelation to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes, Job, Aaron, and
Solomon and to David We gave the Psalms.” (Q. 4:163). In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered ‘apauruṣeya’, "not human compositions", and are supposed to
have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is
heard".
Majority of today’s Buddhists, Confucianists and Taoists consider
their founders’ experience to have some kind of revelation or inspiration from
their Supreme Being. Almost all religious leaders and reformers believe that
eternal truth exists within every soul as a part of nature. Revelation or
inspiration to them is the instrument of contact with the fountainhead of this
eternal truth.
Middle Ages scientists, philosophers, and social reformers of
post-Hellenic Era consider the above perceptions are based on a mistaken inference.
From vantage point of human mind, revelation seems to be an internal experience
taking place within the sphere of the human psyche. It is not a thing received
from outside. Nearly all people at one stage or another of their life have some
encounter with the workings of their psyche.
The human psyche has a built-in mechanism which can create illusions and
visions, sometimes so clear that they appear to be real to the person who
experiences them.
We observe that many authentic cases of revelation and inspiration
are reported outside the domain of religion. For instance, there are many
interesting cases of highly complex information conveyed through some kind of
revelation and inspiration to some scientists and social workers.
In 1865 a German chemist, Fredrich August Kekule had a dream one
night in which he saw a snake with its tail held in its mouth. This dream instantly put him on the right
track leading to the solution of the perplexing problem he was working to solve
since long. The secret of the molecular behavior in certain organic compounds was
unraveled, a discovery which created a revolution in the understanding of
organic chemistry.
Elias Howe was the first person to mechanize the process of sewing
machine. He received answer to his sewing problem through a dream. The sewing
problem had frustrated him for a long time.
In his dream he saw himself surrounded by savages. He was tied to a tree
and the savages attacked him with arrows and spears. It surprised him to see
tiny eyelets on their spearheads. On
waking from his dream, he immediately realized the solution, which led him to
invent the prototype of the sewing machine that dramatically revolutionized the
sewing industry. It is not difficult to
visualize the sorry state in which man would find himself today without the
blessing of messages in our dreams.
Long before when Communist Russia was passing through collapse, I
saw a dream. I saw the full moon in the
night sky was cracking in pieces. The secret of my dream was revealed when
Soviet Russia was dismembered a few months after my this dream. Similarly I saw a dream that I was floating
in sky when the moon and stars were passing with fast speed in opposite
direction. Next morning I checked with one of my knowledgeable friends living
in my neighbor, who suggested that I might have a long air travel. This was revealed when I took up my migration
with a long air-journey from Karachi to Miami after five-six years of my
celestial dream. I had no plan of any migration to USA at the time of this
dream. The most amazing dream I saw in Sylhet (then East Pakistan) in 1970. I
was on a vacation trip with my family from Karachi. Three-four days before our departure from
Sylhet to Dacca to catch our scheduled flight from Dacca to Karachi, I saw a
vivid dream of some sufi mausoleum. Next morning when I related my dream to my
aunt, she informed me that the mausoleum belonged to Sufi Shah Jalal, and she
advised, I must visit him to pay my homage before my departure. When I visited
the mausoleum next day, I was surprised to see it a complete replica of my
dream. (Read full story in my blog: www.Israrhasan.com; title: A Miraculous Journey to Shah Jalal).
I have no doubt that some dreams carry messages for future events in
our lives. I am sure my readers will easily find some such instances of their
dreams come true.
Apart from revelation, inspiration, and prophecies by the medium of
dreams, there are some unexplainable instances which are hard to comprehend by
any rules of human mind. We may call it day-dreaming.
On a day in June 1943, a young house-painter, Pieter Van der Hurk,
slipped and fell 30 feet from a ladder.
When he woke up in a hospital in The Hague (Germany), he had a severe
skull fracture and a broken shoulder. As he opened his eyes, a nurse was holding
his wrist, taking his pulse. Suddenly, a clear picture came into his head. He said painfully: ‘Be careful. I can see you on a train. You may lose a suitcase that belongs to a
friend of yours.’ The girl said to him, amazed: ‘As a matter of fact, I have
just arrived by train, and I did leave a friend’s suitcase behind in the dining
car. How did you know?’ But Pieter Hurk had no idea how he ‘knew’;
the idea had simply come into his head then and there. When the nurse had gone,
he turned to his fellow patient and found himself saying: ‘You are a bad man.’
‘Why?’ asked the patient with some amusement.
‘Because, when your father died recently, he left you a gold watch, and
you sold it.’ The man gasped, ‘My
God! you’re right. How did you know?’
Many people were to ask Pieter Hurk—soon world-famous as Peter
Hurkos, who became famous as a person of exceptional insight. Science is still
unable to answer it. Hurkos can pick up
some common article, a glove or an umbrella, and suddenly ‘know’ all about the
owner. In 1958 Hurkos was asked by the
police of Miami, Florida, to sit in the cab of a murdered taxi driver and give
his information of the killer. As he sat there, Hurkos described the murder of
the driver in detail. He went on to describe the killer—a tall and thin man
with a tattoo on his right arm having a rolling walk like a sailor, his name
sounded like Smitty, and he was responsible for another murder in Miami, a
naval man shot to death in his apartment.
The police were amazed; for there had been such a murder recently, but
they had not connected it with the cab-driver killer.
Many Smiths were nicknamed Smitty in those days. The police came up with a Rogue’s Picture Gallery
of a sailor’s picture on display, called Charles Smith, and the picture was identified
by a waitress, who described a conversation with the drunken sailor who had
boasted of killing two men. A ‘wanted’
notice for Charles Smith went out to police stations all over America; Smith
was recognized in New Orleans after a hold-up, and sent back to Miami. He was
charged only with the murder of the cab-driver and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
If we hunt our daily city data, such cases are not difficult to
find. I believe the episodes of personal dreams, inspirations, and psychic
experiences, cited above, are not uncommon in our day to day personal life. Usually,
we perceive things by our five organic senses of touch, sight, smell, taste and
hearing. But we find human perception in Hurkos episodes are beyond his senses.
We draw results of our needs and problems by the help of our senses
manipulated by our intellect. Beyond intellect there seems to be yet another
stage, when we behold unseen with our wide-open eyes. We can name it
Day-Dreaming. However, all such mental
episodes relate to para-psychology which is not our subject of discourse here.
Here, I have simply given a glimpse to show how our world of so many serious concerns
is so brittle like bubbles in the sea of existence.
Sources:
(i)
W. Montgomery Watt’s “The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali.”
(ii)
Colin Wilson’s “The Mammoth Book of True Crime.”
(iii)
Encyclopedia Wikipedia on Revelation.
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Email:
ihasanfaq@yahoo.com
Blog: www.Israrhasan.com
