RELIGION AND THE LIFE HEREAFTER

RELIGION AND THE LIFE HEREAFTER Points to Ponder We can now assert to a certain extent that the permanent existence of the soul, independent of the body, or the survival of the soul after the death of the body is no more a thing which involves blind faith; rather it has become a reality which can be empirically proved. The crux of religion is indubitably the belief in the life Hereafter. S O says Allama Shibli Nomani (1857-1914) under the heading ‘Life after Death’ in his famous book, Al-Ghazali (biography of the famed 11th century Muslim philosopher Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali). He goes on to say that it is because of this belief that religion has had an impact on human activities. Yet, despite it being the single most important belief in religion, it has been open to question. He quotes a Bedouin poet who, addressing his wife, expresses this most succinctly: Death, rebirth, My dear: it is all nonsense. Shibli feels that the first and most difficult hurdle to be surmounted is the acceptance of the fact that the spirit survives as an entity in its own right, quite independently of the body. The materialists for their part think of the soul as being just one more ingredient in the body, in the way that a chemical element is inextricably a part of a compound, or they regard it as being a particular property of the faculties of thought and sense perception on parallel with the melody which results when notes of a musical instrument are struck in a particular sequence. Drawing extensively on two of Imam Ghazali’s books, he observes that the description of the soul and the arguments which Ghazali has mentioned are all derived from Greek philosophers. Aristotle in his Theology has said the same and Avicenna has reiterated this in his own language. But the strange thing is that Ghazali has left out the point which is of prime importance in the discussion of spirit or soul. Soul has no body. It is an essence. Being purely non-material, this makes it of the first importance to prove its existence. As Shibli himself observes: “The existence of the soul is a matter of intuition. After pondering over it, we come to know that the faculty of reason is not a property of matter. Matter is a lifeless thing. Without reason, you cannot find sublime ideas, arts