1

QUANTUM PHYSICS & MYSTICISM

Submitted by: Supervised by

Huma Rizwan Dr. Tahir Hmeed Tanoli
Roll No 67 Assistant Director
B.S(Hons) in Islamic Studies of Academics at Iqbal
Academy Pakistan, Lahore.
And PhD in Iqbaliyat

MINHAJ COLLEGE FOR WOMEN LAHORE

Session 2010-2014
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I dedicate this thesis to my beloved father and to

Sheikh-ul-Islam Dr. Mohammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
for making me be who I am.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgment
Preface
Chapter 1
Introduction of Quantum Physics
1.1 Concept of Quantum Physics
 Definitions of physics 10
 Definition of Quantum Mechanics 10
 History of Physics 12
 Ancient Greece 12
 Muslim scientists 13
 18th-century developments 15
 19th century 15
 20th century: Birth of Modern Physics 16
 Evolution of Quantum Theory 17
 Quantum Realities 20
1.2 Pioneers of physics 24
 Max Planck 24
 Lord Ernest Rutherford 25
 Albert Einstein 25
 Niles Bohr 26
 Erwin Schrödinger 26
 Louis de Broglie 27
 Enrico Fermi 27
 Werner Heisenberg 27
 Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac 28
1.3 Great theories of Quantum physics 29
 Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity 29
 Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity 30
 Wave particle duality 31
 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 31
 The Copenhagen Interpretation 32
 The Many Worlds Theory 33
 Participatory Anthropic Principle 34
 Quantum Entanglement& Non-locality 35
 Quantum Teleportation 39
 Quantum Consciousness 41
References 44
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Chapter 2:
Introduction of Mysticism
2.1 Concept of mysticism 50
 Origins 50
 Beliefs 52
2.2 Theoretical Perspective 53
 Wahdat-ul-wjood 53
 Wahdat al-Suhud/ Apparentism 55
 Annihilation/dissolution (Fana) 56
 Eternity/subsistence (Baqa) 58
 Tayy at-Ard 61
 Tajdd-e-amsal 63
2.3 Devotional practices 65
 Dhikr 65
 Sama 66
 Muraqaba 67
 Visitation 68
2.4 Mystic’s view about universe 69
 Ali Ibn Mohammad Ibn al Arabi 69
 Jalalad-Din Mohammad Rumi 70
 Mohammad al-Ghzali 75
 Mehar Ali Shah 77
 Qalandar Baba Auliya 79
References 83
Chapter 3:
Quantum Physics & Mysticism: Common Grounds
Introduction 87
3.1 Language barrier 88
3.2 Past,Present &Future exist simultaneously 90
3.3 Teleportationvstayy at-Ard 93
3.4 Biocentrism vs. baqa/eternity/subsistence 94
3.5 Only One Energy Exist VsWadat-ul-Wujood 98

Conclusion 103
References 105
Recommendations 107
Bibliography 109
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Acknowledgement

F irst and above all, I praise Allah, the almighty for providing me this opportunity,
granting me the capability to proceed successfully and for the wisdom and
perseverance that he has been bestowed upon me during this research project, and indeed,
throughout my life. Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my
supervisor Dr. Tahir Hameed Tnoli for the continuous support of my B.S thesis, for his
patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. His guidance helped me in
all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having a
better advisor and supervisor for my B.S thesis.

I would like to acknowledge the academic and technical support of the college, library
facilities and computer facilities of the college. Specially Miss Rehana Tariq for guiding
me about the work on Microsoft Word and in giving the final shape to my thesis. I am
also deeply thankful to my college principal Dr. Samar Fatima and my college staff.

Many friends have helped me stay sane through this difficult time. Their support and care
helped me overcome setbacks and stay focused on my thesis. Munibah Shafiq and, Zain
Fazal and all my friends, I greatly value their friendship and I deeply appreciate their
belief in me. Last but not the least my deepest gratitude goes to my beloved family, my
mother, father, my younger sister Bushra, specially my elder sister Rimza and my
paternal uncle Mian Suleman Pasha for supporting me. May the Almighty Allah richly
bless all of them. For any errors or inadequacies that may remain in this work, of course,
the responsibility is entirely my own.
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Préface

W hen we scroll through the pages of history from the very beginning of the human
record to the present. We find that whenever a person belonging to any religion
any region or any civilization, accomplish an intellectual inquiry keeping himself
unbiased and impartial. He neither has any hidden agenda nor wants to prove someone’s
arguments wrong. He does it with sincerity and intimacy just for the search of truth,
reality and acquaintance. He has love for knowledge and commitment for it, his
intellectual inference or the result of his search would turn out to be the same as that of
Quran’s. Quran: a divine guidance and knowledge revealed about 1400 years ago. The
intact Islamic history and our understanding of Quran, that we have till now, corroborate
and support this fact.

When we talk about the intellectual inquiry or knowledge it includes all fields of
knowledge from physical sciences like chemistry, physics, biology, cosmology,
astronomy, geology, etc to social sciences like psychology, economics and political
sciences etc. Whether we are talking about past or predicting and developing theories
about future, whatever man has achieved after a long endeavor spreading over centuries,
had already been described in the Holy Quran in a modified and codified form. This is
not a religious passion or a demonstration of the miracles of Quran. There are concrete
facts to attest it.

In this thesis we are going to subject a branch of physics, which is the advance form of
modern physics and has made remarkable progress in the last half of the 20th century.
When John Dalton’s theory was proved wrong, Neil Bohr, Heisenberg, Pascal Jordan and
Enrico made valuable researches in this field and developed a new branch of physics
named “Quantum Physics or Quantum Mechanics”. Quantum experts say that the
boundaries of human spiritual intuition and his struggle for materialistic comprehension
are seeing to merge here; apparently spiritualism and materialism are two opposite poles
or contradictory facts, but in the world of quantum physics there comes a commonality
between them.

This concept became a point of interest for me because long ago our national poet and
philosopher Dr. Allamah Muhammad Iqbal said in the preface of his book “The
Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam” that

“...the day is not far off when Religion and Science may discover hitherto unsuspected
mutual harmonies…”

Physics is now going to demolish its own foundations and principles because once
physics was known as the study of matter and energy but now quantum physics rejects
even the existence of matter and only deals with energy. Energy is composed of waves
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and waves show dual behavior of being and not being at the same time as stated in
Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty.

The Quranic guidance and its understanding about the universe, the inquiry of man’s
notion and reflection and this sentence of Dr. Iqbal, persuaded me to study the parallels
of Islamic spirituality and quantum physics. In this thesis I have presented its rational
findings in a systematic way.

Objectives of study:

 To evaluate the commonalities between mysticism and quantum physics.

 To evaluate the spiritual basis of this material world.
 To make modern sciences as an approach to demonstrate Islamic facts.
 To develop the potentiality for the students of Islamic studies to initiate with the
modern studies and vice versa.

Hypothesis

“...the day is not far off when Religion and Science may discover hitherto unsuspected
mutual harmonies…”

Significance of the topic:

Our young generation who is not familiar with the true Islamic disciplines and are seeing
their religion through the glasses of western thinkers should not be subdued and terrified
by modern scientific explorations. They should be confident and proud of their faith and
religion and rather than perceiving Islam as a backward religion, they should recognize it
as a fountain of knowledge. My thesis would work as a thought provoking news for open-
minded people who can think “outside the box”.
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Chapter # 1

Introduction to Quantum Physics

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F irst chapter is based on a brief introduction to physics, and a detailed introduction of

its most important branch that is quantum physics also known as quantum mechanics
or wave mechanics or quantum theory. It would through a light on the suggested
solutions of frequently asked questions like:

1. How the world feels to us? Whether there is a difference between the way the
world feels to us and the way the world really is?
2. Do all realities exist simultaneously?
3. Is there a possibility that all the future exist side by side?
4. Have we ever thought about that, what thoughts are made of?
5. Why we should be able to remember the past but not the future?
6. By acting now we can affect the future but not the past?
7. Why we are here that is the ultimate question? What is reality?
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Concept of Quantum Physics

Definition of Physics:

What is physics? The term Physics comes from Greek and means “everything that is
concerned with nature”. 1

Or it simply means as ‘nature’.2

As this word has its origin in Greek but it also uses in different languages with a quite
different meanings like in English physics means “physical things”. In Greek “phusika”
means “natural things” and in Greek “phusis” means “nature”. Different physicists have
defined science of physics in approximately homogeneous words; some of its definitions
are as follows.

 “Physics is the basic physical science. It deals with those fundamental questions
on the structure of matter and the interaction of the elementary constituents of
nature that are susceptible to experimental investigation and theoretical inquiry”. 3
 “Physics involves the study of matter and energy in its different forms, and the
transformation of matter and energy”.4
 “Physics is an attempt to describe, in as fundamental and penetrating a way as
possible, the nature and behavior of the world around us”.5
 “Physics is the study of fundamental structures and interactions in the physical
universe”.6

Quantum mechanics:

As the object of my study is quantum physics, it seems appropriate to define first what is
meant by quantum physics? However quantum physics, like all other sciences, is not
easily definable. It is that area of science which shatters the materialist myth, violate
Newtonian Mechanics and gives positive evidence for theism. The strange and festinating
world of Quantum forms the basis for modern physics. Quantum mechanics is considered
weirder than Einstein theory of relativity. Robert Heinlein commented that:
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"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine”.

The principles of quantum physics are being applied in an increasing number of areas,
including quantum optics, quantum chemistry, quantum computing, and quantum
cryptography.

What is a quantum?

First of all we need to know, what is ‘quantum’? Quantum is the plural of quanta. Oxford
dictionary defines quanta as

“The minimum amount of energy that can take part in a physical process is called
quanta”.7

The word ‘quantum’ means ‘a quantity’ or ‘a discrete amount’.8

Definition:

Although there is no proper definition of quantum mechanics but some physicists define
quantum physics as

“The branch of mechanics that deals with the mathematical description of the motion
and interaction of subatomic particles, incorporating the concepts of quantization of
energy, wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, and the correspondence
principle”.9

Another definition for quantum mechanics is

“Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena

at nanoscopic scales where the action is on the order of the Planck constant”.10

After working on this topic and analyzing its different theories I would like to defines
quantum mechanics as

“Quantum mechanics is the science of probabilities and consciousness related to the

existing realities of universe”
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In the world of quantum mechanics, the laws of physics that are familiar from the
everyday world no longer work. Instead, events are governed by probabilities. For what
quantum mechanics says is that nothing is real and that we cannot say anything about
what things are doing when we are not looking at them. The world of quantum mechanics
is so strange, indeed, that even Albert Einstein found it incomprehensible and refused to
accept all of the implications of the theory developed by Schrodinger and his colleagues.
Before entering into the weird world of quantum physics we should have a journey to the
past. This past journey enables us to look into the future.

History of Physics:
Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields
of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the
study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in Antiquity with
the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy.
Meanwhile, philosophy including what was called "physics".

When we look over the history of physics we have three prominent eras, physics
gradually passing through them and have attained its present form. The first era is named
as Greek era or ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece:

The move towards a rational understanding of nature began at least since the Archaic
period in Greece (650 – 480 BCE) with the philosopher Thales of Miletus (7th and 6th
centuries BCE), dubbed "the Father of Science" for refusing to accept various
supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena, proclaimed
that every event had a natural cause.11

 Heraclitus:

Heraclitus (around 500 BCE) proposed that the only basic law governing the universe
was the principle of change and that nothing remains in the same state indefinitely. This
observation made him one of the first scholars in ancient physics to address the role
of time in the universe.
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 Democritus:

Democritus, were the first to develop the theory of atomism the idea that everything is
composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms.

 Aristotle:

Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE), a student of Plato, promoted the concept that observation of
physical phenomena could ultimately lead to the discovery of the natural laws governing
them. He wrote the first work which refers to that line of study as "Physics" in the 4th
century BC; Aristotle founded the system known as Aristotelian physics. He attempted to
explain ideas such as motion (and gravity) with the theory of four elements. Aristotle
believed that all matter was made up of ether, or some combination of four elements:
earth, water, air, and fire.

 Archimedes:

In the 3rd century BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (287 – 212
BCE) generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the
greatest of all time laid the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and calculated the
underlying mathematics of the lever. Archimedes also developed elaborate systems of
pulleys to move large objects with a minimum of effort.

After this long era of Greek scientists the second era was of Muslim scientists. Great
scientific inventions and concepts were developed in Muslim era. Muslims provided the
experimental basis to physical sciences.

Muslim scientists:

During the period of time known as the Dark Ages (5th to 15th centuries), much
scientific progress occurred in the Muslim world.12

The Islamic Abbasid caliphs gathered many classic works of antiquity and had them
translated into Arabic within the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, Iraq.
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 Ibn al-Haytham:

Important contributions were made by Ibn al-Haytham (965 – 1040), a mathematician

from Basra, Iraq considered one of the founders of modern optics The works of Ibn al-
Haytham and eventually passed on to Western Europe where they were studied by
scholars such as Roger Bacon and Witelo.13

 Omar Khayyam:

Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), a Persian scientist, calculated the length of a solar year to
10 decimal places and was only out by a fraction of a second when compared to our
modern day calculations. He used this to compose a calendar considered more accurate
than the Gregorian calendar . He is classified as one of the world's first great science
communicators he is said to have convinced a Sufi theologist that the world turns on an
axis.

 Muhammad ibn Jabir:

Muhammad ibn Jabir (858 – 929), from Harran, Turkey, further developed trigonometry
as an independent branch of mathematics, developing relationships such as tanθ = sinθ /
cosθ. His driving force was to obtain the ability to locate Mecca from any given
geographical point – aiding in Muslim rituals such as burial and prayer, which require
participants to face the holy city, as well as making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

 Nasir al-Din al-Tusi:

Furthermore, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274), an astronomer and mathematician from

Baghdad, authored the “Treasury of Astronomy”, a remarkably accurate table of
planetary movements that reformed the existing planetary model of Roman astronomer
Ptolemy by describing a uniform circular motion of all planets in their orbits. This work
led to the later discovery, by one of his students, that planets actually have an elliptical
orbit. Copernicus later drew heavily on the work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and his students,
but without acknowledgment.14

After Muslim era Europe started working in the field of science and continued Muslim’s
work. Last three centuries are full of discoveries and fast development in the field of
science.
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18th century Development:

During the 18th century, the mechanics founded by Newton was developed by several
scientists as more mathematicians learned calculus and elaborated upon its initial
formulation. The application of mathematical analysis to problems of motion was known
as rational mechanics, or mixed mathematics and was later termed classical mechanics

 Mechanics:

The Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made important mathematical

studies of the behavior of gases.15

Henry Cavendish measured the Gravitational constant and determined the mass of the
Earth in 1798. In 1783, John Michel suggested that some objects might be so massive
that not even light could escape from them.

 Thermodynamics:

During the 18th century, thermodynamics was developed through the theories of
weightless "imponderable fluids", such as heat ("caloric"),electricity, and phlogiston.
Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed to caloric theory, which had been developed
mainly by the chemists, was the less accepted theory dating from Newton's time that heat
is due to the motions of the particles of a substance. This mechanical theory gained
support in 1798 from the cannon-boring experiments of Count Rumford, who found a
direct relationship between heat and mechanical energy.16

Chemical experimenters, for instance, defied attempts to enforce a scheme of abstract

Newtonian forces onto chemical affiliations, and instead focused on the isolation and
classification of chemical substances and reactions.17

19th Century Developments:

In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery. A year later, Thomas
Young demonstrated the wave nature of light which received strong experimental support
from the work of Augustine-Jean Fresnel and the principle of interference. In 1813, Peter
Ewart supported the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper on the measure of
moving force.
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 Laws of thermodynamics:

In the 19th century, the connection between heat and mechanical energy was established
quantitatively by Julius Robert von Mayer and James Prescott Joule. In 1849, Joule
published results from his series of experiments which show that heat is a form of energy.
Kelvin and Clausius also stated the that heat does not spontaneously flow from a colder
body to a hotter. In 1850, Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault measured the speed of
light in water and find that it is slower than in air.

 James Clerk Maxwel:-

In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell discovered the distribution law of molecular velocities.
Maxwell showed that electric and magnetic fields are propagated outward from their
source at a speed equal to that of light and that light is one of several kinds of
electromagnetic radiation, differing only in frequency and wavelength from the others. In
1864 James Maxwell published his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic
field, and stated that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon.18 Hertz generated and
detected electric waves in 1886.19

The atomic theory of matter had been proposed again in the early 19th century by the
chemist John Dalton. Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) held that energy (including heat)
was a measure of the speed of particles.20

When the world was going to step in 20th century, sciences crossed the door of bizarre
world of Q.P. and unveil the eccentric realities of this universe. And once again
challenged the men’s intellect.

20th Century Birth of Modern Physics:

At the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at which classical
mechanics could cope with highly complex problems involving macroscopic situations.
However, around 1900 serious doubts arose about the completeness of the classical
theories the triumph of Maxwell's theories. At the beginning of the 20th century a major
revolution shook the world of physics, which led to a new era, generally referred to
as modern physics.21 Albert Einstein's theory of relativity showed how measurements of
time and space are affected by motion between an observer and what is being observed.
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The theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from
the point of view of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous
equation, E = mc2, which reveals the equivalence.

Quantum mechanics:

Quantum mechanics is the theory of atoms and subatomic systems. Approximately the
first 30 years of the 20th century represent the time of the conception and evolution of the
theory.
Evolution of Quantum Theory:

The basic ideas of quantum theory were introduced in 1900 by Germen physicist Max
Planck he quantified nature of energy. Under certain ideal conditions the energy is
distributed in a characteristic way , which Planck showed could only be explained by
supposing that the electromagnetic radiations was emitted from the body in discrete
packets or bundles which he called quanta .the reason for this jerky behavior was
unknown and simply had to be accepted ad hoc.

The quantum theory was accepted when the Compton Effect established that light carries
momentum and can scatter off particles.

 Photoelectric effect:

In 1905 the quantum hypothesis was bolstered by Einstein, who successfully explained
the so called photoelectric effect in which light energy is observed to display electrons
from the surface of metals .To account for the particular way this happens, Einstein was
compelled to regard the beam of light as a hail of discrete particles later called photons.

 Wave-particle Dichotomy:

The experimental work of Clinton Davisson and others and the theoretical work of
Louise de Broglie led to the idea that electrons as well as photons can behave both as
waves and as particles, depending on the particular circumstances.

In 1912, Louise de Broglie, suggested that if energy could behave as both particles and
waves, perhaps matter could also! He nearly didn't get his PhD for that ridiculous
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suggestion! He produced the mathematics and predicted that under the right conditions a
beam of electrons (clearly matter made of particles) might show wave properties.
Surprisingly, when the experiment was performed, a beam of electrons was found to
diffract just like a wave would have done! That was it! It looked like energy and matter
could both exhibit wave - particle dualities. It appeared that a moving particle had a
wavelength!22

 Quantized Theory of atom:

In 1913 Niels Bohr proposed that atomic electrons are also ‘quantized’ in that they can
reside without loss of energy in certain fixed energy levels. When electrons jumps
between the levels, electromagnetic energy is released or absorbed in discrete quantities.
These packets of energy are, in fact, photons23

The quantized theory of the atom gave way to a full-scale quantum mechanics in the
1920s. New principles of a "quantum" rather than a "classical" mechanics, formulated
in matrix-form by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascal Jordan in 1925, were based
on the probabilistic relationship between discrete "states" and denied the possibility
of causality. Quantum mechanics was extensively developed by Heisenberg, Wolfgang
Pauli, Paul Dirac, and Erwin Schrödinger, who established an equivalent theory based on
waves in 1926; but Heisenberg's 1927 "uncertainty principle" (indicating the
impossibility of precisely and simultaneously measuring position and momentum) and
the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics (named after Bohr's home city)
continued to deny the possibility of fundamental causality, though opponents such as
Einstein would metaphorically assert that

"God does not play dice with the universe".24

 Quantum Theory:

Encyclopedia Britannica defines quantum theory as:

“According to quantum theory electromagnetic radiation can no longer always be

considered to consist of continuous waves; instead , it must under some circumstances be
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viewed as a collection of particle like photons the energy and momentum of each photon
being directly proportional to its frequency”25

On an every scale we are accustomed to the idea that the properties of an object such as
its size, weight, color, temperature, surface area and motion all are qualities which can
vary from one object to another in a smooth and continuous way. Apples, e.g. come in all
manner of shapes, sizes and colors without any noticeable gradation in between.

On the atomic scale, however, things are very different. The properties of atomic particles
such as their motion, energy and spin do not always exhibit similar smooth variations, but
may instead differ in discrete amount. One of the assumptions of the classical Newtonian
mechanics was that the properties of matter are continuously variable. When physicists
discover that this notion breaks down on atomic scale they had to devise an entirely new
system of mechanic- quantum mechanics- to take account of the lumpiness which
characterizes the atomic behavior of the matter. Quantum theory, then, is the underlying
theory from which quantum mechanics is derived.

Classical physics, as represented by Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell’s laws of

electromagnetism, works marvelously well for the analysis of the behavior of
macroscopic objects in terms of empirical determined laws of force. But as soon as we
enter the world of the atom, we find that new phenomena appears, requiring new
concepts for their analysis and description. The whole realm of phenomena at the atomic
and sub-atomic level is the special province of quantum theory. 26

Quantum Realities:

The new physics vision is still clouded, as evidenced by the multiplicity of its claim, but
whatever the outcome it is sure to be far from ordinary. To give you a stat of quantum
reality here are the views of its foremost creators in the form of eight realities which
represents eight major guesses as to what really going on behind the scene.
 Quantum Reality #1

The Copenhagen interpretation , Part 1(there is no deep reality.) no one has

influenced more our notions of what the quantum world is really about than Danish
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physicist Neils Bohr, and it is the Bohr who puts forth one of the quantum physics ‘most
outrageous claims: that there is no deep reality. Bohr does not deny the evidence of his
senses. The world we see around us is real enough, he affirms, but it floats on a world
that is not as real. Every day phenomenons are themselves built not out of phenomena but
out of an utterly different kind of being. This quantum reality was developed at Neils
Bohr Copenhagen institute; it is called the “Copenhagen Interpretation”.27

 Quantum Reality #2

The Copenhagen interpretation, Part II (Reality is created by observation.) Although the

numerous physicists of the Copenhagen school do not believe in deep reality, they do
assert the existence of phenomenal reality. What we see is undoubtedly real, they say, but
these phenomena are not really there in the absence of an observation. The Copenhagen
interpretation properly consists of two distinct parts

1. There is no reality in the absence of observation

2. Observation creates reality “you creates your own reality” is the theme of Fred
Wolf’s “Taking the Quantum Leap”

The belief that reality is observer-created is commonplace in philosophy, where it serves

as the theme for various forms of idealism. Bertrand Russell recalls his fascination with
idealism during his student days at Trinity College “In this philosophy I found comfort
for a time…There was a curious pleasure in making oneself believe that time and space
are unreal , that matter is an illusion and that the world really consist of nothing but
mind” 28

 Quantum Reality # 3

(Reality is an undivided wholeness) the views of Walter Heitler, exemplify a third

unusual claim of quantum physicists: that in spite of its obvious partitions and
boundaries, the world in actuality is a seamless and inseparable whole. Heitler accepts an
observer-created reality but adds that the act of observation also dissolves the boundary
between observer and observed: “The observer appears as a necessary part of the whole
structure, and in his full capacity as a conscious being. The separation of the world into
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an ‘objective outside reality’ and ‘us,’ the self-conscious onlookers, can no longer be
maintained. Object and subject have become inseparable from each other.” 29

 Quantum Reality #4:

The many world interpretation (Reality consist of a steadily increasing number of parallel
universes) Of all claims of the New Physics none is more outrageous than the contention
that myriads of universe are created upon the occasion of each measurement act. For any
situation in which several different outcomes are possible (flipping a coin, for instance).
Some physicists believe that all outcomes actually occur. In order to accommodate
different outcomes without contradiction, entire new universes spring into being,
identical in every detail except for the single outcome that gave them birth. In case of a
flipped coin, one universe contains a coin that came up heads; another, a coin showing
tails. Paul Davies champions this claim, known as the many-world interpretation, in his
book Other World. Science we fiction writes commonly invent parallel universe for the
sake of a story. Now quantum theory gives us good reason to take such stories
seriously.30

 Quantum Reality #5

Quantum logic (The world obeys a non-human kinds of reasoning). Quantum logicians
argue that the quantum revolution goes deep that replacing new concepts with old will
not suffice. To cope with the quantum facts we must scrap our every mode of reasoning,
in favor of new quantum logic.

“Einstein threw out the classical concept of time. Our classical ideas of logic are simply
wrong in a basic practical way. The next step is to learn to think in the right way, to learn
to think quantum-logically”

Einstein’s lesson is plain to see, say the quantum logicians. The question of the world’s
true geometry is not settled by common sense but by experiment. Likewise with logic.
For the rules of right reason, look not inside your own head but get thee to a laboratory.31
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 Quantum Reality #6

Neorealism (the world is made of ordinary objects) an ordinary object is an entity which
possesses attributes of its own whether observed or not. With certain exceptions (mirages,
illusions, hallucinations) the world outside seems populated with object like entities. The
clarity and ubiquity of ordinary reality has seduced a few physicists. I call them neorealist
into imagining that is familiar kind of reality can be extended into the atomic realm and
beyond. However, the unremarkable and commonsense view that ordinary objects are
themselves made of objects is actually the blackest heresy of establishment physics.32

 Quantum Reality #7

(Consciousness creates reality.) Among observer created realists a small faction asserts
that only an apparatus endowed with consciousness (even as you and I) is privileged to
create reality. The one observer that counts is a conscious observer.

Von Neumann was the first to show how quantum theory suggests an active role for the
observer’s consciousness .physical objects would have no attributes, Von Neumann said,
if a consciousness observer was not watching them. Eugene Winger comments “it is not
possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without
reference to the consciousness…it will remain remarkable in whatever way our future
concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that
the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.33

 Quantum Reality #8

The duplex world of Werner Heisenberg (the world is twofold, consisting of potentials
and actualities) most physicists believe in the Copenhagen interpretation, which state that
there is no deep reality and observation creates reality. What these two realities have in
common is the assertion that only phenomena are real; the world beneath phenomena is
not.

One question which this position immediately brings to mind is this: “if observation
creates reality, what does it create this reality out of? Are phenomena created out of sheer
nothing or out of some more substantial stuff?” Since the nature of unmeasured reality is
 23

unobservable by definition, many physicists dismiss such questions as meaningless on

pragmatic ground.

Physicists do not put forth these quantum realities as science fiction speculation
concerning worlds that might have been, but as serious pictures of the one world we
actually live in: the universe outside our doors. Since these quantum realities differ so
radically, one might expect them to have radically different experimental consequences.
An astonishing feature of these eight quantum realities, however, is that they
experimentally indistinguishable. For all conceivable experiments, each of these realities
predicts exactly the same observable phenomena.34
 24

Pioneers of Quantum Mechanics:

T heories and concepts do not develop in a blink rather it takes years after years to
establish them. This process is linked with the series of scientists who play their
part to launch a theory or an inclusive concept. A solo scientist cannot make a
significant difference because research of every proceeding scientist is somehow based
on the work of his forerunner. Here is the brief introduction of those physicists who are
the pioneers of quantum physics.

1-Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck:

Max Plank (1858 –1947) was a German theoretical physicist who

originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. 35

For several decades, physicists had been trying to understand the surprising
results they continued to get from heating black bodies. Try as they might, scientists
could not explain the results using classical physics.

In 1900, Max Planck discovered an equation that explained the results of these tests. The
equation is

E=Nhf

E=energy N=integer h=constant f=frequency

In determining this equation, Planck came up with the constant (h), which is now
known as "Planck's constant." The really amazing part of Planck's discovery was that
energy, which appears to be emitted in wavelengths, is actually discharged in small
packets (quanta). This new theory of energy revolutionized physics and opened the way
for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
 25

2-Ernest Rutherford:

Rutherford (1871-1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who became

known as the father of nuclear physics.36

In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity
involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated
and named alpha and beta radiation.

This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the
elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".37

He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear

reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named)
the proton38

Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge

University in 1919. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered by James
Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully
controlled manner, performed by students working under his direction.

3-Albert Einstein:
Einstein (1879 –1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed
the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics
(alongside quantum mechanics) 39

He is best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula

E = mc2

(which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation")40.

He received the1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and
especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".41
 26

Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the
laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the
development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of
relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of
gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued
to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his
explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules42
In a 1905 paper, Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles
(quanta). Einstein was displeased with quantum theory and mechanics (the very theory he
helped create), despite its acceptance by other physicists, stating that

“God is not playing at dice."43

4-Niels David Bohr:

Niels Bohr (1885 –1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational
contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he
received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter
of scientific research.44

Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy
levels of electrons are discrete, and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the
atomic nucleus, but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. He conceived
the principle of complementarity: that item could be separately analyzed in terms of
contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles.

5-Schrödinger:

Schrodinger (1887 –1961) was a German Nobel Prize-winning Austrian

physicist who developed a number of fundamental results in the field of quantum theory,
which formed the basis of wave mechanics: he formulated the wave equation(stationary
and time-dependent Schrödinger equation) and revealed the identity of his development
of the formalism and matrix mechanics. Schrödinger proposed an original interpretation
of the physical meaning of the wave function and in subsequent years repeatedly
criticized the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (using e.g.
 27

the paradox of Schrödinger's cat). He made several attempts to construct a unified field
theory.45

In autumn 1922 he analyzed the electron orbits in an atom from a geometric point
of view, using methods developed by the mathematician Hermann Well . This work, in
which it was shown that quantum orbits are associated with certain geometric properties,
was an important step in predicting some of the features of wave mechanics.

Schrödinger wrote about the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics,

saying:

"I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.46

6-Louis de Broglie:

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) was a French physicist born in 1892 on 15 August

and died on 19 March 1987. He made ground breaking contributions to quantum theory.
In his 1924 PhD thesis he postulated the wave nature of electrons and suggested that all
matter has wave properties. This concept is known as wave or the de Broglie hypothesis.
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1929. 47

7-Enrico Fermi:

Fermi (1901 –1954) was an Italian physicist, best known for his work on Chicago
Pile-1 (the first nuclear reactor), and for his contributions to the development of quantum
theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. He is one of the men
referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb”. Fermi held several patents related to the
use of nuclear power, and was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work
on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and the discovery of transuranic
elements.48

8-Werner Karl Heisenberg:

Heisenberg (1901–1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the key
creators of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper.
In 1927 he published his uncertainty principle, upon which he built his philosophy and
 28

for which he is best known. Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932
49
"for the creation of quantum mechanics".

9-Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac:

Paul Dirac (1902 –1984) was as an English theoretical physicist who made
fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum
mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.

Among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation, which describes the
behavior of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter. Dirac shared the Nobel
Prize in Physics for 1933 with Erwin Schrödinger, "for the discovery of new productive
forms of atomic theory"50

He also did work that forms the basis of modern attempts to reconcile general
relativity with quantum mechanics.

Albert Einstein said of him, "This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and
madness is awful"51
 29

Theories of quantum mechanics:

T here are a lot of interesting ideas in physics, especially in modern physics. Some
aspects of quantum 1mechanics can seem counterintuitive or even paradoxical,
because they describe behavior quite different from that seen at larger length
scales. Till now we have come to know the meaning of quantum mechanics, its history
and physicists, who contributed in this field of science, now here are the important
theories of quantum mechanics.

1-Special relativity

Special relativity is a theory of the structure of space-time. It was introduced in

Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Special relativity is
based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:

1. The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to
one another (principle of relativity).
2. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their
relative motion or of the motion of the light source.

The resultant theory copes with experiment better than classical mechanics, e.g. in
the Michelson–Morley experiment that supports postulate 2, but also has many surprising
consequences. Some of these are:

 Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be
simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion.
 Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's
"stationary" clock.
 Relativistic mass
 Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they
are moving with respect to the observer.
 30

 Mass–energy equivalence: E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and

transmutable.
 Maximum speed is finite: No physical object, message or field line can travel faster
than the speed of light in a vacuum.52

2-General relativity:

General relativity (1916) is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the

years 1907–1915. The development of general relativity began with the equivalence
principle, under which the states of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational
field (for example when standing on the surface of the Earth) are physically identical.
The upshot of this is that free fall is inertial motion: an object in free fall is falling
because that is how objects move when there is no force being exerted on them, instead
of this being due to the force of gravity as is the case in classical mechanics. This is
incompatible with classical mechanics and special relativity because in those theories
initially moving objects cannot accelerate with respect to each other, but objects in free
fall do so. To resolve this difficulty Einstein first proposed that space-time is curved. In
1915, he devised the Einstein field equations which relate the curvature of space-time
with the mass, energy, and momentum within it.

Some of the consequences of general relativity are:

 Clocks run slower in deeper gravitational wells. This is called gravitational time
dilation.
 Orbits process in a way unexpected in Newton's theory of gravity. (This has been
observed in the orbit of Mercury and in binary pulsars).
 Rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field.
 Rotating masses "drag along" the space-time around them; a phenomenon termed
"frame-dragging".
 The universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than
the speed of light.53
 31

Wave-particle duality (1924)

The wave nature of light had been demonstrated experimentally as long ago as
1801by Thomas Young using his famous ‘two-slits’ apparatus. The wave-particle
dichotomy, however, was not restricted to light. Physicists were at that time also
concerned about the structure of atoms. Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory that charge
particles move along curved paths they radiate electromagnetic energy. If this were to
occur continuously, the orbiting atomic electrons would rapidly lose energy and spiral
into the nucleus.54

In 1913 Niels Bohr proposed that atomic electrons are also ‘quantized’ in that
they can reside without loss of energy in certain fixed energy levels. When electrons
jumps between the levels, electromagnetic energy is released or absorbed in discrete
quantities. These packets of energy are, in fact, photons. The experimental work of
Clinton Davisson and others and the theoretical work of Louise de Broglie led to the idea
that electrons as well as photons can behave both as waves and as particles, depending on
the particular circumstances.55

By the mid of 1920s, a new system of mechanics-quantum mechanics-had been

developed independently by Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg to take account
of this particle duality.56

Un-certainty principle (1927)

Germen physicists Werner Heisenberg formulated his famous un-certainty

principle. He noted that Plank’s hypothesis implies that the more accurately one tries to
measure the position of a particle, the less accurately one can measure its speed, and vice
versa. More precisely, he showed that the un-certainty in the position of a particle times
the uncertainty in its momentum must always be larger than Plank’s constant, which is a
quantity that is closely related to the energy content of one quantum of light.57
 32

The Copenhagen Interpretation

Niels Bohr proposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which
asserts that a particle is whatever it is measured to be (for example, a wave or a particle),
but that it cannot be assumed to have specific properties, or even to exist, until it is
measured. In short, Bohr was saying that all quantum particles don't exist in one state or
the other, but in all of its possible states at once. The sum total of possible states of a
quantum object is called its wave function. The state of an object existing in all of its
possible states at once is called its superposition. According to Bohr, when we observe a
quantum object, we affect its behavior. Observation breaks an object's superposition and
essentially forces the object to choose one state from its wave function.58

Superposition:

Claims that while we do not know what the state of any object is, it is actually in
all possible states simultaneously, as long as we don't look to check. At the quantum
level, tiny particles of light called photons appear to change form at random, defying
human prediction. In the multiverse theory of parallel worlds, the universe itself is said to
exist in a state of quantum superposition. Basically, a theoretical multiverse is composed
of infinite universes.59

To illustrate this theory, we can use the famous and somewhat cruel analogy of
Schrödinger’s cat.

Schrödinger’s cat (1935)

The famous cat paradox first appears in print in 1935, the same year as the EPR
paper. Einstein saw Schrödinger’s proposal as the “prettiest way “to show that the wave
presentation of matter is an incomplete representation of reality, and together with EPR
argument the cat paradox is still discussed in quantum theory today. Unlike the EPR
arguments, however, it has not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Yet the concept
behind this thought experiment is very simple. Schrödinger suggested that we should
imagine. 60
 33

A cat is panned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolic device(
which must be secured against direct interference by cat) in a Geiger counter there’re is a
tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of one hour one of
the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none.61

If the detector dose records such an event when the glass container is crushed and
the cat died; if not, the cat lives. We have no way of knowing the outcome of this
experiment until we open the box to look inside; radioactive decay occurs entirely by
chance and is unpredictable except in a statistical sense. According to the strict
Copenhagen interpretation, just as in the two-hole experiment there is an equal
probability that the electron goes through the hole, and the two overlapping possibilities
produce a superposition of states, so in this case the equal probabilities for radioactive
decay should produce a superposition of states. The whole experiment, cat and all, is
governed by the rule that the superposition is “real” until we look at the experiment, and
that only at the instant of observation does the wave function collapse into one of the two
states. Superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This
situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the
observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does
not exist unless the measurement is made. That is, there is no single outcome unless it is
observed.62

The Many-Worlds Theory

Young Hugh Everett agreed with much of what Niels Bohr had suggested about
the quantum world. He agreed with the idea of superposition, as well as with the notion
of wave functions. But Everett disagreed with Bohr in one vital respect.

To Everett, measuring a quantum object does not force it into one comprehensible
state or another. Instead, a measurement taken of a quantum object causes an actual split
in the universe. The universe is literally duplicated, splitting into one universe for each
possible outcome from the measurement. For example, say an object's wave function is
both a particle and a wave. When a physicist measures the particle, there are two possible
outcomes: It will either be measured as a particle or a wave. This distinction makes
 34

Everett's Many-Worlds theory a competitor of the Copenhagen interpretation as an

explanation for quantum mechanics.

When a physicist measures the object, the universe splits into two distinct
universes to accommodate each of the possible outcomes. So a scientist in one universe
finds that the object has been measured in wave form. The same scientist in the other
universe measures the object as a particle. This also explains how one particle can be
measured in more than one state. As unsettling as it may sound, Everett's Many-Worlds
interpretation has implications beyond the quantum level. If an action has more than one
possible outcome, then if Everett's theory is correct the universe splits when that action is
taken. This holds true even when a person chooses not to take an action.63
Stephen Hawking and the late Richard Feynman are among the scientists who
have expressed a preference for the many-worlds theory.

Participatory Anthropic Principle: (1973)

The Participatory Anthropic Principle, or PAP, is the idea that the universe
requires observers, because without observers the universe could not actually exist. This
controversial claim is based on the traditional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
physics, which requires an act of observation to resolve the superposition of states in a
quantum wave function. It is one particularly intriguing variant of the anthropic principle.
It appears that PAP was first proposed by the renowned physicist and outside-the-
box thinker John Archibald Wheeler; though it's unclear to what extent Wheeler really
intended this suggestion to be taken seriously. One of the earliest references to the
concept was when Wheeler discussed the idea of living in a participatory universerelated
to his classic "It from Bit" concept, which rests at the heart of quantum information
theory. Here is a quote from Wheeler in 1990:
It from bit. Otherwise put, every 'it' every particle, every field of force, even the
space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely
even if in some contexts indirectly from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no
questions, binary choices, bits. 'It from bit' symbolizes the idea that every item of the
physical world has at bottom a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source
 35

and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of
yes no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all
things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory
universe.64

Non-locality & Entanglement

Another of the remarkable features of the microscopic

world prescribed by quantum theory is the idea of non-locality, what Albert Einstein
rather dismissively called

“Spooky actions at a distance”

This was first described in the “EPR papers” of Einstein, Boris Podolsky and
Nathan Rosen in 1935.It was even more starkly illustrated by Bell’s Theorem, published
by John Bell in 1964, and the subsequent practical experiments by John Clauser and
Stuart Freedman in 1972 and by Alain Aspect in 1982.

Non-locality describes the apparent ability of objects to instantaneously know

about each other’s state, even when separated by large distances (potentially even billions
of light years), almost as if the universe at large instantaneously arranges its particles in
anticipation of future events.

Thus, in the quantum world, despite what Einstein had established about the speed
of light being the maximum speed for anything in the universe, instantaneous action or
transfer of information does appear to be possible. This is in direct contravention of the
"principle of locality" (or what Einstein called the "principle of local action"), the idea
that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another, and that an object is
directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings, an idea on which almost all of
physics is predicated.

Non-locality suggests that universe is in fact profoundly different from our

habitual understanding of it, and that the "separate" parts of the universe are actually
potentially connected in an intimate and immediate way. In fact, Einstein was so upset by
 36

the conclusions on non-locality at one point that he declared that the whole of quantum
theory must be wrong, and he never accepted the idea of non-locality up till his dying
day. Non locality occurs due to phenomenon of entanglement.

Quantum Entanglement:

Particles that interact with each other become permanently correlated or

dependent on each other’s states and properties, to the extent that they effectively lose
their individuality and in many ways behave as a single entity. The two concepts of non-
locality and entanglement go very much hand in hand, and, peculiar though they may be,
they are facts of quantum systems which have been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory
experiments.

The weird way entangled particles stay connected even when separated by large distances
a phenomenon Albert Einstein called "spooky" has been confirmed once again, this time
with a key loophole in the experiment eliminated. 65

For example, if a pair of electrons are created together, one will have clockwise
spin and the other will have anticlockwise spin(spin is a particular property of particles
whose details need not concern us here, the salient point being that there are two possible
states and that the total spin of a quantum system must always cancel out to zero).
However, under quantum theory, a superposition is also possible, so that the two
electrons can be considered to simultaneously have spins of clockwise-anticlockwise and
anticlockwise-clockwise respectively. If the pair are then separated by any distance
(without observing and thereby decohering them) and then later checked, the second
particle can be seen to instantaneously take the opposite spin to the first, so that the pair
maintains its zero total spin, no matter how far apart they may be, and in total violation of
the speed of light law.66

The results from the new experiment confirm one of the wildest predictions of
quantum mechanics: that a pair of "entangled" particles, once measured, can somehow
instantly communicate with each other so that their states always match.
 37

Spooky phenomenon

Since the 1930s, physicists have been troubled by some of the bizarre
implications of quantum mechanics. Namely, when they measured the wave orientation
of a particle, such as a photon, as horizontal, its entangled partner would have a
correlated orientation such as an opposite, vertical orientation at the same instant.

The implications were that individual entangled particles don't exist in a particular
state until they are measured, and that, once measured; the particles could somehow
communicate their state to each other at a rate faster than the speed of light which seemed
to violate Einstein's theory of relativity. (Recent research suggests the entangled particles
interact at a speed that's 10,000 times faster than the speed of light.)

In a 1935 paper, Einstein and his colleagues noted that one way to get
around spooky action at a distance would be to assume that each particle always traveled
with some hidden knowledge of the other's state before the particles were measured. But
in 1964, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell proposed a mathematical way to check whether
hidden variables or weird non-locality (the idea that entangled particles can communicate
faster than the speed of light) explained the behaviors. Since then, scientists have used
Bell's tests to demonstrate non-locality.

But all of these tests relied on three assumptions, or loopholes: that the source of the
photons and the detector weren't somehow communicating, that the photon detectors
weren't communicating, and that the particles physicists measured were representative of
the ones that they didn’t measure. If any of the assumptions was wrong, in theory, the
hidden-variables explanation could still be right67

Despite Einstein's misgivings about entanglement and non-locality

and the practical difficulties of obtaining proof one way or the other, Irish physicist John
Bell attempted to force the issue by making it experimental rather than just theoretical.
Bell’s Theorem, published in 1964, and referred to by some as one of the most profound
discoveries in all of physics, effectively showed that the results predicted by quantum
 38

mechanics could not be explained by any theory which preserved locality. The
subsequent practical experiments by John Clauser and Stuart Freedman in 1972 seem
(despite Clauser's initial espousal of Einstein's position) to definitively show that the
effects of non-locality are real, and that "spooky actions at a distance" are indeed
possible.

In theory, the concepts of entanglement and non-locality may have applications in

communications and even teleportation, although these ideas are still largely hypothetical
at this stage. Due to the effects of the uncertainty principle, the mere act of observing the
properties of particles at a quantum level (spin, charge, etc), disturbs the quantum system
irrevocably, and this would appear to prevent us from using this system as a means of
instantaneous communication.68

The double-slit experiment (1803)

Double –slit experiment is a demonstration that light and matter can display
characteristics of Both classically defined waves and particles; moreover, it displays the
fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena. This experiment
is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment.69

In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source such as

a laser beam illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through
the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. 70 The wave nature of light causes the
light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on
the screen a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles.71

However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points,
as individual particles (not waves), the interference pattern appearing via the varying
72
density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment
that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as
would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). 73

These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality. 74. Other atomic-
scale entities such as electrons are found to exhibit the same behavior when fired toward
 39

a double slit. Additionally, the detection of individual discrete impacts is observed to be

inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics.

Quantum teleportation:

Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact

state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to
another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum
entanglement between the sending and receiving location.75

In quantum teleportation, one of the more amazing quirks of quantum mechanics,

an exact copy of a photon appears in different location (the record distance is for now 100
miles) just as the old photon is destroyed. Scientists disembody the information about a
particle, such as a photon, from that particle. Then they apply to another photon some
distance away, creating a copy and destroying the original.

In quantum teleportation we actually need three photons- the two entangled ones
and the third to carry the qubit (the unit of quantum information) from one particle or
assembly of particles to another. In case of quantum teleportation, scientists direct the
photon transport through fiber optics or with lasers or satellites aimed at "detectors" that
decode the information carried in the photon. Physicist Dave Goldberg says,

" Quantum teleportation is not only a possibility, it's reality, at least for single photon
states; and there is no reason it could not be scaled up somewhat. I am skeptical that it
will ever be practical to teleport people, but there is no fundamental reason why we could
not do so. It's just mind-bending complex."

The reason why scientists could not teleport humans yet has something to do with
the numbers. Quantum teleportation takes one unit of information and makes it "appear"
somewhere else. The body is made up of 50 trillion units (cells), and each cell is much
more complex than an individual photon. And to disassemble and reassemble such a
complex system with accuracy somewhere else is beyond even a theoretical
understanding today.76

Reliable quantum teleportation achieved:

 40

Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, part of the Delft University of

Technology in the Netherlands, report that they sent quantum data concerning the spin
state of an electron to another electron about 10 feet away. Quantum teleportation has
been recorded in the past, but the results in this study have an unprecedented replication
rate of 100 percent at the current distance, the team said.

“Thanks to the strange properties of entanglement, this allows for that data only
quantum data, not classical information like messages or even simple bits to be teleported
seemingly faster than the speed of light.”

The news was reported first by The New York Times on Thursday, following the
publication of a paper in the journal Science. Proving Einstein wrong about the purview
and completeness of quantum mechanics is not just an academic boasting contest.
Proving the existence of entanglement and teleportation and getting experiments to work
efficiently, in larger systems and at greater distances holds the key to translating quantum
mechanics to practical applications, like quantum computing. For instance, quantum
computers could utilize that speed to unlock a whole new generation of unprecedented
computing power. Quantum teleportation is not teleportation in the sense one might
think. It involves achieving a certain set of parameters that then allow properties of one
quantum system to get tangled up with another so that observations are reflected
simultaneously, thereby "teleporting" the information from one place to another.

To do this, researchers at Delft first had to create qubits out of classical bits, in
this case electrons trapped in diamonds at extremely low temperatures that allow their
quantum properties, like spin, to be observed. A qubit is a unit of quantum data that can
hold multiple values simultaneously thanks to an equally integral quantum phenomenon
called superposition, a term fans of the field will accurately associate with
the Schrödinger equation, as well as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that says
something exists in all possible states until it is observed. It's the same way quantum
computing may one day surpass the speeds of classical computing by allowing
 41

calculations to spread bit values between 0, 1 or any probabilistic value between the two
numbers -- in other words, a superposition of both figures.

With qubits separated by a distance of three meters, the researchers were able to observe
and record the spin of one electron and see that reflected in the other qubit instantly. It's
an admittedly wonky conception of data teleportation that requires a little head scratching
before it begins to clear up.77

Quantum consciousness:

“To be conscious that we are perceiving…is to be conscious of our own existence.”

(Aristotle)

Physicists say that what we perceive as reality is a process that involves our
consciousness, they say that our consciousness create our world, if we have a golf ball
size consciousness when we read a book we have a golf ball size understanding if we
expand our consciousness we got more wakefulness and more understanding of book and
about the universe as well, and there is an ocean of pure vibrating consciousness inside
each one of us and this is the source of all matter.

A very simple but frequently asked question is what and where is consciousness?
This question caused great thinkers such as Rene Descartes to propose that although brain
and consciousness are clearly related, there remains an essential difference between the
two. Descartes saw it; mind and all things mental constitute a world apart from physical
matter and work according to their own system of dynamic laws.78

The quantum mind or quantum consciousness hypothesis proposes that classical

mechanics cannot explain consciousness, while quantum mechanical phenomena, such
as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's
function, and could form the basis of an explanation of consciousness. It is not one
theory, but a collection of distinct ideas. A few theoretical physicists have argued that
classical physics is intrinsically incapable of explaining the holistic aspects of
 42

consciousness, whereas quantum mechanics can. The idea that quantum theory has
something to do with the workings of the mind goes back to Eugene Wigner, who
assumed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness.
However, most contemporary physicists and philosophers consider the arguments for an
important role of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing.79

Wolf believes that the ultimate stuff of the consciousness lies in the ghostly and in
the incorporeal world of quantum itself. Given that there is now persuasive evidence that
this world is nonlocal, it may be that consciousness, like the quantum, does not possess
any single and precise location at all. Sometimes it seems to be inside our heads.
Sometimes, via the infinite interconnectedness of the quantum landscape. But In truth it
never “goes” anywhere at all. It simply access whatever perspective on the universe it
wants via the nonlocal realm from which it operates.80

Physicist Victor Stinger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having

"no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and
dragons.81The philosopher David Chalmers has argued against quantum consciousness.
He has discussed how mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness. 82Chalmers is
skeptical of the ability of any new physics to resolve the hard problem of
consciousness.83
 43

Here our journey to the world of quantum physics ends. Although the journey was
very festinating and full of surprises but we cannot deny that all we have discussed above
is mere on atomic level and not on the world we live in. I think if we take quantum
mechanics seriously enough it puts the responsibilities squarely in our laps and it doesn’t
give answers that are clear cut. It says yes, that the world is very big place, it’s very
mysterious, mechanism is not the answer but I am not going to tell you what the answer
is because you are old enough to decide for yourself. We can hope that in the coming
future the mysterious world of quantum physics will be explored more deeply and new
aspects will be revealed. The day is not far away when we will be experiencing the
quantum phenomenon in our large world.

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet”

(Niels Bohr)
 44

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 49

Chapter # 2

Introduction to Mysticism
 50

Concept of Mysticism

I n the first chapter we experienced the amazing journey of quantum world. The journey

was about the world, full of probabilities and astonishing theories. The quantum world

was entirely different from the most observed world of us though we cannot observe the

quantum world with our naked eye but we cannot completely deny the mysterious aspects

and views of quantum physics.

Now we are going to get involved in another topic that has been the subject of
interest for centuries. The subject is “Mysticism” and in Islamic terminologies the word
“Tasawuf” has been used for mysticism. It is a complete subject that has its own
terminologies, concepts, experiences and boundaries. Mystics (sufies) have their own
particular and unique language and the instruments they use, are sophisticated and
refined.

Let’s have a brief introduction of tasawuf and sufies which will reveal another
surprising world.

Origins of word “Tasawuf”

1: According to some scholars the root word of “Tasawuf” is “Al-Sfaa”. Al safa means
cleanliness.

2:The second root word of tasawuf is narrated as “Al-sfu” means love and purity in
friendship.

3: Some scholars say the root word oftasawufis “Al-soaf” which means wool.83
 51

The word Sufi (mystic) is derived form soof

Abu Raihan Al-Bairuni’s opinion was that “the origin of word Sufi wassoaf which meant
wisdom”.83

The word‘Tasawwuf’ means to always engage oneself constantly in the worship of and
concentration towards Almighty Allah, bending all energy and thinking with extreme
absoluteness towards Him and Him alone.83

Abu Bakr Al Kalani says:

“Tasawwuf is the name of Khulq (Moral conduct). One who excels you in ‘Khulq’ will
also excel you in cleanness which stands for cleanness (safa’ee) both internal as well as
external.”

Abu Mohammad Al Jarayrion being asked what is meant by Tasawwuf, said:

“To include high quality and nice mode of moral character (khulq) and to get rid of every
deed of mean and debased nature is the meaning of Tasawwuf (mysticism)”

Abu Hasan Ahmad Al NooridefinesTasawwuf in these simple words:

“Tasawwuf is neither a formality of custom and ceremony nor even the knowledge (Ilm)
but it is the name at another place, he says: Tasawwuf is the other name (being
synonymous to) Liberty or freedom, Benevolence, abstinence from formal or show
behavior and charitable Disposition”.83

HazratJunaidBaghdadidefines ‘Tasawwuf’ in these words:

“It means that Tasawwuf is that (extra sensory) perception in which Almighty Allah
annihilates the self of you (outward existence) and grants you a fresh (revived) life to
accompany His own Divine Self”.83

Abu Bakr Al-kitanithe definition given by Abu Bakr Al-kitani is the masterpiece of both
being concise and comprehensive:
 52

“Tasawwuf is the name of purification (from evils) and observation (of Nature’s
Manifestation in the Universe). Out of these two attributes the first (Safa or Purification)
is the cause (genesis or source of origin) and the other attribute namely observations the
effect or aim and the desired goal”.83

Beliefs

All Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and hope to become
close to God in Paradise after death and after the "Final Judgment" Sufis also believe that
it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this
life. The chief aim of all Sufis is to seek the pleasing of God by working to restore within
them the primordial state of fitra, described in the Qur'an. In this state nothing one does
defies God, and all is undertaken with the single motivation of love of God.

To Sufis, Sufism involves the study and ritual purification of traits deemed
reprehensible while adding praiseworthy traits. This is independent of whether or not this
process of religious cleansing and purifying leads to esoteric knowledge of God. This can
be conceived in terms of two basic types of law (fiqh), an outer law concerned with
actions, and an inner law concerned with one’s own actions and qualities. The outer law
consists of rules pertaining to worship, transactions, marriage, judicial rulings, and
criminal law what is often referred to, broadly, as qanun. The inner law of Sufism consists
of rules about repentance from sin, the purging of contemptible qualities and evil traits of
character, and adornment with virtues and good character.83
 53

Theoretical Perspective of Mysticism

W ahdat al-wujudand Wahdat al-shuhud are two schools of thought of Islamic

tasawwuf (mysticism) with a historical background. Despite being unanimous on many

issues, they have difference of opinion about the relationship of the Creator and His
creation. Wahdat al-wujudsays that all creation is the effect of zil (shadow) of asma
(names) of Real Being, and this effect is being-less being. Wahdat al-shuhud says that the
creation is a khiyal(thought), but Real Being has made it manifest.

1-Wahdat-ul-Wujood

IbnArabi is most often characterized in Islamic texts as the originator of the

doctrine of waḥdat al-wujud, however, this expression is not found in his works and the
first who employed this term was perhaps, in fact, the Andalusian mystical thinker Ibn
Sabin.83Although he frequently makes statements that approximate it, it cannot be
claimed that "Oneness of Being" is a sufficient description of his ontology, since he
affirms the "manyness of reality" with equal vigor.

In his view, wujud is the unknowable and inaccessible ground of everything that
exists. God alone is true wujud, while all things dwell in nonexistence, so also wujud
alone is non-delimited (muṭlaq), while everything else is constrained, confined, and
constricted. Wujud is theabsolute, infinite, non-delimited reality of God, while all others
remain relative, finite, and delimited.
 54

Since wujud is non-delimited, it is totally different from everything else.

Whatever exists and can be known or grasped is delimitation and definition, a
constriction of the unlimited, a finite object accessible to a finite subject. In the same
way, wujud's self-consciousness is non-delimited, while every other consciousness is
constrained and confined. But we need to be careful in asserting wujud's non-
delimitation. This must not be understood to mean that wujud is different and only
different from every delimitation. The Shaykh is quick to point out thatwujud's non-
delimitation demands that it be able to assume every delimitation. If wujud could not
become delimited, it would be limited by its own non-delimitation. Thus "He possesses
non-delimitation in delimitation" Or, "God possesses non-delimitedwujud, but no
delimitation prevents delimitation. Rather, He possesses all delimitations, so He is non-
delimited delimitation, since no single delimitation rather than another rule over Him.
Hence nothing is to be attributed to Him in preference to anything else”. Wujud must
have the power of assuming every delimitation on pain of being limited by those
delimitations that it cannot assume. At the same time, it transcends the forms by which it
becomes delimited and remains untouched by their constraints.

God's 'names' (asma) or 'attributes' (ṣifat), on the other hand, are the relationships
which can be discerned between the Essence and the cosmos. They are known to God
because he knows every object of knowledge, but they are not existent entities or
ontological qualities, for this would imply plurality in the godhead.For the creatures,
Being is not part of their essence. So a creature does not own its being, that it can never
be independent in itself. In this sense, the created does not deserve the attribution of
Being. Only God is Being, and all the rest is in reality a possibility (imkan), a relative,
possible non-existence.

IbnArabi used the term "effusion" (fayd) to denote the act of creation. His
writings contain expressions which show different stages of creation, a distinction merely
logical and not actual. The following gives details about his vision of creation in three
stages: the Most Holy Effusion (al-fayd al-aqdas), the Holy Effusion (al-fayd al-
muqaddas) and the Perpetual Effusion (al-fayd al-mustamirr).Waḥdat al-wujud spread
through the teachings of the Sufis like Qunyawi, Jandi, Tilimsani, Qayshari, Jami etc. It
 55

is also associated with the Hamah Ust (Persian meaning "He is the only one") philosophy
in South Asia. SachalSarmast and Bulleh Shah two Sufi poets from India, were also
ardent followers of Waḥdat al-wujud.

Today, some Sufi Orders, notably the Bektashi sect and the non-traditional sects
of Universal Sufism, place much emphasis on the concept of waḥdat al-wujud.83

2-Waḥdat al-Shuhud

Waḥdat al-Shuhud has often been translated into English as Apparentism. In

Arabic it literally means "unity of witness", "unity of perception", "unity of appearance"
or "oneness of manifestation".Out of those who opposed the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujud,
there were those who substituted the pole of subject for the object, formulating the
doctorine of Waḥdat al-Shuhud.According to Ahmed Sirhindi'sdoctrine, any experience
of unity between God and the created world is purely subjective and occurs only in the
mind of the believer; it has no objective counterpart in the real world. The former
position, Shaykh Ahmad felt, led to pantheism, which was contrary to the tenets of Sunni
Islam. He held that God and creation are not identical; rather, the latter is a shadow or
reflection of the Divines Name and Attributes when they are reflected in the mirrors of
their opposite non-beings (aʿdam al-mutaqabilah).Abu Hafs Umar al-
Suhrawardi and Abd-al-karimJili were also proponents of apparentism.83

Annihilation & Subsistence

The Quran uses fana and baqa paradigms to state that everything in the physical
universe will perish except the face of God.Al-Junayd is often given the credit for
establishing a true system speculation, bringing together the religion of his predecessors
and creating a lasting system for all subsequent generations. He is credited with the
elaboration of the doctrine of fana’, the goal of the mystic in: dying in one’s self,”
‘passing away” or “absorption” into God, supported by the Quran
27‫۝‬ ‫َام‬
ۚ ِّ ‫ْر‬ ْ َ
‫ِّك‬
‫اْل‬ ‫ِّ و‬
‫لل‬ َٰ ْ ‫ُو‬
‫الج‬ ‫ِّكَ ذ‬
‫َب‬ ُْ
‫ه ر‬ ‫َج‬‫ٰى و‬
‫ْق‬‫يب‬ََّ
‫ښ و‬26‫۝‬ ٍ‫َان‬ َْ
‫ها ف‬ ََ
‫لي‬ ‫ْ ع‬
‫من‬ ‫ُل‬
َ ُّ ‫ك‬
“All that is on the earth will disappear while your Lord’s face abides, majestic,
splendid”83
 56

The mystic quest is based on the need to return to God, the state in which
humanity was before creation. Baqa, the “continuance,” is the existence of mystic after
fana, when he or she lives in God. Al-Junayd combined this goal with an ethical theory
which demanded for the mystic who has reached the state of “absorption” a return of his
individual characteristics scintillate and attract the community to him who appreciate
him.”? This meant, for al-junayd, that the Sufi had the responsibility to return to his
community life and fulfill all the obligations of Muslim existence; the knowledge of the
individual’s absorption into the divine remains a “secret treasure” which shines through
the person in everything done in the world.83

3-Annihilation(Fana)
Fana, “to pass away,” or “to cease to exist” Fana is the Sufi term for extinction. It
means to annihilate the self, while remaining physically alive. Persons having entered this
state are said to have no existence outside of, and be in complete unity with, Allah. Abu
Yazid al-Bistami approached the Divine Presence and “knocked on the gate”. He was
asked, “Who is there?” “I have come, Oh my Lord”, replied Abu Yazid. He was told:
“There isn’t any place here for two. Leave your ego behind and come”. When Abu Yazid
once again approached the Divine Presence and was asked who it was, he said: “You, oh
Lord”.

The "annihilation of the self" (fana fi 'Allah') refers to disregarding everything in

this world because of one's love towards God. When a person enters the state of fana it is
believed that one is closest to God.TheQalab (heart) is sandwiched between the nafs(ego)
and the Rooh(soul) the entire objective of annihilation is to destroy the nafs to that Heart
can recognize the soul. Sudi's say soul has the spark of divine as in Quran,
itsmentioned"All souls come from God".

The nature of fana consists of the elimination of evil deeds and lowly attributes of
the flesh. In other words, fana is abstention from sin and the expulsion from the heart of
all love other than the Divine Love; expulsion of greed, lust, desire, vanity, shows, etc. In
the state of fana the reality of the true and only relationship asserts itself in the mind. One
realizes and feeds that the only real relationship is with Allah fana means to destroy
 57

yourself. If you destroy yourself in the love of Allah then that fana will convert into
entire life means abdizindgi. And for that one you have to destroy your will and yourself
on the will of Allah.

In the death of the ego love is born, God is born, light is born. In the death of the
ego you are transformed; all misery disappears as if it had never existed. Your life right
now is a nightmare. When the ego dies nightmares disappear and a great sweetness arises
in your being, and a subtle joy, for no reason at all. Beyond this is the stage of intimacy
(uns) at which the immanence of the Lord is perceived: as mentioned in Quran

“And I am closer to man than his jugular vein”

Bayazid on the path of ego annihilation:

He said,I became like an iron master for twelve years. I put my nafs and ego in
the stove of discipline, and prepare it with the fire of striving, mold it on the platform of
remorse, hammer it with regret until my nafs became my mirror. I was my own mirror for
five years. Until one day when I thought I was the greatest among great learned. As soon
as this thought came to my mind, I packed up and went to Khorasan. I stayed in a shelter
and promised myself that I would not leave this place unless I receive a message from
Allah. On the fourth day I saw a camel rider coming towards me. A thought passed my
mind that I could stop that camel right there. The rider looked at me and said: Do not
make me to destroyBastam and Bayazid altogether. I lost my senses. When my senses
came back to me I asked him: Where are you coming from? He said: From the side where
your promise is kept. Then he said: Bayazid, keep and protect your heart; then he left. It
is said after this incident whatever passed through Bayazid’s mind would appear in front
of him.WhatBayazid is explaining in this story is that;He who recognizes himself,
recognizes God

InBayazidianSufism, one has to get rid of the pseudo-personality that one has
created for oneself. We all want to be accepted and respected by others. Most of the time
we are led by society and our own cultural norms to create a false sense of
ourselves.Whenever you are now and here, there is no ego to be found. You are a pure
 58

silence. Ego is the center of the false mind. Your ego is your hell, your ego is your
misery, and your ego is the cancer of your soul.When desiring ceases, the other world
opens. The other world is hidden in this world. But because your eyes are full of desire,
full of the ego, you cannot see it.This was the lost secret of the ages. The divine lies
within you, if only you would listen to it. All mystical paths really aim to remove ego
from the self so only name of God remains.God tells Bayazid that He doesn't care if he
sees the world or not. He only cares if Bayazid doesn't see himself. And it's only when he
ceases to see himself that Bayazid can truly say that he has seen God.

This is when Bayazidsays;the final clue is buried in your stare:So long as 'I'
continues to exist. The sun I seek is shrouded in "I's" mist. Bayazid repents first from
thinking he has seen God, and second he repents from that repentance for this is just
another manifestation of his being; finally, he repents from seeing his own existence
altogether.He addresses God;"Oh, Allah, this is how I see myself. I am not offering You
my life's mortification, my constant prayers, my day and night fasting; You know that
nothing will take me from You. I confess that I am shameful, I have nothing, You are the
One who has given me all this fortune. I witness that there is no God but You. You have
accepted me. Purify me from my errors, forgive my faultsand wash away my
shortcomings.A prayer remained from Bayazid:Oh, Allah, how long this “you” and “I”
remain between You and I. Take this “I” from me so all that remains is “You”.Oh, Allah,
when I am with You I am greater than all; when I am without You I am nothing.Oh,
Allah, my poverty took me to you and Your blessings protected my poverty.83

4- Eternity (Baqa):

The baqa (infinity) is the complementary Islamic belief that further highlight the
fana. God’s Law revealed in divine text is the manifestation of baqa. The chief
characteristic of baqa infinity is its immunity from change. What is evolutionary cannot
be permanent and what is permanent cannot be change.83

A person's Baqa, which literally means permanency, is a term in Sufi philosophy

which describes a particular state of life with God. Inayat Khan writes in his book “A
 59

Sufi message of spiritual liberty”The ideal perfection, called Baqa by Sufis, is termed
'Najat' in Islam, this is the highest condition attainable, and all ancient prophets and sages
experienced it, and taught it to the world. Baqa is the original state of God. At this state
every being must arrive some day, consciously or unconsciously, before or after death.
The beginning and end of all beings is the same, difference only existing during the
journey."

"Perfection is reached by the regular practice of concentration, passing through three

grades of development:

1. Fana -fi-Shaikh, annihilation in the astral plane.

2. Fana-fi-Rasul, annihilation in the spiritual plane.

3. Fana-fi-Allah, annihilation in the abstract.

After passing through these three grades, the highest state is attained of Baqi-bi-Allah,
annihilation in the eternal consciousness, which is the destination of all who travel by this
path.”

The two ideas are enjoined in the concept fana’ wabaqa’ (annihilation of the self and
abiding in God).

 Fanaa

(Extinction, annihilation) Through a series of stages (maqamat) and subjective

experiences (ahwal), this process of absorbation develops until complete annihilation of
the self (fana) takes place and the person becomes al-insanul-kamil, the "perfect man". It
is the disintegration of a person's narrow self-concept, social self- and limited intellect
(feeling like a drop of water aware of being part of the ocean). The stage is also
called Fana fit tawheed ("extinction with the unity"), and Fana-fi-lHaq (Extinction in the
reality).

 Sairillallah

(Arabic: journey towards the God) Here the person starts his spiritual journey towards the
ultimate reality of the universe, i.e. God. Also called Safr-e-Urooj
 60

 Fanafillah

(Extinction of the self in God) One of the important phases of mystical experience which
is attained by the grace of God by a traveler on the mystical path is the state of fana fi
Allah, "extinction of the self in God". This is the state where the person becomes extinct
in the will of God. It is important to mention that this is not incarnation or union. Most
Sufis, while passing through this experience, have preferred to live in the greatest depth
of silence which transcends all forms and sounds, and enjoy their union with the
beloved.The highest stage of fana is reached when eventhe consciousness of having
attained fana disappears. This is what the Sufis call "the passing-away of passing-away"
(fana al-fana). The mystic is now wrapped in contemplation of the divine essence.83

Since it is a state of complete annihilation of carnal self, absorption or

intoxication in God, the pilgrim is unable to participate in worldly affairs, he is made to
pass into another state known as Fana-al-Fana (forgetfulness of annihilation). It is a sort
of oblivion of unconsciousness. Since two negatives make one positive, the pilgrim at
this stage regains his individuality as he was when he started the journey. The only
difference is that in the beginning he was self-conscious, but after having reposed in the
Divine Being, he regains that sort of individuality which is God-consciousness or
absorption in God. This state is known as Baqa-bi-Allahliving or subsisting with God.

 Sair min Allah

(Journey from the God) Here the person comes back to his existence. Also called Safr-e-
Nuzooli.

No one can subsist with The Supreme Creator and to believe as such is shirk.
What really happens is the person's awareness of Allah increases so much so that he
forgets his own self and is totally lost in Allah's magnificence.(Eternal life in union with
God the Creator) This is the state where man comes back to his existence and God
appoints him to guide the humans. This is a state in which the individual is part of the
world, but unconcerned about his or her rewards or position in it. This doctrine is further
explained in SahihBukhari which states that God said:
 61

“And the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to Me, is what I have
enjoined upon him; and My slave keeps on coming closer to Me through
performingNawafi till I love him, so I become his sense of hearing with which he hears,
and his sense of sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg
with which he walks.”
There is another verse from Qur’an that is used to explain this concept.
16‫؀‬ ِّ
‫يد‬ ‫َر‬
ِّْ ْ ِّ
‫الو‬ ‫ْل‬ ‫ْ ح‬
‫َب‬ ‫ِّن‬ ‫ْه‬
‫ِّ م‬ َ‫ُ ا‬
‫ِّلي‬ ‫ْر‬
‫َب‬ ‫َق‬ ‫ُ ا‬
‫ْن‬ ََ
‫نح‬ ‫و‬
83
We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.

When Sufis have come out of the Fanafillah state and enter Baqabillah, many of
them have produced works of unsurpassed glory, especially in the fields
of philosophy, literature, and music. These works have crowned the culture of the
entire Islamic world and inspired Sufis and non-Sufis for generations. As the
great Persian Sufi poet, Hafez of Shiraz, who is fondly remembered as the "tongue of the
unseen", said centuries ago: "He whose heart is alive with love, never dies. Allahsays
about these people in the Qur'an:

‫ښ‬62‫۝‬ َْ
‫ن‬ َُ
‫نو‬ ‫ْز‬
‫يح‬َ ْ
‫ھم‬ ََ
ُ ‫ْل‬‫ْ و‬ ‫ْه‬
‫ِّم‬ ََ
‫لي‬ ‫َو‬
‫ْفٌ ع‬ َ ِّ‫ّٰلل‬
‫ْل خ‬ ‫ء اه‬ َۗ
‫َا‬ ‫َو‬
ِّْ
‫لي‬ ‫ِّن ا‬ ََ
َّ‫ْلٓ ا‬‫ا‬

"Lo, indeed, the friends of God have no fear, nor are they grieved.83 They attain
the state of satisfaction. "83

5-Tayy al-Ard:

Tayy al-Arḍ ( "folding up of the earth") is the name

for thaumaturgicalteleportation in the mystical form of
Islamic religiousand philosophical tradition. The concept has been expressed as
"traversing the earth without moving"; some have termed it "moving by the earth being
displaced under one's feet". It is a concept widely familiar to the Sunnis,Shi‘is and Sufis,
each group having a different interpretation on it.The dictionary of DehkhodadefinesTay
al-Ard as:
 62

"A type of keramat in which instead of moving toward a destination by taking a step
forward, the earth turns toward the traverser rapidly, no matter how far the destination
be."

Ibn al-Nadimdefines it exactly the same way when he says:

The concept of tei al-ardh has its roots in the following verses of the Quran:

"Solomon said to his own men: 'Ye Chiefs! which of you can bring me the throne
of Queen of Saba before she and her envoys come to me in submission? Said an Ifrit, of
the Jinns: 'I will bring it to thee before thou rise from thy council: indeed I have full
strength for the purpose, and may be trusted." "Said one who had knowledge of the Book:
'I will bring it to thee within the twinkling of any eye!' Then when (Solomon) saw it
placed firmly before him, he said: 'This is by the grace of my Lord!"83

The phrase "twinkling of an eye" is translated to mean in a very, very short time, i.e.
almost instantaneously.Some claim that according to these verses, it is the non-prophet
Asifibn al-Barkhiyawho transports the throne of Queen Saba almost instantaneously.
According to them, a hadith by Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq also confirms that Solomon
transports the throne by Tay al-Ard in specific.83

A precise definition of Tai al-Ardh has been offered by AllamaQadhi, one of the masters
of AllamehTabatabaei:

"The ceasing and termination of matter in the initial location, and its appearance and re-
creation in its final location (destination)"

Other explanations offered are also mystical in nature. A hadith by Imam

Mohammad al-Baqir e.g. is narrated in which he attributes the aforementioned esoteric
knowledge of AsifibnBarakhia to the Asma 'ullah or the "names of God", another widely
discussed topic in Islamic philosophy and mysticism.

"The Almighty's greatest name has 73 letters (or parts). AsifibnBarakhiaknew only one
letter of it, which enabled him to traverse the earth in the blink of an eye. Shia
Imams however possess 72 of them. And the last letter is concealed from all creation and
remains a secret to only the Almighty Himself."
 63

Being an allegedly esoteric knowledge by nature, it is not known exactly how it

takes place, but theories and explanations abound. The most prevalent theory has to do
with the concept of consciousness and will. The person wills to be some place, and he is
then simply there an instant later. The jinn are believed to possess this knowledge of
transportation, however in a limited amount, as is evident again from the aforementioned
Quranic verses.

6-Tjadud-e- amsal:

Tjdd-e-amsal is a very interesting and mind blowing phenomenon for those who
have no deep knowledge and understanding of mystic world. For the consideration of this
phenomenon I have coated Ibn-Arabi’s view here

“As regards the superiority of human man of knowledge over the man of
knowledge of jinn in the secrets of the disposal of the things and the special properties of
thing, that is known by the amount of time, for the movement of the eye in perceiving
what it perceive is quicker than the movement of the body when it moves. The moment in
which the eye moves is the same moment which it connects to the object. The moment
that the eyes open is the moment in which they are connected to the heaven of the fixed
stars. The moment when its glance returns is the same moment that its perception is
absent.

Rising from one’s place is not like that. It does not possess this speed. Asif ibn
Barkhiya was more perfect in the deed than the jinn was. What Asif ibn Barkhiya said is
the same as the action in the same moment. Sulayman, peace be upon him, at the same
moment saw Bilqis’ throne “settled before him” so one must not imagine that he
perceived it while it was in its original place without being moved. We do not think that
the displacement takes place in one and the same moment, but that it involves going into
non-existence and returning to existence inasmuch as the only one who is aware of that is
the one who has recognition of it. This is what Allah said,
 64

15‫؀‬
ۧ ٍ‫يد‬ِّْ
‫َد‬ ‫ٍ ج‬
‫لق‬َْ
‫ْ خ‬ ‫ْسٍ م‬
‫ِّن‬ ‫ِّيْ َلب‬
‫ْ ف‬‫ھم‬ُ ْ
‫بل‬َ َِّّۭ
‫ل‬ ْ ِّ
‫اْلَو‬ َْ‫ِّالخ‬
‫لق‬ ْ ‫َا ب‬ ‫ْن‬ ‫َع‬
‫َيِّي‬ ‫َف‬
‫ا‬
“Were We then fatigued with the first creation? Yet are they in doubt with regard to a
new creation.”83
Not a moment passes them but that they see what they saw. Since it is like this,
the time of its non-existence (the absence of the throne from its place) is the same as the
time of its existence with Sulayman because of the renewal of the creation with the
“breaths”. No one knows this power, or rather, man is not aware with regard to himself
that he ceases to exist in each breath and then is again.There is no doubt that the moment
of brandishing the spear is without a doubt the same as the moment of quivering of the
thing which is be brandished. It happened without delay. It is the same with the renewal
of creation with breaths. The time of non-existence coincides with the time of the
existence of its like.

Asif did not have any merit except for acquiring renewal in the assembly of
Sulayman, peace be upon him. The throne was not moved across place nor did it rise
above the earth nor break the laws of space for the one who understands what we
mentioned.”83

In the light of above coated views we can conclude the concept of Tjdd-amsal in the
following way

 Man ceases to exist in each breath and then exist again(even things experience
the same phenomenon).
 The time of non-existence coincides with the time of existence.
 In spite of the switching between existence and non-existence reality of remains
same.
 In the story of prophet Solomon (a.s) and queen Saba, Ibn-Arabi has related the
karamat of Asif Bin Barkhiya( an apostle of Solomon a.s) with the concept of
Tjdd-e-Amsal
 65

Sufi devotional practices

M uslims Sufi devotional subject revolve around the citation of the Quran and

elements of the hadith and the Sirah, the life of Mohammad s.a.w, which indicate the
possibility of, if not the positive encouragement and enactment of, the ascetic ideal. The
Quran and Mohammad s.a.w, as sufis have always said, support the mystical quest.
Statements concerning God are popularly cited, for example, Quran says,
‫َا‬
‫ِّذ‬
‫ِّ ا‬ َّ
‫الداع‬ ََ
‫ة‬ ‫ْو‬
‫دع‬َ ُ
‫ْب‬‫ُجِّي‬
‫ا‬ ٌ
ۭ‫ي‬
‫ب‬ ‫َر‬
ِّْ ‫ِّىْ ق‬
‫ِّن‬‫َا‬ ‫َن‬
‫ِّىْ ف‬ ‫ْ ع‬ ‫َاد‬
‫ِّي‬ ‫ِّب‬ ‫َا سَا‬
‫ََلكَ ع‬ ‫َا‬
‫ِّذ‬ ‫و‬
ِّ‫َان‬ َ
‫دع‬

“Whenever My servants ask you about Me, I am near to answer the call of the
caller.”83

And Quran says in another place

“We [God] are closer to him [humanity] than his jugular vein”83

Looking inward, therefore, becomes the goal and the quest, although Quran adds another
dimension to the quest by saying that
‫ه اه‬
ِّ‫ّٰلل‬ ‫َج‬
ُْ ‫َم‬
‫َّ و‬ ‫َث‬ ‫َُّلو‬
‫ْا ف‬ ‫تو‬ ‫َـم‬
ُ ‫َا‬ ‫ين‬َْ
‫َا‬‫ف‬

“Wherever you may turn, there is the face of God”83

 66

1-Dhikr
Term dhikr, the practice was connected by the sufis to the Quranic injunction,
21‫۝‬ۭ ‫ًا‬
‫ْر‬ ‫َث‬
‫ِّي‬ ‫َ اه‬
‫ّٰللَ ك‬ ‫َك‬
‫َر‬ ‫َذ‬
‫و‬
“Mention God often,”83

The developed form of this litany consists of the constant repetition of various phrases,
often

 La ilahaillallah

There is no god but God.

This practice serves as the focal point of devotions for virtually every Sufi
group.Allah as having been written on the disciple's heart according to Qadiri.Dhikr is
the remembrance of God commanded in the Qur'an for all Muslims through a specific
devotional act, such as the repetition of Allah’s names, supplications and
aphorismsfrom hadith literature and the Qur'an. More generally, dhikr takes a wide range
and various layers of meaning.83

This includes dhikr as any activity in which the Muslim maintains awareness of God.
To engage in dhikr is to practice consciousness of the Divine Presence and love, or "to
seek a state of Good wariness". The Qur'an refers to Mohammad s.a.w as the very
embodiment of dhikr of God (65:10–11). Some types of dhikr are prescribed for all
Muslims and do not require Sufi initiation or the prescription of a Sufi master because
they are deemed to be good for every seeker under every circumstance. 83

Some Sufi orders stress and place extensive reliance upon Dhikr. This practice of
Dhikr is called Dhikr-e-Qulb (invocation of God within the heartbeats). The basic idea in
this practice is to visualize the Arabic name of God, Allah, as having been written on the
disciple's heart.

2-Sama

Some Sufi orders engage in ritualized dhikr ceremonies, or sema. Sema includes
various forms of worship such asrecitation, singing, instrumental-
music, dance,incense, meditation, ecstasy, and trance.Samaisa Sufi ceremony performed
 67

as dhikr. Sama means "listening", while dhikr means "remembrance”. These rituals often
includes singing, playing instruments, dancing, recitation of poetry and prayers, wearing
symbolic attire, and other rituals83

Sama is a means of meditating on God through focusing on melodies and dancing.

It brings out a person's love of God, purifies the soul, and is a way of finding God. This
practice is said to reveal what is already in one's heart, rather than creating emotions. All
of a person's doubt disappears, and the heart and soul can communicate directly with
God. The immediate goal of Sama' is to reach wajd, which is a trance-like state of
ecstasy. Physically, this state may include various and unexpected movements, agitation,
and all types of dancing. Another state that people hope to reach through Sama' is
khamra, which means "spiritual drunkenness". Ultimately, people hope to achieve the
unveiling of mysteries and gain spiritual knowledge through wajd. Sometimes, the
experience of wajd becomes so strong that fainting or even, in extreme circumstances,
death, occurs.83

The rules of audition that it should not be practiced until it comes (of its own
accord), and that you must not make a habit of it, but practice it seldom, in order that you
may not cease to hold it in reverence. It is necessary that a spiritual director should be
present during the performance, and that the place should be cleared of common people,
and that the singer should be respectable person, and that the heart should be empted of
worldly thoughts, and that the disposition should be inclined to amusement, and that
every artificial effort should be put aside.83

3-Muraqaba

Is the Sufi word for meditation.Literally it is an Arabic term which means "to watch
over", "to take care of", or "to keep an eye". It implies that with meditation, a person
watches over or takes care of his spiritual heart (or soul), and acquires knowledge about
it, its surroundings, and its creator.
 68

 Kashaf or Ilhaam

Kashaf, or Ilhaam (unveiling of arcane knowledge) is the stage where man starts
getting information that most people are unable to observe. In the beginning, this
condition occurs suddenly without personal control. With practice, the mind gets so
energized that it can get this knowledge by will.

 Shahood

(Evidence) When a person can get any information about any event/person with his
will, this condition is called Shahood. This stage is broadly categorized according to
activation of the senses:

The person can see things anywhere in the universe. The person can hear things
anywhere in the universe. The person can smell things anywhere in the universe. The
person can touch things anywhere in the universe.

 Fatah

(Opening, victory) The peak ofShahood is called Fatah. At this stage, the person doesn't
need to close his eyes for meditation. Here the person is freed from both space and time.
He can see/hear/taste/touch anything that are present anywhere in time and space.83

4-Visitation

In popular Sufism one common practice is to visit or make pilgrimages to the

tombs of saints, great scholars, and righteous people. This is a particularly common
practice in South Asia, where famous tombs include those of KhojaAfaq, near Kashgar,
in China; Lal-ShahbazQalander, in Sindh, Ali Hajwari in Lahore Bha-o-din Zikrya in
Multan Pakistan; MoinuddinChishti in Ajmer, India;NizamuddinAuliya in Delhi, India,
and Shah Jalal in Sylhet, Bangladesh. The purpose of such visitations is usually two-fold,
first and foremost the aim is to receive spiritual guidance and blessings from the Saint
who rests in the shrine, which helps the Seeker in his or her own path towards
enlightenment. Secondly, the Saint is also approached for intercession in prayers, be it in
worldly matters or religious.83
 69

Mystic’s view about universe

1-Ali ibn Muḥammadibn al Arabi:

Ali ibn Muḥammadibn al Arabi (1165 –1240) was

an Arab Andalusian Sufi mysticand philosopher. He is renowned by some practitioners of
Sufism as "the greatest master “and also as a genuine saint. He went by the names al-
Shaykh al-Akbar, MuḥyiddinibnArabi, and was also later nicknamed the Great Shaykh.

Ibn ‘Arabi’s intellectual training began in Seville in 578 AH. His spiritual mentor
in Fes was Mohammed ibnQasim al-Tamimi. In the year 597 AH/1200 AD, he was in
Morocco and took his final leave from his master Yusuf al-Kumi, who was living in the
village of Salé at that time. In 629 AH the first draft of al-Futuḥat al-Makkiyya was
completed. Hundreds of manuscripts of this work exist in various libraries of the world,
the most important of them being the manuscript of Konya, written by its author.Three
years later in 632 AH, on the first of Muḥarram, Ibn ‘Arabi embarked on a second draft
of the Futuḥat; this he explained, included a number of additions and a number of
deletions as compared with the previous draft. This revision completed in the year 636
 70

(Addas 286). On 22 Rabi‘ al-Thani 638 AH at the age of seventy-five, Ibn ‘Arabi died in
Damascus.83

The relationship between the Creator and the creation has been described by
Shaykh al-Akbar MuhyiddinIbn al-Arabi in his Futuhat al-Makkiyya, saying:

83
‫اوجد االشیاء و ھو عینھا‬

Here the word ayn used by Shaykh al-Akbar gives the detail of the relationship
that exists between the Creator and the creation.This word is excellently explained by
great mystic and scholar Syed Mehr Ali Shah (1859-1937 AD) who said that the word ayn
has two meanings:

Firstly, ayn means same, for example; everything is ayn of itself. It means that
everything is same of itself. Secondly, it means a thing on which the other thing depends
for existence. In this statement the second meaning is applicable. So according to the
statement of HazratShaykh al-Akbar, it means that if the contingents have no relationship
with Almighty Allah, they will have no existence and in this case their being something
or their nothingness will be equal. Furthermore, according to Mehr Ali Shah,
HazratShaykh al-Akbar says that this creation and universe is not the ayn of the Creator.
He has explained this fact through many examples. In one of the examples he said that
this universe has a relationship with its Creator as a relationship between a person and his
image in the mirror. The image in the mirror is either the ayn or same of the person nor
ghayror other of that person. We can say that the person has not advent (hulul) into the
image in the mirror. He is neither in the image nor out from the image but even then there
is a relationship between both of these ones and without that relationship the image in the
mirror will not be able to exist.83

2-Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi

Jalal ad-Din Rumi(1207 – 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist,

theologian, and Sufi mystic.83

Rumi's cosmology:
 71

Rumi's cosmology rests firmly on a Quranic text revealed very early in Mohammad's
prophetic career. Speaking of the cosmic quake that will herald the escheating,

'That day she (the Earth) will relate her chronicles, because your Lord inspires her." 83

The word "inspires" here translates a term that elsewhere in the Quran and
throughout Rumi's works, has become associated with God's revelation to and through a
prophet (wahy). In that sense, Mawlana envisions the cosmos as God's first prophet. A
brief conversation between the Prophet Mohammad and God describes the Creator's
motives:

Mustafa said: "O Lord, since thou hast no need for us, Say, then, what
wisdom was there in creating the two worlds?"

God said to him: "O temporal man, I was a hidden treasure; I sought
that the treasure of loving kindness and bounty should be revealed (peida).
I displayed a mirror its face the heart, its back the world
its back is better than its face if the face is unknown to thee.83

As the text suggests, creation is composed of "two worlds." One is "formal," the other
real; one is apparent, the other concealed. All events occur in both worlds, but the
meaning of any given event is far different when perceived from the perspective of "this"
world than when perceived from that of the "other" world. Creation is therefore bivalent:
it has both negative and positive aspects; it both warns and entices.Rumi is fond of the
Tradition of Mohammad:

"This world is a carcass."

People believe, to their detriment,

That this world is alive in itself.

They refuse to look beyond form, for they fail to understand

That the world is 'like straws in the hand of the wind.

 72

'The world full of forms becomes their idol-temple,

While the world is in reality full of His Image Who has no form.

From the perspective of the other world, every particle of the earth is alive and articulate
and fully perceptive of the one reality behind multiple forms:

The world is like a reed pipe, and He blows in its every hole;

Truly its every lament derives from those two sugar-sweet lips.

Behold how, when He blows into every clod, every heart,

He bestows a need; He bestows a passion

Which raises lamentation of anguish.83

To those who are not satisfied with appearances, this world is the "seed-plot" of the other
world."God revealed this present world in order that you may acknowledge the other
stages which yet lie ahead.He did not reveal it so that you should disbelieve and say:
'This is all that there is.'

Basic Cosmological Concepts: Space, Time, Causality

Mawlana characterizes all that can be learned in this world as the "science of
bodies," as distinguished from the "science of religions," which can be acquired only
after death. However,"All bodies and all the world are maintained in being by
forgetfulness,"This is equivalent to unbelief. As a general description, Rumi says that all
things that exist in this world are, "Bodies contained in a certain space and comprised in
the 6 directions, created in time and subject to decay."83

In the final analysis it is not "natural" causes that maintain existent things in their
respective spatio-temporal relationships. Forgetfulness alone makes existent things
appear to be intrinsically and causally related, because the amnesia of unbelief causes
people to deny that God is the only real cause. In this radically atomistic cosmos, beings
are related to one another solely by virtue of their common relationship to the Cause.
 73

"Horizontal" relationships in space and time are fundamentally illusory and

untrustworthy. Of themselves such relationships can only remain secondary and without a
primary link in the Creator. No existent thing derives its genuine value by reason of being
juxtaposed with another of its own kind.Mawlana describes the situation in the "Fihi Ma
Fihi":

Given the insubstantial nature of such a world of accidents, time becomes a series
of discrete moments, space a configuration caused by the momentary collision of
indivisible and impenetrable bodies called atoms. No single being moving through such
discontinuous space and time can claim primary causality for itself. Lack of faith allows a
person to be convinced that the forces of this world are causally efficacious. An
unbeliever can therefore witness countless miracles and remain unmoved by them, for he
can "explain them away" with a philosophy that claims knowledge of all causes and
connections.

"Every atom has become pregnant with the glow of His face,

Every atom of that delight gives birth to a hundred atoms,"

But duration is only apparent.

Rumi's own description of discontinuous time is worth quoting in full:

Every moment the world is renewed, and we are unaware

of its being renewed whilst it remains (the same in appearance).

Life is ever arriving anew, like the stream,

Though in the body it has the semblance of continuity.

From its swiftness it appears continuous,

like the spark which thou whirlest rapidly with thy hand.

If thou whirl a firebrand with dexterity,

it appears to the sight as a very long (line of) fire.

 74

The swift motion produced by the action of God presents this length of duration (time)

as (a phenomenon arising) from the rapidity of Divine action83.

Humanity in Relation to the Cosmos

Fruit appears to derive from the branch, but in reality the branch grows for the
sake of the fruit.Similarly, humanity is the final object of all creation: that for which the
cosmos came into being. The human is like a river and the world like a jar; the heart is an
entire city, the world a single room. All human faculties are the model of the universe.
Thus the heavens may be said to reflect human rationality, for God created reason before
he made the two worlds. Mawlana clarifies his views in the "Fihi Ma Fihi"

When God most High wishes to produce in this world all manner of rare and
wonderful things, He first implants the desire and demand for them in the inward hearts,
so that thence they may become visible.Similarly everything which you see in this
worldis sure that it exists in that world. For instance, whatever you see in the dew, be sure
that it will be in the ocean.

From the perspective of this world, therefore, the human person is the cosmos in
miniature. From another-worldly perspective, however, the person precedes and
transcends the cosmos as its model and as the one for whom all was created.

God's Involvement in the World

Everything in creation is the work of God. There are no exceptions to that rule.
All human acts, both good and evil, are God's creations.Mawlana nevertheless insists that
God does not compel the person. Everyone is left utterly free to accept or to reject God's
grace. Overpowering grace may itself be viewed as compelling; but one is free not to
surrender one's free will to that overpowering grace.Rumi is constant in his rejection of
all forms of determinism, while firmly maintaining that the ethical ideal of love demands
the abandonment of free will:

"He who has not escaped out of free will, no free will has he."
 75

Divine intervention in human affairs is admirably capsulated in Rumi's most

complete statement on the matter:

If receptivity were a necessary condition for God's action,

No nonexistent thing would come into existence.

A pure mirror allows one to see beyond the world of water and clay, to see both
image and Image-Maker. More importantly, the heart must be so reflective that God can
see His own face in it and make the heart His Throne.Rumi alludes to a famous Sacred
Hadith and discusses God's relationship to the heart:

Upon the heart God sends His Revelation and His Light in new and different ways at
each moment, as He holds the heart of the believer in His hand. Once God has given
knowledge to the heart that knowledge and light begin to transform the senses.Parallel to
the 5 external senses are the 5 internal senses, which in turn are related to God's senses as
part to whole. Various listings are given for the internal sensesTo this process Rumi
alludes when he writes:

When you wish to go to a certain place, first your heart goes and sees and informs
itself of the conditions prevailing there; then your heart returns and draws your body
along.Now all these other men are as bodies in relation to the saints and prophets, who
are the Heart of this world.83

3-Abu ḤamidMuḥammadibnMuḥammad al-Ghazali

Abu ḤamidMuḥammadibnMuḥammad al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111);known as Al-

Ghazali or Algazel to the Western medieval world,
wasa Muslim.Theologian, jurist, philosopher,and mystic of Persian descent.Al-Ghazali
has sometimes been referred to by historians as the single most influential Muslim after
the Islamic prophet Mohammad. Within Islam he is considered to be a Mujaddid or
renewer of the faith, who, according to tradition, appears once every century to restore
the faith of the community.83
 76

His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was
awarded the honorific title "Proof of Islam" (Hujjat al-Islam). Others have cited his
opposition to certain strands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific
progress. Besides his work that successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy the
earlyIslamic Neoplatonism developed on the grounds of Hellenistic philosophy, for
example, was so successfully criticised by al-Ghazalithat it never recovered he also
brought the orthodox Islam of his time in close contact withSufism. It became
increasingly possible for individuals to combine orthodox theology (kalam) and Sufism,
while adherents of both camps developed a sense of mutual appreciation that made
sweeping condemnation of one by the other increasingly problematic.83

Al Ghzali said in his book

“What I am looking for is knowledge of what things really are, so I must

undoubtedly try to find what knowledge really is’. It was plain to me that sure and certain
knowledge is that knowledge in which the object is disclosed in such a fashion that no
doubt remains along with it, that no possibility of error or illusion accompanies it, and
that the mind cannot even entertain such a supposition. Certain knowledge must also be
infallible; and this infallibility or security from error is such that no attempt to show the
falsity of the knowledge can occasion doubt or denial, even though the attempt is made
by someone who turns stones into gold or rod into a serpent”83

Further he said

“My reliance on sense-perception also has been destroyed, perhaps only those
intellectual truths which are first principles are to be relied upon, such as the assertion
that ten are more than three, that the same things cannot be both affirmed and denied at
one time, that one thing is not both generated in time and eternal, nor both existent and
non-existent, nor both necessary and impossible”.83

Al-Ghazali’skalam cosmological argument for finite temporality of the universe

can clearly be found in his Iqtisadand Jerusalem Letter, while it is only found implicitly
in the Tahafut, and was diagramed by the following syllogism.
 77

1. Whatever began to exist has a cause for its coming into being. (Premise)
2. The universe began to exist. (Premise)
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for coming into being. (From 1-2)
Al-Ghazali, in accordance with common sense, perceived that the first premise is
indisputable. Therefore, it became important to demonstrate the truth of the second
premise that the universe is finite and began to exist. In order to do so, al-Ghazali used
two lines of attack: first, showing that the philosophers had failed to demonstrate the
impossibility of the creation of a temporal entity from an eternal being; second, that the
beginning of the universe is demonstrable.83

Al-Ghazali’s first point is a clear repudiation of the notion of perfect cause. God
is not the cause of the world in the sense that a cause is that which necessarily
accompanies its effect. But God is a cause in a second sense, a free agent that precedes its
effect. Thus, the effect (the universe) need not follow upon the heels of the cause (God),
but can appear a finite number of years ago when God willed from eternity that it should.

Al-Ghazali’s reply began with the assertion that God willed from all eternity to
create the world at a specific point. Al-Ghazali admits that an opponent would respond
that this still has the temporal occurrence of the world being necessitated and caused.
And just as it is impossible to have an event exist without a cause, it is just as impossible
to have a cause delaying an event, when all the conditions that are needed to cause such
an event exist and are ready to actualize the event. For such preconditions would
necessitate the cause of an event or thing. As applied to God and creation, this means
having a willer, the will, and having the relation to what is willed occur, but not having
the object of will come into existence. This would mean that there be change within God,
because there would be a difference between states of affairs and being before and after
creation, along with the need for these causes to come into existence anew.83
Second, later in the same proof, al-Ghazali turned to a second objection to the
philosophers’ doctrine. “You deem the occurrence of a temporal event through an eternal
improbable when it is incumbent on you to acknowledge it. For in the world there are
events which have cause. If temporal events were to depend on other temporal events ad
 78

infinitum, this would be impossible.” If this were so, there is no need to acknowledge a
Maker.83

4-Meher Ali Shah

Meher Ali Shah was a Sufi scholar, known to his followers as a saint, who was
born on 14 April 1859 (1Ramadan, 1275 A.H.) in Golra Sharif, which is located
midwaybetween Rawalpindi and Islamabad, in present-day Pakistan. He is known as
a Sufi saint, a Hanafi scholar upholding the position of Abdul-HaqqDehlavi, and a leader
of the anti-Ahmadiyya movement. He wrote several books, most notably Saif e
Chishtiyai, (The Sword of the Chishtis), a polemical work regarding the unorthodoxy and
the heresy of the Ahmadiyya movement of MirzaGhulam Ahmad. He wrote many books
some of them are,Tahqiq-ul-Haq Fi Kalima-tul-Haq (The Truth about Kalima-tul-Haq),
ShamsulHidayah, Saif-e-Chishtiya, I’laKalimatillah Fi Bayan-e-Wa Ma
UhillaBihiLegharillah

AlFatuhat-us-Samadiyyah (Divine Bounties), TasfiahMabain Sunni WaShi’ah, Fatawa-e-

Mehria, Maktoobat e chishtia(letters of PirMehr Ali Shah)

In the early part of the month of Safar 1356-A.H (April 1937), Hazrat had an
attack of cold, which soon developed into typhoid fever, which lasted for several days.
His condition grew worse during the last days of Safar. On the morning of 29 Safar (11
May 1937), the pulse became irregular and the body temperature also underwent sudden
changes. According to eyewitnesses Hazrat’s complexion and general bearing during
these moments presented a blend of happiness, modesty, and humility, which defies
description in words. It can only be surmised that the total picture seen by those present
by Hazrat’s bed-side was a reflection of the experiences which Hazrat’s spirit was going
through, before its impending departure from the physical frame and its embarking on its
journey heavenward for internal union with the “Companion On High”.12 May 1937.83

As a supporter of Wahdat-ul-Wujood
 79

PirMeher Ali Shah Sahib was a supporter of IbnArabi's ideology of Wahdat-ul-

Wujood but he made a distinction between the creation and the creator (as did IbnArabi).
He wrote a masterpiece explaining the Unity of Being doctrine of HazratIbnArabi.

Wahdat-ul-Wujood is the realization of tawhid on a level which neither can be

discovered by reading texts nor understood by listening to speeches, its source of
knowledge is Shahood (witnessing) of tawhid, being witness to the One's Oneness. And
when Witnessing His Holy Being, there can be no trace of creation in Him nor around
Him, neither he co-exists in creation, nor creation co-exists with Him. One who witness's
the glory of Allah, He witness's Him as if there is no other creation in existence, cause
Allah's existence is limitless, and it’s not possible to conceive when Witnessing the
Limit-less (Allah) that Limited (Creation) ones do exist as well.83

5-Qalandar Baba Auliya:

Qalandar Baba Auliya is the title of the Sufi mystic Sayyed Mohammad
AzeemBarkhiyya(1898 – January 27, 1979), the founder of theAzeemia Order of Sufis. He
was given the honorifics Abdal-i-Haq and Hasn-e-Ukhra. Qalander Baba Auliya was
born in Khorja, BulandSheher, which is in the U.P. province of India in 1898.Qalander
Baba Auliya received his primary and religious education in a local school. He went to
high school in BulandSheher. After completing his education in high school, he went to
Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, now in India.

During his stay in Aligarh, Qalander Baba Auliya became inclined towards
learning spirituality. He spent a lot of time at the tomb of the Sufi Maulana Kabuli.
Qalander Baba's spiritual training was taken over by the soul of Sheikh
NajmuddinKubra. When the training was completed He transferred the spiritual
knowledge to him and presented him to the Divine Presence of God.
QalanderBabaAuliya died on 27 January 1979 in Karachi.

Views about universe

Qalander Baba Auliya expresses his views in his famous book ‘Lauh-o-Qalam’,
about the Ilm-e-hazoori that
 80

“Present knowledge (Ilm-e-hazoori) is the knowledge that enables us to enter the world
of unseen and makes us to acquaint with the unseen. It is that knowledge, which is a sort
of direct information, bestowed upon the mind of the person learning this science, that is,
the unconscious stimuli start functioning in that person. Functioning of the unconscious
stimuli means that an impression of the stated things is created upon the screen of the
mind. What so ever existing in the world, or that ever existed or which will exist ever
henceforth, is flowing upon thoughts. Something exists for us when we happen to receive
information about that thing, or in other words, a thought about that thing comes to our
mind then that thing does not exist for us.”

Further he said that

“Man is familiar with everything that exists in the universe. It is only that he
knows about only few things whether this knowing is because of visual or auditory
somewhere, all the same.

Human mind is aware that making use of sight or the hearing, it can come to
know of some of those things which are not in its knowledge and, it has quest for having
knowledge about the things that are not known to it. It is the unique power of curiosity
that is responsible for revelation of the material and spiritual faculties upon our mind.
The more familiar we become with the use of this force of curiosity, the more potential is
activated in us and, accordingly, we learn to discover and invent new things. When these
potentials, in the spiritual area, expand and whole universe is seen like a mirror. And, it
comes into our knowledge what was there in the universe, what exists now and what will
ever exist; hence, curiosity is the movement that makes us to excel in knowledge and
harness the force of nature.”

About the relation of universe and men he said that

“When correlation of Unity enters into the certitude of a person that he is

associated with the Ultimate Being of God and no other entity can be the creator, then the
true picture of the whole universe emerges before him. Or, in other words, the Lord
Creator of the cosmos and Creative system established under His Supreme Control start
 81

reflecting upon his mind. And, when the collective system transpires upon the mind,
deliberation guides him towards the fact that there exists a base upon which all the
creature and existents of the universe and the whole program of creation, is inscribed.
After this, he knows it with irrefutable realization that God is the creator, the whole
universe is handwork of His creatorship, and the existent of the universe are the members
of a family created by one single entity. This is the certitude that enables the man to
recognize the extraterrestrial bodies of sun, moon and stars, the creature existing upon the
earth and the atmosphere enveloping the earth appear to be familiar to him.

The human sight is capable of seeing things that exist beyond the limits of our
atmosphere and besides seeing them their effects are also felt by the senses operative in
us.

He said that the universe has two aspects or two dimensions to see, it depends on
our consciousness how we look to the universe or things.

“Sighting the universe is of two types. One is to merely look at the things and the
other, besides looking at them, is to know the structural formation of things and to
explore the formulae operative in the creation of the universe. Witnessing the
manifestation of the universe is the conscious activity and sighting the inner dimension of
the universe i.e. to explore the formulae upon which the universe is established is the
working of the unconscious.

Man’s unconscious knows it well that what is the shape and form, inner stimuli
and the movement style of every particle of the universe. This knowledge is beyond the
reach of human conscious because the man is not familiar with the method of studying
his unconscious. If we could develop the ability to study our conscious then study the
innate formation, movement, activities of every articles would become very easy.

When the Holy command Be (Kun) was pronounced by God, whatsoever that was
required to exist, from the very Beginning to the End, came into existence in its
sequential order. That is, the whole program about the creation of the universe along with
the creative formulae, its components, and their existence in the past, present and future
 82

came into being when God commanded it to be. Anything that is manifested, whether it is
existing presently, manifested in the past or will ever exist in the future, is only a
manifestation of the program that had came into being after God had proclaimed it to be.
It means that nothing can exist in the universe that does not exist already

Universe is such a program that existed and exists in the mind of God. When God
wished to get this program enacted and desired that countless creatures should display
themselves according to His program, He told them to be, i.e. He said, “Be (kun)!” When
God uttered kun, all that was there in the mind of God, inscribed upon a screen in the
form of definite features of the creatures. The screen upon which upon the whole
program the characters through which the program is carried out are inscribed, in the
religious terms is called ‘the preserved scriptorium’ (Loh-e-Mehfoz)

The more one grows matures and gets involved in his surroundings, the closer he
gets to the reality of the structural formation of things around him. It means that the
whole programming of the universe is found in the human mind in a unified form but one
cannot see this program only because one does not get a chance to be empty minded.

The more one concentrates on an object, the more facts are revealed upon him
according to the degree of his concentration and ability to remain attentive in that
particular direction Will of God.

Everything existing in the universe, whether it is an indivisible entity, it is of

spiritual nature or is manifested in form and shape, is a reflection of the Will of God, that
is, the whole universe is the materialization of the Holy.

Every manifestation is a reflection of the inner. Nothing can be witnessed in its

physical form if its inner dimension is not there, that is, the whole manifested dimension
is the reflection of the inner side of an existent.

The waves or the strings of light that are flowing in the lengths and widths of the
universe are weaving the fabric of creation of this universe”83
 83

At the end here is a point that must be mentioned, the world of mysticism is a concrete
reality and practicing truth for hundreds of years, but with the flow of time people
misinterpreted the concept of mysticism and mislaythe factual spirit of mysticism.Now a
day people named mysticism as the collection of some rituals and a subject for debates.

“Tasawwuf used to be a reality without name, now it is a name without reality”

References
83
Qadri.dr.tahir,Haqiqat-e-tasawuf, minhaj-ul-quran publications,2000, p:79-80

83
Hazrat Ali Bin Usman Al-Hujwiri,The Kashf Al-Mahjub, Zia-ul-Quran Publications,2001, p:3

83
ibid, p:8

83
ibid, p:9

83
ibid,p:13

83
ibid, p:14

83
Mohammad EminEr, Laws of the Heart: A Practical Introduction to the Sufi Path, Shifa Publishers, 2008,
p:50

83
S.H. Nasr , Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy, State
University of New York Press,2006, p:156

83
Souad Hakim – Unity of Being in Ibn 'Arabi, MuhyiddinIbnArab Society, paper presented at twentieth
annual symposium of society, Oxford, May 3 and 4, 2003
 84

83
SeyyedHossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present,2006, p:76

83
Al Quran,55:26-7.
83
, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present, P: 142
83
http://zoya-thewayofasufi.blogspot.com/,02/07/2014,10:53 am

83
University of St. Thomas Law Journal, Article:6Fana and Baqa Infinities of Islam: Approach to Islamic
Law and Behaviour, L. Ali Khan, p: 519

83
ReynoldNicholson, The Mystics of Islam, printed in U.S.A,2006, p: 60
83
Al Quran 50:16

83
Al Quran 10:62
83
KhwajaShamsuddinAzeemi, Muraqaba: The Art and Science of Sufi Meditation. Houston: Plato, 2005

83
Al Qur'an,27: 38-40

83
Molavi-nia, M. Javad. Tarikh-i Anbiya , 2002, p.268

83
Al Qur'an 50:15

83
Ibn e Arabi,Muhi-e-Din,Fusus al-Hikam (The Seal of Wisdom), 1976, p:76

83
Al Qur'an2:186
83
Al Qur'an50:16
83
Al Qur'an2:115
83
Al Qur'an 33:21
83
Abdullah JawadiAmuli, "Dhikr and the Wisdom Behind It"

83
HakimMoinuddinChisti,The Book of Sufi Healing

83
During, J and R. Sellheim."Sama" Encyclopedia of Islam, 2010

83
During, J and R. Sellheim."Sama'" Encyclopedia of Islam, 2010

83
Al-Hujwiri,Hazrat Ali Bin Usman (r.a),TheKashf Al-Mahjub, Zia-ul-Quran Publications, 2001,p:525

83
A Reynold Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, printed in U.S.A,2006 ,p: 60
 85

83
Momen, MoojanAn Introduction to Shiai Islam: The History and Doctrines of TwelverShiaism. Yale
University Press,1985, p:115–116.

83
Door Stephen Hirtenstein,the Unlimited Mercifier: The Spirtual Life and Thoughts of Ibn ‘Arabi, , Anqa
Publishing, p:35

83
Ibn al-Arabi, Futuhat, Vol.I, Muqaddima.

83
Shah, Tahqiqul-Haq fi Kalimatul-Haq, p. 27

83
Franklin D. Lewis, "Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The life, Teaching and poetry of Jalal Al-Din
Rumi", Oneworld Publication Limited, 2008, p: 9

83
Quran 4-5 says:

83
Mawlana Rum,Mathnawi:Nicholson edition, University of Tehran, 1940,p:70
83
Mawlana Rum, Fihi Ma Fihi: Arberry's Translation , Samuel WeiserNew York, 1972, p: 132
83
Ibid, p: 15
83
Ibid , p: 114
83
http://hojja-nusreddin.livejournal.com/2322975.html

83
Jane I. Smith, Islam in America, p 36.

83
R.M. Frank, Al-Ghazali and the Ash'arite School, Duke University Press, London 1994

83
Imam Ghazali,Al Munqaz Min al Dalaal, , London Ruskin House Museum Street, p:22

83
Al Munqaz Min al Dalaal,p:23

83
William Lane, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, wipf and stock publishers,2000,p:44.

83
Al-Ghazali, Incoherence of the Philosophers, 15.

83
Al-Ghazali, Incoherence of the Philosophers, 21.

83
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehar-Ali-Shah#cite-note-4

83
"MehrMuneer" a Biography of Meher Ali shah by MaulanaFaiz Ahmed

83
Qlander Baba Aulia,Lauh-o-Qalam, azemia publishers, 2003, p:30-45
 86

Chapter # 3

Quantum Physics & Mysticism: Common Grounds

 87

H uman mind is designed in a way that it accepts a fact or phenomena more easily

when it is supported by some evidence. It’s a human nature that when it comes about the
matter of some unusual thing it believes science more than just merely accepting it
without any evidence or any scientific explanation. Mysticism and quantum physics can
be related on the same basics that if we will try to explain the unusual ideas of mysticism
by supporting them with the scientific theories of quantum physics then both can be
understood in a better way. This comparison can be considered because both mysticism
and quantum physics have got some common ideas.
We have had a look at the basic of quantum physics and have also discussed the
ideas of mysticism. The journey was astonishing and surprisingly beyond the common
understanding. In this chapter we will observed that there are parallels in mysticism
 88

and in quantum theory. A view of the world is very similar to the views, held by
Sufis and modern physicists. For the Sufis all things and events perceived by the
senses are interrelated, connected, and are but different aspects or manifestations of
the same ultimate reality. For Sufis “Enlightenment” is an experience to become
aware of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, to transcend the notion of
an isolated individual self, and to identify themselves with the ultimate reality.

An exact science is expressed in the highly sophisticated language of modern

mathematics, whereas Tasawwuf is based on meditation and insists on the fact that
Sufis’ insight cannot be communicated verbally. Reality as experienced by the Sufis
is completely indeterminate and undifferentiated. Sufis never see the intellect as
their source of knowledge but use it merely to analyze and interpret their scared
personal Tasawwuf experience. The parallel between scientific experiments and
Tasawwuf experiences may seen surprising in view of the very different nature of
these acts of observation. Physicists perform experiments involving an elaborate
teamwork and a highly sophisticated technology, whereas the Sufis obtain their
knowledge purely through introspection, without any machinery, in the privacy of
meditation or Dhikr. To repeat an experiment in modern elementary particle
physics one has to undergo many years of training. Similarly, a deep Tasawwuf
experience requires, generally, many years of training under an experienced master.
The complexity and efficiency of the physicist’s technical apparatus is matched, if
not surpassed, by that of the mystic’s consciousness-both physical and spiritual-in
deep Dhikr. Thus the scientists and the Sufis have developed highly sophisticated
methods of observing nature which are inaccessible to the layperson.
We will discuss the common grounds between them in the light of the following
concepts.

1-Language barrier:

Scientists realized that our common language is not only inaccurate, but
totally inadequate to describe the atomic and subatomic reality. With the advent of
Relativity and Quantum mechanics in modern physics it was very clear that this
 89

new knowledge transcends classical logic and that it cannot be described in ordinary
language. Similarly in Tasawwuf it has always been realized that reality transcend
ordinary language and the Sufis were not afraid to go beyond logic and common
concepts. The problem of language faced by the Sufi is exactly the same as the
problem the modern physicist faces. Both the physicist and the Sufi want to
communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are
paradoxical and full of logical contradictions. These paradoxes are characteristic of
all who practice Tasawwuf and since the beginning of the 20th century they are also
characteristic of modern physics.
In an attempt to understand a reality which does not easily accommodate words,
Heisenberg proposed that physicists should simply accept the complementarily or
paradoxical aspect of subatomic entities and view them as wave/particle entities. By
doing so Heisenberg was making a statement that belonged as much to mysticism as it
did to the new physics. He said

“The ultimate nature of reality is beyond verbal description.”

The greatest commonality in both mysticism and the new physics is that both point to the
inadequacy of language. Because electrons possess both the properties of particles and a
wave packet, they cannot be said to have distinct geographical locations. No physicist
will ever "see" an electron or touch it. Not only mysticism or physics are unable to
elucidate reality but mathematics also. Thus the aphorism of Einstein

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they
are certain, they do not refer to reality”83

Sufism is based on direct insights into the nature of reality and physics is
based on the observation of natural phenomena in scientific experiments. In physics
the model and theories are approximate and are basic to modern scientific research.
Whenever the essential nature of things is analyzed by the intellect, it must seem
absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the Sufis, but has
become a problem in science only very recently, e.g. light as wave or photon or
duality of light. Great variety of natural phenomena belonged to the scientists’
macroscopic environment and thus to the realm of their sensory experience. Since
 90

the images and intellectual concepts of their language were abstracted from this
very experience, they were sufficient and adequate to describe the natural
phenomena. However the atomic and subatomic world itself lies beyond our sensory
perception. The knowledge about matter at this level is no longer derived from
direct sensory experience, and therefore our ordinary language, which its images
from the world of the senses, is no longer adequate to describe the observed
phenomena. As we penetrate deeper and deeper into nature, we have to abandon
more and more of the images and concepts of ordinary language. Probing inside the
atom and investigating its structure, science transcended the limits of our sensory
imagination. From this point on, it could no longer rely with absolute certainty on
logic and common sense. Quantum physics provided the scientists with the first
glimpses of the essential nature of things. Like the Sufis, physicists were now dealing
with a non-sensory experience of reality and, like the Sufis; they had to face the
paradoxical aspects of this experience. From then on therefore, the models, and
images of modern physics become akin to those of Tasawwufof the Sufis.
2-Past, Present & Future Exist Simultaneously:

Past, present and future exist all at once, unraveling secrets of quantum physics.
With the discovery of the crucial, though, unexpected link between space and time,
Einstein realized that these two things could no longer be thought of as separate things.

They are fused together and form the continuum (manifold) of space-time, viewed
as a four-dimensional vector space. Suddenly, he realized something unbelievable,
namely that our understanding of past, present and future and the sharp difference we see
between them - may only be an illusion. He said.

"The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,"

At first, he wasn't particularly thrilled with the unified space-time idea and
dismissed new four-dimensional geometry proposed by Hermann Murkowski, as
"superfluous" pedantry but he eventually accepted the idea.As Arthur Schopenhauer
 91

expressed, "the most insignificant present has over the most significant past the
advantage of reality" and such a belief cannot be so easily dismissed.

Naturally, this illusion our understanding of past, present and future is very
convincing for us, but it's still an illusion, we live with every day, every moment,
continuously.Centuries ago, St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the world's most influential
thinkers was also occupied with the phenomenon of time and space.

"How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?" he
asked.

"As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it
would not be time, but eternity."

Essentially the same question we are pondering today. Most of us are convinced
that reality means the events of the present moment. It's our fundamental belief since we
were children because the only we understand is the reality of the moment. We divide
time into past, present and future and it seems essential to our experience of reality - our
reality - as anything, says Paul Davies, a Professor of Natural Philosophy at the
University of Adelaide, Australia. But what if our perception of time and space has
simply deceived us? Much of what we thought we knew about our universe-that the past
has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our
universe is the only universe that exists-just might be wrong, says famous physicist Brian
Greene.

In our day-to-day lives, we experience time as a continuous flow. But it can also
be useful to think of time as a series of snapshots, or moments, and every event can be
thought of as the unfolding of moment, after moment, after moment. And "if we picture
all these moments, or snapshots, line them up, every moment here on Earth, every
moment of Earth orbiting the Sun, and every moment throughout the entire universe, we
would see every event that has ever happened or will ever happen, from the birth of our
universe at the Big Bang, some 14-billion years ago; to the formation of stars in the
 92

Milky Way galaxy; to the creation of Earth, four and a half billion years ago; to the time
of the dinosaurs; to events happening on Earth today, like me working in my office,"
Greene explains.

Don't you have a strange feeling that someone out there is so incredibly advanced
technologically that he can observe all those movements (snapshots) in the entire
universe when they take place simultaneously? And when we seriously consider the
simple but essential concept of "now we begin to understand that both past and future
must be real because they could be your now, which means past, present and future - are
all equally real and all exist. Moreover, they exist all at once.83

The similar reality about time is expressed by mystics. Quran also elucidate that
the time is not certain, it is different for those are travelling in different space and frames.

ٰۗ
‫سـنَ ٍة‬ َ ‫ار ٗه َخ ْم ِسیْنَ ا َ ْل‬
َ ‫ف‬ ُّ ‫ت َ ْع ُر ُج ْال َمل ِٕى َكةُ َو‬
ُ َ‫الر ْو ُح اِلَ ْی ِه فِ ْي يَ ْو ٍم َكانَ ِم ْقد‬

“The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day, the measure of which is fifty thousand
years.”83

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, presentandfuture. The
past as memory does not push a mystic, and the future as expectation does not pull a
mystic. For him present includes past and future and thus has nothing outside it which
can exert a push or a pull. He is not in time at all, for all time is in him.Qlandar Baba
Auliyasays about the events occurred in time that

“What so ever existing in the world, or that ever existed or which will exist ever
henceforth, is flowing upon thoughts. Something exists for us when we happen to receive
information about that thing, or in other words, a thought about that thing comes to our
mind then that thing does not exist for us.”83

Further he says that past present and future all exist simultaneously since the
moment when Allah almighty ordered “Be”
 93

“The whole program about the creation of the universe along with the creative formulae,
its components, and their existence in the past, present and future came into being when
God commanded it to be. Anything that is manifested, whether it is existing presently,
manifested in the past or will ever exist in the future, is only a manifestation of the
program that had came into being after God had proclaimed it to be”83

This means that past, present and future is an illusion of our minds; not only mystics but
physicists articulate the same.

3-Teleportation VsTayy at-Ard

Another common phenomenon which has surprised the quantum physicists is

teleportation. Mystics used to experience this for very long. As we have discussed in
detail the phenomenon of quantum teleportation in first chapter, here I just remind you in
a few words.

Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact

state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to
another. Quantum teleportation takes one unit of information and makes it "appear"
somewhere else without physically cover any distance. Entanglement provides basis for
teleportation. Till now quantum physicists successfully teleported the photon, atom and
energy. Now let’s have a look in mystic world, the phenomenon closely resembles with
teleportation is “Tayy at-Ard” or “NisbatUwaisiya”.

Tasawwuf in many revolves around the spiritual connection or link that was
between the Beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) and SayidinaUwaisQarni. In
Tasawwuf that spiritual connection is known as “NisbatUwaiaiya”. It is the reality that
exists in creation, the ability for Allh’s creation to influence each other spiritually. Uwaisi
form of transmission refers to the transmission of spiritual knowledge between two
individuals without the need for physical proximity and interaction between them; it is
the reality of unseen quantum world. Sometimes the messenger of Allah would turn in
the direction of Yemen and say in reference to SayidinaUwais:
 94

“I perceive the fragrance of love from Yemen”

Even though Yemen was a great distance away and Love isn’t described as
fragrant, he was referring to something present spiritually that he could perceive.
SayidinaUwais while in Yemen would often hear the Adhn recited in Medina, or
sometimes the prophets (P.B.U.H) speech, or know of events that had unfolded in the
prophets (P.B.U.H) life.
The companions of prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) also used this phenomenon for
messaging. Once Uthmaan (ra) was giving a khutba, then paused for a moment to warn
another sahabah (who was in battle) that danger was threatening them from another
direction.83

Mystics used this for communication, ShiakhorMurshad guide their murid

through this spiritual power to a long distance without using any cable, radio ways or
other type of communication devices.

A certain individual of unusually high rank (a Sheikh, Pir, or Imam) is seen to

have the ability to travel long distances in almost instantaneous amounts of time. In my
opinion mystics use the phenomenon of Tayy-al-Ard just for communication. For
travelling from one place to other they use another more advance phenomenon “Tjadud-
e-Amsal” i.e. Man and everything in this universe ceases to exist in each breath or
moment and then exist again. Asif Bin Barkhiya (r.a) used the same phenomenon for
bringing the throne of queen Bilqis in Solomon’s (alihissalm) palace. As we have
discussed it in second chapter.

4-Biocentrism VsBaqa

“The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the human body, but there is some
part of it which remains eternal”

Said Benedict de Spinoza.83

After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said

 95

“Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means
nothing. People like us, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only
a stubbornly persistent illusion.”8

New evidence continues to suggest that Einstein was right death isan illusion.
Most scientists would probably say that the concept of an afterlife is either nonsense, or
at the very least un-provable. Yet one expert, claims he has evidence to confirm an
existence beyond the grave and it lies in quantum physics .Professor Robert Lanza claims
the theory of biocentrism.
Biocentrism is classed as the theory of everything and comes from the Greek for
'life centre'. It is believe that life and biology are central to reality and that life creates the
universe, not the other way round. Theory teaches that death as we know it is an illusion
created by our consciousness and when we start to see things biocentrically, the
verisimilitude of a finite life loosen its grip. He says that
“Our classical way of thinking is based on the belief that the world has an objective
observer independent existence. But a long list of experiments shows just the opposite.
We think life is just the activity of carbon and an admixture of molecules we live awhile
and then rot into the ground.” 9
Lanza says that
“We believe in death because we’ve been taught we die. Also, of course, because we
associate ourselves with our body and we know bodies die.” 10

Lanza says that

“religion may go on and on about the afterlife, but how do we know this is true?
Physics may tell us that energy is never lost, and that our brain, minds, and hence the
feelings of life operate by electrical energy, and therefore this energy like all others
simply cannot vanish, period energy keeps changing forms, but it never diminishes in the
least. Similarly, the essence of who you are, which is energy, can neither diminish nor
“go away”. And while this sounds very intellectually nice and hopeful, how can we sure
that we will still experience the sense of life the biocentricview of the timeless, space less
 96

cosmos of consciousness allows for no true death in any real sense.” he suggests a
person's consciousness determines the shape and size of objects in the universe. He says
“Death doesn’t exist in a timeless, space less world. Immortality doesn’t mean a
perpetual existence in time, but resides outside of time altogether.”

He consider experiments which support his biocentric point of view the first
experiment is the famous two-slit experiment. When scientists watch a particle pass
through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit
or the other. But if you don’t watch, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits at
the same time. So how can a particle change its behavior depending on whether you
watch it or not? The answer is simple reality is a process that involves your
consciousness.This demonstrates that matter and energy can display characteristics of
both waves and particles, and that behaviour of the particle changes based on a person's
perception and consciousness.

Our linear way of thinking about time is also conflicting with another series of
recent experiments. In 2002, scientists showed that particles of light “photons” knew in
advance what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication
between pairs of photons. They let one photon finish its journey it had to decide whether
to be either a wave or a particle. Researchers stretched the distance the other photon took
to reach its own detector. However, they could add a scrambler to prevent it from
collapsing into a particle. Somehow, the first particle knew what the researcher was going
to do before it happened and across distances instantaneously as if there were no space or
time between them. They decide not to become particles before their twin even
encounters the scrambler. It doesn’t matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and
its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments
consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects.Lanza uses the example of the way
we perceive the world around us. A person sees a blue sky, and is told that the color they
are seeing is blue, but the cells in a person's brain could be changed to make the sky look
green or red.
Further he mentions that
 97

“We generally reject the multiple universes of Star Trek as fiction, but it turns out there is
more than a morsel of scientific truth to this popular genre. One well-known aspect of
quantum physics is that observations can’t be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a
range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream
explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible
observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). There are an infinite
number of universes and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe.
Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist
simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them.”
Lanza concluded with the statement that
“The mathematical possibility of your consciousness ending is zero”. 11
Now when we talk about mysticism, it teaches the same concept that death is an
illusion, not only concepts but mystics used to do these practices for hundreds of years.
Mysticism teaches the continued existence of the soul and a transformed physical
existence after death. Mystics declare death as an interchange to the next world, not
as the end of life. Islamic doctrine holds that human existence continues after the death
of the human body in the form of spiritual and physical resurrection.A mystic
accomplishes the eternal life by attaining subsistence with God because God is eternal.
Quran mentions this fact as
ِ ْ ‫ َويَ ْبقَى َوجْ هُ َربِكَ ذُو ْال َج ََل ِل َو‬- ‫ان‬
‫اْل ْك َرام‬ ٍ َ‫ُك ُّل َم ْن َعلَ ْی َھا ف‬
“All things in creation suffer ‘annihilation’ and there remains the face of the Lord in its
majesty and bounty”.12
In this way, surely those who attain subsistence with God also remain forever as Quran
mentions
ٍ ‫َما ِعندَ ُك ْم يَنفَد ُ َو َما ِعندَ ّللاِ بَا‬
‫ق‬
“What is with you must vanish: what is with Allah will endure:”.13

When one is annihilated from his attributes, he becomes subsistent, i.e. when
one in the presence of attributes, gets annihilated from the evils of his attributes, then
he in the annihilation of desires subsists with the subsistence of desire, then he is
neither near nor far, neither stranger nor intimate and similarly he is neither sober nor
 98

intoxicated, neither separated nor united, neither he is affected by destruction nor by

non-existence. He is left with no name, sign, mark or record. As some
elder venerable has said:

‫فلست اري في الوقت قربا وال بعد ًا‬ ‫وطاح مقامي والرسوم كَلھما‬
‫فھذا ظھورالحق عند الفناء قصد‬ ‫افنیت به عنی فنازنی الھدي‬

“My maqam (station) and forms both are vanished, and now there is no proximity or
farness for me;

When I got annihilated from myself, it opened the way for my guidance, and
manifestation of the Truth depends on the intention of annihilation.”14

In this way when a mystic attains the high state of his conscious, the things like time,
space, past, present, future, life and death lose their meaning for him. Iqbal says

The imprudent ones consider death is the end of life

this apparent evening of life is the morning of perpetual life!15

This is the fact that mystics experiencing this phenomenon of subsistence for very long
but quantum physics only have a theory about it but this is the point at which quantum
physics and mysticism seems to congregate.

5-Only one energyVsWahdat-ul-wujood

Experiments have proved that an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."
Even more interestingly, further examination shows that the nuclei and electrons are
made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," which are not even particles in the
physical sense; rather, they are simply energy. This discovery broke the classical
distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that only energy exists in the
material universe, and that matter is just "frozen energy." There is a still more intriguing
fact: Quarks, those packets of energy, act in such a way that they may be described as
 99

"conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, when accepting the Templeton Prize for Progress
in Religion (2000), stated that:

“Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They
make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of
quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices,
is to some extent inherent in every atom”

In other words, there is information behind matter, information that precedes the
material realm. Gerald Schroeder, explains that quantum physics-along with other
branches of science-is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom lying behind the
material world. As he puts it:

“It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem,
the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while
longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy
that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.”16

The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have deep meaning.
Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of
information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as
ethereal as energy. This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that it covers the whole
universe: A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The
discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have
moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this
wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically
articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every
being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.This
means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the
atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but instead is a manifestation of a wisdom that existed
before the universe and that has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In
Schroeder's words, it is
 100

"As if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical."17

This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the visible
material universe is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder
explains,

“Quantum physics has become the point at which science and theology meet”18

The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the
manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its
manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound
like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical
with the spiritual. Quantum is really the point at which science and theology meet. The
fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom was revealed in the Qur'an 14
centuries ago. One verse reads:19

98‫؁‬ ‫ًا‬
‫لم‬ِّْ
‫ء ع‬ٍْ‫َّ شَي‬
‫ُل‬ ‫َ ك‬ ‫َس‬
‫ِّع‬ ‫و‬ ۭ َ
‫ھو‬ َّ‫ه ا‬
ُ ‫ِّْل‬ َ ْ‫ِّي‬
ٰ‫ْلٓ ا‬
َ‫ِّل‬ ‫الذ‬َّ ُ‫ّٰلل‬
‫ُ اه‬ ‫ُم‬
‫هك‬ ٰ‫ٓ ا‬
ُ‫ِّلــ‬ ‫َا‬ َّ‫ا‬
‫ِّنم‬

(O my people! He) Allah alone is your God apart from Whom there is no God. He has
encompassed everything in (His) knowledge.’20

The same concept is delivered by Michael Talbot but he used the word “light” instead of
energy or wisdom. Talbot says:

"Matter and empty space thus become one and the same.”21

This is what the Sufis say in regard to Wahdat-ul-Wujud.

He says further:

"But the matter does not end here. As particles were discovered to be more wave-like,
phenomenon such as light, which had always been interpreted as a wave became more
and more particle-like. The German physicist Max Planck suggested that light was
discontinuous and consisted of small energy units called 'Quanta'."23
Einstein brought us closer to figuring out the fundamental building blocks of
matter when he discovered that light and matter are ultimately interchangeable. The
 101

primordial substance of the universe appears to be these wave particles and quanta (light
units).The riddle is solved by the following verse of the Quran:
‫ض‬ ْ َ
‫اْلَر‬
ِّْ ‫ٰو‬
‫ٰتِّ و‬ ‫ُ السَّم‬
‫ْر‬‫نو‬ ‫َه‬
ُ ُ‫ّٰلل‬‫ا‬

"Allah (God) is the Light (soul) of the heavens and earth."24

Now, since God's being is pure light (Nur) and since according to the cult
of Wahdat-ul-Wujud (oneness of being), God's Being penetrates everything in the
universe including space, the building blocks of the universe, which are nothing but
God's Light which, on devolution, appeared in the form of wave-like particles or particle-
like waves penetrating the entire field of matter and space whose oneness has already
been established by both the scientists and the Sufis. In Sufi’s poetry Wahdat-ul-Wujud is
describes as

La Mau-JoodaIllallah, La Mash-hudaIllallah,
La MaqsoodaIllallah, La Ma'boodaIllallah

This view of God's light (life, spirit) holding the universe together is perfectly in
accord with the Quantum theory, theory of Relativity and the findings of renowned
physicists like Rutherford, Heisenberg, Wheeler, Max Planck and others; and reconciles
all these apparently irreconcilable theories and tends to weld them into one harmonious
whole. In the Quran there are many passages which throw a flood of light on the secrets
of creation, which is the subject matter of scientists. Apparently the "uniting tissues"
could be the force of gravity which so far nobody has been able to know the source of.
The doctrine of Sufic Wahdat-ul-Wujud (Oneness of Being) stands established both from
the logical, scientific and metaphysical points of view. Moreover, it is not only a logical
proposition. It is actual experience and spiritual perception and is within the reach of
every human being to have it, not through intellect but actual vision and experience of the
Immanence of God in everything through Ain-ul-Yaqin (visual perception) and Haq-ul-
Yaqin (Union or identification with the Divine Being).

The gist of Talbot's book, Mysticism and the New Physics is that the present state
of uncertainty of science is the result of one-eyed observation of the universe, and the
 102

moment both the eyes (physical and spiritual) are utilized, the secrets of creation
automatically unfold themselves. 25
 103

Conclusion

T he principal theories and models of modern physics lead to a view of the

world, which is internally consistent, and in perfect harmony with the worldviews of
Tasawwuf. The significance of the parallels between the world-views of physicists
and Sufis is beyond any doubt. Both emerge when man inquires into the essential
nature of things-into the deeper realms of matter in physics; into the deeper realms
of consciousness in Tasawwufwhen he discovers a different reality behind the
superficial ordinary appearance of everyday life. Physicists derive their knowledge
from experiments whereas Sufis from meditative insights. The Sufi looks within and
explores his or her consciousness at its various levels. The experience of one’s body
is, in fact, often seen as the key to the Tasawwuf experience of the world.
Another similarity between the physicist and the Sufi is the fact that their
observations take place in realms, which are inaccessible to the ordinary senses. To
the physicist the realms of the atomic and subatomic world; in Tasawwuf they are
non-ordinary states of consciousness in which the sense world is transcended. Both
for the physicists and the Sufis, the multidimensional experiences transcend the
sensory world and are therefore almost impossible to express in ordinary language.
Quantum Physics and Tasawwuf are two complementary manifestations of
the human mind; of its rational and intuitive faculties. The modern physicist
experiences the world through an extreme specialization of the rational mind; the
Sufi through an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind. Both of them are
necessary for a fuller understanding of the world.
When men has a quest for reality and struggle hard for it, a time will come
when reality unveil itself. Mystics have their own stages and phases in achieving the
reality and physicists have their own. We have noticed in this thesis that physicists
are still on their way to be acquainted with reality, some time they take their
 104

journey on right path and sometimes they astray but mysticism is based on
revelation knowledge (Quran and Hadith) not rational knowledge, that’s why
mystics continue their journey on veracity not on theories. Physicists are still
arguing about the reality of this universe and there are theories like Copenhagen
interpretation or many worlds interpretation, some say that reality is based on our
consciousness and some say that universe has independent existence, but a single
Hadith clarifies the reality of universe, prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) often prayed
that
‫اللھم ارنا حقأق االشیاءکما ھی‬ 22

“O’ Allah show us the things as they are”

This Hadith clarifies two things, first, whether we are watching a thing or not it is
here in its confirm form and second is, things do not appear to us as they are in real
but we see them according to our consciousness. Although science and mysticism
adopt apparently two different ways but both ways lead to the same destination i.e.
ultimate reality.
 105

References

1. A.S. Noordeen,Islamic Sufism, G.P.O. Box 10066, 50704 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, p:87
2. http://www.messagetoeagle.com/pastpresentfutureallatonce.php
3. Al-Quran,70:4

4. Qlander Baba Aulia,loh-o-qalam,azemia publishers,2011,p:35

5. Qlander Baba Aulia,loh-o-qalam,azemia publishers, 2011, p:40
6. http://www.understanding-islam.com/q-and-a/muslim-sects/is-tasawuf-sufism-one-of-the-
uloom-ad-deen-5616

7. Robert Lanza, MD with Bob Berman ,Biocentrism, BebBella Books USA, 2009, p:185

8. Ibid, 186

9. Ibid, 205

10. Ibid, 208

11. Robert Lanza, MD with Bob Berman,Biocentrism, BebBella Books USA, 2009, p:185

12. Al-Quran 55:26–27

13. Al-Quran 16:96

14. Ali B.Uthman Al-Jullabi Al-Hujwiri,The Revelation of Mystery (kashf al

Mahjub),Quran4u.com,Lahore,Pakistan, p:82
15. MuhamadIqbal,Bang-e-Dra, Iqbal academy,p:287
16. Gerald L. Schroeder,The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, , the
free press, 2001, p:5
17. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, the
free press, 200, P:26
18. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, the
free press, 200, p:173
19. Gerald Schroeder ,The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, the
free press, 2001, p:95
20. Al-Quarn 20:98
21. Michael Talbot,Mysticism And The New Physics,Arkana Penguin Books, 1993, p: 91

22. Michael Talbot ,Mysticism And The New Physics,Arkana Penguin Books,1993, p:92
23. Al-Quran24,35
24. , A.S. Noordeen, Islamic Sufism, G.P.O. Box 10066, 50704 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, p:103
 106

25. Al-Fakhr al Razi, Tafsir-ul-kabir, vol:6, P:26

 107

Recommendations

1. Some people have a view that mysticism is based on the stories of fantasy world
which has a rich historical background. Some considerate it as the collection of
ritualsand superstitious types of believes rathermysticism should be taken as a
unique world based on concrete facts which guide mankind to the ultimate reality.

2. Universities should offer a degree regarding a comparative study of mysticism

and science specially quantum physics. It would not only grab the interest of those
who strongly believe in science but also the interest of those who are curious
about mysticism.

3. While I was searching for my thesis I found negligible work by Muslim scholars,
Sufies and scientist in this field. So I highly recommend Muslim intellectuals to
come forward and play their part.

4. One thing that I notices is when we proceed in science the results ultimately lead
us to the way of mysticism. There an idea clicked me, if we will emphasize our
work in mysticism and will try to understand it in an unbiased and technical
manner the result will definitely lead us to the astonishing scientific discoveries.
This would be a much faster way to proceed in science.

5. I recommend an intellectual society comprising of the masters of mysticism and

scientific experts. Such kinds of society can really contribute in the field of
comperative study of mysticism and quantum physics. These societies can work
on the basis of collective efforts by mystics and scientists.
 108

6. While I was searching for my thesis I found negligible material on quantum

physics in Urdu. I recommend qualitative translations of the subject of quantum
physics in Urdu language.
7. Materialists should change their angle of observing things, they have to go
beyond the material myth and experience non-material basis of material things.
 109

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1. Abdullah Jawadi Amuli, "Dhikr and the Wisdom Behind It"
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4. A Reynold Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, printed in U.S.A,2006

5. Amaldi, Edoardo "Commemoration of the Academy Fellow Enrico Fermi". In Bernardini, C.;
Bonolis, Luisa
6. Andrews, Robert,The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Penguin UK,2003Biagioli,
Mario
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Plato, 2005
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Early Nineteenth Century,University of Chicago Press,1989
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of Chicago Press, 1994
10. Chisti,Hakim Moinuddin The Book of Sufi Healing
11. Cockcroft, J. D, Niels Henrik David Bohr: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
Society,1963.

12. Craig William lane, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, wipf and stock publishers, 2000
13. Door Stephen Hirtenstein ,the Unlimited Mercifier: The Spirtual Life and Thoughts of Ibn ‘Arabi,
, Anqa Publishing

14. David Bodanis, E = mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation, Walker New York,
2000.

15. Darrigol Olivier, World of Flow:A History of Hydrodynamics from the Bernoullis to Prandtl, New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005
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