SPIRIT OF ISLAM AUGUST 2O13

16 Spirit of Islam Issue 8 August 2013 men and women living today, irrespective of the religion or community to which they belong, are purely reincarnations of their previous selves. Yet not one of them remembers his or her previous life. Individual Hindus, both men and women, have been known—quite unaccountably—to recapitulate the happenings of their previous lifetimes. But this kind of ‘miracle’, with its aura of mystery, cannot serve as an argument. For, academically, such narrations could be held as sound arguments only if all Hindus and non-Hindus—rather than just a few obscure individuals—remembered the events of their previous lives. It is also believed that when Gautama Buddha went into a samadhi , he travelled into his previous lives and saw all his births. But this claim is wholly baseless. It has not been proved on the basis of historical records, that Gautama Buddha ever said anything about this. It is later interpreters who have made this inference. The truth is that the ‘cause’ does not explain anything. The ‘cause’ itself is in need of an explanation. The truth is that the principle of causation was based originally on supposition. It was not an academic argument. But from day one people, in their haste, were willing to give credence to a ‘concept’ which was a mere supposition rather than a reality. And indeed, its popularity was due less to its academic weight than to its sentimental value. In this argument put forward by modern atheists, there was clearly a great logical flaw. It did not take into account the fact that according to science the ‘cause’ of any event was not the final word. Even after that the question remained to be answered: How did the cause come into existence? The truth is that the ‘cause’ does not explain anything. The ‘cause’ itself is in need of an explanation. o For further details, see the book God Arises , by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan.