The Basics of Belief

1 1- What I realize through my senses I cannot doubt its existence This is a rational spontaneous intuition which is taken for granted,butwhat is witnessed is that when one walks, at midday, in the desert andseesa pond of water at a remote distance, but when he reaches it, he willdiscoverthat is a dust because what he saw was a mirage.By the same token,whenone puts the straight pen in a cup of water, he will see it as if itis broken,but really it is not.If someone was at an evening party inwhich peopletalked about Jinn and ghosts, on his way home, because theroad was dark and empty and if he was scared and had an active imagination,he may have thought he saw a Jinn or a ghost, but in fact it was nothingother than his imagination.The magicians and tricksters display strangethings which we see, but they have no reality.Therefore, the senses canmake mistakes and be deceived, they can imagine or their owner can imagine,but is this a reasonable cause to doubt the existence of what one realizes? No, because if I doubt what I hear, see, or realizes, my reality will be confused with my imagination and I will be like an insane person. Here, there is another prerequisite to attain the knowledge edge (conviction) that what I realize is existed i.e. the mind should not decree according to the previous experiment and consider it as a basis of conviction. What I felt (realized) in the beginning was an imagination or an illusion of the sense.In the first case, the mind was deluded, it thought the mirage to be water, the pen was still straight although it seemed as if it was broken. The matters in which the senses were mistaken or deluded were definite and well known.This does not invalidate or affect the rule.Amongst these things are the magic done by the magicians of Pharaoh and what is done by magicians in circus nowadays. The Basics of Creed There are many things which we do not see or realize, but we have the conviction that they exist as if they were things which we could see and realize. We believe that there are countries called India and Brazil although wehave never visited or seen them before.We believe that Alexander the Greathad conquered Persia and that Walid Ibn Abd Al-Malik had built the UmayyadMosque, although we did not participate in the wars of Alexander nor didwe witness the building of Umayyad Mosque.If every one of us contemplates in himself, he will discover that his belief in things which he has not seen are more than what he has seen of kingdoms, countries and historical events whether they have taken place in the past or take place in the present.Whydid he believe in the existence of all these things although he did not realizethem with his senses? Man believes in the existence of these things becausethey were transferred to him through the ages, generations, via communication, and what he has learnt according to the agreement among people and according to the principle of habit.So, he believes these reported events because it is impossible to belie them after the people had agreed on their authenticity. Therefore, the second rule is as follows, conviction can be attainedthroughrealization and observation, it can be also attained from the reportof theones whom we think are truthful.The truthful people is believedby others.

1. What is the extent of knowledge that can be attained bythesenses? Can senses realize every created thing?.Infact the likenessof the self and the senses with the creatures is similar to that of a manwho is imprisoned by the ruler in the tower of a castle and blocked all ways before him except by some splits in the wall of the tower.Through these splits the man can look at the river in the east, at the mountain in the west,at the palace in the north, or at the playground in the south.

In fact the imprisoned person is the “Self” and the castle is the “body” and the splits are the restricted senses.Thus, by the sense of sight the man can look at the kingdom of figures and colors, by the sense of hearing can look down the kingdom of sound, by the sense of taste he can look at the kingdom of foods, drinks and tastes, by the sense of smell he can get into the kingdom of smells, and by the sense of touch, he can get into the kingdom of bodies and sizes. Here, a question arises, can the man, through each of these senses, realize all what this vast world contains? When the imprisoned person looks from the split in the direction of the river, he cannot see all the river, but sees only a part of it.By thesametoken, when the eye looks at the kingdom of the colors, it does notsee allof it, but only a part of it.2