ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Imamate and Leadership A Word Concerning the Unseen and the Manifest ( 203 ) Lesson Twenty-Two The world of the unseen is the counterpart of the manifest realm consisting of whatever lies beyond the scope of the senses and cannot be externally perceived.

We have for example no direct knowledge of the circumstances of resurrection or the nature of reward and punishment nor do we know anything of the composition of the angels or the attributes and essence of God not because all of these are minute or subtle entities but because they transcend our limited horizons of thought and lie outside time and space. The unseen may be divided into two parts absolute and relative.

There are certain entities that are unseen in an absolute sense for they will always be unseen by everyone and at all times being intrinsically beyond the external senses of man God's essence being an example of this. As for the relative unseen this comprises entities that are manifest to some but unseen by others. Everything that can be perceived by one of the five senses and thereby falls within the scope of man's sense perception counts as part of the manifest realm.

This applies to matter and all of its effects even if it be a question of items such as atoms microbes and viruses which are invisible to the naked eye because of their minuteness. Our senses cannot perceive them unassisted but once they are magnified several million times by means of special instruments they come within range of our perception.

( 204 ) Similarly scientific discoveries of certain facts relating to this world full of secrets and mysteries such as laser beams x-rays and gravity do not relate to the world of the unseen even though they appear to be imperceptible for they are attained through the observation of natural causes. This serves to demonstrate the limitations of our senses; even within the natural world they do not suffice for the perception of everything.

It sometimes happens that the sensory power of certain animals is much greater than our own. They can see things that are hidden from us or perceive them by non-visual means whereas we can infer their existence only from the effects they produce. As for the world of the unseen and what it contains it stands in contrast to all the phenomena that are perceptible to our senses in one way or other and to some degree or other.