Madina Archives

Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board

Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
jannah
05/16/01 at 11:29:52
A nice article that was forwarded to me: =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell By Huma Ahmad "Every person will be resurrected according to how they died", said the Prophet [saw].   How we die of course depends on how we lived. On the day of Judgement our tongues, our skins, even space-time will be witnesses for us or against us. The first of our deeds to be taken to account is the Salah. "The first of the actions of the servant that Allah will ask him/her about is his/her Salah." In order for us to do well in this first accounting we should take the time to perfect our Salah. First we must try to struggle and discipline ourselves to pray all of them on time no matter what the circumstance. This is no small feat and we must struggle within our Nafs in order to fulfill it. Secondly we should always enter each Salah in a state of Taaharah purity of body as well as mind. When we stand in Salah we should remember that we are standing in front of Allah. Would we stand before any great person lazily or in disrepair? Some Sahaba even had special clean, beautiful garments only for prayer.  When Ali (radi'Allahu anhu) used to go make Wudu his face would become very pale. When asked why, he replied, "Do you know in front of whom I'm going to be standing?" At every Salah we must believe that our hearts are open in front of Allah. Our hearts should be present in that Salah. We should focus on what we are reading and understand the meaning.  We should have Haya' and also fear Allah because of all the wrong things we know Allah knows we did. In Salah we are the closest to Allah, especially in Sujood. We should focus on Muraqaba and bring our heart to a state where it knows/perceives that Allah is watching us. "A person may come to Salah and finish and will only get 1/4th of it, or1/10th or none at all." This is very grave. How many times have we not concentrated in Salah, how many times have our hearts been scattered or our minds been elsewhere? Sometimes the reality of the Hereafter and our deeds coming back and being shown to us seem difficult to believe.  In the Quran many times Allah tells us to reflect on what is around us in nature for wisdom. One example to help us reflect on how our life's deeds will be remembered and come back to us is a story related to us by Abdur Razzak Nawfal. In his book, Death and Dying he tells us about some scientific research studying the life, death and afterlife of a crabshell. In California, at the Institute of Technology a scientist wanted to study some of the secrets of life: How do our brain cells store information? How do human beings remember phone numbers, books, names and faces? How do we retrieve that information? How do animals know the way back to their habitat? Why is there a natural hostility between a cat and a mouse? How was it learned? Questions like these were the impetus for his research. He began experiments on seashell creatures like crabshells, etc.  He wanted to find out first if such creatures have memories?  He put them all in a pool of water in a laboratory lit with a light bulb and decided to use classical conditioning to teach the crabshells something they could understand. He began by turning on the light and feeding the crabshells at exactly 8 A.M every day. At first these seashells didn't seem to respond to the light but with repetition the crabshells learned that an illuminating light meant food was there. Thus they did have the ability to learn and remembered. The scientist then decided to go beyond this and destroyed the crabshell and took out it's brain and cut it into pieces until finally all he had left was a small cell about ½ a millimeter in diameter and connected it to wires and the wires to an electronic device that would record electronic activity. The scientist was astonished at the results -- At 8 am everyday the electronic reading would be out of the ordinary. It would go up to 40 pulses/minute at that time and continue at a higher rate for about 3 hours until it was back to it's norm of 10 pulses/minute. The same thing occurred every day proving that even a cell of a crabshell had a memory and remembered it's history and past life of when it would receive food at 8 am everyday. The researcher concluded that for the crabshell, the brain cell was a conscious system that regulated all of its activities like breathing, the need for food, excretions, population and even it's primitive feelings towards water and lights. The scientist also noted other high pulses not at 8 am. Every 24 days he would notice the pulses would spike. When he went to the seashore the scientist realized that every 24 days it would be high tide and it was that the one cell was remembering and trying to warn itself. The one orphan isolated cell still remembered its past to take precautions for high tides every 24 days. All this occurred even though the relationship between the sea and the crabshell had ended and it's body had long ago been destroyed.   This is an amazing find that we should reflect upon. Even a crabshell has an "afterlife". Long after it has died, it still remembers what happened in the past and sends pleasure, pain, and warnings to itself. If a crabshell's primitive brain can remember what happened in the past and record it within 1 brain cell, it is easy to speculate that our own more complex brains record our events like a human biological computer. Experiments also show that though cells would die after no nutrition, it was possible to re-energize them 1 month later. This emphasizes these cells were still 'living' somehow. Some normal cells have 'life' for 4000 years or more. If the life of a crabshell continues even after it's dead, then won't ours? An afterlife of reality occurs for this crabshell that we should really contemplate. Reflecting on this makes one think of how precious their actions are. Do we want to commit sins and evils and that is the only thing that will be sent back to us by our own cells after we are dead?  Or do we want to do Khair and feel it in this life and have it come back to us even after our body has been destroyed and scattered. If the life events of a crab are remembered in its own cells, it's easy to see how our own body, tongue and skins could testify on the Day of Judgement. If the events in a crab's life can be remembered so exactly and thoroughly, can we possibly be so lax and lazy on our prayers when every single one will be expected to be accounted for one Day? We can learn from this story that our deeds are truly being recorded and we will one day see what our hands sent forth. We should be careful of the choices we make and the actions we take and try to make sure that they will be pleasing to us.

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
sis
05/16/01 at 11:44:44
alsalamu alaykum wa rhmat Allah wa barakatuhu masha'Allah...subhan Allah wa bihamdi.....the truth is in us and all around us

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
bhaloo
05/16/01 at 11:52:18
slm That was a nice article, that Huma Ahmad sure can write.  There was one minor correction I wanted to mention. [quote] In California, at the Institute of Technology a scientist wanted to study some of the secrets of life[/quote] The name of the university is the California Institute of Technology or CALTECH for short, located in Pasadena, California.   From the article it sounded like the university's name was Institute of Technology, and I don't think the author meant that.  Yeah, I know its a minor point, but I'm a Californian. :) I give the article 2 thumbs up.  :)

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
Asim
05/17/01 at 01:02:38
Assalaamu alaikum, Good reminder! I once took a course on brain theory and have read some articles in neuroscience, it is just fascinating subhanAllah. We know only some rudimentary details of the working of the brain like general functional classification into memory, vision, and auditory regions, etc. Information is processed both in time and space and there are several variables involved such as electrical impulses and chemical concentrations. Not just simple magnitudes characterize information but complex patterns in time and space that include synchronized and un synchronized responses, etc. Just fascinating, we know only the basics and there are layers and layers of details that we will completely *never* understand. Artificial neural networks are a crude attempt at the computational modeling of the working of the brain and nervous system and using them to solve problems better. I have worked in this area for a few years and it is really interesting (although I wish I had the oppurtunity to go deeper into this). Wasalaam.

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
jannah
05/17/01 at 02:20:54
walaikum salaam wrt, a good book that br mokhtar always recommends is called Hyperspace ... it talks about the validity of multiple dimensions and how scientific fact proves it..!

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
meraj
05/17/01 at 13:08:20
slm, wow.. subhanallah... that was an amazing perspective... science and islam is somethign that completely fascinates me... it gives you a whole new appriciation for Allah's creations... i agree, 2 thumbs up :)

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
chachi
05/17/01 at 20:32:03
Actually the BEST book on islamic cosmology that i've read is the book by Mufti Ceric of Bosnia regarding the theories of imam maturidi i've read most of the other books on cosmology in my library because i was considering studying physics for a degree at one time.. it's only when you start studying quantum mechanics that the world gets really interesting imam maturidi said that the passage of time was an illusion that allah swt was creating and destroying the world constantly and that we only perceived it as unified because it was like a torch tied on a string being spun very rapidly..even though the torch was one we saw a circle because motion created time this has always really amazed me because motion is the very base of physics ...and imam maturidi is saying that time is really motion!

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
chachi
05/17/01 at 20:35:19
This research kind of brings back all that stuff about diseases of the heart huh? your heart as the major organ of your body remembers.. Hmm thats kind of spooky for people who have transplants of hands and stuff..kind of like a Science fiction movie..the hand of a killer... Does anybody know about that research that proved that praying for people who were unaware of the prayer STILL had a beneficial effect?

Re: Reflections on the Afterlife of a Crabshell
chachi
05/17/01 at 20:59:25
A while ago i read a book called The crusades by Bamber macgascoine (the guy who used to do university challenge) and he said that a muslim in baghdad living in the 1200's had figured out that if you split an atom you would create an explosion large enough to destroy all of baghdad..that has always really amazed me because he figured that out with none of the maths that einstein used the books out of print and not available in the library can somebody give me the name of the muslim please?
Individual posts do not necessarily reflect the views of Jannah.org, Islam, or all Muslims. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster and may not be used without consent of the author. The rest © Jannah.Org