According to Reason, is it not Impossible to Cover in a Few Minutes a Distance Which Would Normally Take Thousands of Years?

 

In the art of the All-Majestic Maker, the motions are of infinitely different degrees. For example, everybody knows how different are from one another electricity, spirit, imagination, and sound. Also, as has been established by science, the speeds of the motion of different planets are so different that it astonishes the mind. So, why should it be deemed contrary to reason that the body of Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, which acquired some sort of refinement, accompanied his spirit in the Ascension and moved at its speed? It sometimes occurs that you sleep for ten minutes but have one year’s experiences. Even, if the words one spoke and heard in a dream lasting one minute were collected together, it would take a day and even more to speak or hear them in the waking state. That means a single period of time means one day for one while a year for another.

Consider this by means of an analogy. Let us imagine a clock to measure the speed of man, a cannon-ball, sound, light, electricity, spirit, and imagination. The clock has ten hands to show the hours, minutes, and seconds down to fractions of an hour to the power of ten, and also it has ten circles one round the other and sixty times larger than it respectively. If the circle with the hand showing the hours was the size of a normal clock, the circle we imagine to have a hand showing fractions of an hour to the power of ten would have to be the size of the annual orbit of the earth, or even much greater.

Now let us suppose there are two people. One is as though mounted on the hour-hand and observes according to its motion while the other is on the hand showing fractions of an hour to the number of ten. There will be an enormous difference, as great as the proportion between our clock and the annual orbit of the earth, with respect to the things these two individuals observe in the same period of time.

Thus, since time is like an aspect or a ‘ribbon’ of motion, a rule which is in force in motion is also in force in time. While the things we observe in the period of one hour are of the same amount as the observations of the individual mounted on the hour-hand, which moves in the smallest circle at the lowest speed, like the one mounted on the hand showing fractions of the hour to the power of ten, God’s noble Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, gets on the mount of Divine assistance and in the same space of time, in that same hour, like lightning, traverses the entire sphere of contingency, and seeing the wonders of the external and inner dimensions of Divine dominion and rising as far as the limits of Divine realm, is honored with Divine conversation and vision of His Beauty, receives the decree, and returns to his duty. It was possible for him to do that, and he did it.

 

This article has been adapted from Risale- i Nur Collection.