SPIRIT OF ISLAM APRIL 2O18

34 Spirit of Islam Issue 64 April 2018 When a machine is in operation, it undergoes a gradual process of deterioration; in like manner, our body ‘machine’ is in a continual state of deterioration. Its ‘bricks’ are constantly being eroded and destroyed in the normal course of our daily lives. But we compensate for this loss by taking in food. Once digested, this produces various forms of cells which counterbalance any physical deficiency. Our bodies are, in fact, a compound of cells that is always in the process of change. It is like a large river that is always filled with water, without the water ever remaining the same. At every moment the old water is being replaced by the new. The container remains the same, but the water flows on. Our bodies are so constantly undergoing changes that a time comes when all of the ‘bricks’ in our bodies have been eroded and replaced by new ones. During childhood, this is a fairly rapid process. However, as one ages, this process slows down day by day. Over an entire lifetime, on an average, all of the body cells are renewed every ten years. This process of the death and decomposition of the body goes on continually, whereas the inner man survives in his original form. At all stages of his life, he thinks of himself as being the same ‘man’ that he was in the past, and this, in spite of the fact that no feature of his, eyes, ears, nose, hands, legs, hair, nails, etc.— has remained the same. Now if, along with the death of the body, the man inhabiting it died too, he should be diminished or depleted in some way by this total replacement of his cells. But this is not so. He remains quite distinct from and independent of the body, and retains his identity notwithstanding the death and decay of the body. Man is like a river. And the human personality is like an island in it, unaffected by the ceaseless flow of the cells. That is why a scientist has regarded life, or the human personality, as an independent entity that remains constant in the face of continuous change. He asserts that ‘personality is changelessness in change.’ Now if death means the end of the body, we might well say that whenever there is such a total replacement of cells in the body, the man actually dies on each occasion. And that if we see him moving about alive, he has really been resurrected. That is, a fifty-year old man would have experienced death at least five times within the short span of his life. If a man does not experience bodily Our bodies are like a large river that is always filled with water, without the water ever remaining the same. At every moment the old water is being replaced by the new. The container remains the same, but the water flows on.