SPIRIT OF ISLAM APRIL 2O18

41 Spirit of Islam Issue 64 April 2018 comes to our mind and every single word that we utter are preserved for eternity. We are pursued by such ‘cameras’ as are unaffected by darkness or light and which go on documenting our lives without interruption. What happens is very similar to the fate of erring drivers, who blatantly commit traffic offences, unaware that their every movement is being picked up by closed-circuit television cameras. One such offender was the driver of a three-wheeler scooter rickshaw who left his vehicle in a no-parking area in Delhi in the year 1980. The system was new at that time, so he had no idea he was being watched. When he was admonished by a policeman, he tried to pretend that he had just allowed a passenger to alight and that he was about to move on. The policeman promptly took him to the traffic inspector in the control room, where he was shown a film of all his movements— his parking (no passenger to be seen!), his strolling around, chatting to friends and finally his conversation with the policeman to whom he had put on such an air of outraged innocence! Naturally, when he saw the film, he had no defence left. Cosmic recording is similar in effect, but it is no sporadic affair. It is a round-the-clock process. And it is as if not only our external personalities, but reflections of our inner selves were being regularly pictorialized. This astonishing phenomenon is explainable only as a means of providing evidence for or against individuals, to be used in the divine court on the Day of Judgement. Now if even such a stark reality fails to convince a man of his ineluctably being called to account on that fateful day, it is impossible to imagine what would, in the last analysis, cause the scales to fall from his eyes. o USA Centre for Peace and Spirituality 2665 Byberry Road, Bensalem, PA 19020 kkaleemuddin@gmail.com