Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Soulveda | March 24, 2017
In ancient times, when man discovered the saw and axe, and using these tools, was able to fashion a wheel from wood, this was considered the ultimate in human progress. History showed, however, that it was just the beginning. When the industrial revolution ushered in the technological age, man started to fashion hard metals into new and wondrous forms. Once again it was thought that this was as far as he could go.
But it was not. The coming of the space age showed that there is a higher degree of perfection, made possible by space technology, which had previously eluded man. In the industrial age, for instance, goods were manufactured on earth. The pollution and density of the earth’s atmosphere, however, was not conducive to the production of certain goods, such as highly sensitive medicines. Now, with what Dr James Beggs, administrator of NASA, calls the ‘extraordinary success’ of the US space shuttle experiments, plans are afoot for ‘space manufacturing’ or putting factories into orbit.
The first such factory, as the Hindustan Times reported on March 31, 1984, aimed at producing medicines of a quality and purity that would be impossible on the earth’s surface, is to be launched in 1986. The report continues, “The secret of the likely success of space manufacturing lies partly in weightlessness. Because of the downward pull of gravity, it is impossible on the earth’s surface to produce anything perfectly round and perfectly pure.”
The space age, then, has brought in a new standard of perfection, one that lies in weightlessness rather than in the density of the atmosphere in which we live. With every new advance in technology, a new, previously unimaginable, degree of perfection emerges. This seemingly unending sequence of advances makes it easy for us to understand the nature of Paradise. Paradise is where perfection reaches its ultimate stage. If progress in the limits of perfection is possible in the human world, then there is no reason why a further, supreme degree of perfection should not be possible in the world of God. There appears to be no limit to the progress which man can achieve in this world; whenever one stage is reached, another lies in wait. But when man enters the world of God, perfection will reach a supreme and unsurpassable stage, for “to the Lord is the final goal.” (Quran, 53:42)