The Attraction and Repulsion of Ali (a.s.)

Law of Attraction and Repulsion

( 19 )

It is a general law, the entire system of creation is subject to it. All modem human sciences conclusively assert that not a single atom from amongst the atoms of the cosmos lies beyond the jurisdiction of universal attraction, rather all happen to be subservient to it. From the largest organism and bodies of the universe to its smallest atoms, all possess this intrinsic force called attraction, and simultaneously (somehow or the other) they happen to be under its influence.

Man of earlier ages was not cognizant of this all-pervading faculty of attraction. Nonetheless, they did discover it in some of the bodies, and recognized them as symbol of this faculty, e.g. magnet and amber. Till late man did not know that these bodies have relative attraction for everything else also, he had rather presumed a specific co-relation about them, i.e., a co-relation between magnet and iron and grass and amber:

Every atom which is in this atmosphere

For its own genus is a petal as well as amber

But for these (two) we find no mention (in their volumes) of existence of faculty of attraction in the rest of the solid bodies. They have only discussed as to why the earth had hAlied amidst the heavens. They believed that the earth was held in suspension in the middle of the sky and was 3 pulled by the celestial attraction from all its sides They thought that as the attraction was comprehensive, so the sphere had to stay where it was, without leaning on any side. Some of them believed that the sky did not attract the earth, it rather repelled the sphere, and as the repulsion was equally comprehensive, so it had to stay on, at a specific point and could not change place.

( 20 )

They believed in the existence of the faculties of attraction and repulsion in plants and animals, in as much as they held them to possess the faculties of nutrition, growth and procreation. In the context of the faculty of nutrition they acknowledged the existence of secondary faculties of (i) attraction (ii) repulsion (iii) digestion and (iv) retention, and said that the stomach had the faculty of attraction, and because of that it pulled the food to itself and, in the same course, it excreted the diet whence it was found improper. In the same stance, they said that liver had the faculty of attraction because it attracted water to itself:

"Stomach pulls food to the point. Liver pulls water to itself".