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A
CONVERSATION WITH ATHEISTS, WHO WOULD LIKE TO LIVE HOWEVER THEY WISH
Left
without a support on which to build his misguidance and atheism
the representative of the misguided reveals his real intention,
saying:
The real
nature of atheism
‘Since
I seek the pleasure and happiness of the worldly life,
advancement in civilization and perfection of art in denial of
God, not heeding the Hereafter, love of the world, being free to
live however I wish and self-assertiveness, I have drawn most
people onto this path through the help of Satan, and continue to
do so.’
Answer
I say in
the name of the Qur’an:
O
helpless man! Come to yourself! Do not listen to the
representative of the misguided. If you listen to him, you will
suffer such a great loss that imagining it causes the spirit,
mind and heart to shudder. There are two paths before you:
Two paths
before man
One is
the path to which the representative of the misguided points and
it is a path full of dangers.
The other
is the one which the wise Qur’an describes and it is a path
that brings happiness. You have already seen many comparisons
between these two paths in The Words, primarily in the first
nine short ones. Now heed only one among a thousand, which
befits the occasion.
The path
of misguidance, and associating partners with God and of
dissipation and transgression of Divine Commands, causes man to
fall to bottomless depths of degradation, and loads an
unbearable burden onto his weak back and his heart with
boundless sorrows. For if a man does not recognize Almighty God
and put his trust in Him, he becomes like an extremely weak and
impotent and an infinitely poor and destitute animal, a mortal
afflicted with pains and grieves and subject to countless
calamities. Throughout his life he suffers incessantly from
separations from the things which he loves and has had
connections with, and leaving his friends and relatives
remaining in life in pains of separation, he enters into the
dark depths of the grave alone.
Also, he
struggles in vain, with a limited will, little power, a short
life-span and a dull mind, against infinite pains and ambitions.
He strives to realize his countless desires and goals without
any considerable result. While he is unable to bear the burden
of his own being, he loads his miserable mind and back with the
tremendous burden of the world. Before going to Hell, he suffers
the torments of Hell.
In order
to be able to endure that sort of painful spiritual torment, a
misguided one leads himself to the drunkenness of heedlessness
as some sort of anesthesia. However, when he has approached the
grave, he begins to feel it most acutely. For since he has
refused to become a true servant to Almighty God, he supposes
himself to be the owner of his self. Whereas he is unable to
govern his being in this tumultuous world with his limited free
will and insignificant power and encounters numerous enemies
from harmful microbes to earthquakes ready to attack him. In
painful fear and terror he looks to the door of the grave, which
always appears terrifying to him.
Furthermore,
on account of being human, he is related to humankind and the
whole of the world. But since he does not believe the world and
mankind to be at the disposal of the One Who is All-Wise,
All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Compassion-ate, and
All-Munificent, and attributes their existence and lives to
chance and nature, the fearful events of the world and the
conditions and experiences of mankind always trouble him.
Together with his own pains, he also suffers from the troubles
of other creatures. The convulsions, earthquakes, plagues,
calamities, deaths and famines, which visit the world, inflict
upon him unbearable torments.
A man in
this position does not deserve mercy and affection for it is
himself who throws himself into such a terrible state. As is
pointed out in The Eighth Word, comparing the states of the two
brothers who happened to fall into wells, if a man who, not
content with an agreeable and lawful enjoyment and entertainment
in a fine banquet among honest friends in a beautiful garden,
has become drunk with foul wine for the sake of a disagreeable
pleasure, imagines himself to be surrounded by wild beasts in a
dirty place on a winter day and begins to tremble and cry in
fear, he will not deserve pity. For he is imagining his honest
friends to be wild beasts and insulting them, and supposing the
delicious foods as foul and the clean, fine plates and bowls as
worthless, dirty stones, is breaking whatever he touches, and
judging the invaluable meaningful books which have been brought
to read and study to be ordinary meaningless collections of
sheets, is tearing them up and throwing them around. Rather than
compassion and pity, such a man deserves punishment.
Similarly,
since through the drunkenness of unbelief and insanity of
misguidance arising from the abuse of will-power, a man asserts
that the All-Wise Maker’s guest-house of the world is a
plaything of chance and nature, and that the transference of
beings to the world of the Unseen after each has completed its
duty of refreshing the manifestations of the Divine Names is
going into absolute non-existence; since he judges the
glorifications of beings and their recitations of the Divine
Names to be outcries of deaths and eternal separations, and
those sheets of creatures which are each a missive of the
Eternally Besought-of-All to be confused, meaningless
collections; since he sees the door of the grave, which is
opened on the world of mercy, as the opening of a dark world of
non-existence and death (while it is in fact an invitation to
re-union with friends and beloved ones), as absolute separation
from all friends and beloved ones; he makes himself subject to
alterable and painful torment, and since he denies, rejects and
insults both creatures and the Divine Names and His inscriptions
and missives, he in no way deserves pity and compassion, rather
he deserves a severe punishment.
Do
science and technology compensate for the darkness of death?
So, O
unfortunate people of misguidance and dissipation! Which
progress and evolution of yours and which sciences, which
technology and civilization of yours can compensate for such a
terrible loss and collapse and crushing hopelessness? Where can
you find the true consolation which the human spirit needs first
of all and most urgently? What nature, what causality and
whatever else on which you rely and to which you attribute the
works of God and His bounties and favors, and what discoveries
and inventions of yours and what idols and fetishes, can save
you from the darkness of death, which you suppose to be eternal
extinction, and take you across the boundaries of the
intermediate world of the grave and the place of the
Resurrection and Gathering and over the Bridge to the Abode of
Eternal Happiness?
Whereas,
since you are unable to close the door of the grave, you are
bound to traverse, to tread this way which reaches the One under
Whose command and at Whose disposal are all those worlds and
abodes.
The
potential of loving misspent
Also, O
unfortunate, misguided and heedless people! Since you use
unlawfully in love of your selves and the world, the potential
of loving and knowing which was given to you to know and love
God and His Attributes and Names, and your body and faculties
granted to you to worship and thank Him, you are suffering the
punishment which you deserve. Since you assign to your selves
the love which must be felt for Almighty God, you are suffering
the troubles which your selves cause you. You do not provide a
true peace and happiness for that object of your adoration,
which is your carnal self. Since you do not submit it to the
Absolutely Powerful One, the True Beloved One, with utmost trust
in Him, you always suffer pains. Since you assign to the world
the love belonging to the Names and Attributes of Almighty God,
and attribute the works of His art to causality and nature, you
are getting your deserts. The things among which you share out
your love either leave you without saying good-bye or do not
recognize you. Even if they recognize you, they do not love you.
Even if they love you, they give you no benefit. You suffer from
incessant separations and deaths without hope of re-union.
This is
the reality of what the misguided call happiness of life and
human perfection and beauties of civilization and pleasures of
freedom. Dissipation and drunkenness are a veil which may
temporarily keep them from feeling those sufferings and pains.
As for
the light-diffusing highway of the Qur’an, it heals the wounds
with which the misguided are afflicted, with the truths of
belief, and disperses all the darkness enveloping them. It
closes up all the doors of misguidance and wasting.
How
do man’s essential weakness and destitution the source of
his real power and richness?
The way
of the Qur’an removes the weakness and impotence of man and
his poverty and neediness through trust in an All-Powerful One
of Compassion. In this way man submits the burden of his being
and life to His Power and Mercy and rather than being loaded
with that burden, he makes his self and life a mount for
himself. This way teaches him that he is not a speaking animal
but a true human being and a welcomed guest of the All-Merciful
One. Showing the world as a guest-house of the All-Merciful One
and the creatures in it as the mirrors of the Divine Names and
ever-recruited missives of the Eternally Besought-of-All, it
heals perfectly the wounds caused by the transience of the
world, decay of things and love of mortals, and saves man from
the darkness of whims and fancies.
The way
of the Qur’an shows life to be the prelude to re-union with
the friends and beloved ones who have already gone to the other
world, and thereby heals the wounds of death, which the
misguided regard as an eternal separation. It establishes that
that separation is in reality the re-union itself.
By
demonstrating that the grave is a door opened on the world of
mercy, the abode of happiness, the gardens of Paradise and the
luminous realm of the All-Merciful One, the way of the Qur’an
removes the greatest fear of mankind and shows the journeying in
the intermediate world which is, in appearance, most depressing
and troublesome, to be most pleasant and exhilarating. It
demonstrates that the grave is not like a dragon’s mouth but a
door opened on the gardens of Divine Mercy.
It says
to the believer: ‘Seeing that you have a most limited
will-power, then leave your affairs to the universal Will of
your Owner. If you have a slight, insignificant power, then rely
on the Power of the Absolutely Powerful One. If you have a short
life, consider the eternal life. If you have a dull mind, enter
in the sun of the Qur’an. Look at it with the light of belief
so that in place of your mind, which gives light like a firefly,
each of the Qur’an’s verses gives you light like a star.
If you
have endless ambitions and pains, boundless rewards and an
infinite mercy are awaiting you.
The
world is not the place where all aims and desires can be
fulfilled
If you
cherish limitless desires and aims, do not be anxious for them.
The world is not the place where you can realize all of them.
You can realize them in another realm, and the One Who has given
them to you is One other than you.’
It also
says: “O man! You do not own yourself. You are one owned by
One infinitely Powerful and an infinitely Compassionate One of
Majesty. That being so, do not give yourself trouble by loading
your being and life onto yourself, for the One Who has given you
your life is He, and the One Who governs it is again He.
“Then
the world has an Owner, Who is the All-Wise and the All-Knowing.
Whatever He does, He does it out of compassion. Even His wrath
is based on His Compassion in many respects. You are His guest
in His world, so do not interfere with what is beyond the realm
of your power and responsibility.
“Next,
living beings like men and animals are not free, left to
themselves. They are officials charged with certain duties, and
controlled and favored by an All-Compassionate Ruler, Who has
preferred them over most of His creatures. He is much more
compassionate towards them than you.
“Furthermore,
all things and events from microbes to catastrophes like
plagues, floods, droughts and earthquakes which, in appearance,
are hostile to you, are controlled and governed by that
All-Compassionate Ruler. He is the All-Wise, doing nothing
useless, and the All-Compassionate, in every act of Whom is a
kind of grace.”
This
world is transient but the necessities of the afterlife are
obtained in it.
It adds:
“This world is transient but the necessities of the afterlife
are obtained in it. It is doomed to decay but it yields
everlasting fruits and displays the manifestations of the
Eternal Names of a Permanent One. In return for its few
pleasures it causes one to suffer many pains and afflictions but
the favors of the All-Merciful, All-Compassionate One are true
and lasting pleasures, and its pains are the cause of obtaining
many spiritual rewards. Since the sphere of the lawful is
sufficient for the enjoyment and pleasures of the spirit, heart
and carnal self, do not enter the sphere of the unlawful: any
illicit pleasure results in numerous pains. It also causes one
to lose the favors of the All-Merciful One, which are pure,
lasting pleasures.
“In the
way of misguidance man falls so low that no trend of philosophy,
nor scientific development, no human civilization and progress
can pull him up out of that deep pit of darkness. Through belief
and righteous deeds, the wise Qur’an takes man out of that
lowest of the low and raises him to the highest of the high. It
fills up that deep pit with the steps of spiritual progress and
the means of spiritual perfection.
“The
way of the Qur’an facilitates man’s long, troubling and
stormy journeying in the direction of eternity. It shows him the
means with which to traverse in a day the distance which would
normally take him fifty thousand years to cover.
“Also,
by enabling man to know the majestic Being, Who is the King of
Eternity, uncontained by time and space, it honors him with the
position of being a dutiful servant and guest of His, and
secures him an easy and comfortable journeying through the world
and the mansions of the intermediate world of the grave and the
Hereafter. Just as a righteous, dutiful official of a king
travels in his domain in security with fast vehicles of
transport like planes or trains or ships and crosses the
boundaries of its provinces without encountering any difficulty,
so too a man who is connected with the Eternal King through
belief and shows his obedience to Him through righteous deeds,
travels through the mansions, and across the boundaries, of the
world and the realms of the grave and the Hereafter with the
speed of lightning or Buraq, the mount of Paradise, and finds
eternal happiness. The Qur’an proves the truth of this
decisively and purified religious scholars and saints can see it
clearly.”
The Qur’an
also says: O believer! Do not use your infinite capacity of
loving in favor of your carnal self, which is ugly, defective
and evil, and harmful to you. Do not adore it and do not follow
its desires and fancies as if it were an object of worship. Use
the infinite capacity of loving given to you in favor of the One
worthy of infinite love, Who does you infinite good and will
make you infinitely happy in the future, Who through His favors
makes happy those with whom you have connections and whose
happiness pleases you; One with infinite perfection and
infinitely sacred, transcendent, pure, perfect and undecaying
beauty, Whose every Name radiates numerous lights of beauty and
grace and the beauty of Whose Mercy and the mercy in Whose
Beauty are displayed in Paradise, and Whose Beauty and
Perfection all the beauty, grace and perfection in the universe
which are lovable, point to and are signs of: love Him, and make
Him the sole object of your worship.
Do not
use your infinite capacity of loving in loving impermanent
beings.
Furthermore
it says: O man! Do not use your infinite capacity of loving,
which has in fact been given to you to love His Names and
Attributes, in loving impermanent beings. For whatever or
whoever other than Him is mortal. Whereas the Divine Beautiful
Names manifested on mortals are permanent and constant. Each of
those Names and Attributes has thousands of degrees of favoring
and thousands of levels of perfection and love. Consider, for
example, the Name the All-Merciful: Paradise is a single
manifestation of it, and the eternal happiness, a single
radiance, and all the provisions and bounties bestowed on
creatures in the world are a ‘drop’ of it.
In order
to see in the language of the Qur’an the difference between
the way of the Qur’an and that of the misguided, which we have
so far been trying to elaborate, consider the verses,
Surely,
We have created man in the fairest form and the best pattern
of creation. Then We have returned him to the lowest of the
low, except those who believe and do righteous deeds.
and the
verse which points to the end of the misguided,
Neither
the heavens nor the earth wept over their destruction.
and see
in what elevated and miraculous style they express the
difference!
The verse
explicitly states that the heavens and the earth do not weep
over the death of the misguided. Therefore, it implies that when
a believer dies, the heavens and the earth shed tears over them.
Since the
misguided people do not know the meaning of the heavens and the
earth and do not recognize their Maker, and since they deny
their duties and reduce their value, and thereby insult them and
show ‘hostility’ toward them, when they die, the heavens and
the earth do not weep over them, rather they are pleased with
their death. But they weep over the death of believers because
the believers know the duties of the heavens and the earth and
affirm the reality they bear. Through belief they know the
meaning they have and admit: how beautifully they have been
created! how well they perform their duties! The believers
acknowledge their value and pay them their due respect. They
love them and the Names to which they are mirrors in the name of
Almighty God. It is for this reason that the heavens and the
earth are grieved for their death.
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Last Updated on November 14, 2000
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