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A WARNING
AND LESSON GIVEN TO A GROUP OF UNHAPPY YOUNG PEOPLE
One day a
number of bright young people came to me, seeking an effective
deterrent to guard themselves against the danger arising from
modern worldly life, youth, and animal desires. As I had
previously told other young people who sought help, I also said
to them:
Your
youth will definitely disappear and if you do not restrict
yourselves within the limits of the lawful, it will be lost.
Rather than its pleasures, it will bring you suffering and
calamities in this world, in the grave, and in the Hereafter. If
under the Islamic discipline, you use the blessings of youth in
gratitude, chastely and uprightly, and in worship, it will in
effect remain perpetually and be the cause of gaining eternal
youth.
As for
life, if it is without belief, or if belief, because of
rebelliousness, is ineffective, it will produce pains, sorrows
and grief far exceeding the superficial, fleeting enjoyment and
pleasure it brings. As an intelligent, thinking being, man is
(in contrast to animals) intrinsically connected to the past
and the future, as well as to the present time. He derives
both pain and pleasure from them. Whereas, since the animals do
not think, neither the sorrows arising from the past nor the
fears and anxieties concerning the future, spoil their present
pleasure. But if man has fallen into misguidance and
heedlessness, sorrows arising from the past and anxieties about
the future, mar his particular pleasure, diluting it with pains.
Especially if it is an illicit pleasure, then it is like an
altogether poisonous honey. This means that, with respect to
enjoyments of life, man is a hundred times lower than the
animals. In fact, for the misguided, heedless people, their
whole life and existence, their whole world, consists in the day
in which they find themselves. According to their misguided
belief, all of time past and all past worlds have gone to
non-existence. Their intellects, which connect them to the past
and the future, produce darkness for them. Accordingly with
their lack of belief, the future is also non-existent for them.
The separations that become eternal because of this
non-existence continually darken their lives.
By
contrast, if they build their lives upon belief, then through
the light of belief, both the past and the future will be
illuminated and acquire existence. Like the present time, they
provide, through belief, exalted spiritual pleasures and lights
of existence for their spirit and heart.
Where
does the enjoyment and pleasure of life lie?
So, that
is how life is. If you desire the pleasure and enjoyment of
life, animate your life with belief, and adorn it with religious
obligations. Maintain it by abstaining from sins. As for the
fearsome reality of death, which is demonstrated by instances of
death every day, in every place and time, I shall explain it to
you with a parable in the same way as I explained it to some
other youths.
Let us
suppose a gallows has been set up here in front of our eyes.
Beside it is a lottery office, one which gives tickets for truly
high prizes. We are here ten people, and willingly or
unwillingly, shall certainly be invited there. They may call us
(since the appointed time is unknown) at any moment, and say
either, “Come and mount the gallows for execution!” or “A
prize ticket worth millions of dollars has come up for you; come
and collect it!” While we are waiting for either call, two
people suddenly turn up. One of them is a scantily dressed
woman, beautiful and alluring. She holds in her hand and offers
some apparently very delicious, but in fact poisonous, sweets,
which she wants us to eat. The other is an honest, solemn man.
He enters behind the woman, and says:
“I have
brought you a talisman, a lesson. If you study it, and if you do
not eat the sweets, you will be saved from the gallows. With
this talisman, you will receive your ticket for the matchless
prize. You see with your own eyes that those who eat the sweets
inevitably mount the gallows, and furthermore, until they mount
them, they suffer dreadful stomach pains from the poison of the
sweets. As for those who receive the ticket for the large prize,
it seems that they too mount the gallows. But millions of
witnesses testify that they are not hanged on the gallows, they
use them as a step to enter the prize arena easily. So, look
from the windows! The highest officials, the high-ranking
persons concerned with this business announce with loud voices,
‘Just as you see clearly with your own eyes those mounting the
gallows to be hanged, so also know with utmost certainty that
those with the talisman receive the ticket for the prize.’”
As in the
parable, the dissolute, religiously forbidden pleasures of
youth, which are like poisonous sweets, are the cause of losing
belief-and belief is the ticket to an eternal treasury and a
document for everlasting happiness. Those who indulge in them
are subject to death, which is like the gallows, and to the
tribulations of the grave, which is the door to eternal
darkness. The appointed hour of death is unknown, therefore, its
executioner, not differentiating between young and old, may come
at any time to cut off your head. Give up the religiously
forbidden pleasures (which are like the poisonous sweets) and
acquire the Qur’anic talisman (belief and performing religious
obligations). One hundred and twenty-four thousand Prophets,
upon them be peace, together with innumerable saints, have
proclaimed that you will get to the treasury of eternal
happiness if you do so. They have also shown the signs and
evidences of it.
Youth
spent in indulgences
In short:
Youth will pass. If it is wasted in indulgences, it results in
thousands of misfortunes and pains both in this world and the
next. Perhaps you want to understand how such youths end up in
hospitals with mental and physical diseases, mainly because of
their abuse, and in prisons or hostels for the destitute as a
result of their excesses, and in bars because of the distress
provoked by their spiritual unease. Then, go and inquire at the
hospitals, prisons and cemeteries.
For sure
you will hear from most of the hospitals the moans and groans of
those ill from dissipation and debauchery resulting from the
appetites of youth. Also you will hear from the prisons the
regretful sighs of unhappy wretches, suffering for illicit
actions mostly resulting from the excesses of their youth.
Again, you will come to know this truth as testified by the
saints who can discern the life of the grave, and affirmed by
exacting scholars of truth. Most of the torments of the
grave-that Intermediate Realm the doors of which continuously
open and shut for those who enter it-are the result of misspent
youth.
Also, ask
the old and the sick, who form the majority of mankind. Most
certainly the great majority of them will answer you with grief
and regret, “Alas! We wasted our youth in frivolities, indeed
harmfully. Be careful, never do as we did!” A man subjects
himself, for the sake of the illicit pleasures of a short period
of youth, to years of grief and sorrow in this world, torment
and harm in the Intermediate Realm, and the severe punishment of
Hell in the Hereafter. Despite being in a most pitiable
situation, he does not deserve pity. For one who freely consents
to indulge in harmful actions is not worthy of pity.
May
Almighty God save us and you from the alluring temptations of
this age and preserve us against them. Amen.
***
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Last Updated on November 14, 2000
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