Adam and Eve

When God pours ladles full of sunshine upon the ocean, the ocean sends droplets of water to spread that sunshine into the expanses of the atmosphere. There, according to a process these droplets of water become clouds that shower upon the earth, irrigating the entire earth. When Adam was thrown upon the earth, he lamented, 'how will I meet my nutritional needs?' Allah said, 'We have made the earth a reservoir of resources for you. Open up the belly of the earth; you will be provided for all your needs.' With the blessing of his Lord adam dug the earth, and therein he found all things necessary. The essence of the story is that as a person sows, so does he reap. Adam and his wife, Eve ['Havva'], were living a carefree life of luxury in heaven but, tired of the monotony, they committed a mistake and, as a consequence, heaven rejected them. Indeed, heaven is a composite of a certain character, and when this specific character broke apart, earth became the abode of Adam and Eve.

This world is a world of duality. No character of the earth is free this duality. The fluctuation of the weather between hot and cold, happiness overshadowed by sorrow, sorrow being overpowered by happiness, honour followed immediately by disgrace, health, sickness, love and hatred, night turning into day, and day becoming night—all of these dualities are the contrasting faces of each character. If this contradiction within the life of duality is not understood, it is not possible to understand at all.

Unless I understand what disgrace is, it would be a futile attempt for me to understand honour, in the same way if I do not understand what hardship is, any talk of happiness would be meaningless for me. When we ponder this world of duality, only one conclusion arises: that duality is rooted in the body. As long as bodily incentives and activities are present, duality is present. Happiness and sorrow, health and sickness, heat and coolness, love and hatred, selfishness and sincerity, all are related to the body. The body itself is based upon duality: One body made up of the particles of the earth; the other made of the lights of the heaven. The body made of the particle' of the earth is the physical body, and the body made up of the lights of the heaven is the spiritual body. Man spends his life alternating between his physical and spiritual body. To escape from the physically constrained thoughts, it is not the material body that one needs to abandon, but material' thoughts. The physical body must be trained so that it can accept [the presence of] these dualities at the same time. The duality of happiness and sorrow is only due to the material body. But if the qalander conscious activates within a person, all the dualities, though remaining present, lose their meaning, and, temporarily, they can even be eliminated. In each

instant of his life, man may be subject to confined perceptions. Yet man may also be free within his confined perceptions. In such cases, impressions of sadness and grief do not affect him. He does not remain happy either, as the other face of happiness is sorrow. His eyes are not attracted to the glitz and glamour of the resources adorning the earth as far from it all, very far from it indeed, the glory of heaven stands before his eyes. Just as here, confined within matter, he eats bread, in the same way, it is easy for him to free himself from this matter and partake of fruits from the gardens of heaven. When an individual gains awareness of the duality and becomes complete in self awareness, a new path, a new way, a new style of living is revealed to him. Such a pot is called a free man, possessing a qalander conscious. A free man looks at all things with the same perspective, whether it is stones or whether it is gold. When the free man realizes that he is not just the material body, he no longer considers his material needs [the purpose of] his life. He has a higher purpose of life before him, and with body and soul he is able to observe that this life is temporary and merely fiction. His heart remains peaceful. It does not become chaotic by the affects of the material world. He is pleased with the material glow and glitter, but this glitter does not become an attraction ha him.

In the eyes of the free man who possesses a qalander conscious, sincere friends and enemies, those who are jealous and envious, the righteous and the sinful, the selfless and the selfish, biased and the unbiased, all become the same in significance. He realizes that we are all living beings and this universe is a stage for the living things. Each individual within the universe is fulfilling his role. The universe, in fact, is like a large drama production in which each individual performs his character and exits.

The universe is one; its dramatic characters are various. One meter is the oppressor, the other the oppressed. One has the responsibility to spread the message of peace, while another has been appointed to advocate violence.

Just as a single film [or movie] can be seen on thousands of screens, in the same way, images of this universe are being displayed by loh-e-mahfooz ['divine tablet recording the activities of mankind']. Each earth in the universe is a screen. When qalander conscious awakens, the entire universe appears as film [or a movie] and the billions of earths in the universe appear as screens. The eye of the soul shows to the physical eye that whatever happens on the earth, such as its agriculture, and the continuation of generations following ceremonies of marriage, happens in exactly the same way upon all the other earth in the universe.