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As we analyse life, only one reality emerges before our
eyes, and that is, every son of Adam and each daughter of Eve desires to live
his or her life happily, but the materialistic view of life always leaves him
or her disappointed. This is because each and every moment of our life is
temporary and ever changing. From the physical
and materialistic point of view we do not even possess the knowledge of what
real happiness is, and how it is achieved. To gain awareness of true happiness,
it is essential that we find our base and origin.
Even when we were nothing, we were still something,
because 'not being anything' negates our existence. Our physical life starts in
the mother's womb. There matter, having passed through a specific process when it reaches its peak, a living image comes
into existence out of nothingness. This image is raised and trained in such a way by its environment that it does not
learn what real happiness is and how this true happiness can be achieved.
In order to embrace true happiness, one must first
realize that life does not depend upon the body alone, but upon that truth
which itself has created the body as its garment. After birth, the second stage
of life that comes before us is where each Moment [that we live in] that dies, and the death of one moment becomes
the cause of the next moment's birth. It is this moment that
at times changes into childhood, at times into youth, and still at other times
into adulthood, and at Times into old age. The
way we can reach this truth is by realizing that the living and awake image is
not a body but a conscious. Our difficulty is that we cannot entirely call it
consciousness either because consciousness is that means of our identification
upon which the entire building stands. We also know that as the body dies, the
material foulness and impurities end, but we also know that as the body is
terminated the conscious does not die, but is instead transferred into a
different world.
In all the religious books that are present, one thing is
mentioned again and again, and that is, 'man is not merely a physical body, but
a conscious.' When we mention life starting from the belly of the mother until
death, we realize that consciousness that had its base in the belly of the
mother...that consciousness reduces from one end and increases at the other. As
the conscious continues to decrease, man recedes into the past; as the
conscious continues to increase, man progresses further and further into the
future.
The increase and decrease in one's consciousness is what
determines one's age. One period of consciousness is called
"childhood," the second period of consciousness is called
"adulthood," and the third period of consciousness is called
"old age." Eventually, the conscious that remains and continues is
the conscious that has sustained this material life, and the conscious upon
which this body is progressing through the stages of evolution.
When we study ourselves, we say that we have a limited and
mortal body, and this is the identity of our life. This body that we see has
foulness, filth, putridity and decay as its components. The roots of this decay
lie in the fact that that each person thinks that, 'I am matter, and I am born
of this material world,' This limited point of view confines man within a
certain state, and each person entangles himself within the limiting and
confining web, and thus the foundation is laid for a limited and confined point
of view. Each person dwelling on the earth, when refers to himself, says, 'I am
a Muslim. I am a Hindu. I am a Zoroastrian. I am a Christian,' whereas no name
can be given to the spirit. Light is light wherever it exists whether it is in
the Arab world, or the non-Arab world, whether it is in Europe, or whether it
is in any part of Asia.
Allah's system is established in such a way that wherever
the message of Allah came, it still exists through its words. For the
Christians, the words of the Bible hold the status of religion, and for the
Muslims, it is the Holy Quran that establishes religion; Hindus worship the
words of Bhagavat Gita.
All heavenly Books are, in reality, those voices of the
honoured servants of God, which have become light and have spread throughout
the world.
KHWAJA SHAMS-UD-DEEN AZEEMI
Science has made immense progress, yet many believe that, even with all of the modern tools at our disposal, human beings function at no more than 10% of their mental capacity. This leads to the question of what exactly it is that comprises the remaining 90%. Yet another question that arises is this: If it has taken man four and a half billion years to be able to apply only 10% of his ability, how long will it take for him to make use of the remaining 90%?
