Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 80
BarĀhĪn-e-a H madiyya — Part Four 80 of the cognition of God solely to the flights of our imagination at the time of our supposed need. Has God created man so ill-fated and unfortunate that, in this world, he is to remain wholly disappointed and hopeless in obtaining full satisfaction of the cognition of God which his soul desires and his heart longs for, and for the attainment of which his heart and soul are filled with eagerness? Is there not one soul among the thousands of you who can realize that the doors of divine cognition—which are only opened by God—cannot be opened by human faculties, and that God’s own proclamation, ‘I am Present’, cannot be equalled by the hypothet- ical conjectures of human beings? Undoubtedly, God’s affirmation of His own Being is like a manifestation of God, but man’s saying so by conjecture is not the same; and since our conjectures based on reason cannot equal God’s Word, which points specifically toward His dis- tinct Being, then why is His Word not needed for the perfection of certainty? Are your hearts not awakened by observing this obvious disparity? Is there nothing in our discourse which affects your heart? O people! There is no difficulty in understanding that human reason cannot be the instrument for ascertaining matters of the unseen, for who among you can deny that whatever we encounter after death, indeed, belongs to the domain of the unseen? For instance, reflect whether anyone knows with certainty how the soul departs at the time of death, where it goes, who accompanies it, where it is kept, and, there- after, what experiences it passes through. How can human reason make a conclusive decision regarding all of these matters? A person could give a conclusive verdict had he died once or twice before and had become familiar with the paths along which he reached God, and recollected the places where he had dwelt for some time; however, as it stands, we have only conjectures to fall back on. No matter how much you hypothesize, the fact remains that no sane person has ever visited the place and seen it for himself. Thus, in such a situation, it is obvious that to gratify oneself with these baseless conjectures amounts to a false sense of comfort, not true satisfaction.