Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 345
SuB-Footnote Number Three 345 understanding of God which is carried to completion and perfection through true visions, divinely bestowed knowledge, clear revelations, converse and discourses with the One True God, and other miraculous Signs, so much so that between them and the next world is left only a thin and transparent veil across which their vision beholds the facts of the Hereafter in this very world. On the contrary, other people cer- tainly cannot arrive at this perfect stage because their books are full of darkness; rather, their books being full of perverse teachings, pile up hundreds of other veils on top of their own veils, and cause their dis- ease to grow until they reach the point of death. The philosophers, who in these days are being followed by the Brahm u Sam a jists and whose religion depends entirely upon ideas based on rational thinking alone, are deficient in their own way. Suffice it to say that their deficiency is disclosed by the fact that their cognition, in consequence of hundreds of errors, does not move beyond the apparent causes and does not advance beyond conjectures. It is obvious that the person whose divine cognizance is confined to the visible methods—and that, too, defiled by many mistakes—occupies a very low and inferior level of knowledge in contrast with one whose cognition has arrived at the stage of the bad a hat [self-evidence]. It is quite clear that beyond the stage of obser- vation and reflection, there remains the stage of self-evidence and eye- witness. In other words, matters that are discovered through observa- tion and reflection may become self-evident and be witnessed through some other means. Hence, reason affirms that the stage of self-evidence can be achieved. Though Brahm u Sam a jists may deny the external manifestation of this [state of certainty], they cannot deny that if it is manifested exter- nally it would doubtless be higher and more perfect, and that the reso- lution of the secrets that are left unsolved in observation and reflection, depends entirely upon this stage. And who cannot understand that a matter being established as self-evident is a higher and more perfect stage than the stage of reflection? For instance, though by observation of created things a wise and good-natured person can think that all