Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part V — Page 300
B AR Ā H Ī N-E-A H M ADIY YA — PART F IV E 300 should abide by taqw a in fulfilling his obligations to God and His crea- tures. This is the beauty of conduct or spiritual beauty which becomes apparent at the fifth stage of the spiritual being but does not yet show its full brilliance, whereas at the sixth stage when the birth has been per- fected with the infusion of the Spirit, this beauty manifests itself in all its splendour and glory. And it should be remembered that in the sixth stage of the spiritual being, the Spirit refers to God’s personal love which descends like a flame upon man’s personal love for Him, and drives away all inner darkness, and grants spiritual life, and is necessarily accompa- nied by all-encompassing help from the Holy Spirit also. The second kind of beauty that attends man’s creation is physical beauty. Although both kinds of beauty begin to manifest themselves at the fifth stage of the spiritual and physical being, their true splendour and glory is only manifested after the advent of the Spirit. In the same way, as the soul enters the physical body after it has been perfected, so does the Spirit enter the spiritual being after it has been perfected; that is to say, when man takes upon himself the yoke of the Shariah and is prepared to abide by all the divine restrictions and prohibitions with effort and striving. Through practicing the norms of the Shariah and abiding by the injunctions of the Book of Allah, he becomes worthy that the Spirit of God should attend to him. But above all is the fact that through his personal love for God he becomes eligible for Almighty God’s personal love, which is white as snow and sweet as honey. As I have already stated, the spiritual being starts with the state of humbleness, and reaches its perfection at the sixth stage of spiritual development; that is, at the stage when the spiritual body having attained perfection, the flame of the personal love of God falls like a Spirit on man’s heart imparting to him a perpetual consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is then that the spiritual beauty shows its fullest manifestation, but this beauty which is spiritual—which may be called the beauty of conduct—is the beauty which, by virtue of its strong powers of attraction, is far greater than the physical beauty of a person. The physical beauty of a person may excite the ephemeral love