Conditions of Bai'at and Responsibilities of an Ahmadi — Page 194
C ONDITIONS OF B AI ‘ AT AND R ESPONSIBILITIES OF AN A H MAD I 194 with me! you are devoting your lives, comfort, and properties to this cause. I am aware that you will deem it your good fortune to carry out whatever I might impose upon you to the full extent of your capacity. But I do not desire to lay down anything by myself as an obligation upon you, so that your service should not be the result of my directive, but should proceed out of your own free will. Who is my friend and who is dear to me? Only he who recognises me. Only he who believes that I have been sent and accepts me as those are accepted who are sent. The world cannot accept me because I am not of the world, but those whose natures have been invested with a portion of the other world accept me and will accept me. He who turns away from me, turns aside from Him Who has sent me. And he who establishes a relationship with me establishes a relationship with Him from Whom I have come. I hold a lamp in my hand. He who comes to me will surely partake of its light, but he who, out of ill-thinking, runs away will be cast into the darkness. I am the citadel of security for this age. He who enters therein will be secure against thieves and robbers and wild beasts. He who seeks to remain away from my walls will be confronted with death from every direction, and even his dead body will not be saved. Who is it who enters my citadel? Only he who discards vice and adopts goodness, and gives up crookedness and treads along the path of truth, and frees himself from the bondage of Satan and becomes an obedient servant of Allah the Almighty. Everyone who does that is in me, and I am in him. But only he has the power to attain to this upon whom Allah the Almighty bestows a pure soul. Then He places His Foot in the hell of such a one’s inner self, and it becomes cool as if there