The Essence of Islam – Volume III — Page 76
76. Essence of Islam-III status. They are slothful and lazy in respect of religious obligations and are wholly preoccupied with worldly anxieties and grief. They deliberately support falsehood and abandon truth. They are guilty of dishonesty at every step and some of them do not even restrain themselves from vice and sin and have recourse to every unlawful device for the purpose of acquiring worldly benefits. The moral condition of some of them is deplorable and they are riddled with envy, miserliness, self-conceit, arrogance and pride. They have recourse to every meanness and are characterized with diverse types of shameful ills. . Some of them see only evil dreams, of which a number come true, as if their brains have been fashioned only for evil and ill-omened dreams. They are not capable of having dreams that benefit them or indicate something good for another person. Their dreams are of a category which might be described as resembling the experience of a person who perceives smoke from a distance but sees neither the light of the fire nor feels its warmth. Such people have nothing to do with God and spiritual matters; they have been given only smoke which yields no light. . The second category of people who see true dreams or receive revelations are those who have some relationship with God but that relationship is not perfect. Their dreams and revelations resemble the experience of a person who perceives the light of fire from a long distance in a dark and cold night, which enables him to avoid potholes, thorns, rocks, serpents and wild beasts, but which cannot save him from dying of cold. If such a person does not arrive within the warm circle of the fire, he is also destroyed in the same manner as the one who walks in the dark. . The third category of people who experience true dreams