Hazrat Maulvi Nooruddin - Khalifatul-Masih I — Page 143
Hadrat Maulw i Nur-ud-D i n ra — Khalifatul Masih I KHALIFATUL MASIH 143 XII KHAL I FATUL MAS IH After obtaining permission from the Promised Messiah as , Maulaw i N u r-ud-D i n ra drew up a statement on March 19, 1908, entitled: Request Submitted to Friends and Brethren, which ran as follows: "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Ever Merciful. We praise Him and call down His blessings on His Noble Messenger. Peace be on you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. One night I fell into reflecting on my own age and the much longer expanse of the Muslim era and was greatly disturbed by contemplating that which needs to be done before life comes to its end. The current of my thoughts leaned towards the significance of the supplications that are made in the sitting posture in the S al a t , and arrived at the story of the parrot set out by Maul a n a Jal a l-ud-D i n R u m i in his Mathnaw i , the point of which is that a parrot owned by a merchant charged its master to convey its greetings to its fellow parrots in India when he should happen to pass by them. Its purpose was to seek their guidance on how it could obtain its freedom. They sent back word that the road to freedom ran through the valley of death. This line of thinking led me to the parrots of Allah, that is to say, to the souls of the