Lecture Lahore — Page 15
15 When you speak, speak wisely and reasonably and abstain from idle talk. Your whole body and all your faculties should be subservient to God, and all of you should to- gether devote yourselves to His service. Allah also says: 17 O you who are unmindful of God, your desire for the world has made you heedless, and you do not relent until the time comes for you to enter the graves. You are wrong in doing so, and you will soon know. Indeed, you will soon know. If you possessed true awareness, you would see your own hell and realize that you are leading an infernal exis- tence. And if you possessed even greater awareness, you would see with the eye of certainty that your life is indeed an infernal one. A time comes when you shall be thrown into hell and have to answer for all your indulgences and excesses and, having been overtaken by chastisement, shall reach the state of perfect certainty. These verses show that there are three stages of certainty: The first is attained through knowledge and inference, as, for instance, when you see smoke rising from afar and in- fer through reason and deduction that there must be a fire in that direction. You reach the second stage of certainty when you see the fire with your own eyes. And you arrive at the third stage when you put your hand into the fire and 17 Al-Tak a thur, 102:2-9 [Publishers]