A Letter to a Dear One — Page 34
34 Letter to a Dear One The Way to Closeness to Allah What are the ways and means to achieve this objective? Briefly, it is man giving Allah’s Pleasure preference over everything else. However, the question arises, how does man find out Allah’s Pleasure? He is a most Remote and Exquisite Being. Although man possesses a soul in his body, but his life is engulfed in physical aspects. Due to the connections and intricacies of this material life, despite being subtle and fine, when compared to Allah’s Being, the human soul is dense like matter. In everyday life, we observe that if we want to find out the wish of a friend, despite the fact that we are of the same species and as a friend we know him for some time and are familiar with his habits and opinions, unless and until our friend tells us what his desire or wish is or expresses it in some way to us, we cannot be sure of what he really wants. If we rely on conjecture then we are likely to make a mistake, in fact sometimes this leads to a misunderstanding. If this can take place between the same species, then how can we succeed in knowing the Will of Allah? This can only be possible if He takes mercy on us and Himself expresses His Will to us and unfolds the ways and means for us to attain His pleasure. In fact, this is how it should be, for when God has placed His love in the human heart, then it is essential that He teaches man the way to attain it as well. It would be contrary to His Mercy to having placed such an urge in the human heart without explaining any way to attain it. This is the reason why, since the time when the human mind progressed to the stage where it could feel the Love of God, the process of revelation has prevailed. It teaches man the ways and means to attain Love of God. As the human comprehension progressed so did the specification of revelation. The dimensions of the nature of revelation increased, until the time arrived when human comprehension and soul became affable to the perfect shar ī ‘ah (revealed Divine law) and guidance. This perfect shar ī ‘ah was thus revealed to the perfect man, Muhammad ( ” allall ā hu ‘alaihi wa sallam) who was Allah’s chosen beloved. This perfect guidance is called the Holy Qur’ ā n and it contains the perfect moral and spiritual teachings for mankind. The Nature of Revelation What is the mode of revelation and what are its specifications can be a long argument. However, one aspect of it has caused a lot of