Malfuzat - Volume VII — Page 61
29 December 1904 61 29 December 1904 On the Occasion of Jalsa Salana After Z uhr Prayer at Aqsa Mosque Speech of the Promised Messiah, Peace and Blessings be on Him Strive for a Good End From my side, the advice to my Jam a ‘at is the same as I have given many times before: since life is short 1 and magnificent work lies ahead, we should strive for a good end. Attaining an auspicious end involves traversing a path with many thorns. When a person comes into the world, some time passes in a state of unconsciousness. This period of unconscious- ness is when he is a child and has no knowledge of the world and its conditions. After that, when he gains consciousness, there comes a time when he is no longer unconscious in the way he was in childhood. But there is a certain intoxication of youth that creates unconsciousness even in these days of conscious- ness, and he becomes so beside himself that nafs-e-amm a rah [the self that incites to evil] takes over. 1. From al-Badr: ‘Man’s life is fickle; it cannot be relied upon’ ( Al-Badr, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 10, dated 1 January 1905).