The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam — Page 135
129 salvation. This is the only method that the law of nature has appointed for man's highest exaltation and for his meeting the Divine. Those alone find God who enter into the spiritual fire of Islam and continue occupied with the supplication set out in Surah Fatihah. Islam is the blazing fire that burns up our life and, consuming our false deities, presents the sacrifice of our life and our property and our honour to our Holy God. Entering it, we drink the water of a new life and all our spiritual faculties establish such a relationship with God as subsists between kindred. A fire leaps up from our inside like lightning and another fire descends upon us from above. By the meeting of these two flames all our passions and our love for anything beside God are totally consumed and we become dead vis-à-vis our previous life. This condition is named Islam in the Holy Quran. Through our complete surrender to the will of God our passions are killed, and through supplication we acquire new life. This second life is signalised by the receipt of revelation. Arriving at this stage is interpreted as meeting with God, in other words beholding God. At this stage, a person establishes a relationship with God by virtue of which he becomes as if he were beholding God, and he is invested with power and all his senses and his inner faculties are illumined and he feels the strong pull of a holy life. At this stage, God becomes his eye with which he sees, and becomes his tongue with which he speaks, and becomes his hand with which he