The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 239
THE PROMISED MESSIAH AND MAHDI one beholds the countenance of the True Beloved in the mirror of one's obedience. (Aa'enae Kamalat-i-Islam, pp. 57-58 - Essence of. Islam, Vol. 1, pp. 13-14) 3. The second aspect of devoting one's life to the cause of. God Almighty is that one's life should be devoted to the service of his creatures and to sympathy with them and to sharing their burdens and sorrows. One should suffer pain to bring them comfort, and one should experience grief to bring them consolation. . This shows that the reality of Islam is a very superior thing. and that no one can truly deserve the title of Muslim till he surrenders the whole of his being to God, together with all his faculties and desires and designs, and till he begins to tread along this path withdrawing altogether from his ego and all its attendant qualities. A person will be truly called a Muslim only when his heedless life undergoes a total revolution and his evil-directing self, together with all its passions, is wiped out altogether and he is invested with a new life which is characterized by his carrying out all his obligations to. Allah and which should comprise nothing except obedience to the. Creator and sympathy for His creatures. . Obedience to the Creator means that to make manifest Hist. Honour and Glory and Unity one should be ready to endure every dishonour and humiliation, and one should be eager to undergo a thousand deaths in order to uphold His Unity. One hand should be ready to cut off the other with pleasure in obedience to Him, and the love of the grandeur of His commandments and the thirst for seeking. His pleasure should make sin so hateful as if it were a consuming fire, or a fatal poison, or an obliterating lightning, from which one must run away with all one's power. For seeking His pleasure one must surrender all the desires of one's ego; and to establish a relationship with Him one should be ready to endure all kinds of injuries; and to prove such relationship one must cut asunder from all other relationships. . The service of one's fellow-beings means to strive for their benefit purely for the sake of God in all their needs, and in all the 239