Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 95
95 sugar in his mouth and to tell him that it is sweet. Simi- larly the nature of the experience of a meeting with God cannot be put in words, but as this is a matter which concerns faith and on which depends the whole spiritual progress of man, God invests those who have gone through it with such attributes that everybody can perceive that they stand in a special relationship towards the Living God. Just as a machine comes alive when it is connected with electric current, and people can at once perceive that some mighty force is working through it, so is the case with those who attain to union with God. Since the beginning of time this fact has been proclaimed in the same manner. The fact that Noah as , Abraham as , Moses as , Jesus as and Muhammad sa and the other Prophets of God were His favourites was pro- claimed to the world only through the manifestation of God’s attributes for them. In no other manner could the nature of the relationship in which each of them stood towards God be understood by another. The truth is that God being all spirit, His relation- ship with man can be expressed only through the reflec- tion of His attributes in man. As the Holy Prophet sa has said, 'If you desire to meet God, you must assimilate the attributes of God and must fashion your lives accord- ingly. ' With beings that belong to the world of spirit a relationship can be established only through perfect understanding and knowledge. The Holy Quran de- scribes this understanding or realization as being of three kinds or having three stages. The first stage is called, ‘Ilm-ul-Yaq i n , that is to say, knowledge or