Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 158
BarĀhĪn-e-a H madiyya — Part Four 158 Nevertheless, I reiterate that inasmuch as the Pundit’s forefathers before him were deceived thousands of times in various ways by their imaginary ‘revelation’ as well as by their reason, and have always been stumbling in different direction in the recognition of God, by what means can the Pundit now rest assured that his own imaginary revela- tion and baseless conjectures are safeguarded from error and oversight? Is it not possible that this, too, should have some element of delusion? When the imaginary revelation of the Pundit has been, from the very beginning, steeped in mistakes and errors, how can it be trusted? In short, the reality of what he believes to be revelation is fully exposed and, from his own admission, it stands proven that he considers mere baseless thoughts to be revelation. Obviously, how can something which is predominantly false be the instrument of recognizing truth? How can one’s own thoughts, which the Pundit calls ‘revelation’, safe- guard one from errors? And, indeed, how can those dark thoughts res- cue one from all kinds of darkness and take one to the light of perfect certainty? According to the Pundit these same bewildered thoughts, which he calls ‘revelation’, despite their confusion, led those people—who, by the admission of the Pundit, were graced to be the first and chief recip- ients of revelation, exceeded all others in their hunger and thirst for the cognition of God, desired to establish a god for themselves with full sincerity, and maintained a life of the utmost inner sanctity—into wor- shipping stones and considering the moon and sun to be divine at the beginning of time, which was the age of purity. Sin had not yet spread throughout the world, for it was the age of Sat Jug 1 and these people desired to devote themselves to God. Therefore, it suddenly occurred to them that they should appoint a god for themselves and not remain godless. They had faith and clear perception and that is why such a 1. Sat Jug literally means ‘Age of Truth’, and according to Hindu belief, Sat Jug refers to the golden period of the human race, which was a time of purity and virtue. [Publisher]