Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 344
BarĀhĪn-e-a H madiyya — Part Four 344 desires. It is not manifested purely for the sake of God without being mixed up with selfish desires, not to speak of attaining perfection. This seed develops into perfection purely for the sake of Allah only in those people who are completely devoted to God and whose souls are filled by God Almighty with His own pure qualities, as He finds their selves to be totally empty of the defilement of anything besides God. He makes those high qualities as dear to their hearts as they are dear to Him. Thus, because of their self-annihilation, they acquire such a high rank of adorning themselves with the divine attributes of Allah that they become like an instrument of God through which He manifests His own attributes. Finding them hungry and thirsty, He gives them to drink pure water from His special spring in which no creature, in its own right, is His partner. And one great perfection among the bounties which are bestowed to the Holy Quran’s perfect followers is ‘ub u diyyat [the state of com- plete submission to God]. Meaning that, despite their own excellences, they always keep an eye on their personal deficiencies and, keeping in view the greatness of God the Exalted Maker, they pass their time in humility, self-negation, and meekness. They consider humility, poverty, indigence, and being full of faults and mistakes to be their true reality, and they deem the excellences that are bestowed on them like the tem- porary light which the sun casts upon a wall, and which does not have a real connection with the wall, and is subject to decline like a borrowed garment. Therefore, they confine all good and excellence in God alone, and deem only His Perfect Being as the fountain of all goodness. By observing the manifestation of divine attributes, their hearts are filled with the true certainty that they themselves are nothing, so much so that they are wholly lost to their own existence, desires, and designs. And the surging ocean of the majesty of the Divine so envelops their hearts that they experience thousands of types of nothingness, and they are wholly cleansed and purified of the least suspicion of associat- ing anything with God. And another one of these gifts is their ma‘rifat [cognition] and