The Essence of Islam – Volume III — Page 86
86. Essence of Islam-III. A person who is in the grip of carnal passion is, as it were, caught in the mouth of a most poisonous serpent. . Thus, as the malady of miserliness is graver than the malady of indulgence in vain pursuits, in the same way being caught in the grip of carnal passions is graver than the malady of miserliness, and is a severer calamity than all other calamities, and needs the special mercy of God. Almighty to be delivered from it. When God Almighty designs to deliver someone from this calamity, He visits him with such a manifestation of His grandeur, awe and power, as grinds down all carnal passions and invests his heart with eagerness for His own love along with a manifestation of beauty. Just as a suckling baby, on being weaned, passes a restless night or two, and soon forgets its mother's milk and turns away from suckling even if the mother presents her breast to him, in the same way, a righteous one is disgusted with carnal passions when he is weaned away from the milk of desire and is granted spiritual nourishment in its place. . This is followed by the fifth condition, the disorders of which are dearly loved by the self that incites to evil. At this stage only one struggle is left and the time approaches near when the angels of God would conquer the whole territory of the ego and would bring it under their complete control, and, disrupting the whole system of the ego, would ruin the territory of carnal faculties and humiliate its chieftains and destroy their kingdom. For that is what happens when a kingdom is destroyed, as it is said: اِنَّ الْمُلُوكَ إِذَا دَخَلُوا قَرْيَةً أَفْسَدُوهَا وَجَعَلُوا اعرة اهلها اذلةً : وَكَذَلِكَ يَفْعَلُونَ 0 75 75 'Surely, kings, when they enter a country, despoil it, and turn the