The Essence of Islam – Volume IV — Page 279
Propagation, Establishment of a Holy Jama'at, and Instructions 279 merely recite the Kalima as a matter of form, rather the reality of Islam is that your souls should fall prostrate at the threshold of God Almighty, and that in every respect you should give preference to God and. His commandments over your worldly affairs. [Tadhkirat-ush-Shahādatain, Rūḥānī Khazā'in, vol. 20, p. 63]. My repeated admonition to my Jamā‘at is that man's life is short and transitory. It cannot be depended upon. Before you is a great task. Try by every means that your end should be good. . In trying to achieve a good end, one encounters many obstacles. When a person arrives in the world, the first part of his life passes unconsciously, for he is then a child and has little knowledge. When he arrives at the age of discretion, he enters into another stage in which, though he is not unconscious as he was in his childhood, he is positively overtaken by a condition of unconsciousness, which is caused by the frenzy of youth and passions of Nafs-e-Ammarah. 147 These cause negligence in these days of awareness and he is so lost in his self as if he were unconscious. Thus these two periods of mans' life are lost. Then comes the third period when old age overtakes man and, having obtained knowledge, he becomes without knowledge, as it were. His senses and other faculties start declining. Some people, as soon as they enter upon old age, begin to exhibit signs of insanity and seem to have lost all their senses and begin to behave 147 The Self that incites to evil. [Publisher]