The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam — Page 13
12A it becomes incumbent on everyone to fall into prostration and to be drawn to that Light. Everyone perceiving that light falls into prostration and is naturally drawn to it, except Iblis who loves darkness. Here it would be useful to mention that the human foetus shows signs of life almost four months and ten days after its conception, that is, at the intermedial stage of its existence in the womb. The same laws of nature that cause the foetus to evolve from the vegetative to the animal state are also operative in spiritual birth. In other words, just as a foetus spends half the span of its existence in the privacy of the womb and then starts showing signs of animation and life, the same condition obtains in the birth of spiritual life as well. The better part of a person's life, before the onset of senility, can be measured at approximately eighty years, half of which is forty. Here the number forty correlates with the first four months the foetus spends in the womb prior to its first physical movements. Experience tells us that when man has lived half of his productive life—the first forty years which bear a strong likeness to the first four months of a foetus' existence-his soul awakens and shows nascent signs of spiritual life, provided he is blessed with a pure disposition.