Way of The Seekers — Page 67
67 THE (64:17) This means do all good deeds, but purify your hearts, for a heart that is impure will be called to account. After making clear that good means the good heart, let me now proceed to discuss the threefold method of avoiding sin if the person concerned is clean and uncorrupted: 1. He or she must have true knowledge of right and wrong. The heart might urge towards right action, but if you do not know what the right action is, you cannot perform it. Similarly the heart might warn you against evil, but if you are ignorant of what and why an act is evil, you cannot guard yourself against it. Thus it is essential that you should know what you ought or ought not to do. It is not enough to have the capacity to do or not to do a certain action. For instance, you may be very eager to please your friend but you cannot do much unless your friend tells you how best he can be pleased. Therefore, knowledge of actions, good and bad, is of the greatest importance. 2. He or she must know the context in which right action has to be done and bad action avoided. For instance, you ask your servant to place furniture inside a room. The servant may be very active and eager but if he does not know where each item is to be placed, he might easily put tables in place of chairs and chairs in place of tables. The same would be true of a person who is ignorant of the appropriate occasion for a particular action, that is to say, when the action should be done and when not done. Hence he must know the circumstances under which an action is to be performed or avoided. 3. He should be conscious of the evil to which he is prone and which he wants to discard. That is why one of the conditions precedent to spiritual treatment of the self is that we should know our faults. He should also know wherein he lacks virtue, so that he can pursue good and avoid evil. If the heart is not corrupted and the rust of sin has not eaten into the mind, knowledge, albeit true