The Descent of the Messiah — Page 90
THE DESCENT OF THE MESSIAH denied it. O heedless ones! No deed can reach heaven without conviction, nor can internal impurities and fatal maladies of the heart be removed without conviction. The Islam that you take pride in is merely ritualistic, and not the true essence of Islam. Genuine Islam transforms a person's character, illuminates the heart, frees from a lowly existence, and ushers in a new life that you may not be familiar with. All of this requires true conviction, which stems from the divine Word that descends from heaven. God is known only through God, not through any other means. Who among you would not recognise the one who speaks to you? In the same way, it is through Divine discourse that one grows in spiritual knowledge. When a servant of God prays, and God responds to that prayer with kindness and mercy-not once, not twice, but twenty, thirty, or fifty times, or throughout the night, or throughout the day—and he receives a response for every prayer, and this too in eloquent words, and sometimes in different languages, and sometimes in languages that he does not know; and this is accompanied by a shower of signs and a chain of miracles and succour; is it possible that after receiving such continuous discourse and manifest signs, for such a person to be in any doubt that it is the Word of God? No, never! Rather, it is the means through which man beholds God in this very world, and both worlds become the same to him without any distinc- tion. Just as hair falls off immediately after the use of Nūrah', in the same way, with the descent of this glorious Nūr [Light], the hair of a barbaric life vanishes, and man, becoming weary of the dead, becomes enamoured with the Living Beloved Whom the world knows not. And just as you can barely wait for the things of the world, so is he impatient with being distant from God. 1 A type of white powder used to remove hair. [Publisher] 90