First Grain of Sand — Page 74
58 FIRST GRAIN OF SAND Bastami's statement to Prophet Muhammad's statement itself exposes who is greater. Bayazid Bastami can be seen as just a nov- ice student who reads some rudimentary aspects of a topic yet proudly considers himself to be a scholar. On the other hand, the Prophet Muhammad's sas statement proves he is a great scholar, for every step that a true scholar takes towards knowledge, he real- izes that he has yet so much to learn, whereas everything he has learned thus far is trivial. I said that Prophet Muhammadsas—who was a perfect Prophet far surpassing all others in spirituality and wisdom-dove [deep] into the sea of Divine wisdom and instinc- tively uttered these words in recognition of the perfect manifesta- tion of God's wisdom. In the same way, the Prophet Muhammadsas, who was the perfect prophet and far ahead of all prophets in spirituality and mysticism, dove into the ocean of God's knowl- edge and realized the perfect manifestation of God, Who pos- sesses the highest level of knowledge. That is why he uttered the words, 'Glory be to Thee. We haven't even recognized You the way we should have. Abdul Qadir liked the answer I gave to Brother Abdullah Khan so much that he said this is precisely the very reply furnished in the commentary of the Masnawi. He concluded that either I wrote this answer in that book myself or otherwise mem- orized this answer from the book. I responded saying that this is just the first answer, and I would also give him the second answer. However, since Abdullah Khan knew that this man was sent as a spy from the government and having already become an Ahmadi Muslim had feared I might get caught in his words, he scolded me like a father would scold his son, saying 'Don't bother me, and don't talk too much. ' That ended the conversation. Since Abdul Qadir was sent to my cell as a spy from the Soviet