Malfuzat - Volume VII — Page 61
29 DECEMBER 1904 29 DECEMBER 1904 ON THE OCCASION OF JALSA SALANA After Zuhr Prayer at Aqsa Mosque Speech of the Promised Messiah, Peace and Blessings be on Him Strive for a Good End From my side, the advice to my Jama'at is the same as I have given many times before: since life is short¹ and magnificent work lies ahead, we should strive for a good end. Attaining an auspicious end involves traversing a path with many thorns. When a person comes into the world, some time passes in a state of unconsciousness. This period of unconscious- ness is when he is a child and has no knowledge of the world and its conditions. After that, when he gains consciousness, there comes a time when he is no longer unconscious in the way he was in childhood. But there is a certain intoxication of youth that creates unconsciousness even in these days of conscious- ness, and he becomes so beside himself that nafs-e-ammārah [the self that incites to evil] takes over. 61 1. From al-Badr: 'Man's life is fickle; it cannot be relied upon' (Al-Badr, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 10, dated 1 January 1905).