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Friends! Who am I?
Brothers! Who are you?
Companions! What is this world?
Dears! What kind of an existence is this—forever dancing along
the path of death!
What happened was that at night when the sky was glittering, in the
serene atmosphere made delicate by lights, a bright star WAS travelling towards
an unknown destination. After traveling through the entire night, the star had
left the east and had made the west its abode.
I could not tell if the earth was moving or if it was the star
that was, in motion. Lying down on the wooden daybed in the courtyard the
entire night’s account is that the star had gone from the east to the west and
had been taken over by the cover of light. Obviously, travelling all day, the
star would again each the same point where it had commenced in the east- and
this process is continuous.
Just as the stars and the earth are revolving and rotating, each
and every particle of the universe is in motion in its own way. Man, for whom
this entire universe has been created, is also interchanging within the world
of feelings and emotions each every moment. Each moment that is to arrive is
the past ['mazi’] and the past is death or non-existence [‘fanaa’] reality, it
is the presence of death [fana'] which forms life or existence [‘baqaa’]. In
the absence of death [or non-existence] it would be futile to mention life [or
existence]. When the childhood of a thumb-sucking youth goes through the stages
of death ['fanaa'], adolescence comes into existence. That is, the death of
childhood is adolescence and then adulthood, and the death of the early part of
adulthood is old age. When old age goes into non-existence, we are born into
another world. It is a process that goes on without end.
Just as adulthood is born at the death of childhood and old age
arrives after the early years of adulthood succumb to death, in the same way
the days and nights of the world are dying and being born at the same time.
Just as man can make his life short if he desires, or spread it over a hundred
years if he so wishes, the same is true of the life of the world.
Today, when the spell of progress is all pervasive, it is
extremely painful to see that the age of the world, caught in the attractive
and deceptive trap of progress, is diminishing. The earth, in agony like a sick
and feeble limb, is crying, "For God's sake, have mercy on me and on
yourselves." But there is no one to lend an ear to her sobbing and
sorrowful voice.
In order to gain superiority, nations have built such weapons
upon which are hovering looming clouds of death. These weapons threaten the
lives of the four billion people who live on this planet. Once something comes
into existence, it becomes necessary to utilize it. In today's age it has
become so easy to make an atomic bomb, that a team of over a hundred people can
make an atom bomb in a small factory.
The great danger that is apparent to the open eye, in connection
with the production and propagation of atomic weapons, is that very soon the
time will come when a great many countries will have atomic weapons and that,
eventually, in times of war, their use will become inevitable.
Friends! What kind of a progress is it that the world is
standing at the brink of atomic war and we have made our abode a volcano about
to erupt?
Eventually, this magical spell of progress will break one day.
This been going on all along: nations that were not aware of the formulas of
life ['baqaa] and death ['fanaa'] have been wiped off the face of earth, and
today neither their names nor their remains exist. For God's sake, please
reflect on where we are headed. Death is on our chase, while we are deceiving
ourselves by giving it the name of progress. This is the result of that conduct
and character that has taken a hold of us like a monster. Allah the Exalted
states:
Then whoso does an atom's weight of
good will see it, And who so does an atom's weight of evil will also see it,
AI-Zilzal: part 30 [Holy Quran ch99: v7-8]
KHWAJA SHAMS-UD-DEEN AZEEMI
Science has made immense progress, yet many believe that, even with all of the modern tools at our disposal, human beings function at no more than 10% of their mental capacity. This leads to the question of what exactly it is that comprises the remaining 90%. Yet another question that arises is this: If it has taken man four and a half billion years to be able to apply only 10% of his ability, how long will it take for him to make use of the remaining 90%?
