THE FIFTY-NINTH DISCOURSE On cheerful acceptance of misfortune, and being grateful for blessings

Your condition must be either of the following two. It will either be a state of calamity or of blessing. If it is a state of calamity, you should ask therein for patience, even with effort — and this is an inferior state; and ask for patience proper, which is a higher state than the other. Then you should ask for pleasure with the decree of God and concord with it and finally to be merged in it; and this is a state befitting the ahdal and men of spiritual knowledge, people of knowledge of God, the Mighty, the Glorious. And if it is a state of blessing you should ask in it thankfulness on account of it. Thankfulness can be through the tongue and through the heart and through the organs of the body. The thankfulness of the tongue consists of acknowledging that the blessing is from God and of avoiding ascribing it to the people, or to your own self, or to your might or to your power or to your movement or to your effort or to anything or anybody else besides you, through whose hands it had to pass, because you yourself and they are only the means and instruments for it. The real allotter and executor and creator of it and the actor in the affair and one who is the prime mover of it is God, the Mighty, the Glorious. The Allotter is God and the executor is God and their Creator is God. So He is more deserving of thanks than others. For example, one does not look towards the slave who carries a present but towards the master, the sender of the gift. God says in respect of one who lacks in this correct attitude: . They know the outward of this world's life, but of the Hereafter they are heedless (30:7). So whoever looks to the outside and the cause, and his knowledge does not go beyond these, is ignorant and defective in his intelligence. The term "intelligent" applies to a person on account of his insight into the ultimate end of things. Thankfulness of the heart consists in believing with the firmest standing conviction that all that is with you of the blessings, benefits and enjoyments, external as well as internal, in your movements and reposes, are from God, the Mighty, the Glorious, and from no one else. Your thankfulness by tongue will express what is in your heart as He has said: And whatever good you have, it is from Allah (16:53). And (He)granted to you His favours completely outwardly and inwardly (31:20). Again He says: And if you count Allah’s favours, you will not be able to number them (14:34). So with all these statements, there can be no bestower of favours for a Muslim but God. The thankfulness of the organs of the body consists in exercising and using them in obeying His commandments to the exclusion of all others in the creation. You should not respond to anyone among the creation for anything in which there is any opposition to God, and creation in this connection includes your own self and your desires and purposes and your wishes and everything else. Make obedience to God, the primary thing under which every other thing should come, and make it the guiding factor and make whatever is besides this of secondary and subordinate consideration. If you act differently you will be deviating from the right course and will prove yourself an unjust person for His believing servants and will be following the way which is not the way of righteous people. God, the Mighty, the Glorious, says: And whoever judges not by what Allah has revealed, those are the wrongdoers (5:45). And elsewhere it is written: Those are the transgressors (5:47). In that case, your destination will be the fire of which the fuel are people and stones. When you cannot bear fever for one hour in this world and cannot bear very small splinters of fire in it, how will you bear for eternity the hell in the company of its inmates? So run away, run away; make haste; make haste, seek refuge in God, seek refuge in God. Guard both the above-mentioned states together with their conditions because you cannot be free from either of them for the whole of your life — either the state of calamity or the state of happiness. Give each state its right to your patience and thankfulness accordingly as I have described to you. Do not complain in the state of calamity to anyone from among the people and by no means express your annoyance to anyone and do not blame your Lord in your mind and do not doubt His wisdom and His choice of the best thing for you in your worldly life and in your life hereafter. Neither should you go in your zeal to anyone among the people for the purpose of finding an escape because that will be your associating something with him. No one shares anything in God's possession and no one is able to harm or to give benefit or to remove difficulties or to procure anything or to cause illness and bring about calamity and restore*to health and confer anything good except Him. So do not be ingrossed in the creation, either outwardly or inwardly, for they will never avail you anything against God, but stick to patience and pleasure with God and harmony with Him, and absorption in His action. If you are deprived of all these blessings, it becomes incumbent on you to call to Him for help and show humility and to acknowledge your sins and to complain to Him of the evil of your self and against your keeping away from truth, and to profess to Him His unity together with His blessings; and proclaim your dissociation from polytheism and harmony till the writing of Destiny attains its fullness, and the calamity disappears and grief is removed and then conies the favour of God and ease and relief and happiness, as it came in the case of Job, the Prophet of God — in the same way as the darkness of night goes away and the whiteness of day comes and the coldness of winter disappears and the breeze of spring comes with its sweet smell. Because for everything there is an opposite and a contrary, and an end and a goal. So patience is its key, and its beginning and its end, and its guarantee of welfare. This is as it has been related in the traditions of the Holy Prophet, that is, "Patience is to the faith as the head is to the body." And in another narration: "Patience is the whole of faith." Sometimes thankfulness comes through the enjoyment of God's favours and this is a portion of it in return for the state of your selfeffacement and of vanishing away of your desires and of your zeal for the preservation and guarding of the bounds of law; and this is the farthest point of advancement. Take lesson from what I have mentioned to you. You will be guided if God, the Exalted, so wills.