THE THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE On submission to Allah’s command

Do not make any effort to appropriate any blessing, nor to ward off any calamity. The blessing will come to you if it is destined for you, whether you seek it or dislike it, and the calamity will overtake you if it is destined for you, whether you dislike it and try to ward it off by prayer, or confront it with your patience and fortitude in order to earn the pleasure of the Lord. You should surrender yourself in everything so that He may do His work through you. If it is a blessing be engaged in thanksgiving and if it is a calamity either exhibit patience or try to cultivate patience and alliance with God and His pleasure or try to feel His blessing in this or be merged in Him through this as far as you can afford, by means of spiritual states which are given to you, and in which you are being turned over again and again, and in which you are made to journey from stage to stage in your way towards God to obey and befriend Whom you are commanded, so that you may meet the Great Friend. You will then be made to stand at a place which has been reached before by the siddiqs and shahids and salihs. That is to say, you will attain to extreme nearness to God so that you may observe the position of those who have gone before you to the heavenly King, the Lord of Glory and Mighty Kingdom, and who have attained nearness to Him and received from Him every kind of amenity and joy and security and honour and blessing. And let the calamity visit you and do not obstruct its way nor confront it with your prayer nor feel uneasy over its coming and approaching you, because its fire is not more terrible than the flames of the Hell fire. It is reliably related in the traditions about the best of mankind and the best of those whom the earth carried on its surface and the sky covered with its shade, I mean the Prophet Muhammad (the chosen one), that he said: Verily the fire of Hell will speak to the believer saying: "Pass hurriedly along, 0 believer, because your light is extinguishing my flame." Now, is the light of a believer which extinguishes the flame of Hell not the same which is to be found with him in this world and which distinguishes those who obey God from those who disobey? Let the same light extinguish the flame of calamity and let the coolness of your patience and harmony with God extinguish the heat of what is going to overtake you. Thus the calamity has not come to you to crush you but to try you and to confirm the correctness of your faith and to strengthen the foundation of your convictions and to give you inwardly the good news from your Lord about His kind thoughts for you. God says: And certainly We shall try you, till We know those , among you who strive hard, and the steadfast, and manifest your news (47:31) Thus when you faith with God is proved and you have been quite in harmony with His work with certainty, and all this with the help of the power given by Him and of His benevolent help, then you should always remain patient and be in complete harmony with Him and in fullest obedience to Him. Do not allow anything to happen in yourself nor in others which may go against the commandments and prohibitions of God. And when any of His commandments comes, listen to it with attention, and be quick to act upon it, and be on the move and do not remain inactive, and do not remain passive before the decree of Providence and its act; but employ your power and efforts to fulfil the commandment. Then if you find yourself unable to carry out the order, do not lose time in repairing to God. Seek His refuge and humble yourself before Him and ask His forgiveness and try to find out the cause of your inability to carry out His order and being prevented from being honoured by your obedience to Him. Possibly this inability is due to the evil of your disobedience to Him or to your pride or to your reliance on your own resources and powers or to your being conscious of your own action or to your associating your own self or the creation with Him, as a result of which He has kept you away from His door and dismissed you from obedience to Him and from His service and shut you out from the help of His strength and turned away from you His benign face and become angry with you and estranged from you and kept you occupied with your trials of the world and with your passions and your vice and your desire. Do you not know that all these things make you oblivious of your Lord and make you fall away from the sight of Him who has created you and nourished you and blessed you with so many gifts? Beware lest these things which are besides God should divert you from your Lord. Everything which is not God is besides God, so do not accept any other thing in preference to Him, because He has created you for His own sake. So do not be unjust to your own soul so as to be preoccupied with things other than His commandments, because that will cause you to enter the fire, of which the fuel will be men and stones and then you will be sorry, but your sorrow will not benefit you and you will make excuses but no excuse will be accepted, and you will cry for help but no help will be forthcoming, and you will try to please God but without any success, and you will try to come back to the world to take stock of experiences and to mend matters but you will not be allowed to return. Take pity on your soul and be kind to it and bring into use all the instruments for the service of your Lord, such as your intelligence and faith and spiritual enlightenment and knowledge which have been given to you; and seek to illumine your surrounding with the light proceeding from these in the midst of the darkness of destiny and hold fast to the injunctions and prohibitions of God and traverse, under the direction provided by these two, the path towards your Lord and surrender whatever is besides these two to Him Who has created you and caused you to grow; and do not be ungrateful to Him Who has created you from dust and then from a small life-germ, then He made you a perfect man. And do not wish for anything which is besides His commandment and do not consider anything bad unless it is His prohibition. Remain contented with regard to this world and the hereafter with the former object in view. And despise, with regard to both of them, the latter. Thus everything that may be desired by you should be subservient to the former object and everything despised should be subordinated to the latter hateful thing. When you are in harmony with His commandment the whole universe will pay homage to you and when you despise what has been prohibited by him, displeasure will run away from you wherever you may happen to remain. God has said in His Book: O children of Adam, I am God; there is no other deity besides Me, I say to a thing "Be" and it comes to exist. Obey Me; I will make you such that you will say to a thing "Be" and it will be there. He also said: O earth, whoever serves Me, serve him and whoever serves you keep him worried. So when His prohibition comes, you should become like one who has become loose and tired in his joints and has lost all physical reactions, — a man with a bruised heart, contracted breast and spiritless body without any desire and purpose, freed from all impression of the material world, cut off from all and devoid of all signs of animal life and marks of animal desires, — like a dark courtyard and a dilapidated, uninhabited building with its roof fallen down, without any perception and any traces of animal existence. You should become like one who is deaf even from his birth, and your eyes should be like that of a person who is blindfolded and born blind and your lips should be as if they are full of sores and are swollen; and your tongue should be as if it is dumb and coarse and your teeth should be as if they have pus in their roots and are full of pain and disintegrated; and your two hands should be as if they are paralysed and incapable of holding anything and your feet should be as if they are stricken and trembling and full of wounds; and your sex organ should be as if it has lost all power and is engaged in other things, and your stomach should be as if it is full and indifferent to food, and your understanding as if it is mad and your body should be as if it is dead and carried to the grave. So you should listen and carry out quickly the commandments of God just as you should feel lazy and hesitant and slothful in matters of prohibition and behave like a dead man and be resigned to the decree of God. So drink this syrup and take this remedy and have this diet so that you may be free from the desires of the flesh, be cured of the diseases of sin and be free from the bondage of desires and thus be restored to perfect spiritual health.