THE THIRTY-SIXTH DISCOURSE On the explanation of this world and the hereafter, and what one must do in them both

Make your life after death your capital money and your worldly life, its profit. Spend your time first of all in acquiring your life after death. Then if any surplus time is left spend it in acquiring your worldly life, in seeking your livelihood. Do not make your worldly life your capital money and your life after death your profit, so as to spend any surplus time left in obtaining your life after death and to fulfil the obligations of five prayers in such a away, as if putting all together in a single melting pot, dropping its different parts and upsetting the order of various obligations without the ritual bending and prostration and without restful pause between different parts; or when you are exhausted and agitated you take to sleep, leaving the whole thing unattended, like a dead body during the night and whiling away the day in obedience to your animal self and your animal desire and your devil and selling your hereafter in exchange for your worldly life, acting like a slave of the animal self and its riding beast. You are commanded to ride on your animal self and to discipline it and to exercise it and to traverse on its back the paths of safety — that is the way to the life eternal and to the obedience to its Lord. But you have acted unjustly towards it by accepting its urges and you have handed over to it its reins and followed it in its low desires and in its enjoyments, and you have made an alliance with its devil and its passion, so you have missed the best thing of this life and of the hereafter and have incurred loss in respect of both of them, and thus you enter on the Day of Judgement the poorest of men and the greatest loser in respect of religion, and without obtaining, by following it, most of your allotted portion in this world's life. On the other hand, if you had traversed with it the path of the hereafter and used it as your capital money, you would have gained in your worldly life as well as in the hereafter; and your destined portion of this world's life would have come to you with all its pleasantness and you would have been secure and respected. Thus the Holy Prophet has said: "Surely God gives felicity in this world's life on the intention pertaining to the hereafter, whereas the felicity of the hereafter is not given on the intention pertaining to this world's life.'1 How can it be otherwise? The intention for the hereafter is obedience to God because intention is the very soul of service and its very being. So when you obey God with your abstinence in this world's life and with seeking the abode of the hereafter you become among the chosen ones of God and the people of obedience to, and love for Him, and the life hereafter is obtained by you and that is paradise and nearness to God. The world will be at your service and the portion allotted to you from it will be given to you in full, because everything is subordinate to its Creator and its Master. But if you get engrossed in the worldly life and turn your face from the hereafter, the Lord will be angry with you; you will lose the hereafter and the world will be disobedient to you, and will put you in trouble and difficulty in the matter of allowing your allotted portion to reach you on account of the anger of God towards you because it is owned by God; so it abases whoever is disobedient to Him. Then it is that the truth of a saying of the Holy Prophet is established. The saying is this: 'The world and the hereafter are two co-wives; if you please any of the two the other becomes angry with you." God, the Mighty, the Glorious, says: Of you were some who desired this world, and of you were some who desired the Hereafter (3:151). These are called the children of the world and the children of the hereafter, respectively. See, then, of which these two you are children and to which of these two tribes you like to belong while you are in this world. Then when you pass on to the other life there will be one party in the heaven and the other party in the hell. One section of people shall remain standing at their own place in the midst of prolonged reckoning on a day which, as the word of God says, is the equivalent of fifteen thousand years. Then there will be another section of people who shall be staying by the dining table on which will be very good food and fruits and honey whiter than ice, as it has been narrated in the Hadith: 'They shall be looking at their residence in Heaven until, when God will be free from the account of the people, they will enter heaven; they shall find their way towards their residences just as a man in this world finds his way to his residence." Evidently, these people attain to this position only by their discarding the world and by their occupying themselves with, and their attempt to get to the hereafter and the Master; and those other people are involved in the accounts and various kinds of difficulties and humiliations only on account of their preoccupations with the world and their attachment to it, and their indifference towards the hereafter and the scantiness of their attention towards its affairs and their forgetfulness of the Day of Judgment and what is to happen to them in the future among the things mentioned in the Book of God and the Traditions of the Holy Prophet. So look at your own self with the look of mercy and affection and choose for it the one that is better among the two groups, and keep it away from bad associates and from the disobedient from among men and jinns; and make the Book of God and the Sunnah your guide and look at these two authorities with contemplation and meditation and act on them and do not be deceived by mere talk, and by greed. God says: Whatever the Messenger gives you, accept it, and whatever he forbids you abstain (therefrom); and keep your duty to Allah (59:7). Do not oppose him so that you cease acting on what he has brought. Do not make innovation from your own self either with regard to deeds, or with regard to service, as God says in respect of a people who went away from the right path: And as for monkery, they innovated it. — We did not prescribe it to them (57:27). Accordingly, He purified His Prophet and kept him away from falsehood. Thus He says: Nor does he speak out of desire. It is naught but revelation that is revealed (53:34). meaning: Whatever he has brought to you, it is from Me, and not from his desire and self, so follow it. He further says: Say if you love Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you (3:30). It is clear that the path of love is to follow him in word and deed. Thus the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) says: "Earning is my way and reliance on God is my state." So you are between his practice and his state. If your faith is weak, you should take to earning which is his practice, and if your faith is strong, you should adopt the state which is reliance on God. God the Mighty, the Glorious, says: they rely on him (10:84). He also says: And whoever trusts in Allah, He is sufficient for him (65:3). He further says: Surely Allah loves those who trust (in Him) (3:158). So He commands you to have trust in Him and insists on your sticking to it just as His Prophet has been commanded to observe the same. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) says: "Whoever does a deed on which there is no commandment of ours is rejected." This covers livelihood and deeds and words. We have no Prophet except him whom we can follow, and no book except the Qur'an on which we can act. Do not, therefore, go beyond these two, lest you should perish and lest your desires and the devil should lead you astray: And follow not (low) desire, lest it lead thee astray from the path of Allah (38:26). Safety lies in the Book of God and the practice of the Holy Prophet, and destruction in what is besides them, and with the help of these two the servant of God progresses towards the state of wilayat, of badaliyyat and of ghauthiyyat.