THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DISCOURSE On good and evil as two fruits

Regard good and evil as two fruits coming out from two branches of a single tree. One of the two branches yields sweet fruit and the other bitter. So you leave cities and countries and the outlying part of countries where fruits plucked from this tree are sent, and keep away from them and their people. Approach the tree itself and become its guard and attendant servant and acquire knowledge of these two branches and of the two fruits and their neighbourhoods and remain near the branch which yields sweet fruit. Then, it will be your food and your source of strength and beware lest you should approach the other branch and eat the fruit of it lest its bitterness should kill you. When you persist in this attitude you will be in ease and security and safety from all troubles because troubles and all kinds of calamities are born of this bitter fruit. When you are away from this tree and wander about in countries and these fruits are brought before you and they are mixed up in a manner that the sweet cannot be distinguished from the bitter and you start eating them, your hand may fall on the bitter and you may put it in your mouth and eat a part of it and chew it so that its bitterness goes to your palate, and then to your throat and further to your brain and nostrils and spreads its effect on you as far as your veins and the organs of your body and you are thus killed. Your throwing away the remainder from your mouth and washing off its effect cannot take away from you what has already spread in your body and will not benefit you. If, in the beginning you eat the sweet fruit and its sweetness spreads to different parts of your body and you have been benefited by it and have become happy, even this is not enough for you. It is inevitable that you will eat another fruit and you cannot be sure that this other one will not be bitter; so you will experience what I have already mentioned to you. Thus, it is no good to be far from the tree and to be ignorant of its fruit; and safety lies in being near to it and in standing by it. So good and evil are both acts of God, the Mighty, the Glorious. Allah has created you and what you make. (37:96) The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said: "God has created the man who slaughters as well as the animal slaughtered." The actions of God's servant are His creation as also the fruit of that labour. God, the Mighty, the Glorious, has said: Enter the Garden for what you did. (16:32). Glory be to Him, how generous and merciful of Him! He ascribes the actions to them and says that their entry into paradise is on account of their deeds whereas these deeds owe their existence to His help and mercy. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said: "No one enters paradise on account of his own deeds." He was asked: "Not even you, 0 Prophet of God?" He said: "Yes, not even I, unless God covers with His mercy." While saying this He placed his hand on his head. • This is narrated in one of the narrations of Ayisha (God be pleased with her). Thus, when you are obedient to God in carrying out His behest and refraining from what He has forbidden, be resigned to Him in what He has appointed; He will protect you from His evil and increase His good to you and will protect you from all evils, religious and worldly. As for worldly things, there is a word of God: Thus (it was) that We might turn away from him evil and indecency. Surely he was one of Our sincere servants ' (Qur'an, 12:24). And as for religion, He says: Why should Allah chastise you if you are grateful and believe? (4:147), Indeed, what will a calamity do to a person who is a believer and grateful? He is nearer to safety than to calamity in as much as he is in a state of plenty because of his gratefulness. God says: If you are grateful, 1 will give you more (14:7). Thus your faith will quench the fire in the hereafter — the fire which will be the punishment of every sinner. How can it be then that it will not quench the fire of calamity in this life, 0 my God, unless it is some servant in a state of spiritual ecstasy and who has been selected for wilayat and for Divine choice. In such a case calamities are inevitable, but these are to make him free from the abomination of passions and low inclination of nature, and from relying upon the desires of the flesh and its enjoyments, and from being contented with people and from the pleasure felt in their nearness and from living with them and from feeling pleased with them. So he is tried until all these weaknesses depart from him and his heart is purified by the expulsion of the whole lot of them, so that what remains in it is unity of the Lord and knowledge of truth, and it becomes the landing place of many kinds of secrets from the unseen and knowledge and light of nearness. This is because it is a house in which there is no room for two. As God says: Allah has not made for any man two hearts within him (33:4). Again: Surely the kings, when they enter a town, ruin it and make the noblest of its people to he low. (27:34). Then they turn out the nobles from their good position and comfortable life. The sovereignty over the heart was (in the beginning), of the devil of desires and selfishness, and the organs and the faculties used to be moved by their order for various sins, vanities and trifles. This sovereignty now vanishes and the organs become restful and the house of the king becomes clear, and the courtyard, which is the breast, becomes clean. The heart has now become clean and has become the habitation of the unity of God and of knowledge, and as for the courtyard it has become the alighting ground of wonderful things from the unseen. All this is the result of calamities and trials and their fruit. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said: "We, prophets, are beset with the greatest number of trials among people, then others and still others, according to rank." He has also said: "I know more of God than any of you, and am more afraid of Him than any of you." Anyone who is near the king must have his danger and guardedness increased of necessity because he is in the presence of the King from Whose observation nothing is now hidden of his manipulations and movements. Now, if you say that the whole creation in the sight of God is like one man, that nothing of it remains hidden from Him, what then is the good of this statement? The answer is that when a person's position is raised and he is placed in an honourable rank, risks also become great, because it becomes necessary for him to give thanks for what God has conferred on him, in the shape of various blessings and favours. So that the slightest diversion from service to Him is a default in gratitude to Him and is a shortcoming in one's obedience to Him. Thus God says: 0 wives of the Prophet! whoever of you is guilty of manifestly improper conduct, the chastisement shall be doubled for her (33:30). God says this to these ladies on account of His having completed His blessings on them by bringing them in contact with the Holy Prophet. What then will be the position of one who is attached to God and is near Him? God is far too high and above all similitude with His creation: Nothing is like Him; and He is the Hearing, the Seeing (42:11).