Aslam

Answer: Know, O dear readers, that a party of blind men went to see an elephant which they never see it before. When they reached the elephant, they touched it. One blind man touched its feet, another its ear, another its trunk. They at once exclaimed :
We have known an elephant. When they went away, other blind men asked : How is an elephant ? They all described its different forms. The blind man who touched its feet said that the elephant is like a post. The blind man who touched it trunk said : the elephant is not as the other blind man has described.

The elephant is a hard subestance and not a post and it is long. One who touched its ear said : By God. the elephant is smooth like a seeve. The saying of each is true in some respect or the other, but none could give a full description of an elephant.
The difference of many men over a single matter is like this. This gives clue to spiritual knowledge.

Tauba is compulsory with its three ingredients, knowledge of sin, repentance for sin and giving up of sin in future. Tauba is compulsory after commission of sin, as a believer can understand that sin is harmful. He who does not give up sin gives up a portion of faith. The following Hadis proves it. When a man commits fornication he commits when he is not a believer. That fornication is injurious like poison is not known to him. This is said with regard to the faith which returns to spiritual knowledge. At the time of committing of fornication, he loses

Vol-IV THE BOOK OF CONSTRUCTIVE VIRTUES 1 3

faith that fornication is injurious and that it keeps him far away from God, just as when a physician says : It is poison and don't take it. If inspite of this warning, a person take: it, it can be said that he has taken it as he disbelieved it. This does not mean that he does not believe in the existence of the physician or that he has got no knowledge of medicine, but it means that he does not believe that poison is harmful, as he who knows the effect of poison, cannot accept it.