Aslam

DEVIL'S TWO ARMIES: The devil has got two company of armies. One company lover over the sky and another over land.
The movements of the company which lover over the sky are called passions. This is because the devil was created of fire and man of dried clay. Dried clay means clay burnt by fire. The nature of fire is to rise upwards and of earth to go down. When the devil was ordered to make prostration before man, he was thereby ordered to remove the pride and passions of upward tendency and to be subservient to man but he declined and disobeyed God.
The life of prostration is humility and its body is placing of forehead on the ground. It means to crush all sorts of vanity and pride. So you should shift the jewel from its outward cover, life from its body and the seed from its outer form and guide your life accordingly. This open world is the outer cover and the next work is its inner seed. If you take up the outer world and neglect the next world, you will be taking up the cover only without the inner seed. You should understand that the devil has been given time up to the Resurrection Day and he will not stop to whisper evils. If your object of thought be one and the same (God), the devil will not find place of refuge in your heart. When you become sincerely devoted to God, the supremacy of the devil will vanish. The devil runs in your vains like the blowing of wind in a cup. It will be impossible to keep the cup empty either of water or of air. So also the case with mind. It is engaged always with religious thoughts and actions, it becomes free from the influence of devil or devilish tendencies. For this reason,, God says: 1 appoint a devil for one who remains aloof from God-remembrance and he becomes then his companion. The Holy Prophet said: God is dissatisfied with a young man having an empty mind. When Manusr Hallaj was raised upon the gallows, he was asked: What is Sufism? He replied: It is your soul. If you engage it, it will keep you engaged. So the meaning of patience is to keep away from every destructive and inurious thing.

MEANS OF RAISING STRENGTH OF PATIENCE: Know, O readers, that every disease has got a medicine. Though patience is troublesome, yet it is possible to acquire it by the medicine which is a mixture of knowledge and action. When patience has got different classes, its diseases also are different.
The medicine of a disease is its opposite thing. We shall explain it by a few examples. Take the case of sexual passion. When it

Vol-IV THE BOOK OF CONSTRUCTIVE VIRTUES 73