Chapter VIII: Self-Examination and Self-Accounting
4. O baser-self ! Alas for you, why do you not believe in the Day of accounts ? Do you think that when you die, you will be finished? That is not a fact. Do you think that you will be let off without any accounts ? Were you not a mere semen ? Were you not thereafter a clot of blood ? Has he not thereafter given you shape and life ? Will not He be able thereafter to resurrect you ? If you think that you will be risen up what thing made you ungrateful and ignorant ? Don't you think that He made you from a drop of sperm? Then He gave you shape proportionately. Then He made your path easy, then you will die, and He will put you in grave. Do you make the verse false ? — He will resurrect you when He wills. If you believe this verse, why don't you take precaution ? If any Jew gives you information of a taseful dish and says — This is injurious to you in illness, you will surely refrain from it relying on his words. Are the sayings of the Prophets, their miracles and the revealed verses of God more
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untrustworthy than the word of a Jew ? If a boy tells you that there is a serpent underneath your cloth you at once believe it and take off your cloth without any proof or question. Are the words of the Prophets, saints and friends of Allah more untrustworthy than the word of the boy?
5. O baser self ! if you can understand these affairs and believe them, then why do you want proof of the affairs of the next world? Death awaits you. Perhaps it will attack you soon and will not give your respite. On what reliance do you live that it will not come to you soon? When a man goes to a foreign land to get education and sits there idle and just before return learns something you will laugh at him and take him to be a fool. Likewise. You sit idle now hoping that at your old age and last stage. You will do divine service. Is it not a matter of joke ? Look, you think that you will do a thing tomorrow but tomorrow comes and goes., still you have not done that thing. If you do not do divine service today, you may meet with death tomorrow. It will be more difficult for you to do it tomorrow as passion is like a tree wi th firm root. If you do not uproot it to day, the root will be more firm tomorrow. Thus it will grow stronger and stronger as days go by and it will be impossible to uproot it then. Now you are a young man, you have got strength. Yet inspite of this if you do not root out your evil passions, it will grow firmer and firmer and in old age you will not be able to root them out. Riazat or religious practice is difficult to be performed in old age, A soft stick can be moulded to any shape you like but when it is dried up, it admits of no blending except to break. If the self does not understand this clear matter and keeps attached to procrastination, then why do you call yourself intelligent ? What foolishness is greater than this foolishness?