Discovering God

Realization of God the drought the rains were held to be a matter of God’s own mercy rather than the solution to the demands of man’s needs. The implication of this is that God being the most merciful of all would not punish people if it was not their fault. The first kind of prayer is uttered owing to human needs. But the second kind of prayer comes from the heart of a person with deep God-realization. The second kind of prayer is the result of the discovery of God at the level of realization. This kind of prayer comes out of the heart or mind of a person only when he has some special experience of God’s nearness. There are many instances of this kind of prayer in the books of Hadith. The Discovery of One’s Ignorance The journey of realization of God begins with ‘la ilaha’ (there is no god) and then it finishes with ‘illallah’ (but God). The individual must first of all become a seeker and later become a finder. It is this order of the journey of maarifah which applies to common man as well as to a prophet. There is a saying in the Arabic language: La adri, nisfulilm (Saying ‘I don’t know’ is half of knowledge). First of all an individual has to discover his own ignorance, and then a spirit of enquiry is born within him. The greater his acknowledgement of his own ignorance, the greater is