Discovering God

to the heart is as infructuous as paying attention to one’s nails or hair or anything else. The Need of a Guide In principle, the path to tazkiya for a person is to reflect upon the Quran and to study the Hadith in order to find guidance from the lives of the Prophet and the Companions of the Prophet. This is the basic source of tazkiya, and its importance will last for all eternity. Besides this, there is also a practical way of attaining tazkiya, and that is to find a living guide, thus benefitting from his learning and experience. When a guide is found, he ought to be accepted as such unconditionally. Making conditions before accepting a guide only sets up a hurdle in the path of tazkiya. When anyone says that he has accepted someone unconditionally, this does not mean that he has entered into this arrangement with blind faith. It only means that, as a result of the development of moral consciousness, two human beings have come together on the same wavelength. This is a case of intellectual affinity, rather than a case of blind faith. When two human beings reach the core of truth, they naturally enter a state of intellectual commonality. They become, as it were, intellectual “twins”.