Part One: SEERAH (Biographical Sketch) CHAPTER

C:\Users\Admin\Dropbox\The Message - Material of Maulana\16. Books and Review\Apa's Books\Life And 101 understanding; those that remember God when standing, sitting, and lying down, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth (saying): ‘Lord, You have not created these in vain. Glory be to You! Save us from the torment of the fire, Lord.” (3:191) Meditation is essential for developing our spirituality. Meditation is a high kind of contemplation. It is not a state of silence, but a deep kind of thinking process. It takes us from the seen world to the unseen, from darkness to light, from chaos to conviction, from limitation to limitlessness, from word to meaning. It is like a door through which one enters another world. In short, from the human world we reach the divine world. The concept of meditation is based in Islam on two things, at-tafakkur wat-tadabbur (3:191, 4:82). Abu Darda was a senior companion of the Prophet. After his death a man came to his wife and asked her what was the most important form of worship performed by Abu Darda. She replied: He would spend the whole day thinking, thinking, thinking. According to this, Islamic meditation is a thinking process rather than the cessation of intellectual activity. The Quran further tells us that this intellectual process has two different directions—al-anfus and al-afaq. Al-anfus literally means soul, that is, inner world; afaq literally means universe, that is, external world. So when a believer sees the universe functioning in a perfect manner and he finds that all the events in this vast universe always proceed towards a meaningful result, he realises that man’s life too must have a meaningful end. This makes him exclaim: O our Lord! You have not created all this without purpose. Glory be to you! Give us salvation in the life to come. (3:191) Thus the universe is a manifestation of God’s attributes. Hence, it is a source of spiritual nourishment for those who want to lead a divine life on earth. For them, the whole universe becomes an important means of reaching spiritual perfection. This spiritual development continues throughout their earthly life till a time comes when they attain that degree of spirituality which the Quran calls the ‘Rabbani soul.’ It is, souls such as these,