Prior to Tazkiyah

PRIOR TO TAZKIYAH Living in the greatness of God, accepting the Prophet as the perfect guide and making Paradise one’s greatest goal can be described as tazkiyah. The real incentive to the attainment of tazkiyah is the feeling of being devoid of spiritual resources. The more one acknowledges one’s feeling of need, the more one feels the necessity for tazkiyah. One so motivated will naturally seek fulfillment of this need. This discovery starts with one’s own existence. First of all, man consciously discovers his own existence. This discovery arouses his curiosity as to who is his Creator. In this way he discovers his Creator. This discovery produces a tremendous feeling of the greatness of his Creator. Then he reflects that, as a needy person in the fullest sense of the word, he has been unable to fulfill any of his needs by dint of his own strength. It is not by his own efforts that all the basic things he requires are already there for him – earth, water, air oxygen, light, food and all those numerous things which are known to be constituents of the life support system. No, indeed. All are there for him as unconditional gifts. After this discovery, he attempts to understand who is the giver of all these blessings. In this way, he discovers his Lord. As a result of this, an immense amount of love is engendered within him for the Giver. His search then leads him to the question: what is his goal? Then he learns that he cannot reach his desired goal in the present world. This discovery finally makes him extremely