What are the Means of Attaining Tazkiyah?
English book, p. 233
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
WHAT ARE THE MEANS OF ATTAINING TAZKIYAH? Spirituality is, in fact, a sublime state of realization of the truth. It has nothing in common with some vague state of ecstasy. It follows that true spirituality is that state which can be attained at the level of the mind, rather than at the level of the heart. Due to a lack of awareness of this reality, man has largely remained deprived of true spirituality throughout the entire human history. What he regarded as spirituality was not spirituality. It was due to this lack of awareness of the truth on his part that he failed to progress towards true spirituality. There is no tragedy greater than this in all of human history. WHAT ARE THE MEANS OF ATTAINING TAZKIYAH? The real means of attaining the ends of tazkiyah is for man to reflect on the signs of God, activate his thinking, and through continuous reflection, discover the deeper realities of things. Traditionally, some things are considered to be the means of attaining tazkiyah, such as, supererogatory prayers, recitation of the Quran, prophetic prayers, meditation, companionship, taking lessons from the lives of the “saints”, etc. According to this thinking, tazkiyah is like a fixed course, or something to be learned from a manual. However, the truth is that there is no fixed course for

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