Spirit of Islam, June 2017

No! Their own deeds have cast a veil over their hearts. (THE QURAN 83: 14) T HIS verse refers to those who deny the revelation of the Quran indicating a psychological issue concerning those people who are stubborn and heedless. This issue is described in a Hadith as follows: “When a person commits a wrong deed a black spot appears on his heart. If he abandons the wrong deed, seeks forgiveness and repents, then the black spot will be erased from his heart. But If he returns to the wrong deed, the blackness increases until it covers his entire heart.” (Ibn Majah) This Hadith relates a psychological fact in symbolic language. Whenever a person does something wrong but then quickly becomes conscious of what he has done and develops the desire in his heart not to engage in the bad deed again, his heart becomes pure. But if he keeps committing one bad deed after another and does not introspect and neutralize their influence on his heart, then, gradually, his heart becomes insensitive. He begins to live in evil, and truth will have no influence on him. Modern psychological research has shown that there are three major parts of the human mind. They are part of the human mind since birth. These three parts are: 1. The conscious mind 2. The subconscious mind 3. The unconscious mind Experience and research tell us that once a thought enters our mind, it becomes a part of the mind forever. As is known, our mind is actually another name for our personality. This means that once a thought enters our mind, it becomes a part of our personality, so much that if we try to separate it from our personality we cannot do so. Modern psychological research has further clarified this. It is no longer a mysterious belief and has now become a known fact. It has become understandable for us at the intellectual level too. DEVELOPING ONE’S PERSONALITY Positive Thinking Today, most people are drowned in negative thinking. Even if someone seems to be talking positive things, it is almost always only at a very superficial level.