FROM THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

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 words 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 in Islam is based on two things, at-tafakkur wat-tadabbur (thinking and contemplation) (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 realizes 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, who, in the life Hereafter, will inhabit Paradise. Our most compassionate Lord will say: Dwell in Paradise; you shall have no fear, nor shall you grieve. (7: 49) There is nothing mysterious about spirituality in Islam. It is rather the direct result of the kind of intellectual development that takes place when a believer ponders over the Creator and His creation: he gains something in the process that may be termed spirituality. The source, therefore, of Islamic spirituality is observation and reflection, rather than any sort of mysterious exercises. We learn from the Quran that in the very creation of the universe, the signs of God lie hidden all around us. One who has developed keen