The second attribute of perfection is justice and impartiality. This means
to have no regard for one’s own personal benefits and selfish advantages,
and to carry out the laws of God without the slightest concern for
anything else. It means to see one’s self as only one of the servants of
God, the All-Possessing, and except for aspiring to spiritual distinction,
never attempting to be singled out from the others. It means to consider
the welfare of the community as one’s own. It means, in brief, to regard
humanity as a single individual, and one’s own self as a member of that
corporeal form, and to know of a certainty that if pain or injury afflicts
any member of that body, it must inevitably result in suffering for all
the rest.
The third requirement of perfection is to arise with complete sincerity
and purity of purpose to educate the masses: to exert the utmost effort to
instruct them in the various branches of learning and useful sciences, to
encourage the development of modern progress, to widen the scope of
commerce, industry and the arts, to further such measures as will increase
the people’s wealth. For the mass of the population is uninformed as to
these vital agencies which would constitute an immediate remedy for
society’s chronic ills.
It is essential that scholars and the spiritually learned should undertake
in all sincerity and purity of intent and for the sake of God alone, to
counsel and exhort the masses and clarify their vision with that collyrium
which is knowledge. For today the people out of the depths of their
superstition, imagine that any individual who believes in God and His
signs, and in the Prophets and Divine Revelations and laws, and is a
devout and God-fearing person, must of necessity remain idle and spend his
days in sloth, so as to be considered in the sight of God as one who has
forsaken the world and its vanities, set his heart on the life to come,
and isolated himself from human beings in order to draw nearer to God.
Since this theme will be developed elsewhere in the present text, We shall
leave it for the moment.
Other attributes of perfection are to fear God, to love God by loving His
servants, to exercise mildness and forbearance and calm, to be sincere,
amenable, clement and compassionate; to have resolution and courage,
trustworthiness and energy, to strive and struggle, to be generous, loyal,
without malice, to have zeal and a sense of honor, to be high-minded and
magnanimous, and to have regard for the rights of others. Whoever is
lacking in these excellent human qualities is defective. If We were to
explain the inner meanings of each one of these attributes, “the poem
would take up seventy maunds(25) of paper.”
[PAGES 41–60]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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