FAITH IS A DISCOVERY
In the chapter Al-Ma’idah (The Table) of the Quran, the story is told of a group who came to the Prophet and accepted him as a prophet:
When they listen to what has been sent down to the Messenger, you see their eyes overflowing with tears, because of the Truth they realized. They say, ‘Our Lord, we believe, so count us among those who bear witness. (5:83)
According to this verse, these people accepted the Prophet’s faith. But their acceptance was not of a simple kind: it was the outcome of marefat, that is, realization of the truth.
What is realization or discovery? It is the result of deep contemplation. When anyone ponders over nature and thinks about himself, he discovers that there is a great mind behind this creation. His study, his observation and contemplation, all lead him to believe that there is this great reality. After this realization, he feels that he has no option but to proclaim the existence of God. The next step is to aver there is no God but the one God.
This declaration inevitably follows surrender before God. One who makes such a declaration not only accepts the truth but he becomes a worshipper of God and a follower of God’s guidance. His thinking, his speech, his behaviour are all coloured in the dye of God. He adopts a God-oriented life. This faith, or iman, revolutionizes one’s thinking. It brings about a sea-change in one’s life.
Faith, or iman, is like a seed. A seed is a growing thing. It grows and grows till it becomes a big tree, with roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits. All these are potential parts of the seed. A tree is an actualization of a seed’s potential.
The same is true of faith, or iman. Faith is like a spiritual seed. When the seed is implanted in a personality, it starts growing. There is everything in this spiritual seed, but everything is the form of potential. When it finds its place in one’s mind, it starts growing and all those things that are part of the divine religion begin to unfold. This process continues till the individual becomes a divine person in the fullest sense of the word.
Faith, or iman, revolutionizes one’s thinking. It brings about a sea-change in one’s life.
Although faith, or iman, is full of potential, it does not grow automatically like the seed of a tree. It requires great endeavour and anyone who wants his personality to grow, must start an ideological struggle. Without this, no one can grow into a full-fledged tree of the divine religion.
An ideological struggle means contemplation, introspection, observation, and developing the ability to draw lessons from different kinds of experiences, accompanied, of course by a study of divine literature. All these processes are paths to spiritual development and when one follows this course he surely will reach his destination. The growth of a tree is controlled by the external laws of physics, but the growth of a divine personality is a self-controlled phenomenon.
