Chain of the Light of Imamat - Reality of Gratitude
Reality of Gratitude
Tags: Gratitude, Favour, Ni`mat, Vegetative Soul, Animal Soul, Human Soul, Punishment, Prophets, Hazrat Nuh
In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
"Whatever is in the heavens and the earth purifies God, and He is the Mighty, the Wise. His is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth; He gives life and causes death and He is Powerful over all things. He is the First, and the Last and the Manifest and the Hidden and He is Knower of all things" (57:1-3).
Gratitude becomes incumbent on receiving the favour of God, as the blessed verse shows: "And verily We gave Luqman wisdom (saying): Give thanks to God." (31:12). However, real gratitude for the special favours granted to man by God, the True Benefactor, is possible to some extent if the way of expressing this gratitude is according to His will. If not, it may not be accepted by Him.
The meaning of true gratitude is to know the purpose of the Benefactor from the realities of His favour and to use it according to His will. An elaboration of this meaning is that it is necessary to acquire the knowledge of the realities of things by carefully observing and reflecting on the position, essence and purpose of every favour, to use it according to His will, to deduce the perfect attributes of the True Benefactor from the beauties of it and to search for His recognition, to consider His favour a munificence and in return to do good for one's own sake and for the sake of His creatures. Finally, one should believe that He, the Wise Creator, by His profound wisdom has strung all physical and spiritual pleasures on the thread of the universe with respect to the order of excellence, so that every wise human being may search day and night for that favour from Him and in which, in addition to its own unique, imperishable and infinite pleasures, are also included other pleasures. Such a favour which contains this all-inclusive pleasure is the Divine vision. True recognition of the favour and its real appreciation is possible at this level.
Favour or ni`mat is the name of anything which causes happiness, comfort and pleasure for man physically or spiritually. But it is true of every favour that in terms of value and pleasure it is better than the preceding one and lesser or inferior to the following one. For instance, think about the nourishment of the plants, animals and mankind. The nourishment of plants is soil, water, air and the effects of fire, which in terms of value and pleasure, is far inferior to that enjoyed by animals. The nourishment of animals is grass, fruit, grain, flesh, etc., which is far better than that enjoyed by plants, but far inferior to that enjoyed by mankind. Since animals use plants and their nourishment, due to the superiority of their animal soul, they can be called the rulers of plants or the vegetative kingdom.
Similarly, the nourishment of mankind, in comparison to that of animals, is far better and superior in value, taste and benefit, but when compared to the spiritual (jalali) nourishment of angels, it is far inferior. Man is undoubtedly the king over animals, plants, minerals and all things of the world, and makes his nourishment from whatever is useful from them. But it must be noted by seekers of spirituality that all the current forms of human nourishment inspite of their merits are, in reality, called animal nourishment. A proof of this is that the question of nourishment arises at the level of soul, which is of three kinds. The first is the vegetative soul, which has the faculties of growth and which is in every kind of plant and tree. Its nourishment has already been mentioned in connection with the nourishment of plants. The second is the animal soul which is in animals of all kinds, and its nourishment has been mentioned in connection with the nourishment of animals. The third is the speaking, rational or human soul.
However, there is still another soul, which is called the Holy Spirit, which is in the Prophets and Awliya', which is distinct from and higher than the (ordinary) human soul. (See Zadu'l-Musafirin, by Hakim Pir Nasir-i Khusraw, Kaviani edition, pp. 212-213).
According to the physical composition of the soul, every plant has only one soul, i.e. vegetative soul, every animal has two, namely, its own animal soul and vegetative soul and man has three souls, his own rational soul and vegetative and animal souls.
As for the special nourishment of the human soul, in which the animals do not share, there is speech, discernment, knowledge, wisdom and ma`rifat, etc. The limits of nourishment for plants, animals and human beings are in an ascending order. Thus the limit of the nourishment of plants is that which they can attain. The upper limit of nourishment for animals is the amount which they are able to eat. From this it is evident that as long as man lives, he cannot dispense with animal nourishment. Therefore, no matter how tasty and delicious the foods he may eat, it is the food of this animal soul. But the real food of man is that which gives strength to the rational soul and intellect, as Hakim Nasir-i Khusraw, may God sanctify his soul, says in this regard:
Chizi-kih suturan-u dadan ba tu sharik and
Minnat na-nihad ba tu ba-dan izid-i dawar
Ni`mat na-buwad anchih suturan bi-khurandash
Nay mulk buwad anchih ba-dast aradash qaysar
The thing which cattle and beasts of prey also share with you;
The Just God does not put you under an obligation for that.
It is not the bounty which animals and beasts of prey also eat;
Nor is it the kingdom which Caesar can also obtain.
To have more knowledge of the favours bestowed on man and the reality of gratitude, reflect on this verse of the Wise Qur'an : "Ma yaf`alu'llahu bi-`adhabikum in shakartum wa-amantum. Wa-kana'llahu shakiran `alima (What concern has Allah for your punishment if you are thankful and believe. God is All-thankful, All-knowing" (4:147)). But on the tablet of ta'wil, this verse means that Allah does not act through your punishment (spiritual exercise) if you appreciate the favour and attain certainty. And Allah causes to be thankful and gives knowledge. That is, if we are thankful to Allah for His favours and believe in Him truly, He will not act through our hardship, rather it will be in comfort, the act in both cases being for our spiritual ascent. According to ta'wil this is the appropriate meaning (of the punishment mentioned in this verse) for several reasons. For, if we take this punishment in the sense of the eternal punishment of the Hereafter, then after mentioning the punishment He would not have drawn our attention towards His attributes of appreciation and teaching knowledge. For, one of the wisdoms of the Wise Qur'an is that the meaning of every verse depends on the words and names mentioned at the end of it. Why not, for after all this is the wisdom-filled speech of the Most Just of judges. Even a person of ordinary intellect, after punishing someone, expresses his action with appropriate words. For instance, either he says: "It is his own fault", or he says: "Did you learn a lesson?" This example should be adequate enough on the meaning of punishment.
In connection with the reality of gratitude, we still need to explain the importance of knowledge. On every occasion, I have tried to show the importance of knowledge and reality, and by the grace of God, the Lord of sciences and realities, I will attempt to do so with sound and cogent proofs. It should be known that God created man in this world for the sake of knowledge. Knowledge is the aim and object of mankind. Thus, God has made knowledge available both physically and spiritually in the form of favours of every kind. Knowledge is also kept in all those words and deeds which man is commanded to do. In short, there is nothing without knowledge. As God Almighty says on behalf of Hazrat Ibrahim: "My Lord has included all things in knowledge; will you not then heed?" (6:81). In this connection, I would like to place before you another reality, which can solve, not only this one problem, but many other problems. That is, God, the Knowing, the Wise has revealed in the Qur'an one (or more) specific virtues of every Prophet mentioned in it. For instance, Hazrat Adam is conferred with the titles of khalifah (Vicegerent), masjud-i mala'ik (the one to whom the angels prostrated) and safi (Chosen); Hazrat Nuh is mentioned as shakur (very grateful); Hazrat Ibrahim is praised as the ideal muwahhid (the one who believes in one God); Hazrat Musa is mentioned as kalimu'llah (God's interlocutor); Hazrat `Isa is called ruhu'llah (Spirit of God); Hazrat Yusuf is called siddiq (the Truthful); Hazrat Ayyub is mentioned as sabir (Patient); Hazrat Dawud is mentioned as having been granted khilafat (Vicegerency); Hazrat Sulayman was given the kingdom. Similarly a specific virtue of all other Prophets is mentioned. And finally, the ummat of Hazrat Muhammad, the Chief of the Prophets was given the glad tiding that on the night of mi`raj (spiritual ascent), God took him to His special private palace. All this is true without doubt. But you should not think that whatever is given to one Prophet, was denied to the others. This is impossible, it can never be so. Rather, God, the Wise, has concealed great wisdom behind the veil of these characteristics of the Prophets, which is that, all these Prophets, by virtue of their respective characteristics stand for the titles of a Holy Book of God, so as to facilitate the seekers of reality.
According to this Divine law, we can learn more about the reality of gratitude from the history of Hazrat Nuh. God, the Majestic and Overpowering, says: "O you descendants of those whom We caused to be borne with Nuh. Surely, he was (kana) a very grateful servant" (17:3). That is, he has many special favours and he knows their complete reality. Kana in Arabic means both "was" and "is". Nuh without tanwin (nunation) means the historic Nuh, and with tanwin, anyone who is like the historic Nuh in every respect. As for the reality of the Ark, God says: "Wa'sna`i'l-fulka bi-a`yunina wa wahyina" (Build the ark by means of Our observations and Our revelation) (11:37). That is, prepare the ark of salvation on the basis of the knowledge of the physical world and the spiritual world. Thus the ark was made of nothing but knowledge. If someone says that Hazrat Nuh's ark is in the museum of such and such a country, I would say that this may be true, but in this verse, only the ark of knowledge is mentioned. Then God says: "We said: Load therein two from every pair (zawjayn ithnayn) and your family" (11:40). That is, when Hazrat Nuh saw all the things of the world with the eye of wisdom, he found endless wisdoms of the Wise Creator in everything and the existence of soul in all things according to their composition was proven to him. He also became certain of the greatness and magnificence of all these things in the luminosity of the spiritual world. Then Hazrat Nuh, by the command of God attained one spiritual pair from each of the five hudud (pl. of hadd, ranks in Isma`ili religious hierarchy) who were in the Imam of the time, and kept them in the ark of knowledge. The five hudud are: the hadd of the oneness of hudud (Universal Command), the hadd of justice or equity (Universal Intellect), the hadd of creation or composition (Universal Soul), the hadd of compilation (Natiq, which he himself attained after this event) and the hadd of ta'wil (Asas). Then the things related to the Intellect and the things related to the Soul became pairs. That is, the things related to the Intellect were male and the things related to the Soul were female and they became pairs among themselves. The pair is called "zawjayn" in the above-mentioned verse (11:40). Similarly, the male things of Natiq with the female things of Asas became pairs and are called "ithnayn" in the above-mentioned verse. And the souls which were merged with the Command became one thing, i.e. their existence became one. This is the reality of the gratitude which Hazrat Nuh had accomplished.
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