Hundred Questions - Spiritual Progress
Spiritual Progress
Q33 What are the pre-requisites or basic conditions of spiritual progress? What can be the reason of not being able to progress in `ibadat, despite practising it regularly for a long time?
A33 The basic conditions for spiritual progress are the true and absolute obedience of the Imam of the time, which consists of knowledge and action. That is, one basic condition of spiritual progress is religious knowledge and the other is good deeds. By religious knowledge is meant the knowledge of certainty (`ilmu'l-yaqin), that is, the knowledge by which all doubts and suspicions are removed and questions cease to exist automatically. And by good deeds are meant those deeds, which are in accordance with the pleasure of the Imam of the time.
If a mu'min regularly continues to do `ibadat for a long time, he should have definitely progressed spiritually. However, the difficulty here is that the standard by which you assessed the mu'min is entirely an ordinary standard. This means that the `ibadat that one considers to be regular might not be regular; because there is in it a lack of `ilmu'l-yaqin and also a defect in his good deeds. Further, it is possible that there may be some defect in the procedure of zikr (remembrance).
In this connection refer to one of my books Zikr-i ilahi, which has been translated from Urdu into English by Jan-i `Aziz Faquir Muhammad Hunzai and Zayn Rahim Qasim.
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