Wisdom Is A Must
3. WISDOM IS A MUST- HOW TO DEVELOP IT
The golden heart is the centre from which all good thoughts and acts can continuously and consistently flow. Continuously, because if you think good, righteous thoughts now and convert them into good acts but later begin to think bad thoughts and convert them into bad acts you are not a reliable person. You are fickle and variable because you are at the mercy of your immature moods and unstable ambitions. One moment you are all love and mercy towards your own child while the next moment you may show the child the door and ask the child to leave and never come back and that for a very laughable reason. In the first instance you could not adjust the dose of your grace towards the child while in the second instance the dose of your anger was excessive. Had you been able to adjust the doses of your reactions to the child you could spare both of you a lot of trouble each pregnant with more troubles down the line. Remember that many fights between near people are over shamefully ridiculous small matters. Obviously we need something more than intelligence and skill with words to smooth our relationships and remain good friends.
What we need is wisdom, I mean more wisdom. What is wisdom? It is that mental and psychological capacity for seeing things holistically and in perspective, being able to tell apart what is humanly good and what is humanly bad in each situation and- a very crucial and- be able to go for the good and not to go for the bad. We sometimes know what is good but are somehow unable to go for it and know what is bad but are unable to resist it. That is lack of wisdom. Wisdom is the full maturation of our mental capacities when we are masters of our thoughts and actions all of which will reflect a nobility of soul and a determination to follow courses of action conducive to more good and satisfaction for more people.
We said that the first element of wisdom is seeing things holistically: This means we should take account of everything we can in our analysis of any situation so that we can identify or diagnose the problem presenting itself to us. Each human situation has several aspects playing a role in its rise and evolution. Mental, emotional, economic…. The list can run long. Take a husband and wife who are frequently quarrelling. The first and foremost factor in the causation of quarrels is always selfishness on the part of each party. If one is not selfish the quarrel is always started by the other party who is selfish. The mature party then either defends itself calmly or gracefully or keeps quite until the immature party runs out of steam. But one can be even better than that. One can return the fire of his attacker by offering roses to the attacker in such a way that the attacker feels ashamed despite not being insulted or looked down at all. This top degree of maturity is a sign of a golden heart and its owner is described by Allah:
“Whose speech is nicer than the one who invites to Allah (highest possible nobility of soul) and himself practices that standard of behaviour and explains “You see, I am a Muslim (a submitter to the demands of man’s noblest moral potential which is next to Allah). Repel each and every evil by what is the very best conduct and you will then see that the one between whom and you is animosity becomes as if he is a warm friend. None can attain this maturity but the showers of patience, none can attain it but those given a great share of spiritual grace” (41: 35)
Suppose both sides to a dispute are mature like this. Any dispute which might have started for some reason will be resolved amicably within minutes. When the two parties to a dispute are golden-hearted people, or rather when the solution of a dispute between two parties are delegated to two mature persons they can solve it as easily as pulling a hair from butter. Unfortunately all nations on earth are dominated by immature majorities who elect equally immature demagogues to rule them and which demagogues are unable to negotiate any disputes in ways that will lead to a peace fair and satisfactory to both parties. Instead each panders and bends to the selfish demands of their clients calculating that the more insoluble and prolonged the dispute becomes the more popular support they get from their side and the more heroic status they gain in their view. All these are surely unwise and originate in that primordial mine of unwisdom called Iblis Satan whom Allah cursed and banished.
If above is so far so good, more is needed to be added to the words about the golden heart or more fully Wise Golden Heart. Capital letters are only meant to impress by emphasis.
We must know that there is more to the wise golden heart. Its loving mercy descends direct from Allah’s Loving Mercy (rahmat) and loving mercy is equally present in Allah’s threats and punishments. One cannot run his life and relate to others entirely by always thinking nicely of others and dealing with them nicely whatever they are saying or doing. A mature person with a wise golden heart is also the best disciplinarian in the sense that he or she knows when softness and incentives make up the right remedy and also when firmness and if necessary punishment must be the medicine. However, the second option is open to us only when we have the legitimate right and the power to administer the punishment which is not always the case. Allah having all the authority and power He needs both threatened and punished people and so did His Prophet and the successors (caliphs) of the Prophet. However, in all such cases the ultimate aim of the disciplining authority is loving merciful, like a righteously disciplining wise patient’s. A wise and timely punishment leaves the punished person, if he has any amount of wisdom, grateful, if not immediately, then later on.
It is not always easy to decide which of the two methods to apply to cause good to people. The matter is only put on a sure and secure basis when the deciding heart is guided by Allah which means it is a wise golden heart. Read if you wish:
“As for those who believe and do good works Allah guides them though their faith…” (10: 9)
As simple as that! Why so simple? Simple because true belief in Allah puts Allah into your heart to rule over it at all times. When Allah is your captain how can your ship fail to be piloted always to safety and prosperity? In fact which heart can become and be called a wise golden heart if not Allah is its Resident Sovereign? Which connection with Allah can ensure our being guided to the most appropriate, sagacious and universally blessing thinking and acting if not belief in Allah? Once you have this connection you have an unbreakable handle or cable keeping you under Allah’s mercifully helping gaze and care and into your heart the gold of loving mercy and all-conquering wisdom are constantly pumped. Read if you wish:
“Whoever rejects the Taghut (Ego-Satan) and instead opts for belief in Allah (adopts Universal Wise Loving Mercy) has just grabbed a handle which knows no breaking” (2: 256)
Wise Golden Heart only arrives when one connects with Allah with an unbreakable connection. Then Allah pours into that person’s heart such treasures that the seven paradises cannot contain or account for. Something more than paradises is in store for the golden-hearted servant, which only Allah knows and can give. Read if you wish:
“Enter ye in there (paradise) in peace and safety. THIS IS THE DAY OF ETERNITY”. In there for them is all they can ever wish for and WITH US IS AN EXTRA MORE” (50: 34- 35). Amen
4. THE ONLY FOOD FOR THE HEART
Man is a living creature in need of food like all other living creatures. This is such an absolute law that even in the Hereafter food will have to be served to man even though the food there shares only names of the foods here and now. Water here, ‘water’ there, meat here, ‘meat’ there, fruits here ‘fruits’ there. These foods will be given to the saved who will then recognise them as similar to the foods of this world but some also will recognise that they are not the same but incomparably superior and full of spiritual stuff. Read if you wish:
“Give the good-news to those who believe and do good works that for them are gardens from under which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with their fruits they say ‘This is what we used to be provided before (while on earth). They are given it in metaphor” (2: 25)
The original word which I translated as ‘metaphor’ is ‘mutashabih’ which also occurs in (3: 7) and refers to metaphorical verses in the Qur’an. We do have bodies in the Hereafter but they are not material like in this world nor the food will be material. That is because material is always changeable and temporary while our existence in the Hereafter should and shall be unchangeable and eternal. We may get a glimpse as to how this could be. In dreams we have many experiences some of which are impossible in our waking state and our experiences include things like eating. But do these experiences change our bodies; for example if we drink water in a dream, on waking do we find that our thirst is gone? If we eat in our dream do we feel full on waking or do we gain weight as a result? Yet, admittedly we enjoy our dream drinkings and eatings all the same. In the perfection and eternity of Allah’s Gardens we can expect to have all the most wonderful experiences of this world infinitely magnified and enhanced yet totally divorced from the fatigues and afflictions many a time associated with them in this world. For simplicity’s sake assume that death opens for us an interminable dream life which will be full of horrors if we have been bad boys and girls in this lower world or full of most exquisite, inalienable experiences of full bliss and joy. Will they be more or less real than this world’s experiences? I am sure they will be incomparably more real not the least because they will be unending and unwakeable from! Here you are!
Now we may move on to our title subject. Which part of man is his most important, precious part and what food does it need? Is it not the ‘heart’, I mean heart in its spiritual, subjective sense? Have what you will in this world- if your heart is not in peace, is not content what is the use of your possessions or achievements? I had once read the famous novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ by Victor Hugo, one of the great masters of world literature. In there the powerful, very learned and feared and respected chief priest of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris is exposed as a very unhappy and therefore evil man, deep unhappiness is a Satanic state and deeply unhappy people feel a desperate need to hurt others and even destroy them if possible. Is not that the state of the Iblis Satan Allah described in His Book?
Every evening this rotten cleric was passing by a place where he was seeing two very poor men sleeping rough under the bridge like street dogs without an owner and a home. He would see them feeding on scraps of food which could only disgust the great man yet these two vagabonds were often cracking jokes and laughing their heads off. “Why these lowly creatures, filthy sinners are so happy while I the great man of God in Paris am so unhappy, so cheerless, so angry?” he used to wonder and grind his teeth in disgust and frustration and utter curses. What was wrong with him? He was starved of heart food- as simple as that. For example he was starved of love, he could not get it and could not give it. He was ashamed of being in burning carnal love for a gipsy street-dancer girl called Esmeralda which girl for her part was in love for a worthless if handsome army captain. In love with Esmeralda was also Quasimodo, the extremely malformed bellringer of Notre Dame. Only Quasimodo’s love for Esmeralda was spiritual, pure and all-sacrificing. Quasimodo was intellectually the most backward and ignorant of the three men but his heart was golden in a way. Eventually it was he who most effectively protected Esmeralda, killed the treacherous chief priest who was chasing and persecuting the girl with salacious intentions and gave up his life for her happily. His spiritual love for Esmeralda was returned by her in full and both died as best friends. Despite their supposedly lowly origins yet very different degrees of physical beauty the two had the same golden hearts.
What was wrong with the chief priest? Why he could not develop a golden heart despite his immense scriptural and spiritual erudition? Why, tradition has it that Iblis knew by heart all one hundred and four scriptures sent to Allah’s prophets and yet had the worst heart in the universe. It must be then that intellectual and academic knowledge in itself can do nothing for a heart if that heart has no spiritual love in it of which love the ultimate source and destination is Allah. Yet, does this mean that intellectual and academic religious knowledge is unnecessary or unconducive to spiritual love? No, it does not. On the contrary, in a right combination it can help as nothing else can. Let me explain.
In chemistry (my speciality) there are substances we call catalysts. A catalyst is sometimes necessary to enable a chemical change to occur; without the catalyst the change is either too slow or more often impossible to proceed. In biochemistry catalysts are everywhere; vitamins are one group of biochemical catalysts which enable many vital chemical changes the body needs to proceed. Remove all vitamins from a person’s diet and whatever amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates you feed him he will surely die not long after. But we must also consider conversely: Feed all the vitamins to a man but give him no proteins, fats and carbohydrates, again he will surely die soon. The same applies to heart and its food.
The catalyst of human heart nutrition is ‘rahmat’ which means loving mercy. Some people are so full of it while some are so devoid of it. Like iblis Satan who has never been known for having or showing rahmat some men and women are like mere intellectual machines with no rahmat to catalyse an evolution of heart into a golden heart. I do not mean that any person can be totally devoid of some degree of rahmat but too little of it is the problem. The more one has of it the more benefit one can derive from one’s intellectual and academic inputs.
Let us take two extreme cases, a person with minimal rahmat and another with maximal rahmat in his heart. Let us give both the same religious education. The man with scant rahmat can become a very learned religious scholar and even the head of a religious hierarchy, like a grand mufti or archbishop or pope. Whatever level he is he will be wily, selfish, manipulative, politically murderously ambitious and at least secretly totally unscrupulous in getting his way. For example among Christian high clerics of the past even assassination was employed to determine a succession to a high church office. Otherwise both the unscrupulous and pious clerics were equally knowledgeable in religion. This perennial fight between the heartless and heartful men of religion has plagued all religious communities as well as their mystical versions like Christian monastic or Sufi groups. All are heavily filtered and subverted and often also hijacked by what we may call unscrupulous spiritual politicians who often succeed in attaining the top. That defining Council of Nicaea in 325 CE of the Christian churchmen was one such victory for the politically more astute but spiritually corrupt faction led by a certain minor cleric called Athanasius of Alexandria! In Islam it was the politically astute and often unscrupulous Muawiya who brought to an end the features of a piety-based community and gave the community an increasingly worldly ethos and orientation. Incidentally we may note that Muawiya was eventually excused even by his chief victim Ali who noted that given the then current slow degeneration of the broad Muslim community Muawiya could be the more suitable person to rule over them.
Now we may check with our Lord Allah how we are faring so far in finding the truth.
“How many generations We had destroyed before them, stronger than them and overrunning countries. Could there be an escape? In this certainly is an admonition for one who has a HEART, gives ear and is a witness” (50: 36- 37)
Did you notice? Allah’s admonitions only work with people who has a heart, which must mean a pure enough, perceptive enough, loving-merciful enough heart. Otherwise every body has a physical heart.
Now this good enough heart cannot survive well with not good enough food. It can only linger or even become ill and turn into a diseased heart. So, let us dig out this Divine food, this heart food from Allah’s Garden which the Qur’an is:
“O mankind! (In this Qur’an) a preaching has come to you from your Lord alongside a CURE for what is in bosoms (the heart) as well as a Guidance and RAHMAT for the believers” 10: 57)
You see? Firstly the Qur’an is a preaching. It aims at both informing us about our spiritual nature (that we are no mere intelligent brutes) and motivating us towards the acquisition of spiritual saving lights. In the course of its action the Qur’an diagnoses and cures any diseases in our hearts, like envy or meanness for example and it also supplies constant guidance to our hearts and last but not least it fills our heart with rahmat. This means that the sign that you are benefiting from a study of Allah’s Book is a growth in your capacity for love and mercy, for kindness and forgiveness. Take your pick! Take all in fact!
All diseases afflicting our hearts must then depart once exposed to Allah’s Word and any missing amount of rahmat must be made up until the heart becomes golden with it!
Now another wonderful verse:
“Nay (not like you say), this (Qur’an) is (a treasure of) explicit proofs in the bosoms (hearts) of those given learning. Only the Wrongdoers fight against our (Qur’anic) proofs (29: 49)
This means that our capacity for appreciating and benefiting from Allah’s Book is in proportion to our purity of heart and amount of true heart-supported knowledge. Those whose heart have grown more golden and are filled by more beneficial, saving knowledge recognise the verses of the Qur’an as home truths like they would recognise their beloved friends coming home after a long separation. Read if you wish:
“Those who were given the Book recognise him as they would recognise their sons. Those who waste their souls- only they fail to believe” (6: 20)
The Prophet had come with the Truth, with the Book of Allah and all those learned in Divine scriptures could recognise him. Yet only the sincere among them could accept and submit to him. Since sincerity is a matter of heart and not intellect it means that Allah’s Word only penetrates and saves a sincere heart, a pure heart, a golden heart.