The disease of pride

The disease of pride

 

 

‘Truly, Allah likes not the proud.’ (16: 23)

 

O patient of spiritual disease!  If, in your heart, you consider yourself as good because of your knowledge, or your wealth or your lineage or your beauty and are under the impression that I am also something, then remember that this is a dangerous disease among the hidden diseases of your heart.  The person afflicted by this disease does not think of his own sins, then how will he dispel them?  The fear of Allah Most High is removed from the heart of such a person.  This kind of person remains carefree of the reckoning by Allah.  He thinks he has some status with the Lord Almighty and doesn’t listen to any advice.  He thinks of himself as better than the rest. 

 

If you are priding yourself on your knowledge and consider others as nothing more than animals before you, then you are making a huge mistake.  It appears that you think that your studies are a great favor on the creation.  You do not know that knowledge is that through which you recognize yourself, through which you get to know the path of the religion and through which you recognize the Lord Almighty and know the hereafter.  It also means that you acquire knowledge of those things which veil you from Allah Most High.  And that you acquire the knowledge of the things which develop longing and love of Allah Most High and develop humility.  This is knowledge.  O sick human!  You do not study this discipline at all and the knowledge that you acquire, what does it do other create pride and arrogance?

 

What is really astonishing is that people who study the Holy Quran and Hadith and still fall prey to pride.  A saint says that there is no need to be surprised because the exegesis of the Holy Quran and the Hadith are like rain.  It is evenly pure when it comes from the sky.  Whatever greenery it falls on, it acquires the quality of that greenery.  If that plant is bitter, this water also becomes bitter.  If it is sweet, this also becomes sweet.  Similarly, the exegesis of the Holy Quran and Hadith are means of guidance, but for those inward aspect is vile, then the exegesis of the Holy Quran and Hadith do not benefit that person because of that vileness….

 

Performance of good deeds and worship also creates pride.  This kind of person starts thinking that deliverance is for him alone.  He restricts the Mercy of Allah Most High to himself and thinks of others as bereft of deliverance.  If the enemy of this person suffers any harm, this person thinks that it is his miracle.  When knowledge and worship create pride in this manner then what to say of wealth and power?

 

O Patient of arrogance!  These are the kinds of your disease.  You have no worry about treating this fatal disease.  Sit and reflect over the earlier, current and end states of your life.  You yourself will say that such a lowly one is not worthy of any pride.

 

Earlier, you were non-existent.  There was no trace of you.  You are made of soil.  There is nothing lowlier than it.  Then you were the drop of semen, which is by itself impure.  Then you were a glob of blood and a lump of flesh.  These are your origins.  Is this a matter of pride or shame?

 

Don’t even ask about the current condition of yours.  You are stuck in a thousand tribulations like hunger, thirst, disease, clod, heat, pain, sorrow and what not.  There is no peace at any time.  You don’t even know when you will die, when you will go blind or deaf, or when you will go insane or fall ill.  You want to know things, you can’t.  You want to forget some things, you can’t.  Some things enter your thoughts all by themselves.  Some things, you want to think about, but they remain afar.  Pride does not suit such a humiliated one. 

 

You have heard of your beginnings.  Listen to your end as well.  Hear it.  Not even a day passes after your death that you start stinking.  You decay, decompose.  You reek of maggots.  Then you are nothing more than a mound of sand.  That is your beginning.  This is your end.  Then what do you take pride in?

 

Again, you will be resurrected from soil, humiliated and debased.  If it were that like animals you would also perish and be wiped out.  That would have been a lot better.  But this is not the case.  You are raised from your graves and the Day of Judgment has been established.  The Lord Almighty has come forth.  Paradise and hell are before you.  The angels are handing the records of deeds into the hands of each and every person.  Whatever you have done in the whole life is being expressed.  Then, you are feeling humiliation and debasement.  The reckoning is being performed.  Each one is being called and asked:  Why did you do it?  Why?  Why did you eat this?  Why did you sit?  Why did you get up?  Why did you see?  Why did you think?  You cannot think of an answer.  You are being cast into hell.  Then you will say:  If only I were a pig or a dog.  Then I would have been turned to dust and would have been saved from punishment.

 

The one who is worse off than a pig and dog, how can that person have any pride?  This is the easy cure for the affliction of pride.  Even if this is not possible for you or does not benefit you, then woe on your condition!

 

[Excerpted from Kitaab Ul Muhabbat of Hadhrat Muhaddith-e-Deccan]