philosophical schools of Spiritual Freedom
by (Martyr) Murtadha Mutahari
And removes from them their burden and the shackles which were upon them.
(7:157)
Last week I mentioned that our discussion consists of three parts: The meaning of
freedom, the two kinds of freedom, namely social and spiritual freedom and the
dependence of these two types of freedom upon one another, especially the
dependence of social freedom on spiritual freedom.
Tonight, I wish to devote myself to the subject of spiritual freedom, its meaning and
its necessity for mankind. This is particularly urgent since today little attention seems
to be paid to spiritual freedom by human societies, which is the cause of many
present troubles. This is so evident that many people consider spiritual freedom as
something abolished, even though the need for it is much greater than in the past.
What does spiritual freedom mean? Freedom requires two sides so that one side
becomes free of the bond of the other. In spiritual freedom what must the human be
free of? Spiritual freedom is freedom from one's self as against social freedom which
is freedom from the bonds of others. One may be asked whether the human being
can be enslaved by the self.
Can a person be both a slave and a slave owner? The answer is in the affirmative. In
the case of animals this may not be true but what about this strange being called the
human being? How is it possible for it to be at the same time a slave and master?
The reason is that the human being is a complex creature and that is a fact which
has been confirmed by religion and philosophy by scientists and psychologists and
about which no doubt exists.
Let me begin by an interpretation of the Quran on Creation which says, "So when I
have shaped him and breathed into him of My spirit, fall you down, bowing
before him." (15:29) It is not necessary to know what this divine spirit means, but it
is enough to know that this earthly being is granted something else which is
unearthly. According to a Tradition, the Prophet says that God created angels and
granted them only intelligence. He created animals and gave them only appetites
and He created man and granted him both intelligence and appetite; an utterance of
the Prophet that has been used in a poem by Rumi. Now, besides these verses of
the Quran and Traditions and what has been affirmed by philosophers and
psychologists, what does spiritual freedom consist of in simple language. We will
begin with something which everyone would understand. Undoubtedly we need food
to live and the more of it the better, and we need clothing and the finer the better and
we require a dwelling and the more magnificent the better. We desire wives and
children, luxury, money and material things. But at one point we may reach a cross-
road where we should keep our honor and nobility and at the same time put up with
poverty, eat dry bread, wear shabby clothes, live in a poor hut and have no money
and be distressed. If we ignore our honor and nobility and submit to abjection, then
all material benefits will be provided for us. We see that many people are not willing
to suffer abasement for the sake of material things while others readily accept this
exchange, even though they and their consciences are ashamed of themselves.
In the Gulistan, Saidi describes two brothers, one of whom was rich and the other
poor. The former was in the service of the government and the latter was an ordinary
worker who secured a livelihood by manial labor. One day thc rich brother said to his
poor brother, "Why don't you accept government service, to be delivered from
hardship and distress?" The poor brother answered, "Why don't you work to be
delivered from abjection?"
That kind of service with all its accompanying wealth means lack of freedom, for, it
involves bowing to others and being humbled. Sa'di goes on to say that according to
the wise, sitting down to eat your own bread is far better than wearing a golden belt
and standing to serve others.
You may be well-versed about this subject but I wish you to analyze it from a
psychological point of view. What feeling makes the human being prefer pain and
hardship, labor and poverty to humbling himself or herself betore others? He calls it
captivity to serve others though it is not of the type of material slavery. It is not his or
her strength that is enslaved but the spirit. There is a quatrain attributed to Ali, peace
be upon him, saying, "If you desire to live freely, labor like a slave, work and suffer
pain and shut your eyes from Adam's offspring whoever they may be, even from
Hatam Ta'i (a heroic figure famous for his generosity in pre-Islamic Arabia). So have
no expectation not only from mean people but also from the generous."
He goes on to say that when a job is offered to someone, that person considers it
below his or her dignity to accept it. He or she thinks every kind of manual labor as
mean. But Ali, peace be upon him, believes that every kind of work and labor is
better than extending your hand before others begging for something. He says,
"Nothing is worse than going to others to beg for something."
Having no need of others means being superior to them. Once I came across a
remark of the poet Hafiz who was an extraordinarily eloquent man and had a deep
respect for Ali, peace be upon him. He quotes nine sayings of his which are relevant
to our discussion, one of which is, "You may be in need but remember that if you
have need of someone, you still turn yourself into his slave. But if you do away with
that need, you will be his equal and if you show benevolence to someone, you will be
his master."
So you see that your need makes you someone's slave What kind of slavery?
Slavery of spirit. These sayings are fine but today they are disregarded since
mankind prefers to discuss other problems and pays little attention to ethical ones.
Again Ali, peace be upon him, says, "Greed means perpetual slavery." Thus he
considers greed worse than slavery. Here then, spiritual slavery is mentioned as
something worse than physical slavery. There is also slavery to wealth against which
all moralists have warned mankind.
Another saying of Ali is, "The world is a passage not a residence." Again he says,
"There are two groups of people in the world." He continues, "One of these two
groups come and sell and enslave themselves and go and the others come and buy
their freedom and go." These two attitudes can also be applied to wealth, either to be
a slave of wealth or free from it. A person should say that as he or she must not be a
slave to riches, he or she should say, "I am a human being. Why should I make
myself a slave of inanimate things like gold and silver, land and other things?"
But the truth is that when a person thinks the self to be a slave of wealth, that person
is in fact a slave to his or her mental characteristics, a slave to greed and one's
animal nature. For inanimate things like money, land, machine and even animals
have no power to enslave that person. When one ponders deeply over this matter,
one finds the source of slavery to lie in one's own peculiarities such as greed, lust,
anger and carnal desires.
The Quran says, "Have you noticed someone who 11as made his carnal desires his
god?' Wealth itself is not to blame when a person is warned against his or her own
desires. Thus if one liberates oneself from the bond of one's wicked desires, one will
realize that one is not at the service of wealth.
It is then that one finds one's own true worth and understands the significance of this
verse of the Quran, "All We have created on the earth is for you. " Thus riches are
at the service of the human being and not vice versa. If so, then, envy and avarice
have no meaning and if one engages in them, one is enslaving oneself. There are
two stages for the human being: A lower, animal stage and a higher, human one.
The Prophets are sent to preserve the spiritual freedom of humanity. What does that
mean? It means preventing human honor, humanity, intelligence and conscience
from being subjugated to its own lust, passion and love of profits. If you overcome
your passion, you are free. If you conquer your lust and not vice versa, you are free.
If you are in a position to gain an illegitimate profit, but your faith and conscience and
intelligence forbid you to do so, you have overcome your desire and then you can
say that you are really spiritually free.
If you see a woman, but you check your lustful desires and obey your conscience,
then you are a free human being. But if your eyes, ears, and stomach incite you to
satisfy them by whatever means, then you are their slave. The human being is ruled
by two types of ego: An animal ego and a human one. This fact and this contrast are
well illustrated by Rumi in a story of Majnun (in eastern literature, Majnun is the
equivalent of Romeo and Laila is the equivalent of Juliet) and the camel.
The story goes that Majnun was riding a camel intending to visit Laila's home. The
camel happened to have a baby camel and Majnun, in order to ride faster to his
destination, confined the baby camel to the house. He was deep in thought about his
Beloved while the camel was worried about its young. Every moment Majnun
absentmindedly let the reins loose, the camel turned back towards home. This was
repeated several times until the camel collapsed. The poet digresses to say that thc
human being has two kinds of inclinations: that of the spirit and that of the body.
If you wish to be free in spirit, you cannot be a glutton, a woman-worshipper, a
money-lover, a lustful person of passion. I have come across a narrative in the Nahj
ulbalagha which says that one day the Prophet went among the Companions (the
ansar who were the poor followers of the Prophet in Medina who had migrated there.
The Prophet first let them stay in a mosque, but a divine command was issued to him
to find another home for them since a mosque was not a proper place to live in and
they obeyed the order. Subsequently, they lived in a large shelter near the mosque).
One of them said to the Prophet, "I feel as if the whole world is worthless in my
eyes." He did not mean that he made a similar use of stones and gold but that
neither of them had the power to attract him. The Prophet looked at him and said, "
Now I can say that you are free." Thus we can say that spiritual freedom is in itself
something real.
We can give other reasons to show that the human being's personality is complex
and that one can either be spiritually free or a slave. God Almighty has granted this
power to a person to be one's own judge. In society, a judge stands apart from the
plaintiff and defendant. Have you ever heard a person to be his own plaintiff and
defendant and judge, all at the same time?
A person is called just. What is a just human being? Does it not mean that a person
can judge impartially about one's own problems and issue a verdict against one
when guilty? Does this not show the complex nature the human being? Many a time
you have seen people who judge fairly about themselves and prefer the rights of
others to their own. The late Sayyid Husain Kuh Kamari who was a great religious
authority with a following and an uncle o the late Ayatullah Hujjat Kuh Kamari who
was our teacher was such a man. It is narrated about him that he had theological
class in Najaf which had not yet won the reputation it had later on, especially as his
stay in Najaf had not been long for he had been in the habit of travelling here and
there to benefit from the teachings of the great masters in various towns such as
Mashhad, Isfahan and Kashan.
The late Shaykh Ansari who was dressed poorly and whose eyes suffered from
trachoma happened to teach in the same mosque as Sayyid Husain, each in turn,
the Shaykh first and Sayyid Husain next, without meeting each other. One day the
latter happened to arrive an hour earlier than usual. As there was no time to go home
and come back, he thought he would wait there for his pupils to arrive. He noticed a
peculiar looking Shaykh sitting there teaching two or three fellows. He sat in a corner
and could hear the Shaykh's words. He found them to be profound and wise. It was a
strange experience for a great scholar like him to meet an unknown but erudite
teacher. He decided to go earlier to the mosque once more to see how things went.
The second visit proved to be as beneficial as the first and he found the Shaykh very
learned and in fact more of a scholar than himself. On repeating the experience for
the third time, he was fully convinced of the man's profound knowledge. So he
decided to join the small class and when his own pupils arrived, he said to them,"I
have news for you. That Shaykh is much more learned than I am as I have
discovered and I advise you to accompany me to join his class." They arose together
and attended the Shaykh's class.
What is the implication of such fairness? Sayyid Husain turned himself into a pupil of
Ansari and gave up his claim to being an authority. He must have felt, as we do, what
respect and mastership are and must have been pleased at being an authority. And
yet his noble and free spirit allowed him to judge fairly between himself and that man,
and issue a verdict against himself. This is proof of the human being's complex
personality. A person commits a sin and then blames the self. What is this prick of
conscience? Exploiting governments train individuals in such a way as to kill their
conscience . And yet when that conscience is supposed to be dead, a small light is
noticed to scatter its beams at its proper time. The pilot of the plane who bombed
Hiroshima was actually trained for such a crime but when he dropped his bomb and
saw the city burning and the innocent men and women and children who had no
connection with war, being annihilated, he felt spiritually sick. In America they gave
him a fine welcome but they could not check that torture of conscience which led him
eventually to a lunatic asylum. The Quran says, "Nay, I swear by the Self-
reproaching soul ... " (75:2).
Ali, peace be upon him, says, "He who is not granted a preacher within himself by
God, will not be affected by other's preaching." Do not deceive yourself into thinking
that you will be influenced by others if you are not influenced by your own
conscience. One of our religious injunctions is to judge ourselves and issue a verdict
against ourselves when necessary. "Call yourself to account before you are called to
account." "Weigh yourself before you are weighed for your deeds on the Day of
Resurrection."
All these show the human being's complex personality which has a lower animal side
and higher human side. Spiritual freedom means that the higher side is free from the
lower one.
In connection with self-punishment, I remember a case related to Hadrat Ali. A man
came to him to repent, supposing that by saying the sentence of repentance,
everything would be all right. Ali reprimanded him sharply by saying, "May your
mother mourn for you. Do you know what repentance means? It is very much higher
than saying a sentence." Then he told the man that repentance is based on several
things: Two principles, two conditions of acceptance and two conditions of
completion. That is, a total of six points.
He then explained this by saying, "The first principle is that one should be truly
penitent of one's past wicked deeds. The second is to decide never to commit that
sin in the future. The third is to grant people their right if one owes it to them. The
fourth is to perform the obligatory devotions which one may have forsaken." The last
two points, Ali, peace be upon him, mentioned are most relevant to my discourse.
They are: Fifthly, to melt down the flesh that is grown on you by lustfulness through
sorrow and constant grief; and lastly, to give this body which has in the past been
addicted to the pleasure of sin, the pain of worship and devotion.
Have there been people in the past who have reached this stage? Yes. There have.
Today we may forget that repentance exists. But we can cite a fine example of it by
mentioning Mulla Husain Quli Hamadani who was a great moralist of modern times
and a pupil of the great religious scholars, the later Mirza Shirazi and Shaykh Ansari.
A sinful man goes to him to be guided. When the man came back after a few days,
he could hardly be recognized due to his extraordinary leanness. The Mulla used
neither a whip nor a weapon nor a threat. But he could offer true spiritual guidance.
He managed to awaken that man's conscience to fight his lust and passion.
The most significant program of the prophets is to provide spiritual freedom. Self-
purification is in fact spiritual freedom. The Quran says, "Prosperous is he who
purifies it and failed has he who seduces it." (91:9-10)
The greatest damage of our time is speaking of freedom and confining it to social
freedom. Spiritual freedom is never spoken of and, in consequence, social freedom
is not secured. A great crime is committed in our time in the form of philosophy and
philosophical schools totally ignoring the human being, its personality, spiritual honor
and God's revelation, "I breathed into him of My Spirit,"is quite forgotten. They
deny that the human being has two aspects an animal side and a human one. They
claim that this human being is no different from animals and is subject to the survival
of the fittest. This means that each individual' effort is for his or her own interests.
Can you imagine how much damage this attitude has done to humanity? They say
that life is a battle and the world a battlefield. They also say that a right is what one
seizes, not what one ,rants. But the truth is that a right must both be taken and given
and not only something which is snatched by force.
The prophets did not come to make such a statement that a right must be seized by
force. They came to persuade the oppressed to secure their rights. They also
compelled the oppressor to rise against their evil deeds and grant others their rights.
In conclusion I pray God to liberate us all from our carnal desires as he has done for
truly generous beings; and to grant us social freedom and blessings in this and the
next world; to acquaint us with the facts of Islam; to meet our legitimate needs and to
grant salvation to our deceased ones.
by (Martyr) Murtadha Mutahari
And removes from them their burden and the shackles which were upon them.
(7:157)
Last week I mentioned that our discussion consists of three parts: The meaning of
freedom, the two kinds of freedom, namely social and spiritual freedom and the
dependence of these two types of freedom upon one another, especially the
dependence of social freedom on spiritual freedom.
Tonight, I wish to devote myself to the subject of spiritual freedom, its meaning and
its necessity for mankind. This is particularly urgent since today little attention seems
to be paid to spiritual freedom by human societies, which is the cause of many
present troubles. This is so evident that many people consider spiritual freedom as
something abolished, even though the need for it is much greater than in the past.
What does spiritual freedom mean? Freedom requires two sides so that one side
becomes free of the bond of the other. In spiritual freedom what must the human be
free of? Spiritual freedom is freedom from one's self as against social freedom which
is freedom from the bonds of others. One may be asked whether the human being
can be enslaved by the self.
Can a person be both a slave and a slave owner? The answer is in the affirmative. In
the case of animals this may not be true but what about this strange being called the
human being? How is it possible for it to be at the same time a slave and master?
The reason is that the human being is a complex creature and that is a fact which
has been confirmed by religion and philosophy by scientists and psychologists and
about which no doubt exists.
Let me begin by an interpretation of the Quran on Creation which says, "So when I
have shaped him and breathed into him of My spirit, fall you down, bowing
before him." (15:29) It is not necessary to know what this divine spirit means, but it
is enough to know that this earthly being is granted something else which is
unearthly. According to a Tradition, the Prophet says that God created angels and
granted them only intelligence. He created animals and gave them only appetites
and He created man and granted him both intelligence and appetite; an utterance of
the Prophet that has been used in a poem by Rumi. Now, besides these verses of
the Quran and Traditions and what has been affirmed by philosophers and
psychologists, what does spiritual freedom consist of in simple language. We will
begin with something which everyone would understand. Undoubtedly we need food
to live and the more of it the better, and we need clothing and the finer the better and
we require a dwelling and the more magnificent the better. We desire wives and
children, luxury, money and material things. But at one point we may reach a cross-
road where we should keep our honor and nobility and at the same time put up with
poverty, eat dry bread, wear shabby clothes, live in a poor hut and have no money
and be distressed. If we ignore our honor and nobility and submit to abjection, then
all material benefits will be provided for us. We see that many people are not willing
to suffer abasement for the sake of material things while others readily accept this
exchange, even though they and their consciences are ashamed of themselves.
In the Gulistan, Saidi describes two brothers, one of whom was rich and the other
poor. The former was in the service of the government and the latter was an ordinary
worker who secured a livelihood by manial labor. One day thc rich brother said to his
poor brother, "Why don't you accept government service, to be delivered from
hardship and distress?" The poor brother answered, "Why don't you work to be
delivered from abjection?"
That kind of service with all its accompanying wealth means lack of freedom, for, it
involves bowing to others and being humbled. Sa'di goes on to say that according to
the wise, sitting down to eat your own bread is far better than wearing a golden belt
and standing to serve others.
You may be well-versed about this subject but I wish you to analyze it from a
psychological point of view. What feeling makes the human being prefer pain and
hardship, labor and poverty to humbling himself or herself betore others? He calls it
captivity to serve others though it is not of the type of material slavery. It is not his or
her strength that is enslaved but the spirit. There is a quatrain attributed to Ali, peace
be upon him, saying, "If you desire to live freely, labor like a slave, work and suffer
pain and shut your eyes from Adam's offspring whoever they may be, even from
Hatam Ta'i (a heroic figure famous for his generosity in pre-Islamic Arabia). So have
no expectation not only from mean people but also from the generous."
He goes on to say that when a job is offered to someone, that person considers it
below his or her dignity to accept it. He or she thinks every kind of manual labor as
mean. But Ali, peace be upon him, believes that every kind of work and labor is
better than extending your hand before others begging for something. He says,
"Nothing is worse than going to others to beg for something."
Having no need of others means being superior to them. Once I came across a
remark of the poet Hafiz who was an extraordinarily eloquent man and had a deep
respect for Ali, peace be upon him. He quotes nine sayings of his which are relevant
to our discussion, one of which is, "You may be in need but remember that if you
have need of someone, you still turn yourself into his slave. But if you do away with
that need, you will be his equal and if you show benevolence to someone, you will be
his master."
So you see that your need makes you someone's slave What kind of slavery?
Slavery of spirit. These sayings are fine but today they are disregarded since
mankind prefers to discuss other problems and pays little attention to ethical ones.
Again Ali, peace be upon him, says, "Greed means perpetual slavery." Thus he
considers greed worse than slavery. Here then, spiritual slavery is mentioned as
something worse than physical slavery. There is also slavery to wealth against which
all moralists have warned mankind.
Another saying of Ali is, "The world is a passage not a residence." Again he says,
"There are two groups of people in the world." He continues, "One of these two
groups come and sell and enslave themselves and go and the others come and buy
their freedom and go." These two attitudes can also be applied to wealth, either to be
a slave of wealth or free from it. A person should say that as he or she must not be a
slave to riches, he or she should say, "I am a human being. Why should I make
myself a slave of inanimate things like gold and silver, land and other things?"
But the truth is that when a person thinks the self to be a slave of wealth, that person
is in fact a slave to his or her mental characteristics, a slave to greed and one's
animal nature. For inanimate things like money, land, machine and even animals
have no power to enslave that person. When one ponders deeply over this matter,
one finds the source of slavery to lie in one's own peculiarities such as greed, lust,
anger and carnal desires.
The Quran says, "Have you noticed someone who 11as made his carnal desires his
god?' Wealth itself is not to blame when a person is warned against his or her own
desires. Thus if one liberates oneself from the bond of one's wicked desires, one will
realize that one is not at the service of wealth.
It is then that one finds one's own true worth and understands the significance of this
verse of the Quran, "All We have created on the earth is for you. " Thus riches are
at the service of the human being and not vice versa. If so, then, envy and avarice
have no meaning and if one engages in them, one is enslaving oneself. There are
two stages for the human being: A lower, animal stage and a higher, human one.
The Prophets are sent to preserve the spiritual freedom of humanity. What does that
mean? It means preventing human honor, humanity, intelligence and conscience
from being subjugated to its own lust, passion and love of profits. If you overcome
your passion, you are free. If you conquer your lust and not vice versa, you are free.
If you are in a position to gain an illegitimate profit, but your faith and conscience and
intelligence forbid you to do so, you have overcome your desire and then you can
say that you are really spiritually free.
If you see a woman, but you check your lustful desires and obey your conscience,
then you are a free human being. But if your eyes, ears, and stomach incite you to
satisfy them by whatever means, then you are their slave. The human being is ruled
by two types of ego: An animal ego and a human one. This fact and this contrast are
well illustrated by Rumi in a story of Majnun (in eastern literature, Majnun is the
equivalent of Romeo and Laila is the equivalent of Juliet) and the camel.
The story goes that Majnun was riding a camel intending to visit Laila's home. The
camel happened to have a baby camel and Majnun, in order to ride faster to his
destination, confined the baby camel to the house. He was deep in thought about his
Beloved while the camel was worried about its young. Every moment Majnun
absentmindedly let the reins loose, the camel turned back towards home. This was
repeated several times until the camel collapsed. The poet digresses to say that thc
human being has two kinds of inclinations: that of the spirit and that of the body.
If you wish to be free in spirit, you cannot be a glutton, a woman-worshipper, a
money-lover, a lustful person of passion. I have come across a narrative in the Nahj
ulbalagha which says that one day the Prophet went among the Companions (the
ansar who were the poor followers of the Prophet in Medina who had migrated there.
The Prophet first let them stay in a mosque, but a divine command was issued to him
to find another home for them since a mosque was not a proper place to live in and
they obeyed the order. Subsequently, they lived in a large shelter near the mosque).
One of them said to the Prophet, "I feel as if the whole world is worthless in my
eyes." He did not mean that he made a similar use of stones and gold but that
neither of them had the power to attract him. The Prophet looked at him and said, "
Now I can say that you are free." Thus we can say that spiritual freedom is in itself
something real.
We can give other reasons to show that the human being's personality is complex
and that one can either be spiritually free or a slave. God Almighty has granted this
power to a person to be one's own judge. In society, a judge stands apart from the
plaintiff and defendant. Have you ever heard a person to be his own plaintiff and
defendant and judge, all at the same time?
A person is called just. What is a just human being? Does it not mean that a person
can judge impartially about one's own problems and issue a verdict against one
when guilty? Does this not show the complex nature the human being? Many a time
you have seen people who judge fairly about themselves and prefer the rights of
others to their own. The late Sayyid Husain Kuh Kamari who was a great religious
authority with a following and an uncle o the late Ayatullah Hujjat Kuh Kamari who
was our teacher was such a man. It is narrated about him that he had theological
class in Najaf which had not yet won the reputation it had later on, especially as his
stay in Najaf had not been long for he had been in the habit of travelling here and
there to benefit from the teachings of the great masters in various towns such as
Mashhad, Isfahan and Kashan.
The late Shaykh Ansari who was dressed poorly and whose eyes suffered from
trachoma happened to teach in the same mosque as Sayyid Husain, each in turn,
the Shaykh first and Sayyid Husain next, without meeting each other. One day the
latter happened to arrive an hour earlier than usual. As there was no time to go home
and come back, he thought he would wait there for his pupils to arrive. He noticed a
peculiar looking Shaykh sitting there teaching two or three fellows. He sat in a corner
and could hear the Shaykh's words. He found them to be profound and wise. It was a
strange experience for a great scholar like him to meet an unknown but erudite
teacher. He decided to go earlier to the mosque once more to see how things went.
The second visit proved to be as beneficial as the first and he found the Shaykh very
learned and in fact more of a scholar than himself. On repeating the experience for
the third time, he was fully convinced of the man's profound knowledge. So he
decided to join the small class and when his own pupils arrived, he said to them,"I
have news for you. That Shaykh is much more learned than I am as I have
discovered and I advise you to accompany me to join his class." They arose together
and attended the Shaykh's class.
What is the implication of such fairness? Sayyid Husain turned himself into a pupil of
Ansari and gave up his claim to being an authority. He must have felt, as we do, what
respect and mastership are and must have been pleased at being an authority. And
yet his noble and free spirit allowed him to judge fairly between himself and that man,
and issue a verdict against himself. This is proof of the human being's complex
personality. A person commits a sin and then blames the self. What is this prick of
conscience? Exploiting governments train individuals in such a way as to kill their
conscience . And yet when that conscience is supposed to be dead, a small light is
noticed to scatter its beams at its proper time. The pilot of the plane who bombed
Hiroshima was actually trained for such a crime but when he dropped his bomb and
saw the city burning and the innocent men and women and children who had no
connection with war, being annihilated, he felt spiritually sick. In America they gave
him a fine welcome but they could not check that torture of conscience which led him
eventually to a lunatic asylum. The Quran says, "Nay, I swear by the Self-
reproaching soul ... " (75:2).
Ali, peace be upon him, says, "He who is not granted a preacher within himself by
God, will not be affected by other's preaching." Do not deceive yourself into thinking
that you will be influenced by others if you are not influenced by your own
conscience. One of our religious injunctions is to judge ourselves and issue a verdict
against ourselves when necessary. "Call yourself to account before you are called to
account." "Weigh yourself before you are weighed for your deeds on the Day of
Resurrection."
All these show the human being's complex personality which has a lower animal side
and higher human side. Spiritual freedom means that the higher side is free from the
lower one.
In connection with self-punishment, I remember a case related to Hadrat Ali. A man
came to him to repent, supposing that by saying the sentence of repentance,
everything would be all right. Ali reprimanded him sharply by saying, "May your
mother mourn for you. Do you know what repentance means? It is very much higher
than saying a sentence." Then he told the man that repentance is based on several
things: Two principles, two conditions of acceptance and two conditions of
completion. That is, a total of six points.
He then explained this by saying, "The first principle is that one should be truly
penitent of one's past wicked deeds. The second is to decide never to commit that
sin in the future. The third is to grant people their right if one owes it to them. The
fourth is to perform the obligatory devotions which one may have forsaken." The last
two points, Ali, peace be upon him, mentioned are most relevant to my discourse.
They are: Fifthly, to melt down the flesh that is grown on you by lustfulness through
sorrow and constant grief; and lastly, to give this body which has in the past been
addicted to the pleasure of sin, the pain of worship and devotion.
Have there been people in the past who have reached this stage? Yes. There have.
Today we may forget that repentance exists. But we can cite a fine example of it by
mentioning Mulla Husain Quli Hamadani who was a great moralist of modern times
and a pupil of the great religious scholars, the later Mirza Shirazi and Shaykh Ansari.
A sinful man goes to him to be guided. When the man came back after a few days,
he could hardly be recognized due to his extraordinary leanness. The Mulla used
neither a whip nor a weapon nor a threat. But he could offer true spiritual guidance.
He managed to awaken that man's conscience to fight his lust and passion.
The most significant program of the prophets is to provide spiritual freedom. Self-
purification is in fact spiritual freedom. The Quran says, "Prosperous is he who
purifies it and failed has he who seduces it." (91:9-10)
The greatest damage of our time is speaking of freedom and confining it to social
freedom. Spiritual freedom is never spoken of and, in consequence, social freedom
is not secured. A great crime is committed in our time in the form of philosophy and
philosophical schools totally ignoring the human being, its personality, spiritual honor
and God's revelation, "I breathed into him of My Spirit,"is quite forgotten. They
deny that the human being has two aspects an animal side and a human one. They
claim that this human being is no different from animals and is subject to the survival
of the fittest. This means that each individual' effort is for his or her own interests.
Can you imagine how much damage this attitude has done to humanity? They say
that life is a battle and the world a battlefield. They also say that a right is what one
seizes, not what one ,rants. But the truth is that a right must both be taken and given
and not only something which is snatched by force.
The prophets did not come to make such a statement that a right must be seized by
force. They came to persuade the oppressed to secure their rights. They also
compelled the oppressor to rise against their evil deeds and grant others their rights.
In conclusion I pray God to liberate us all from our carnal desires as he has done for
truly generous beings; and to grant us social freedom and blessings in this and the
next world; to acquaint us with the facts of Islam; to meet our legitimate needs and to
grant salvation to our deceased ones.