THE TWO COURSES
A Sincere Inclination towards Truth
IN the present world, there are two courses open to man. One is the straight path. The other course has many deviations from the straight one. The Quran (16: 9) explains: ‘The straight way leads to God and there are ways which deviate from the right course.’
The straight path is that man should have a central place in his life for his Creator. He should make the Creator his supreme concern. The path that deviates from the right course is that man loses himself in worldly beings and things. He plans his life only in relation to these created things. In the universe, there are only two things: the Creator, and the creation. The religious term for making the Creator one’s sole concern is tawheed, while the religious term for making creation one’s concern is shirk.
Starting with the birth of humankind, in every age God sent prophets, who gave people guidance regarding right and wrong. The mission of all the prophets was one and the same—to invite people towards tawheed and exhort them to save themselves from shirk. It is a fact that just as in every age tawheed was one and the same, in every age shirk too has been the same.
Ancient shirk, or the ancient version of shirk, was based on nature worship. Nature’s status is that of a creation. It has been created by God. But ancient man gave natural objects the status of a deity. He adopted the evil of nature worship. That is, instead of worshipping the Creator, he worshipped the created. This is referred to as the ‘worship of natural phenomena’.
The straight path is that man should hold a central place in his life for his Creator. He should make the Creator his supreme concern. The path that deviates from the right course is that man loses himself in worldly beings and thing
Today also, this shirk remains with its full strength. Man is doing the same thing as before—instead of the Creator, the creatures have become his supreme concern. The difference between ancient shirk and modern shirk is only in terms of external appearances, not in terms of their reality.
Ancient man had made nature an object of worship. Modern man has made nature an object of entertainment. The centre of his devotion earlier was in creation, and it is so now as well.
Modern man’s ideology is based on instant pleasure and gratification: to find immediate pleasures, with no concern for the morrow. Man seeks to derive these pleasures from the bounties of nature provided to him by God. These blessings are a direct provision of God, none have been made by man. It is the Creator who has created all these things.
But modern man has only taken these bounties of nature completely neglecting the Giver. He uses these blessings of God, but he has left the Creator of the blessings aside. Abandoning the Creator, man has selectively appropriated only the creation. He has abandoned a Godoriented life, adopting a worldly life in its place. It is in man’s nature to acknowledge his benefactor. Gratitude is an innate sentiment that arises whenever man is given something. In the present age, man has again directed this sense of gratitude towards the created instead of the Creator. Instead of acknowledging God as the Giver, his heartfelt feelings of gratitude are directed towards the beings and things created by God.
Listen to what people have to say today or read about what they write― you will find many such examples. Anyone can see these examples in his daily life. Here is one such article published in The Times of India, New Delhi, March 18, 2008. The author of the article is Donna Devane.
Be Happy Here and Now
"Gratitude fills my soul as I enjoy my
computer, more about my home, enjoy the
feeling of a hug from my daughter. There is
so much to be grateful for each moment of
each day. I find that where gratitude goes,
joy flows, spend a few moments throughout
the day with thought shifter statements. A
few of the thought shifter statements that I
use are―I am so happy and joyful to believe.
I am so happy and grateful for this wonderful
mind, and body that allows me to enjoy touch,
taste, sound, and movement. I am so happy and grateful for my family,
and friends, and the love we share. I am so happy and grateful for my
computer, my internet, my ability to type and share with friends all
over the world."
It is in man’s nature to acknowledge his benefactor. Gratitude is an innate sentiment that arises whenever man is given something
Today, a number of people are afflicted with tension and stress. What is the reason behind this? It is because man fails to properly nourish this natural urge of gratitude that he possesses. Making full use of the bounties provided by the Creator, he fails to acknowledge the Creator.
This non-acknowledgement or ingratitude is against human nature. This fundamental failure, consciously or unconsciously, is the root cause of tension and stress. In the present-day, man has come up with unnatural solutions for the problems of stress, i.e. expressing gratitude to the things that he has been given, instead of to the Giver of these things. So, people may be thankful to their family and friends, to their computers and their jobs, to the trees and the rivers, but how many are genuinely thankful to the Giver of all these things—God?
Just as the powerful feelings of hunger and thirst, man also possesses the strong emotion of expressing gratitude to his benefactor. By his very nature, man cannot accept something useful without acknowledging the giver. Whenever he is bestowed with generous gifts, his whole personality wants to cry out in gratitude to the giver. No person is bereft of this quality.
All that man has in this world is a gift from the Creator, the Giver of all bounties. Be it man’s own being or everything outside of him― the ‘life-support system’; everything that man has is a unilateral gift from God. This being the case, man’s nature desires to fully acknowledge the Giver of all these blessings.
Among these gifts are those that man receives directly—for instance, oxygen, water and sunlight. And there are those that he gets indirectly. These are things that man has produced through the use of intelligence gifted to him by God, by using the discoveries and resources of nature that God has created—for instance, all sorts of consumer goods.
Peace of mind can be obtained only through the remembrance of God. The Quran tells us clearly: ‘Surely in the remembrance of God, hearts can find comfort.’
All these gifts demand that man should acknowledge and thank their Giver—God—with his full heart and mind. But in line with self-invented philosophies, man willingly grabbed these gifts, but abandoned the Giver of them all. This was an enormous blunder. The result is that a basic demand of human nature—the need to acknowledge and express gratitude to the Giver—remained unaddressed.
This is an issue of internal contradiction or conflict for a man. In the present age, almost every person is living with this contradiction. The present-day phenomenon of tension and stress is a direct result of this same inner contradiction.
It is a fact that peace of mind can be obtained only through the remembrance of God. The Quran tells us clearly: ‘Surely in the remembrance of God, hearts can find comfort.’ (13: 28)