1975-December-5

Bilalian News

The Path Of Natural Growth

Imam W. D. Muhammad

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30. So set thou thy face
Steadily and truly to the Faith; 
(Establish) God's handiwork according
To the pattern on which 
He has made mankind : 
No change (let there be) 
In the work (wrought)

By God : that is 
The standard Religion: 
But most among mankind 
Understand not.

Holy Quran – Yusuf Ali Translation – Sura XXX:30
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In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful; Peace and Blessings upon His Servant and His Messenger, Muhammad, forever. Amen. There is no God but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

As -Salaam –Alaikum

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The best way to worship Almighty God is to try to grow your mind (your inner being) in accord with the natural growth pattern established for human beings by God. To properly grow yourself as a human being, you have to grow morally, intellectually, and spiritually. These three areas of growth are the three fundamental elements in your human makeup.


THREE – IN – ONE - GOD

The Christians wrongly identified these three fundamental elements as the "three -in -one god." The Prophet Jesus preached, "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I am in you." (St. John 15:20) He was referring to three persons or bodies: God, himself, and the people.

In this concept of three-in-one, God was the Creator, the son (Jesus) was the will of God manifested in the flesh form that had grown out of bondage to the flesh, and the people represented those people who were in bondage to the flesh.


GROWTH PATH OF HUMAN BEINGS

This same three-in-one concept can be seen in the natural growth pattern of human beings. As a person beginning your growth movement, you struggle under the pull (desire) of the flesh. You can only survive this powerful attraction by developing moral strength. Then you move up from a simple moral body to an intellectual body. At the intellectual level of growth, you have something to depend upon other than just a moral code. Then you will not do things that are improper because you are too intelligent to lower your standards of behavior or to lower your dignity.


THE PATH TO GOD

From the intellectual development, you move on up to the divine development, or the spiritual development. When you reach the level of spiritual development, you can survive without even watching the dictates of intelligence. You become so much in accord with reality that you can walk the path without reading the sign of direction.
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8. And We will make it 
Easy for thee (to follow) 
The simple (Path).

Holy Quran – Yusuf Ali Translation – Sura LXXXVII: 8
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Moral codes enable the common people to walk the path towards God with some degree of direction. Intellectual knowledge enables the intellectual people to walk the path with a higher degree of direction. But spiritual knowledge enables you to walk the path towards God with ease. At this high level you do not have to watch the signs because your own nature has come in accord with the moral purity and the intellectual purity.


JUDGING YOURSELF

In trying to keep this kind of concept of the three-in-one principle in the society, the Gentiles of Europe (Christians) were put on the wrong path. The ungodly of Jews (Jacob) made them to think that this natural principle meant three persons in one.

The Holy Quran speaks of the person that lives in the flesh and who has to be guided by a moral code as a person who is ruled by the forces of the flesh. The intellectual being who has formed as a thinking, intellectual person responds to intelligence rather than responding to emotions. On the intellectual plane, you take on the development of the person that the Holy Quran refers to as "the self-accusing person."

You cannot accuse yourself if you do not have any knowledge of judgment. Once you become a person ruled by intelligence you can look at yourself and judge yourself. The person that the Holy Quran refers to as the "self that has found its rest" is the person that has moved on up to the level where he can walk freely in the world. When you reach that level, you do not feel the effects of gravity because your muscles have gotten so use to them that gravity is cancelled out.


THE PERFECT PEACE

Life is always in motion and it is always trying to find its peace. Life finds peace on a level when it finds form. But life is not satisfied with that lower level of peace and it wants to perfect its peace. That's why the peace that Allah offers us is called the perfect peace. It means that that peace has been completed or perfected and the person has reached the limit of his natural struggle. This means that he has arrived at the abode of perfect peace. When an individual reaches the level that we call the spiritual being, he is at rest. The Holy Quran says that the person on this level is well pleased with his Creator and that his Creator is well pleased with him.


MOVEMENT OF GROWTH

Growth goes vertically and horizontally and the first thing that a person must do is move upward. Moral growth is upward growth. If he doesn't find the particular relationship between himself and something else that will enable him to raise his level, he will remain on one level. He only will grow outwardly or horizontally and he never really will grow in worth or value. In order for an individual to grow in value, he has to make a perpendicular or vertical line of growth.

Moving out horizontally to complete movement on that level, the person has to accept the Hajj, which is the fifth pillar or belief of Islam. Hajj brings the Muslim in touch with people all over the world. When the Hajj was established, it was not a worldwide community because only a local group of people were making the Hajj. So the Hajj was established to bring about a worldwide community.


ECONOMIC ORDER OF HAJJ

Since Islam is a worldwide mission, one day we will have to include in the Hajj members of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the West. When we do this, we will have one human economy. You may say, "I've never heard the Hajj described as an economic thing." The Hajj is an economy that has a currency that is called "zakat" or charity. So go back and study it.

Hajj establishes for us an economic order that gives us heaven or a society (a complete world) that's lifted above the ground world in human principles. This is the heavenly order because it begins from the individual connecting himself with his Creator and moving out horizontally and also growing perpendicularly to that horizontal line. This is what the old ancient cross meant. It was a sign of the universe and it meant that the universe (life creation) moves horizontally and vertically.


IDENTIFYING WITH ONE ANOTHER

God demands that you move out horizontally and that your horizontal movement strengthens the movement towards God. If you keep moving only one way, you are going to stop growing. Unless you recognize that God intends for you to move outward, you will not grow that way.

We pray with one another because that means that we have identified with each other's problems and that we have common needs. In praying together as a group, we move out horizontally. We begin to grow towards each other, expand, combine to form a bigger body.


COMBINATION OF PILLARS

Hajj completes the pillars of Islam because it combines worship of Allah, prayer, charity and fasting in an arch. Each of these is growing but it continues to contain and not lose each other. There is a little charity in prayer, more charity in charity itself and a little charity in fasting and Hajj. Charity strengthens prayer and moves on to the other pillars, not losing anything.

In Hajj we have nearness to Allah along with the other pillars and that's the purpose of the journey. Muslims say that when they make the Hajj, they are going to visit Allah, but they are not actually going to visit Allah physically. When Muslims make the Hajj, they are taking physical steps that will bring them closer to Allah spiritually. We see all of the pillars of Islam shining in the fifth pillar because the Hajj incorporates all of the pillars. This outward movement enables the true Muslim really to move along the vertical line towards God.


PILLARS AND MOVEMENT

A Muslim who prays has more movement and knows more about the relationship and distance between himself and Allah (God) than the Muslim who does not pray and only admits that there is a God.

The Muslim who prays and also gives charity has still more progress along the line between himself and his Maker, the Muslim who fasts progresses even more and the Muslim who wants to make Hajj progresses still more. But the Christian putting emphasis on Jesus and man having faith in God, stretches the vertical line. In stretching one line of growth -horizontal or vertical - the other one stops growing and it gets short.


SYMBOLS IN RELIGION

Life needs movement to manifest and it needs direction to complete its growth, and as scientists in the Nation of Islam, we deal with specifics: Zakat means to grow or to make an increase and salat means to purify. The Arabic word "soom" means to restrain or to deny natural urges to refine the appetite, but in this word also is a message of growth and purification.

In order to speak we need symbols which we get from our environment. People who study the history or evolution of what they call religion in society identify symbols as meanings instead of as symbols. So they would say that early religious people worshipped the sun or fire, which was not necessarily the case. Early religious people used symbols to convey the meanings that they wanted to communicate. The sun, for example, is a symbol of God, of His purity, righteousness and wisdom among many other attributes.


PURIFICATION THROUGH PRAYER

Salat in prayer means to purify through a heating or burning. We know that heating or- burning changes and purifies the form of physical materials. Men discovered fire and used it to cook their meats because it made the meats more agreeable to their appetites and safer to their health. Prayer enables us to get a spiritual relationship to God that is nearer to our appetite for this kind of relationship. As prayer purifies our appetite, it gets out those things that are hurting our relationship with God.

The Nation of Islam offers you the opportunity to learn how to grow yourself towards God and that which He has planned for human beings, His highest creation. Islam is the religion that will provide you with the necessary knowledge for that growth.
Thank you for honoring us with your time to read these few words.

Your Brother, W.D. Muhammad

