A journey within the homeland — you do not leave the homeland, and yet you are on a journey. One meaning of…

A journey within the homeland — you do not leave the homeland, and yet you are on a journey. One meaning of this is that the homeland of the human soul is its body. To be on a journey without leaving this body. The soul is, as it were, inside the body, yet over the years it sees a great many stations. Some of these stations are called joy, some are called sorrow. Some people feel as if they are walking in a circle: what they saw yesterday comes back again today. Yesterday he left the station where he had stopped, yet he comes out in front of that same station again. But even to understand this, a deep heart and mind are needed. This is stagnation, but the true journey is the journey the soul makes from the earth to the sky. This journey too takes place while it is inside the body. The one who committed a sin yesterday meets the same sin today as well. For him the days pass in a form made up only of sins and rebellion. Sin is like the whirlpool of a river — you do not flow on, you do not escape, you spin round and round in one place, or perhaps you sink to the bottom of the river — you perish. You find salvation from this whirlpool by grasping the rope of istighfar, seeking forgiveness, and climbing aboard the ship of repentance. Being free of sin and busy with good deeds, a person now begins to rise. Truths that others do not see are revealed to him, and stations not granted to others are opened. This is the real journey. Society consists of different strata. There is a difference between an ordinary worker and a person who reads books and pursues knowledge. If the worker, being constantly occupied with labor, remains unaware of the wisdom of knowledge, the person of knowledge comes to possess wisdom and leadership. Today it is customary to call those who have received higher education and work as writers, poets, journalists, teachers and scholars the intelligentsia, the enlightened. Raising society up from the whirlpool of despondency lies on the shoulders of this stratum. Just as the journey of the human soul takes place within the body, the soul of society also has its journey to the heavens. They say that Hell is beneath the seven layers of the earth and Paradise above the seven layers of the sky. The body is from the earth, the soul is from the sky. Following the desires of the body is falling to the earth and, in the end, tumbling into Hell; attaining the desires of the soul is rising to the heavens and, as a result, taking Paradise as one’s abode. Personalities who call themselves intellectuals should live toward this deep goal and lead society in this direction. It would be good for young men stepping toward the great life to know that in the future they will certainly belong to some stratum within society. The things a young man does today will place him among those who are occupied with these very things. If he does good deeds, he will join the ranks of the good; if he does bad deeds, he will mix in with the bad. What we want to say is this: wherever a person may be, he should be on the path of bringing benefit to others. Doing good is the most beautiful of deeds. Worship and obedience you do for yourself, but bringing benefit to people is true nobility. Goodness means erasing your own name and fighting for the honor of others. Going hungry yourself and feeding another. Giving up your own comfort for the comfort of another without demanding anything in return. One must be certain that sincere goodness is sure to be punished with evil. Love is sure to be tested by hatred, compassion by oppression, loyalty by betrayal, purity by impurity. This test has two purposes — to temper you, to make you strong, and to check that you are worthy. One can save people from hunger by giving them bread and from thirst by giving them water, but leading those held captive by lies out of darkness into light with the light of truth is the hardest of all. It is nothing for the blind, whose eyes have never seen the light, to kill you out of fear of the light. The greatest goodness is handing humanity the mirror of knowledge and wisdom that reflects the truth. But be ready: there is a great chance they will break the mirror and slaughter you with its shards. Do not fear this; this execution will bring you to eternity. Young people who are going to take the path of knowledge should be on their guard, for today among those who call themselves scholars there are very many envious ones; among those who call themselves people of knowledge there are many who have resigned themselves to death. By envious we mean one who cannot bear to see someone whose knowledge has grown beyond his own; indeed, he learned knowledge for the sake of prestige, and now, if another’s knowledge grows, he feels as if his prestige has been taken away.

The scholar who has resigned himself to death is a person who has stopped studying, has ceased spreading knowledge, lives only to make a living, and has left the path of knowledge for the sake of position and a chair. The searching, discoveries and achievements of young people give him no joy; he does not seek solutions with new ideas for the problems of a brazen age; his zeal has died; they do not support one another; he does not state the truths; he has become one who does not budge even if kicked, and has grown used to the saying “the dog lies down, the scribe stays put.” Can such a scholar be called alive? He is dead; he chose death of his own free will, whereas a scholar is one who endures toil tirelessly every day, who works joining night to dawn and dawn to night, who spreads his knowledge. The soul of a nation is knowledge. If gatherings of knowledge multiply, if gatherings of knowledge are crowded, if a people rises a little above the worry of the stomach and begins to think of the worry of the heart and soul, then it is a people, a nation, a community. Otherwise, how does it differ from a herd of unconscious creatures?! Those who cannot journey while staying in the homeland think that a journey can only be made by leaving the homeland. They do not know that people can journey from the swamps of sin toward the mountains of repentance. They are poor wretches tied to the stake of the ego, who think the earth revolves around them. By the way, knowledge is not denial, not a porridge of feelings, not a string of pretty words; it is a bright truth obtained with pains over a long time, which sinks into the body and turns into deeds. It is so bright that it does not allow you to lose your way either in the darkness of oppression or in the wealth of happiness.

Akrom MALIK