The Greatest Jihad:Combat with the Self
(Part 15)
Choose a teacher of morals for yourself; and arrange sessions for advice, counsel, and admonition. You cannot become reined by yourself. If there is no place in the seminary for moral counselors and sessions of advice and exhortation, it will be doomed to annihilation. How could it be that iqh and usul (jurisprudence and its principles) should require teachers for lessons and discussions, and that for every science and skill a teacher is necessary, and no one becomes an expert or learned in any speciic ield by being cocky and disdainful, yet with regard to the spiritual and ethical sciences, which are the goal of the mission of the prophets and are among the most subtle and exact sciences, they do not require teaching and learning, and one may obtain them oneself without a teacher! I have heard on numerous occasions that the late Shaykh Ansarl,15 was a student of a great Sayyid16 who was a teacher of ethics and spirituality. The prophets of God were raised in order to train the people, to develop humanity, and to remove them from ugliness, filth, corruption, pollution, moral turpitude, and to acquaint them with virtue and good manners: "I was raised in order to complete noble virtue [Makdrim al-Akhldq]}1 This knowledge which was considered by God Almighty to be so important that He raised the prophets for it is not considered unfashionable in the seminaries for our clergy. No one gives it the importance of which it is worthy. Due to the lack of spiritual and gnostic works in the seminaries, material and worldly problems have come so far as to penetrate the clergy [ruhaniyyat], and has kept many of them away from holiness and spirituality [ruhaniyyat], so that they do not even know what ruhaniyyat means, nor what the responsibilities of a cleric are and what kind of programs they should have. Some of them merely plan to learn a few words, return to their own localities, or somewhere else, and to grab facilities and position, and to wrestle with others [for them]. Like one who said: "Let me study Sharh al-Lum 'ahxl& and then I will know what to do with the village chief!" Do not be this way, that from the beginning you aim to win someone's position by studying, and that you intend to be the chief of some town or village. You may achieve your selish desires and satanic expectations, but for yourself and the Islamic community you will acquire nothing except harm and misfortune. Mu'awiyah17b was also chief for a long time, but for
himself he achieved no result or beneit except curses and loathing and the chastisement of the life hereater.
It is necessary for you to reine yourselves, so that when you become the chief of a community or a clan, you will be able to refine them, as well. In order to be able to take steps toward the reform and development of a community, your aim should be service to Islam and the Muslims. If you take steps for the sake of God, God the Almighty is the turner of the hearts: He will turn hearts in favor of you: "Surely for those who believe and do good deeds, the Merciful (ar-Rahmdi) will bring about love" (Q 19:96). Take some trouble on the way to God, devote yourselves; God will not leave you unpaid, if not in this world, then in the next He will reward you. If, aside from Him, you have no reward in this world, what could be better? This world is nothing. This pomp and these personalities will come to an end ater a few days, like a dream passes before the eyes of man, but the other worldly reward is infinite and never ending.
Source:” The Greatest Jihad” by imam khomeini
