'When you beseech God for strength and assistance in both worldly and religious affairs, do not make your pleas merely ceremonial. Instead, as you entreat God, you should truly believe that every blessing comes from the heavens. You will become righteous only when true spirituality pervades your life: before devising your solutions to any new task that you undertake, and during every difficulty and predicament, you will implore God earnestly in solitude, and appeal to Him to make easy your task and ease your difficulty through His favour. It is then that Gabriel will assist you, and some hitherto unknown way will be opened for you from the Unseen. So, act mercifully to your souls.
Don’t follow those who have severed their ties with God. They have grown utterly dependent on their means to the extent that not even the phrase ‘Insha Allah’ (God willing) escapes their lips. May God open your eyes so you can see that He is the central supporting beam of all your human enterprises. If the main beam is somehow removed, the rafters will plummet down in structural collapse, and most likely those beneath the roof will lose their lives.
Similarly, your plans and enterprise can stay intact only with God’s assistance. You’ll never see any success unless you make it your principle to seek strength and assistance from God. Otherwise, you will die with poignant regret. Do not fret over the worldly advancement of other nations that are not even aware of the God Who is your Almighty God. I realise that this might strike you as a paradox -- their worldly progress despite unawareness of the One, True God. The answer to this seemingly contradictory statement is that those nations have been placed in a trial right here in this world precisely because they have forsaken God.
A trial from God sometimes is of the type that He opens the doors of worldly bounties for the person who deserts God, who gives himself up to pursue material riches. But that person remains impoverished spiritually, threadbare morally, and departs from the world even while he is preoccupied with temporal concerns and is eventually sentenced to hell. Another type of trial from God is that the person enamoured of the worldly pleasures suffers unspeakable failures right here in this world. Of these two former trials, the latter is relatively less dangerous than the former, because it is the more arrogant person who faces the former type of trial.
Similarly, you should neither follow worldly philosophers nor venerate them; all such pursuits are lapses into folly - true philosophy is what God teaches you in the Holy Quran. Ruined are those who adore worldly philosophers. Successful are those who gleaned real knowledge and philosophies and gleaned it from the Holy Quran's pages. Why do you tread on the trails of folly? Do you imagine that there are things that God does not know and that you are going to teach Him those things? Do you think you will find the right way by following the spiritually blind? O fools, how can the blind show the way?
The true philosophy, which has been promised to you, is gained through the Holy Spirit. Through the mediation of Gabriel, you will be put in touch with those pure branches of knowledge that remain inaccessible to others. Know that you will find this spiritual fortune if you earnestly beseech God. Then you will realise that this is the knowledge that refreshes and reinvigorates the soul and reinforces one’s faith immeasurably.
Do not think that revelation from Allah is not possible in the future and that it was possible only in the past. Do not think that the Holy Spirit cannot come down now. I tell you truly that every door can be closed except the door for the coming down of the Holy Spirit. Open all the doors of your heart to receive it.
With your own hands, you remove yourself far from that sun when you, yourself, close the window through which light can enter. Therefore, rise up at once and throw this window open so that the light of the sun should, of its own accord, enter your heart with the easiness and inevitability of a natural process.
When Allah has not closed the doors of His blessings upon the world, when, in fact, He has multiplied them even more than before, do you venture to presume that He has closed upon you the doors of His spiritual blessings, even at a time when they are needed most? No, not at all. In fact, that door has been opened beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Now, in accordance with His teaching as given in Surah Fatihah, when the door of all earlier blessings has been opened for you, why do you decline to receive them? Create a thirst for this spring and then of itself the water will begin to gush forth. For this milk, cry like a child so that it should surge up in the breast. Begin to deserve mercy so that you should be shown mercy. Show anxiety and deep concern so that your minds should be set at rest. Cry out with pain, again and again, so that a hand should stretch itself and take hold of you.
Indeed, how terribly difficult is that way which is the way of the Lord! But, verily, it is made easy for those who jump into the abyss, resolutely determined to face destruction and death. Blessed are they who for the sake of the Lord wage a war against their own selves.'
- Extracts from Noah's Ark (Kishti-e Nuh) written by Promised Messiah Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as) of Qadian.