Peace of Mind

The main aim of all human effort is and has always been the acquisition of the peace of mind. Everything else – wealth, power, knowledge, fame – serves as a means to this end. And yet it has generally eluded man. Modern man, particularly in the affluent societies, has all comforts and luxuries available to him but peace of mind remains an unrealizable dream. Why? The Quran answers:

Allah lets go astray whomsoever He wills and guides towards Him those who turn to Him; those who believe and whose hearts find peace in remembering Him; beware that it is only in the remembrance of Allah that hearts find peace. (13:27-28).

The first part of this Quranic statement tells us that Allah’s guidance is available to everyone provided one inclines towards it with heart and soul. Such are the people who come to believe in the Unseen and whose hearts find rest in remembering Allah. The second part then proclaims the Universal Truth: “beware that it is in the remembrance of Allah alone that hearts find rest”.

What is the meaning and significance of this remembrance (dhikr) of Allah? It means to establish a ceaseless contact with Allah, to remember Him every moment with all one’s soul and all one’s heart and all one’s body; to live one’s life in a way as to seek His pleasure in every decision that one takes and every act that one performs from wearing and taking off one’s dress and leaving and entering home to doing one’s duties as a social being – trader, ruler, labourer, teacher, doctor etc. Dhikr also means that every part of our body – our hands, our tongue, our lips, our feet and even our fingertips – should participate in the remembrance as happens in salat about which God told Moses (A.S): establish salat for my remembrance. (20: 14)

Peace of mind is unachievable except through the remembrance of Allah. Luxuries and palliatives and drugs and ideological and other intoxicants may yield momentary pleasure of the body, but leave the soul thirsty and unconsoled. This soul, the spirit in man, is a Divine spark and can never find rest and comfort unless it is connected up with its source – Allah (SWT). Just as the fish cannot survive without water, human heart cannot find peace without dhikr. As our Shaikh (RA) put it:

Dil chuy gaad tey hokhi mou thawun

Zikri-i hund pouni dis lasiyo tawy

Thy heart is a fish, leave it not on dry land;

Give it waters of remembrance so it may live.