Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), the Promised Messiah & Imam Mahdi
The Promised Messiah (as) wrote over 80 books in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian. Excerpts of his collected works have been translated into English and organised by topic.
The Review of Religions is pleased to present these excerpts as part of a monthly feature. In this series, the Promised Messiah (as) continues to describe the different stages through which one must pass to attain spirituality.
This is the fifth part of a multipart series.
Extracts from The Essence of Islam, Vol. III, 93-106.
When a person stands before a mirror, all his features are reflected in it; similarly, a believer who completely discards his ego so that no part of his own being survives, becomes like a mirror and all the features and qualities of the Divine are reflected in him. It can be said that the mirror, which reflects all the features of the one standing before it, becomes his vicegerent; in the same way a believer, by reflecting divine qualities, becomes a vicegerent of God and reflects divine features. As God is Hidden beyond hidden and is transcendent in His Being, in the same way, a perfect believer becomes hidden and transcendent in his being. The world cannot appreciate his reality as he is placed far away from the sphere of the world. It is a wonderful thing that after this holy change in the perfect believer, when he loses his self altogether for the sake of God and emerges in a new garment of holiness, God, Who is Unchangeable and Ever-Living and Self-Subsisting, too appears to him in a new guise. This does not mean that any change takes place in the eternal attributes of the Divine. He is eternally unchangeable, but there is a new Divine manifestation for the perfect believer.
When the believer brings about a change in himself, a change manifests itself in the Divine, the nature of which we cannot fathom. This happens in such a manner that God’s unchangeable Being is not affected by the dust of events. He remains unchangeable as ever.
It is a change of the type as has been mentioned, that when a believer moves towards God Almighty, the Almighty moves much more swiftly towards him, though it is obvious that as the Divine is not subject to change, He is also not subject to movement. All these expressions are metaphorical and the need for their use arises because experience testifies that as a believer assumes a new being by discarding his ego in the cause of God, God also assumes a new aspect vis-à-vis the believer, and deals with him in an exclusive manner. God reveals to him of His kingdom and mysteries that which He does not reveal to others, and displays for his sake that which He does not display for the sake of others. He helps and succours him in a manner that causes people to marvel. He manifests extraordinary happenings for such a person, and works miracles in his support and establishes his supremacy from every point of view. He invests him with a strange kind of magnetism, whereby a whole world is drawn to him and only those remain unaffected who are eternally unfortunate.
All this shows that when a true believer carries out a holy change in himself, God Almighty also appears to him with a new kind of manifestation. This is proof that God has created man for Himself, and when man turns towards God Almighty, from that very moment God turns towards him and becomes his Guardian, his Providence, his Supporter, and his Helper. If the whole world were to be on one side and a true believer on the other, it is the believer who would stand supreme, because God is true in His love and always fulfils His p