Purpose of Life. As-salamu aleykum everybody! My name is Ali Kemal Civelek. I am an Imam in Houston,Texas at the Houston Blue Mosque. I come from an engineering background but I’m working as an imam. Today, in these series, I will talk about belief and the belief system of Islam.
The first topic isis relating belief with the purpose of life. As we all know, we all came to this world to find the truth and we are created for this. I go to different prisons as a volunteer.The people there have many tattoos and I ask them about those tattoos. They say, regarding the tattoos, that they given them an identity.
So my advice to them to make a great tattoo on their body, my advice is make to a big, a huge question mark tattoo on their chest. Because human being is created with this question. Who are you? We will talk about the purpose of life. As a human being, we are coming to this giant universe with this question mark. Who are you? We’re obliged to find the ultimate truth for ourselves.
Imagine you are dreaming and suddenly find yourself walking towards a garden. You reach the garden, and enter and the first thing you ask yourself is, whose garden is this? You begin to search for the owner of the garden. You are afraid because if this garden belongs to someone that misinterprets your intentions there, may think you are trespassing and may approach you with a gun. In your heart, you become anxious and fearful, so you immediately being to look for the owner of the garden so that you may explain your presence there.
This is the first point. We came to this universe like, and huge giant garden, we are looking for the owner.This is the first step for us. Who is the owner of this universe? And it’s called belief in God. Believing, Iman-i Billah in Arabic. I don’t want to bother you in this series with many Arabic words, I am going use as little as possible, related to our topic.
This is the first one: Iman-i Billah, believing in God. We came to this world and we understand God’s presence definitely from the order around us. Imagine still, you are still in that garden, you are looking around and you saw that this garden really has a great order. You understand that definitely this order needs an owner who’s taking care of this garden. Same thing. This universe with this order, definitely needs an owner who’s taking care of this huge universe.
Yes, you understand now with your innate feelings, you understand that yes definitely there is an owner of this garden. The second step is to determine, what kind of owner is this? Can I see him? Can I know him? And you continue your search. You see that everything is beautifully adorned in this universe. Everything is beautiful. So you understand that this owner has an intention to beautify everything. And you say then all this beauty is coming from His Beauty. You understand O Lord, O Creator, O Owner, You are Beautiful.
And you see another thing.You realize, everything revolves on mercy and compassion. You realize that all beings here, all living creatures here are grown up on the laps of their mothers. And mothers are taking care of them with mercy and compassion. And you see that, Oh this compassion and mercy should come from the Owner, from the Lord. Then, you say, okay, this Lord is merciful, compassionate, beautiful, and He is doing everything with perfect knowledge. You understand this knowledge is everywhere in the universe from the tiny particles, to the huge stars. Knowledge is everywhere so you understand that He is such a Lord, that He is All Knowing.
We said the first step is believing in Him. We put our trust in Him. This is belief. The second step is knowledge of Him. The first step called in Arabic, Iman-i Billah, Believing in God, Believing in Allah. And the second step called Ma’rifatullah, Knowledge of God. Now we are coming to a conclusion.
I was driving from Boston to Houston. I lived for five years in Boston. I am really a very bad driver I can say that. I should admit this. I was driving from Boston to New York one night, at 3 in the morning. And I saw the light, but not a spiritual light, I saw the lights of a police car just behind me. Anyway we stopped. He came and he said, “Hello sir, did you realize that you were driving 35 miles per hour?” I said “Oh my Goodness”. Because I was almost sleeping. I was really driving 35 miles per hour on the highway. So he said “Two gentlemen called us and they said, there is a person, on the highway in Connecticut. He is on the highway and he is driving 35 miles per hour. And he’s driving all over on the highway”.
This was such a sad point for me. And the question, the crucial question he asked me that night, I always remember that incident. He said “Sir are you high?”. I said, I really wanted to say to this police officer, “Yes police officer, I am always high”. But of course, I didn’t say this because I don’t want to spend the night in jail. So I said actually I am a little bit sleepy. My driving may be in response to this.
Anyway, is there any way to reach that highness without using any intoxicants? Yes there is a way! Actually we are talking about this today. We said the first step, is Iman-i Billah. Believing in God. And the second step is a very natural second step. It is the curiosity about this Owner leading us to know Him and we will talk about this knowledge of God in later episodes.
Knowledge of God. But the Knowledge of God leads us to another step called Love of God. Yes think again. Right? Quran advises us always think. This is the first job thing we learn from the Quran. It is assigned to us not to blindly believe. The Quran always says think. So we think. Yes we are think in order to reach an ultimate love that is really required. Yes if you want to love somebody or something, first you need to know him. Without knowing, you cannot reach that love.
Yes we started searching for our Lord. In the second step, we started to learn about His attributes. But this learning leads us to another step. We start to love Him because of His Beauty, because of His Perfection, and because of His Giving to us. Yes I realized that in that garden, everything is so beautiful.
The second point, again in that garden, everything is perfectly designed and working. Everything is perfect. This is the second point. And the third point, I see that all this beauty has been designed for me as human being. It is as if I am the fluid of this universe. Oh God, Oh Lord, I understood now your purpose, you are trying to reach me and teach me something about Yourself with all Your Beauty and with all Your Perfection and with all Your Giving.
Now we reach the third step. Now I’ve started to love you with all my heart. The more I understand you, the more my love for you increases. This love will bring us to another step called Ecstasy. It’s called, the gentleman you remember, he asked me “Are you high?”. Yes when you reach that love of God, when you reach that love, you will reach happiness and tranquility and the wisdom that you’ve been looking for in this universe. As we said, we’re created with this question mark, right?
Yes, this question mark, it’s like hunger. It requires us to look for food; this question mark of happiness requires us to search for Him, to search the Truth. And at the end, we reach Knowledge and Love.
Thank you very much!
