How is it that when Ali...

How is it that when Ali, himself moves away from a bent wall and he is criticized for doing that, he says that he was feeling from destiny to another and when he is asked by someone else to do that, he says that the ‘appointed time’ guards him? Further, according to the Islamic law it is not permissible to sit under a tottering wall. Then how is it that Imam Ali did not leave the place under the plea that he was guarded by his ‘appointed time’?

It appears that keeping in view what we have said earlier, this hadith can be interpreted in a way that it would neither be inconsistent with the hadith of Asbagh bin Nubatah nor with the legal principle enjoining the protection of one’s own life. While discussing the spiritual factor we said that the sequence of the causes affecting a destiny could not be confined to the three dimension material causes of this world. The spiritual causes are also equally effective.

Some times it so happens that when we look at an event from its material angle only, it appears that the sequence of its causes is complete, but if we look at it from another angle and observe some secret aspects of it, we realize that some spiritual causes to the contrary and other good deeds performed with good intention make an impact on the system of causation.

If somebody has a sense additional to those senses which we all normally have, his judgement in certain cases may be quite different from that of ours. This case may be illustrated by an example. We are three-dimensional beings. Our judgements about three-dimensional matters will naturally be different from that of two-dimensions. But as far as two dimensional matters are considered, our judgement and their judgement will be the same.

The people who are endowed with ‘conviction’ have an additional sense and they look at things from a different angle. Naturally on certain occasions their judgement is different from ours. We may regard a thing as a cause of death, but a man of conviction may not think so, because he has an eye on certain inner force at work.

From spiritual point of view there is no reason why we should not believe that certain things are spiritually effective in causing prolongation of life, maintenance of health and expansion of the means of living, and that the people endowed with conviction are aware of them. Anyway, this hadith can be explained, though it requires a lengthy explanation. Previous…