ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Knowing God Perfecting Man's Faith and Conviction Human beliefs, like man's knowledge, science and technology, advance with the centuries. Religion predates history, and has always engaged mankind's particular affection and attention. Language, writing, and means of livelihood have all progressed in parallel with man's mental and spiritual growth. They wax and wane, as is the human condition. Religions multiplied; deities proliferated.

Some were represented as imaginary beings, some as animals, then some as humans; and so step by step ascended towards the metaphysical, the spiritual, and the transcendent, to the ultimate reality of the Unity. Knowledge and religion had similar lowly origins. It is debatable whether man's road to spirituality was harder than his path to science and morality. Tangible entities are easier to accept than ideas; the seen world easier to grasp than the unseen.

Aeons are required for minds to rise to the heights needed for knowledge of the Divine. The sun, the most obvious of objects, shines on all. Yet analysis of its composition and conformation has been reached only after the creation and abandonment of innumerable hypotheses. Despite the sun's light, the truth behind the hypotheses remained in darkness. This darkness was not due to depravity or depression of thought.

Science and knowledge were equally backward and had to go through the same eras of myth and superstition as the philosophies and beliefs of our forebears. Myths and legends gave savage tribes their creeds and developed their morality. Slowly knowledge and experience attained a level capable of grasping the unity and orderliness of creation and the mathematical perfection of relations between natural phenomena.

From these man deduced that all obeyed the will of a single unique Creator, One Totally Other, unlike any visible object. He deduced that every effect has its own separate cause, and posed an independent creation for each phenomenon. They went further. In early stages they imagined that such creations, or creators, had the form or appearance of animals. Speculations advanced through man to spirits and eventually to the One.

Research through all regions and eras shows that this progress is an expression of the essence of the nature of man as much as language, thought, and customs. The faculty which distinguishes man from all other animals is his mind. A newborn infant manifests this power of mind.