which his character and conduct are discriminately tested, intervene
between the selection and the actual summons to nubuwwah. He has
no notion of this process. He is entrusted with the mission only
when he is proved worthy. In the case of Moses (PBUH) the long
period of preparation which preceded the call to nubuwwah, has been
well described in the Qur'an:
And We have (O Moses) already been gracious to you another time.
When We sent word to your mother, saying: Put him into the ark and cast
him into the sea, and the sea shall cast him on the shore, and an enemy of
Mine and his shall take him (and bring him up); and I bestowed on you
love from Me, that you may be brought up under My eye.
When your sister walked up and said: Shall I show you one who will take
care (of the child), then We returned you to your mother, that her eye
might be cheered, and that she might not grieve. And you did kill a man,
and We saved you from the trouble, and We offered other opportunities
so that you may test your capabilities. Then, for years did you stay among
the people of Median. It was after all this that you came up to Our
measure, O Moses! And I have chosen you for Myself ( 20 : 37 - 41 ).
To understand the real nature of Wahi, it is essential to
distinguish it clearly from mystical experience with which it is often
confused. Some scholars have tended to regard the revelation of a
Nabi as the culmination of the mystical experience. This is a
misconception. The difference between the two types of
experience is fundamental. It is a difference of kind and not merely
of degree. Mystical experience, whatever it is, is within the reach of
every man, provided he is willing to subject himself to a rigorous
discipline. It is the outgrowth of the mystical sense, or oceanic sense
as Koestler calls it, which is inherent in man. Like the aesthetic sense
it can be cultivated and developed. The mystical experience may be
induced through self-mortification, contemplation, detachment
and meditation. It is a purely subjective experience in which the
affective factor is predominant. Bound being the self of the mystic,
it has no bearing on, or testimony in, the outer world. The mystic
finds it supremely gratifying and absolutely convincing. Therein he
tastes a bliss which overwhelms and dissolves his finite personality.
He feels himself merged in the infinite ocean of reality. The mystic
claims that his experience is charged with value of a high order, but
it remains private and incommunicable. The mystic may have had a
vision of something of which he is satisfied to be the truth, but he
Divine Guidance^100