being. It does in no way curtail man's freedom of choice and
action. Man has the right to reject it, if he so desires and is
willing to pay the price of rejection.- For man, Wahi or Revelation, is the vehicle of Divine
Guidance. God selects a man who is fit to be the custodian
of truth. This man is the Nabi who receives the Revelation
from God, keeps it inviolate and faithfully communicates it
to his fellow beings. Those who accept it, of their own
accord, find themselves following the path which leads to
the enhancement of their powers and towards the goal of
perfection. Those who reject it, have perforce to follow the
downward path of deterioration and degradation. Self-
fulfilment is the reward of the former, while an enfeebled
and perverted self falls to the lot of the latter. Such is the
Law of Requital. - The Wahi, the Divinely revealed Guidance, is really God's
Word. It is not contaminated by the personal likes and
dislikes, feelings and desires of the recipient. The medium
specially selected by God is so refined that the Wahi, in
passing through it, suffers no diminution in its purity or
lustre, The Wahi transcends human intellect but does not
conflict with reason. It rather supplements it.
We hope that a few words about the institution of nubuwwah will
serve to elucidate this point. At an early stage in the history of
civilization, man set up a sort of social organisation and began to
function as a free self-conscious member of a group. But he often
misused the freedom which had been granted him and yielded to the
temptations by which he was beset. The pursuit of selfish ends
brought the members of the group into conflict with each other.
These conflicts posed a serious threat to the society which was far
from stable. Man, more often than not, chooses wrong in
preference to right. The catastrophe which was imminent, could
have been averted by depriving man of his freedom and making
human society as regimented as a beehive or a colony of termites.
The aim of Providence, however, was to enhance his freedom and
to enlarge its scope, not to extinguish it altogether. The only way in
which freedom could be preserved and at the same time the danger
Divine Guidance^104