Story 67 - The True Worship of God

There was a certain Shaikh. He saw in one of his visions an angel writing the names of people in a book. The Shaikh asked, "What are you doing, Sir?" The angel replied, "I am writing out the names of those who are the nearest, dearest and greatest worshippers of God." And then Shaikh put down his head and was dejected, and he said, "I wish I had been a worshipper of God as others have; I never pray, I never fast, I never attend church, I shall be debarred. I shall not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The angel said, "Can't help!" Then Shaikh put another question to the angel and said, "Will you ever put down a list of those who love man and the whole world and not God?" The Shaikh said, "Put down my name as a worshipper of man." The angel disappeared. The Shaikh had a second vision, and in the second vision the angel reappeared with the same book; and when he was turning over the leaves of the book and had revised it all, the Shaikh inquired what he was doing, and the angel said he had written down the worshippers of God in order of merit, and the Shaikh asked if the angel would allow him to look at the register, and lol to his great surprise, the Shaik, who had given his name as a worshipper of man, found his name at the top of the list of worshippers or devotees of God. Is not this strange? It is a fact.

If you worship man, or in other words, if you look upon man not as man but as the Divine, if you approach everything as God, as the Divinity and then worship man then you worship God. To worship God in the best way is to worship the Divinity arid God in your friend. If you find faults in your friends, try and keep yourself away from those faults, but hate not. They are God, recognise the Godhead in them.

MORAL: To love all humanity, to see Divinity in every being, and to serve all as God is the true worship of God.

Vol. 2 (93-94)