God: From Seeking God to Faith in God

The Origins of Defying Divine Commandments

The factors that make man disobey God and defy the worship God has obliged His subjects to carry out are:

1-Ignorance and incapability: Those who suffer from mental handicap do not know that God exists, and have no blame; how, on the other hand, can someone of sound brain and spirit see all the discipline and harmony in the universe and ignore its source?

2-Neglect toward God: Some people ignore the supreme level of divinity, for they are drowned in their lusts and desires.

3-An illusion of independence: Some people do not understand the necessity of having a relationship with God and obeying His orders, so they believe themselves to be independent. This is the most degraded form of conceit and selfishness. 

If man is aware that God exists, if man realizes how great and glorious God is, and if man understands that without contact with God he can never reach the supreme aim of life, he will not avoid worshipping God.

Devotion

There are two kinds of devotion:

1-Devotion in a general meaning: Regarding a fact as innately desirable, whether the fact or reality has an aspect of merit or not, like power, wealth, ethnic characteristics, science and freedom. Such a form of devotion is not a value or a merit, and cannot develop the human character. 

2-Devotion in a specific meaning: Regarding a fact that if achieved potentials and talents are activated as innately desirable. 

Devotion in the first meaning inflates man's natural ego, and throws him into grief. It is meritorious devotion, however, that can bring about man's development and perfection. 

The greatest of all meritorious form of devotion that is the base of other valuable kinds of devotion is devotion to God. When man is devoted to God, he is aware of what is proper and appropriate to man, and progresses toward gaining them. 

In fact, if something is to be innately desirable to man, it must be a reality that can make all of man's potentials flourish. It should be in accordance with man's sound logic, nature and his psychic observations about God.

Since complete devotion causes the true elixir of man's soul to flourish, there will be irreparable damage if such a devotion is given to something other than God. 

Devotion to God brings about being devoted to all realities and facts of merit and value. If man acquires a certain kind of knowledge with devotion for God, for instance, the knowledge will be innately desirable. Or, if man acts with justice in all aspects of his life with devotion to God, he will enjoy both the individual and social benefits of justice and its divine aspect, too. 

The Characteristics of Valuable Devotion:

1-Value-based devotion is not compatible with selfishness or egotism, for no supreme reality can become innately desirable to man unless the natural self is moderated. 

2-Like true love, devotion based on value and merit is the strongest factor of self-possession – a perfectionist human being's greatest ideal of all.

3-Value-based devotion provides man with tranquility. When man's soul is devoted to a supreme reality, he is also guiding himself toward the highest aim of life.

4-Devotion helps man concentrate his mental and psychic forces and guards him against baseless hallucinations and soul-damaging temptations.

5-Being devoted to a supreme reality makes man's attention to it change dramatically. Devotion for something makes all other facts and realities fade away.

6-Devotion has two values – an innate, dispositional value and a value as a means. Its innate, dispositional value involves "the desirability of devotion itself which purifies man's relationship with the desired truth of all contaminating factors and selfishness." 

 Its value as a means, on the other hand, consists of the innate desirable that attracts the soul. The most valuable form of devotion is the one that attracts man toward God.

7-When man considers something as desirable, his entire character is attracted to it, and he accounts for and justifies his whole life based on it. Since devotion, as an innately desirable thing, makes man choose his path in life, man must make great effort to choose a reality as his goal that is really worth being devoted to. 

8-Devotion is a bipolar mental development – it has innately external and innately internal poles. Its internal pole consists of man's tendency toward a reality that is considered as innately desirable. Its external pole consists of the reality that is innately desirable to man. Such a reality should be able to activate all of man's potentials and aspects.

9-In value-based devotion man deals with everything logically. 

One of the most fundamental characteristics of value-based devotion reveals itself when the desired reality shows its true face and attracts the soul; it's not that it cannot hear the disagreeing sounds or cannot see the protestors, or that it does not confront those who conflict with the reality. If it can, it defeats the protestors and destroys those who fight reality and righteousness; if it fails to do so, it continues on its way without the least attention or influence from them. 

10-Having devotion in one's thoughts, deeds and speech purifies man's inside. Devotion in thoughts makes realities able to be received by man intuitively, and prevents the facts from being contaminated by hallucinations and illusions. Pure and devoted speech also keeps man away from deceitful words. Devoted deeds are the soul of deeds, and builds up man's existence on the path of intelligible life.