from the beginning, like a gentleman, giving him the best of food and
clothes, and money exactly like his own child or even more lavishly.
But the slave noticed that his master always felt uneasy.
Eventually the rich man made up his mind to set him free and provide
him with some capital. One night as they were sitting together, the
master said: "Do you know why I have treated you so well?" The slave
asked the reason. The master said: "I have one request to make which
if you fulfill, you would enjoy all I have given and will give you!
But if you refuse, I will be discontented with you." The slave said:
"I will obey whatever you ask. You are my benefactor who has given me
my life." The master said: "You must promise me in good faith to do
it, for I am afraid you may refuse it."
The slave said: "I promise to do what you want." The master said: "My
proposal is that you must behead me at a specific time and place." The
slave exclaimed: "What? How can I do that?" The master said: "That is
what I desire." The slave said: "That is impossible." The master said:
"I have got your promise. You must do it."
One midnight, he awakened the slave and gave him a sharp knife and a
bag full of money and climbed up a neighbor's roof, and told the slave
to behead him there and then go wherever he liked. The slave asked the
reason for such an act. The rich man answered: "I hate this one man
and prefer death to seeing his face. We have been rivals but he, my
neighbor has gone ahead of me and excels me in everything, and I am
burning with hatred. I desire my neighbor to be jailed for this fake
murder and this idea is a relief to me. Everyone knows him to be my
rival, and so my neighbor will be condemned to death for this act."
The slave said: You seem to be a foolish man and deserve this death."
So he beheaded the rich man and ran away, His rival neighbor was
consequently arrested and imprisoned, but no one believed that he
would have killed his rival on his own roof. It had become a mystery.
At last, the slave felt a prick of conscience, went to the authorities
and confessed the truth. When they understood the matter, they freed
both the slave and the neighbor.
This is a fact that Hate is a disease of the soul. The Noble Qur'an
says in Chapter "The Sun" (Shams 91:9-10). "He will indeed be
successful who purifies it, and he will indeed fail who corrupts it."
Thus, the first proposal of the Noble Qur'an is purification of the
self from ailments, complexes, ignorance, deviations and
metamorphoses.
You could have heard that in the past there were people who, because
of excess of sins, were cursed by the Prophets of their time and were
thus metamorphosed, that is, they were transformed into animals such
as a monkey, a wolf, a bear etc.
Someone said: "We had made a pilgrimage to Makkah along with Imam
Sajjad (as)and when we looked down at the Desert of Arafat it was full
of Hajis (pilgrims). There were so many of them that year. The Imam
Sajjad said: "There is much uproar, but few are true Hajis
(pilgrims)." The man says: "I don't know how Imam Sajjad gave me the
insight, but when Imam Sajjad asked me to look down again, I saw a
desert full of animals, like that in a zoo, among whom a few human
beings were moving about." The Imam Sajjad told him how things looked
to those who had a clear sight and were concerned with the inward
concept of things.
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