ZIKR
Remembrance of God
The words that spontaneously spring from one’s lips when one’s mind overflows with spiritual feelings of his Lord’s beneficence is the essence of zikr.
Remembrance of God is one of the basic teachings of Islam. Forgetfulness of God shows indifference, whereas remembrance of God shows attentiveness to the divine will.
Such remembrance is a natural reality. A human being at every moment, experiences such things as are directly related to God. That is, he observes the sun and the moon, the rivers and the mountains, the air and the water,—and sees that everything has been created by God. Similarly, all the creatures that he sees in the world are reminders of the Creator. Right from the earth to the heavens, all things are reflections of God’s beauty and perfection. With their entire existence, they testify to God’s being. As such, they draw a person towards his Creator.
At every moment, an individual is reminded of God by the things amidst which he spends his days and nights in this world. Influenced by these things, his heart and mind overflow with spiritual feelings of remembrance of God.
Throughout his life a person repeatedly experiences such a connection with God, as causes him to ponder upon his existence, and his heart is filled with the sense that it is God who has created him in the best of moulds and given him all kinds of abilities in abundance. These feelings come to his lips in various ways in different words again and again. This is a true form of remembrance.
A person in his daily life has to come to grips with various ups and downs, and undergo different kinds of experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant. At these times, he focuses his attention on God. Again and again, he remembers God in different words.
In this way, during his daily worship, he repeats aloud various words and phrases. These words are sometimes derived from the Quran and Hadith, and at other time, in acknowledgement of his Lord’s beneficence, they spring spontaneously to his lips. All this is remembrance of God.
