Mental Frame

Yet when We bestow favours on man, he turns his back and holds aloof. But when evil befalls him, he grows despondent.

Say: ‘Each man behaves after his own fashion. But your Lord best knows who is best guided.

(The Quran 17:83-84)

It is common for a man to receive comforts in abundance and yet evince no signs of contentment or gratitude. If upbraided, he becomes obdurate. No viewpoint other than his own is acceptable to him. But when all his resources and props are taken away from him and he experiences helplessness he suddenly loses all hope and courage and is plunged in despair.

In this world most people have such experiences. But there are very few who discover the truth as a result. They think that in this world where they have freedom, they may continue to show insolence and arrogance in the face of reality. Then what will be their state when Doomsday comes, and they are divested of all their might? How powerful man thinks himself to be, but how weak he is in reality.

The thinking and the circumstances of the society in which a person moves, are conditioning factors in his particular mental framework (shakilah).

He thinks under the influence of his own society and forms his opinions accordingly. But the only right viewpoint is that which is so according to the Knowledge of God. Any viewpoint which takes no account of divine knowledge is bound to be wrong.

It is on the point of right thinking that man is being tested. What man has to do is break out of the mental framework, which has been acquired under the influence of his environment, so that he may see things as they are ¬in effect, with the divine eye. Those who remain enclosed in their mental shell very soon go astray, whereas those who venture to emerge from it in order to seek the divine truth are the ones who are rightly guided.