Questioner: Is spiritual enlightenment essential to each individual soul?
Huzoor (rh): Spiritual enlightenment?
Questioner: Essential to each individual soul.
Huzoor (rh): This question is not valid, because the word essential is not an apt word to apply to this situation. It’s a natural—I mean, it’s for granted. Spiritual enlightenment and human being are just inseparable. Only the stages of spiritual enlightenment are different. So what you call ignorance—even there you find some sort of spiritual enlightenment, but very feeble. So, it’s impossible for a human being to be totally without spiritual enlightenment. Only there are degrees, like the degrees in consciousness. Some people think the animals are not conscious, or not to a degree where they think it matters. In reality, all animals are conscious. Some have a feeble consciousness, some have a more sensitive consciousness. Even the plants have consciousness. So, when you look at the plants, you can’t conceive yourself to be in a position of plant and yet think. Yet we know—there is evidence from the Holy Qur’an, positive evidence—that there is life, plant life, and there is consciousness there too. So, existence and consciousness, existence and spiritual enlightenment—they all go together. They are inseparable things.
