Message for the Sick

The Seventh Remedy

O sick person who has lost the pleasure of his health! Your illness does not remove the pleasure you receive from health, which is a blessing from Allah; rather, it makes you taste it and increases it. For when something continues without interruption, it loses its effect. The people of truth are even agreed on the validity of the following saying:

اِنَّمَا الْاَشْيَاءُ تُعْرَفُ بِاَضْدَادِهَا

That is, everything is known through its opposite. For example, without darkness, light cannot be known and gives no joy. Without cold, warmth cannot be felt and gives no delight. Without hunger, food gives no satisfaction. Without thirst, drinking water gives no pleasure. Without hardship, well-being gives no joy, and without illness, health gives no delight.

Since the Fātir-i Hakīm wants to show man all kinds of His gifts, to make him taste every variety of His blessings, and to lead him constantly to gratitude, He has equipped him with many instruments so that he may taste and benefit from the endless varieties of His blessings in the universe. To bring this about, just as He gives health and well-being, He will also give illnesses, ailments, and troubles.

Now I ask you: “If that illness had not afflicted your head, hand, or stomach, would you have appreciated and given thanks for your healthy head, hand, or stomach, which are blessings from Allah?” Certainly, you would not have given thanks for them; perhaps you would not even have thought of them. You would have unconsciously spent that health in heedlessness, and perhaps even in excess.

The Eighth Remedy

O sick person who thinks of his Hereafter! Illnesses are like soap that washes away the dirt of sins. It is established in an authentic hadith that illnesses are expiation for sins. In another hadith it is stated: “Just as ripe fruits fall from a fully grown tree when it is shaken, so too do the sins of a believer fall away when he trembles with illness.”

Indeed, sins are both lasting illnesses in eternal life and spiritual illnesses for the heart, conscience, and soul in this worldly life. If you remain patient and do not complain, through this temporary illness you will be delivered from many lasting illnesses.

If you do not care about your sins, do not know the Hereafter, and do not recognise Allah, then you suffer from a terrifying illness millions of times more severe than your present small illness. Tremble before it and seek refuge! For through your heart and soul you are connected to every creature in the world. Those connections are continually severed by separation and death, causing you countless wounds. Especially since you do not know what the Hereafter is and imagine death to be eternal annihilation, it is as though you have an illness as vast as the world.

Indeed, you must realise that īmān is the only medicine that brings healing for these countless illnesses. First of all, you must find this medicine and correct your belief. The shortest path to this medicine runs through illness, which tears away the veil of heedlessness and reveals beneath it the window of helplessness and weakness, from which the power and mercy of Qadīr-i Dhul-Jalāl may be perceived.

Indeed, the one who does not know Allah has a world of calamities hanging over his head. But the world of the one who knows Allah is filled with light and spiritual joy; he experiences this according to the strength of his īmān. Beneath this spiritual joy, healing, and pleasure that arise from īmān, the pains of physical illnesses melt away and are overcome.