A man once asked the Promised Messiah(as) that he already believed in him, so why should he need to take Bai’at. The answer he received explains why an entire community would come to be reformed not by argument but by something closer to sight. The Promised Messiah(as) said,
meri Jama’at nasai say durust na ho gi balkay nishaano say durust ho gi: my people will not reform themselves through mere reasoning or advice but through seeing and feeling signs (Malfuzat, January 1903 Urdu Volume 4 page 5).
Khuda ko Khuda kay zariye pehchana jata hay: God is recognized only through God. The reform of a soul can only be carried out by the One who created it.
If signs are the door, then the first key to that door is keeping company with the righteous.
Allah says in At-Taubah 9:119,
ya ayyuhal ladheena aamanuttaqullaha wa koonoo ma as saadiqeen: O ye who believe! fear Allah and be with the truthful.
The command itself proves its own necessity. If believers are told to be with the truthful, then the truthful must always exist somewhere in the world, in every age, waiting to be found. This is not a strange idea even outside religion. A person who wants to master a craft seeks out those who have already mastered it and sits in their company until something of their skill is absorbed.
The furthest point on this path of companionship is Bai’at. When someone asked the Promised Messiah(as) why formal allegiance was needed if belief already existed in the heart, he answered with the image of grafting. A gardener grafts a plant to change its very nature for the better. Without Bai’at, belief alone leaves a person outside the orchard, deprived of the fruit that grafting alone can produce. Bai’at is the sunnat of the prophets, and its deepest wisdom lies here: the frailty of the nafs needs a graft to cleanse and strengthen it, and that graft is true Bai’at.
The second key is prayer. The Promised Messiah(as) came to restore man’s bond with God, and he often said that the moment a person becomes neglectful of that bond, something of disbelief enters him. Allah says in Ta Ha 20:15,
fa’budni wa aqimis salata li dhikri: So serve Me, and observe Prayer for My remembrance.
This is the same call answered in Al-Mumin 40:61,
ud’uni astajib lakum: Pray unto Me, I will answer your prayer.
Congregational Salat and the shared experience of Jalsa Salana both flow from this same root, koonoo ma as saadiqeen, so that the goodness in one person passes into another and the whole community moves forward together as one strong body under Khilafat.
The Promised Messiah(as) delivered his address on the occasion of Jalsa Salana on 29 December 1904, after Zuhr prayer at the Aqsa Mosque. He told his Jama’at plainly that life is short and the work before them is immense, and that everyone should be anxious to strive for Khatama Bil Khair, a consummate end (Malfuzat, Volume 7, English translation, pages 61 to 76). He explained that this end is reached only by passing through obstacles, and that three means alone open the way through them: tadbeer, planning and striving against one’s own weakness; prayer; and koonoo ma as saadiqeen, the company of the truthful.
Reaching that end asks first for humility. A seed only sprouts after it is buried and made to die in the ground, and only then does Allah give it new life. Man passes through a similar burial. He begins as Aslam, when the mind accepts the truth. He rises to Momin, when the heart accepts it as well. He reaches Muslim, complete submission, when the truth is finally lived out. This is the station named in Al-Fajr 89:28 and 89:29: ya ayyatuhan nafsul mutma’innah, irji’i ila rabbiki radiyatam mardiyyah: And thou, O soul at peace! Return to thy Lord well pleased with Him and He well pleased with thee. This is nafs mutma’innah, the soul at peace, the state in which man no longer stumbles.
Submission stands at the summit, and humility is the ladder that reaches it. Prayer and sacrifice both feed that humility until it grows higher and higher, as in Al-Anam 6:163, qul inna salati wa nusuki wa mahyaya wa mamati lillahi rabbil aalamin: Say, My Prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are all for Allah, the Lord of the worlds, until a person can utter the words that follow in 6:164, la shareeka lahu wa bi dhaalika umirtu wa ana awwalul muslimin: He has no partner. And so am I commanded, and I am the first of those who submit. This is the formula for attaining and holding spiritual sobriety and stability, purity, and ascent.
Humility is the very substance of true prayer. It refreshes the heart and tames the ego. Allah describes this quality in Al-Muminun 23:3,
allazina hum fi salatihim khashi’oon: Who are humble in their Prayers.
The two prostrations of every rak’at carry this meaning bodily. The first sajdah recalls that man began as clay, and rising from it recalls that he came into the world from the earth. The second sajdah recalls that he will return to the earth, and rising from it recalls that he will be raised again on the Day of Resurrection and called to account. The Prophet(sa) in his farewell address said, O people, indeed your souls are dependent on your deeds, so free them with Istighfar, and lighten their loads with long prostrations. Know that Allah swears by His might that there is no punishment for one who prays and prostrates, and he shall have no fear of the fire on the day when man stands before Rabbul Aalameen.
The Promised Messiah(as) once related a story from the Masnawi of Rumi to show what this submission looks like from the inside. A man kept a parrot in a cage. Before setting off on a journey, he told the bird about his plans, and the parrot asked him to pass on a message. If you see the parrots free in the forest, tell them their caged brother envies their freedom. The man delivered the message, and one of the wild parrots dropped to the ground, fluttered, and lay still as if dead. Grieved, the man returned home and told his own parrot the whole story. On hearing it, his parrot did the same thing, falling to the bottom of the cage and lying motionless. Thinking it dead, the man opened the cage and threw the bird out, and it immediately came back to life, perched on a wall, and spoke. Neither of us was dead, it said. I only asked them how to be free, and they showed me. This is the death of the nafs-e-ammara You must die to be free. This is a metaphor for freeing ourselves from the cage of nafse aamara. We must kill our egos, passions and desires and come into complete submission to Allah’s Will. It is only then that we inoculate ourselves from sin and other vices, reaching the state described in the Quran Ha Mim As-Sajdah 41:41, i’malu ma shi’tum: and echoed in the hadith Ma shi’ta fa inni ghafarto laka, Do what you will. At that point man’s very nature has changed. He no longer sins or stumbles, because he has reached spiritual stability.
There is a companion story about the Persian Mystic, Bayazid Bistami. He once found a doctor preparing medicine and asked him if he had a cure for sin. The doctor admitted he knew no such remedy. Bistami later met a majzub, one lost in God through constant remembrance, who told him he knew exactly what was needed. Take ten dirhams of remorse and ten of repentance, place them on the tray of the heart, and beat them with the pestle of tawhid. Sift the mixture through the sieve of fairness, knead in some tears, and cook it in the oven of love. Five spoonfuls a day of this paste, taken faithfully, will leave nothing of the disease behind.
The practical instruction that follows from all of this is simple to state and hard to live. The Sufis say consider every night as though it were Laylatul Qadr, and every person you meet as though they were Khizr. The Promised Messiah(as) urged his followers to reform themselves at night and to help reform others during the day. When prayer and good deeds stop feeling like a burden and start feeling like nourishment and reward, a person has entered the state the Holy Quran calls allazina hum ala salatihim daimoon, those who are constant in their Prayer, in Al-Maarij 70:24. This is heaven brought down to earth, and for such a person there are two heavens rather than one, as Allah says in Ar-Rahman 55:47, wa liman khafa maqama rabbihi jannatan: But for him who fears to stand before his Lord there are two Gardens.
Signs, not arguments, were promised to change this Jama’at. Perhaps that promise is less about waiting for the miraculous and more about noticing what patient, disciplined humility slowly makes visible in a single life.