"As the whole of nature is made by God,
so the nature of each individual is made by himself".

The Hindus have called the manifestation the dream of Brahma. And what is the dream? In the dream the thought and feeling have their full play, they become fully alive, they become concrete. So the nature of man is the manifestation of his thought and feeling, as even "the face of man is the picture of his thoughts"; in it are manifested the impressions he gathers. From the very outset and throughout his whole life on earth each individual makes his nature by the impressions he gathers, which become his attributes and qualities.

"The only thing that is made through life is one's own nature."

 These, if beautiful and desirable, are the treasure he lays up in Heaven; if otherwise, they are a burden his soul would rather throw away. All else that man has constructed in life, every work of art or utility he leaves behind when he goes from here; this, his only real possession, he takes with him to enjoy eternally.

"Nature is born; character is built; personality is developed".

 The character is built by the power of the will checking those impulses which it is desired to restrain, in strengthening and giving outlet to those desires and tendencies which it is wished to produce. The character enables man to play his part in the world, to do his work in life. "A man without a character is like a flower without perfume". If an organizer speaks on organization he interests his audience; if a musician speaks on music he charms the listeners; if a poet speaks on poetry he delights the hearers; and when one possessed of beauty of personality speaks on character and personality he wakens in the hearers the desire to make their character and personality as he says. The personality can be made as beautiful as man wishes, if he knows the art. It is said, "The fittest study for mankind is man"; the fittest art upon which man can be engaged, as well as the most difficult, is the art of personality, for this art enables man to become a person, man.

"A charming personality is like a magnificent piece of art with life added."

This is the real reason of the honour given in the East to the mother, that by her thought and feeling she moulds the thought and feeling of her child. On the spiritual path the light of the Murshid, reflected in the mureed, will turn the mureed, in time, by his devotion into the likeness of the Murshid. So, in the culmination, the light of Rasul is reflected upon an age, fashioning and forming that age to the likeness of his personality, as we read in the Vadan, "Thou mouldest my body and my mind to make the clay kneaded to make a new universe".

Murshida Sharifa Lucy Goodenough