People have different ideas about what their religious life should be.
Some think that it should consist in the participation in rites and violence against other people.
Others — the reasonable ones — understand that One Universal God (the Creator, the Primordial Consciousness), called Allah in Arabic, now (and not, for example, during the formation of Islam) wants from us, embodied people, quite the contrary. Namely, He wants everyone to perfect, to develop himself or herself as a soul.
It is customary in Islam to denominate a war against people who are considered enemies as external jihad, while internal struggle against one’s own imperfections as internal jihad.
Sufism — the main branch of Islam — is where the methods of internal jihad are practiced. You can read about this in the books such as Classics of Spiritual Philosophy and the Present, Divine Parables, Book of the Warrior of the Spirit and in others. The parables published in this book are also dedicated to this theme.
The true methodology of spiritual development taught to us by Allah is one for all people who seek the Path of spiritual perfection. Only the external forms of manifestation of religiosity are different. Yet they were created by people, and not by Allah, and do not relate directly to Him.
This book will be useful to all those people who, in their personal evolutionary development, have become mature enough to practice internal jihad.
