What Is the Difference Between One Who Remembers Allah and One Who Does Not?
The Exalted Lord says:
“The seven heavens and the earth and whatever is in them exalt Him. There is not a thing but that it exalts [Allah] by His praise, but you do not understand their [way of] exalting...” (al-Isrāʾ, 44)
The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said:
“The difference between one who remembers his Lord and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead.” (Bukhārī, Daʿawāt 66)
The Value of Dhikr and the Importance of the Heart
Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Kharaqānī (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
“The most exalted and valuable thing in the world is a heart that is filled with the remembrance of Allah at all times and in all places.”
All beings in the heavens and on the earth remember Allah in their own tongues. This is manifest in the songs of nightingales, in the ‘hū, hū’ of doves, in the ‘lek, lek’ of storks; in the eyes of the gnostic servants, all of these are manifestations of ‘dhikr (remembrance of God)’ filled with emotion.
Indeed, as an example of this reality, among the select Companions (ṣaḥāba) who were raised under prophetic training, ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
“We had reached the point where we could hear the glorification of the morsels passing down our throats!”
Among the friends of God (awliyāʾ), Ḥudāyī (may Allah have mercy on him) heard the glorification of the Truth from the tongues of the flowers he reached out to pick, and could not bring himself to pick any of them; in the end, he was only able to present to his master a flower whose stem had already been broken.
According to the divine order in the universe, for all living beings except humans and jinn, when their dhikr (remembrance) ceases, their life also ends. This means that for all living beings created by Allah the Exalted, true life is spent with the grace and blessing of dhikr. Therefore, even if a heart that forgets Allah appears to be alive outwardly, in reality it is dead.
Regarding the vital importance of dhikr upon the hearts, Sāmi Efendi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
“The one who truly possesses life is only the one whose heart is alive. For the heart is the House of Allah (Beytullah, the locus of the Divine gaze). If there is no love and remembrance of Allah there, that heart is dead...” (M. Sāmi Efendi, Menāqib, 25.)