Internal and External Teachers of Human Happiness

Human being is a complicated being who can travel to all stages of creation due to his different faculties. He can travel upward and even go ahead of the angels, or can have a downward journey and remain entangled on the earth and become even lower than any beast. Thus human beings appear before the court of the Lord on the day of judgment as virtues or wrongdoer. In this dangerous path, the ultimate goal of man is felicity, which is proximity to God for the public and annihilation in Allah for the wayfarers. God has sent some teachers for human beings to guide them in this regard: internal guide or reason and external guide of prophets. Imam Khomeini, as a teacher of ethics, has discussed the role of reason and prophets in guiding human beings. The present paper is an attempt to study the internal and external guides in viewpoint of Imam Khomeini.