Durs on the Essence

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi ad-Darqawi

Yesterday we got to a very significant point of approaching understanding of this great central claim of the people of tasawwuf from the Qur’an al-Karim. We found it in the event of Sayyiduna Musa, ‘alayhi salam, in his quest for this ultimate knowledge of Divine reality. In unfolding this we came on uncertain things that we have to clarify in order that there should not be confusion. We also came on certain things which we might say are contrary claims which are true. But we remember that the sufis say that this knowledge cannot be proved by logic. In other words, it is a precarious path which scorns logic in the sense that it leaps over it because we are not anymore concerned with demonstration or proof, we are concerned with confirmation of experience. If someone has something that is beyond their experience, up to that point all that remains is confirmation of the experience.

We find that the people of knowledge of Allah, by the separate paths that they have come to it, all confirm the goal. The Ahl al-Haqiqat in one place will say something and other people of haqiqat without connection with these people confirm the same thing. Those who have examined the matter even more deeply in terms of the human record find confirmation of exactly the same story in the communities before Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Allah has never left a people without a prophet and therefore he has never left them without access to the unitary reality.

Firstly we have to understand the more important thing which is that this realisation, this unveiling of its nature obliterates the one who looks on it. It is like the one who stares at the sun and becomes blind. So also the people of haqiqat claim in the end their knowledge, yet they also claim with it, in this extraordinary position Allah has put them, a total ignorance. They put themselves beneath everybody while they are making the most grandiose claim possible in their ecstasy-folded up in the great claim is the most menial claim. We say it is a talisman sewn up, bounded and sealed in a mundane cloth. But we also saw that at this point of illumination, the opposite attributes clashed together into a point of unification, so that jamal and jalal met at the point of this annihilation. We end saying that the attributes are darknesses because, for example, you can see the act of strength but you cannot see strength itself, you cannot the see the qudra. You can see the effect of will but you cannot see the will.

Attributes are the darkness and therefore the Essence itself is a luminosity, it is an illumination and therefore it is in itself form. So the sourceness of the attributes, which coming into mulk manifest form, is darkness. The core of the darkness is the luminosity of the Essence-the lights, the tajalli, the self-manifestation from the Essence, but the self-manifestation from the Essence is division. Therefore in an inner chamber of the palace, there is a hidden room with a key. We say that there is an inscription in a talisman that is sealed. There is light upon light and there is outline, there is vision, there is identification but the key to all of it is that when this mountain-self disintegrates and dust remains, that is the confirmation of the recognition of what happens in the process of the annihilation, and in the return from the annihilation. Annihilation has, if you like, three phases: it has the ecstasy and the swooning and the passing away. It has the obliteration and it has the return. This is as far as we can go. We cannot take the matter further than this.

We must make the journey back, as it were, from this condition to what we are able to recognise of the cosmology of this situation that is the existence of the world because at this point we have broken the barrier between the self and the cosmos. We have recognised that self-cosmos is one reality. We are now dealing with the whole creation, you as all the creation. The mountain and Sayyiduna Musa have one knowledge between them-he knows what the mountain knows! The dust and the clay know what the dust and the clay know. The secret therefore of the smallest atom is the secret of all existence. What man discovers, the atom already knew! In Qur’an Allah says that every creature invokes Allah, every creature praises Allah, only you do not know.

This situation we must look at more finely. We have said that Allah is One in His acts, His attributes and His Essence. In reference to the unity of the act of Allah we confirm it by the line of the Diwan of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahullah, “The multiplicity of actions do not multiply the Actor.” In other words, there appear to be many actions but in reality, “Allah is the Creator of you and your actions”-Qur’an. This in itself rips away the veil of qudra and the fantasy of the creatures control over the human situation. In every situation he is utterly dependent and in it we see most clearly that the ruler, the monarch, the leader, the tyrant is most at the mercy of the human situation. The man of destiny, the Mao Tse Tung, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan is most at the mercy because Allah raises him up and Allah brings him down as He wants and when He wants. He does not have knowledge-his very frenzy of activity is the evidence of his ignorance. He is trying to set up a kingdom that is other than the kingdom of Allah in knowledge.

We will say of the attributes that the one who goes from act to attribute has already made a tremendous leap because they have gone from outward appearances to what allows the outward appearance to happen. It is a very crucial zone because it is in this zone that the intelligent seeker realises that all the elements by which man makes something happen are not his. We have said of the act, have we not, that all actions are really one action. This in itself removes from man the fantasy of power, kingdom and achievement. It is what places the governments of existence under shari’at and not under the politics of any kingdom. That is the meaning of Madina al-Munawarra and not what people have said it is today.

When we realise the unity of the attributes we already come to this impossible situation where we realise that all the elements and energies of creation are under the command of Allah. Allah says in the Qur’an, “He makes people laugh and He makes people cry.” These are two names of Allah. “He brings to life and He makes die.” In the Qur’an this ayat is followed by that ayat. This is an actual confirmation of the saneness of weeping and the saneness of laughing. We cannot end up with the same view of existence when we understand this. They are different in experience but they are the same in reality. So a real knowledge would be one in which these two experiences would be understood to be the same.

The sufis say that the common people get the sting but they do not get the honey. The elite get the honey and they do not get the sting. But the elect of the elite get the sting and get the honey and they do not care. In other words they experience the sensory in its fullness but the meanings so dominate their experience that it has made them the same for them. Like Sayyiduna Ayyub, ‘alayhi salam, the pain becomes a du’a. At that point worship and suffering are not different and at that point there is no suffering properly speaking. The opposites have met. One of the great awliya said, “I reached Allah by the opposite names.” Meaning that by placing them together and placing them together he finally broke through to understanding what existence was like.

The oneness of the Essence is a secret which contains a secret. Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, has warned against contemplation of the Essence because you are not going to decode it. You are going to unlock a lock. You will go into a room, you will go out of a room. You will pass from one phase to another phase. You will join and you will separate. You will extinguish the outline and you will replace the outline but in that chamber, in that secret garden there is only you. There is nothing that is not you, because that is the unitary reality. You, the experiencing slave, will vanish and it will manifest. So you will pass in and out of that secret garden through the gate. You will smell these fragrances and you will smell those fragrances and that is the most that we can say.

This annihilation contains a period of swooning between these realms. What are these realms? Now we come to precisely what designates all of existence. We have designated these by three terms: mulk, malakut and jabarut. There are two systems by which this is explained by the Ahl al-Haqiqat: the first places as it were jabarut at the pinnacle. So they talk about ahadiyya, al-wahdat and wahidiyya. In other words, ahadiyya is pure, uncontaminated unity without form, without distinction, without condition, without definition. Where was Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, before the creation of the universe? Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, replied, “He was in the great ama, the great mist,” beyond what may be stated. He was inaccessible for there was no-one and no thing to have access. This is ahadiyya.

Then you have wahidiyya as the third of the three. Wahidiyya is the potential of all the elements of the attributes, all the names of Allah, Asma was-Sifa-names and attributes, as this capacity from which all existence will unfold. Their effulgence cascades from the Unseen into the phenomenal universe. Wahdat is between these two. Wahdat is the one form from which all the forms come. It is that primary form from which the forms come. Properly speaking it is not a realm but a barzakh, an interspace between ahadiya and wahidiya. Remember that these are not three realms in reality but in description between because Allah’s Essence cannot be divided. Allah’s unity cannot be separated. It is our way of coming at this subtle, fine matter. But we must be able to recognise these three elements in order to realise the tremendous nature of the Divine Creator. So its essential reality we define as indefinable – the Name that cannot be named, the great name of the Name. The ultimate name, the supreme name.

We come to the barzakh of the wahdat which is Nuri Muhammad, the light of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, taken from the hadith which confirms this primal reality of the meaning of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. We are not talking about the dhat of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, but about his haqiqat, about his ma’nawiya, his meaning, his reality, because his essence is like your essence and my essence in the sense that our essences have no reality in themselves, they are only reflections. The only existent is Allah.

What about the reality, the meaning of him, the light of him? Let us for the moment say that the Nuri Muhammad is this interspace between completely indefinable, inaccessible, inexplicable sublimity and the vast fountain-head of all the energies of all the attributes. He is the first of the lights manifesting from the Essence of Allah because he is the ultimate form. Sayyiduna Adam is the pinnacle of creation and the adamic perfection is completed in the lastness of the adamic which is Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Therefore that is the ultimate form of what maybe form than which there is no higher. Therefore it is by him that the whole thing has meaning.

As Sayyiduna ‘Ali, karamullahu wajhahu, said, “The evidence of tents in the desert, of camels being barbecued, of silken tents, of carpets laid out, of goblets, of trays, of houris, of youths, of armies-all this is evidence that the king has arrived, all this is in order that the king should take his place. So all of existence is in order that Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, should manifest. There is a hadith qudsi that says, “If it were not for you I would not have created the universe, oh Muhammad!” Sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. He is therefore in this picture, this barzakh between the ineffable and the plenitude of all the attributes. There is the mist and the peacock emerges, and then the peacock opens its tail and the tail of the peacock shows all its variegated colours, and all its splendour is unfolded which is the unfolding of the names and the attributes. These are the three stages of ilahiya, of godness, of the divinity. Again, we are not referring to the Prophet of Madina or his essence, but of the nur of Muhammad, the haqiqat al-Muhammadi.

Now let us look at the three creational realms. We have mulk and malakut and, as I say, some people put jabarut at the pinnacle, and then there is the descent to malakut and the descent to mulk. Shaykh al-Akbar, radiyallahu ‘anhu, says–because these are only in description, Allah is One, not dividable-“It is better understood that if between the mulk, the visible realm and the malakut, the invisible realm, you put the jabarut and make jabarut the interspace, you will understand everything.

Before we topple over what can be held in the intellect let us pull back from that and return again to Qur’an. We find in Surat ar-Rahman that there are two seas, one bitter and one sweet, and there is an interspace between them. One does not run into the other. There is a barzakh between them, is that not correct? So they do not mingle but they meet in this interspace and interspace is that which does not take up space. The line between one and another is the barzakh. Just as we say that insanu kamal, the perfect man, is the complete interspace between two seas. He is the barzakh between the knowledge of shari’at of the phenomenal world and the haqiqat, the hidden world, the subtle world, the spiritual reality. He is between the two, and he does not deny the one and he does not deny the other. He obeys the obligations of the one and he confirms the secret of the other. He is outwardly a man of shari’at and inwardly and man of haqiqat.

If we look at these realms, not from the man’s point of view of knowledge but in the creational sense of cosmos, we find a visible world and an invisible world and there is a barzakh between them. Let us go further. In ordinary imagination, if you look out of the window you see a tree. You see tree as solid and around it is nothing, air. It is by that space that you recognise the object. Then of course along comes a scientist and says, “That is solid, and that is a gas.” So in a sense the whole thing is a lie. So it is a mode of perception: I see the tree in its separateness. So you have another dual, you have samawati wal-ard, the heavens and the earth in the physical sense but then we take it further than that-the sky is ard. You go from the simple condition of the bedouin woman whom they wanted to accuse of shirk and was asked by the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, “Where is Allah?” because he had confirmed that Allah has no where-ness because he cannot be associated with anything and therefore cannot be associated with a place, and yet he asked her this question to see if she was mushrik and she pointed to the sky. But in her intellect that meant no place because the tree is the object, the river is the object, the person is the object but up there is nothing. So that was the purest non-mushrik situation. She was not an idolater. That is the non-idolatry of the common people in which samawat is the space between the object, and that already purifies one from the gross shirk.

Then we are told that the space is also in fact a gas, it is also form, and because we want a pure tawhid, remember that shirk goes through three stages: it goes through worshipping a form, an object, to worshipping an element to worshipping a person. In other words, the mushrik tries to obey tawhid from a crude to a subtle to a mysterious. Worshipping an object-when the jews went off the path they worshipped gold. The worship of the jews is the pure evidence of the shirk because in worshipping the car they in fact bow down to the gold. They were looking beyond the form to its substance. The worship of the element is the very high shirk like the zoroastrians-fire, earth, air or wind, and some believe that running water is inhabited by divine capacity. The tibetans, when they deviated from what they were taught, ended up worshipping the wind power which blew the prayer wheel. They turned the wheels to show that the wind would blow them and they put up flags because they lived under the power of the wind on top of the Himalayas. The zoroastrians worshipped fire and the event of the end of zoroastrianism is the coming of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

The worship of the present society is not an atheist society but a deeply religious society and it is a zoroastrian society. The guardians of zoroastrian power are the people who are at present the occupiers of the Haramayn because they worship oil which is fire. They take their living by it, their power from it and their importance from it. This is shirk. They depend on it therefore it is their god, therefore the occupiers of the Haramayn today are mushrik because this is open worship, it is not nafs.

This is not leaving our point, it is very germane** to what we are examining-the subtlest shirk is the worship of a person, that someone is a deity, because obviously if you say that someone is a deity you do not mean their body so you have to explain away their body in some crazy doctrine, because if you had just meant the body you could have made it of clay or of wood but you have left that domain, it is primitive. The people who are most wise about these idols of stone and so on are the muslims because they know that it leads to these other ones. When the christian missionaries went to Africa they let them continue with their idols, they never removed the idols, saying, “It is just a step from that idol to this idol of a living person with a history. So you have a black Jesus, a chinese Jesus, a south american indian Jesus, a’udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim, because they say that he is a divinity. In other words they have exalted him up and so they have to take his body with him and say that godhood is embodied. They lie who say he is one of two-Qur’an.

Our doctrine can have no taint of these elements. Our tawhid can have no taint of either of these three elements, these conditions of shirk. We have to arrive at something which is devoid of that and this is why in description the Ahl al-Haqiqat have made these three dimensions in speaking of the Divine reality in order to make quite clear that you cannot identify the Prophet Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, with the Divinity. We have to deal with the secret and that secret is the secret of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, but that secret is therefore the secret of existence, the secret of the universe, only we are speaking in gradations to get the matter finer and finer so that there is not any taint or shred or shadow of connection so that we have pure tanzih and confirm Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, as one who walked in the market place and so on and so on-the qualities of bani Adam.

Let us return then to these three realms of mulk, malakut and jabarut. We say that jabarut is between mulk and malakut. We have then gone one step further, if you recall, which is that mulk on first examination is the outline of the solid form. In other words we have identified ‘out’ (or ard?)** with malakut and samawat with malakut but this is the primitive tawhid of the bedouin woman. We then realise that the whole cosmic reality including the air-because otherwise we will again end up worshipping the air, worshipping the subtle elements-is also form. Air is made of oxygen and nitrogen, so already it is form, just as running water is oxygen and hydrogen. The ocean is apparently limitless but in fact it has form, a distinct viscose silhouette, yet so does the air and so does the volatile fire that is somewhere and is not anywhere. And obviously with the earth as we have seen.

Therefore we avoid this by refining our understanding of it to its furthest limits and the scientist confirms to us that the air is form so we were on the right track before the scientist demonstrated it. We were on the right track from our Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, confirmed by the great awliya and salihun like Muhyiddin Ibn al-’Arabi. He was writing a tawhid for an age that was lying seven hundred years ahead of him because he we preparing people for the discovery that scientists were going to make about matter because the next thing would be that they would make people worship the power of matter. He prepared us for this because the vision of the ‘arif is beyond the knowledge of the constituencies, the nature, the identity of the underlying substance of stuff.

So we now reach this next stage of samawati wal-ard. By ard we mean all that is cosmic and by samawat we mean all that is ghayb, hidden, because properly speaking if we go to the sublime Qur’an, samawati is from asma’. So the heavens is a place of names, a place of meanings, and the earth is a place of sensory. “We have taught Adam all the names,” we have taught him the heavenly realities, we have given him a heavenly dimension in his ‘aql, that Allah asked him to identify and name. Language is between the two kingdoms of mulk and malakut, between the hidden and the visible. So asma’ is the realm of the samawat. So the samawat is the malakut in this higher knowldge. We have a creature who is between the visible world and the invisible world and that is why, right at the beginning of Qur’an, Allah says, “This book is for people who believe in the Unseen.” If you do not believe in the Unseen you are not going to break through to tawhid.

This elevates us up to a state of knowledge. You believe in the Unseen until you see it and then you do not have to believe in it. If you tell me, “There is someone I would like you to meet,” I believe in that person, I believe that they exist. The Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, confirmed the Ghayb and he is a trustworthy person and so you believe him. Once I have met so-and-so I do not have to believe in him, I have the evidence. Madness is when you do not believe yourself-you do not accept what you tell yourself, you cannot bear it, so you say you are someone else and split in two. This is a knowledge. You go from ‘Ilm al-Yaqin to ‘Ayn al-Yaqin. Allah says in Qur’an, “Do not say, ‘I am mumin,’ say, ‘I am muslim.’” Submit! Take the message! Believe in the Ghayb! When you have ‘Ayn al-Yaqin, do not brag, do not boast, because it is based on a subtle moral and spiritual quality. Do not say, “I am mumin, I have iman,” what is iman? Iman is trust. What is trust in? It is in the Books, the Messengers, the Angels-all the elements of the Unseen-the Balance, the Qudra of the destiny, the Last Day, the Garden and the Fire. In other words, malakut.

This brings us to the finest element of all of this which is that between mulk and malakut there is a division, a barzakh has been set up. The nature of a barzakh is that it has one face facing one way and one face facing the other way and yet it is really one and it is not really an existent. It is a non-existent simply by these two coming together but there has to be a barzakh. This barzakh between mulk and malakut is jabarut. Jabarut is from jabr. Allah is Al-Jabaru. This is the tremendous might of Allah. Jabr is what cannot be penetrated, it is like a wall that cannot be breached, it is that kind of power-impenetrable, unbreakable. So then, Qur’an comes into all its fullness because if you read Qur’an with awareness of the description of cosmology of existence, it just pours the information onto you, it floods you. You cannot open the Qur’an but that you will find it. If you open it ten times you will find it seven out of ten as it is so common to the basic news that the Book contains, and it is the secret of the realm of the jabarut, the realm of the lights. We have defined that it is the jabarut that sets up the outlines.

Let us take it again in the simple bedouin sense: between the man and the sky there is a silhouette, an outline, but he is that outline. One is dense and one is subtle. I see his outline by the air and I see the air by his outline. Between the visible and the invisible-between this man and outline, and the Unseen, there is a similar division. Between cosmos, man and sky, and heaven, and the ruh there is a similar outline. That is the mithal of that.

Now let us make it easier. In daytime the earth outlines between man and sky which we are now holding to as both being cosmos are visible. When night comes, sky and man have been gathered. So in another condition which is night, there is no difference. I cannot see the difference, I cannot even see them but they are there and they have been unified by the night. Let us take another example: a landscape with a house, trees, cattle, fences and roads-the snow falls and it all is unified. It is covered over and the outlines are gone, but it is all earth, so the snow had only made true what was true anyway. That is one condition in which all the separate things are gathered, and the night is a condition which makes all the separate things which are still there gathered, undifferentiated.

In malakut there is the same thing only it happens the other way around. In malakut it begins as a darkness, begins as snow, everything is unified, then the form emerges, the outline emerges. Let us take it further. On the earth we see darknesses by light. We see solid forms by the light of the sun, or an artificial sun. So by light you see darknesses. This is our condition on the earth. If you were to go into the depths of the ocean-and we shall take this as our mithal-at first it would be complete darkness. If you were a scuba diver you would at first distinguish absolutely nothing, but as you grow accustomed to this condition there are certain fish in the depths of the ocean that from within themselves have luminosity. Allah has given them an outline of light so that in their darkness they are lights. So you would begin to discern the lights of these creatures of the deep by their darkness. So in malakut, by being annihilated in the darkness of the attributes there begin to emerge the lights of the Essence, which are the subtle forms. From the lights, all the lights come to one light. Nuri Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

Make no misunderstanding and imagining that we are saying anything that would permit people to say that we are worshipping Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, him, and that we are making any claim for him. We are not making any claim for anyone except Allah. But we want a tawhid that will have the Rabb and marbu-the Lord and the lorded over, and not a tawhid that leaves us with an unexplained universe and an unexplained master of the universe, the human being. Otherwise we have set up the total existence as a god, or we will deviate and become pantheists which all the muslims try to say that the sufis are. ‘God is the cosmos.’ But by this delineation we are not saying so, how could it be so when we are saying that everything perishes except the face of Allah. Nor are we monist, we are not saying that there is only One and nothing exists and there is only Allah and that is the end of it, because we say that the final position of knowledge has to be two. It has to be the Lord with nothing associated with Him, and the dependent, utterly reliant, utterly helpless slave-cosmic slave in slave cosmos obeying His rules. We must remember that this is our final position that we must aim for.

To clarify this last confusion-because if we made a mistake about Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, we would then end up making the mistake about ourselves and our own identity-we go back to the statement that the essences of the things have no reality. Let us take the human creature. We have seen that the human creature has the core attributes: speech, hearing, sight, knowledge, will, power and life. These are the mother attributes, umm as-sifat, the source attributes. But we have also confirmed that these belong to Allah. They belong to Allah in perfection and in endless time, in the beyond time, and they belong to the creature in the in-time imperfectly and therefore with living. And also because they do not belong to him independence by dependence while they belong to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, with independence-He is not dependent on any thing or source for these energies.

Therefore this creature with these acts is this creature with His attributes. But attributes are impossible without His Essence. We are a cell-source from which these attributes come. They have to unify up to one source otherwise there would not be identity. Essence means ‘coming from’, attributed to this one or that one, so we attribute to an essence. This essence is not a reality, it does not exist. We have confirmed that there is only one Essence, Allah is One in His Essence, not multiple in His Essence. But Allah has created existence bil-Haqq, with the Truth. To explain this, to clarify this, the people of clear vision have created a technical vocabulary so that we can understand this and arrive at a position where we make sense of the universe and do not attribute specific and identifiable power and reality and divinity to the creature, and return all sublime elements to the Divine Creator-after all, everything in the universe indicates these spectacular attributes. We have to be very clear not to end up in shirk which is what unfortunately the modern muslims have allowed themselves to do, essentially because their political social shari’at behaviour is deeply involved in the shirk of worshipping petrol.

So a term has been created for the sources of the created beings and that is Ayan ath-thabita-the source-form, the source-outline. Ayan ath-thabita are the essences of the individual creatures, but it exists in description but not in reality. It exists from one point of view and not from another point of view. As Shaykh al-Akbar puts it, “If you say it exists, it exists, if you say it does not exist, it does not exist.” Then to make this clear, the people of unveiling take a very spectacular proof of demonstration-I say proof because it is a proof that there are signs in the self and on the horizon if you only knew-so they take from the horizon something that will explain the self. They let the one explain the other because these are two signs of one Lord. We will come back to this expression ‘the signs of the Lord’ inshallah.

They say that the source of the creature, the essence of the creature is like a mirror. If you think about the mirror, there is nothing in it, it is a barzakh, it is glass with silver and black on it. What happens is that if this mirror is placed before something it reflects it. In front of the light it reflects the light. In that sense it is a receptacle of the light but it is not the light. There is no fusion, no incarnation, no joining. It is not that and that is not this. Yet if you look there, you will say that there is light there, and this is that light. Equally you might say that in the eclipse if I look at the sun I will be blinded but if I look through the smoked glass I will not be blinded. So we say that I cannot look on the shamsul-haqiqat, I cannot look on the Essence but I can look on the Nuri Muhammad because its meaning is to filter this to allow it to be reflected. Or if you like, the Reality is a sun and Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is a moon. From the Divine the light issues, and this planet takes its reflected light from it. We are on the earth and we look up and we can see the moon. We can look at the moon but we cannot look at the sun. If we look at the moon we are seeing the light of the sun by the moon, but we are not saying that the moon is the sun. In fact, the moon is a bit of the earth.

So we will say something further: each mirror will show what it shows according to its shape and its density. One mirror will be very wide and clear and will show a wide, clear reflection. Another will show a long image, another will show a short image, another will show a curved image, another will show convex, another will show concave-in other words, according to the shape of the mirror there will be a different encapturing of this light, but reflected. That is the most that can be said about the essences of the individual creatures. But all the mirrors are taking from one light.

To change the metaphor: the sufis say ‘Many flowers from one water.’ The source is one, the manifestations are many. This is the way in which we encompass speaking about the final, uttermost limit of what may be said. This understanding the nature of this barzakh that makes this mirror this and that mirror that-because it is by barzakh that each mirror has its form-this is the limit to which the intellect can go, in knowing that between mulk and malakut the lights make the differences, outline the differences, outline the outlines. This is called the place of the sidrat al-muntahar. Sidrat al-muntahar is a desert plant of spikes which, when you see it against the horizon, breaks up the sky so that the sky is all outlines. Sidrat al-muntahar is all outlines, it is like a line drawing on a blank page. That is its silhouette. So arriving at sidrat al-muntahar is arriving at that place where the outlines emerge in the clarity and finality beyond which there is only obliteration. Sidrat al-muntahar also has a fruit and if you take it it creates ecstasy and yearning for the homeland. In other words it creates a drunkenness, it creates an intoxication and it creates a yearning for the homeland, and the homeland of the bani Adam is Alastu bi-Rabbikum-“Am I not your Lord?” The homeland of the bani Adam is the Dhar** which is referred to in the Qur’an, when you reach the ultimate abode, when you reach the last home, which is the vision of your Lord.

Then we go to the description in Qur’an of the highest gnostic experience which was Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam-his vision, his passing from his adamic, non-existent essence of reflected light to this barzakh reality of his own ma’nawiya, of his own meaning, of his own nur. He, therefore, had the gnosis that is the highest gnosis and Allah says a very significant thing in Qur’an: “He did not waver.” In other words, his ecstasy did not stop him having access to the knowledges that came from it. You see, a man can have a drunkeness that obliterates him so that he does not remember anything. We say that a drunkenness that has forgetfulness in it is not the same as a drunkenness that has remembering in it. So Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, did not waver. Allah says, “You certainly saw him on the furthest horizon.” So whom did he see? Whom did he see!

Surat an-Najm: “‘Indaha Jannatu ma’wa”-Near it is the Garden of Refuge. Allah says that the lote-tree, the sidrat al-muntahar was misted over, but his eye did not waver nor did he look away.” Then Allah says, “Laqad raa min ayati Rabbihil-kubra.” ‘He saw some of the Greatest Signs of his Lord.’ So we would say that this vision of the Essence-this is not Allah, because you can never, never say that this is Allah because we are agnostics and this is the secret of gnosis-indicates Him. So he saw the greatest sign of his Lord, and what is the greatest sign of his Lord? Himself. But not Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who is buried in Madina, or his identity, but his secret, his meaning.

So then we go from there to the core of the matter which is of course the famous Ayat an-Nur, the Sign of light. The greatest sign of the Lord. Allah says, “Allahu nuru samawati wal-ard.” Now we have explicated that in detail and we now take it in its highest meaning.

“The metaphor of His Light is that of a niche
in which there is a lamp, the lamp inside a glass,
the glass like a brilliant star, najm…”

I say najm to remind you of the surat we have just been looking at. Now here we have already that the secret is an enfolded secret. There is a niche, in it is a lamp and in the lamp there is a glass, and the glass itself is like a star. So this knowledge is a knowledge enfolded and enfolded. Allah’s light is like a niche, and if you like you could say that the niche is like the universe in which there is a lamp, which you could say is man, and then there is a glass which is like a star, which is his secret.

“…lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west,”

in other words it is a ruhani light. We have said that the niche we could say is the world, the lamp we have said is the person, the glass is the ruh and the light is the secret of the secret because that light is not lit from a olive tree from the east or the west, that light is a secret. If you consider the olive, the secret of the olive is that out of impossible material this extraordinary thing happens. From the driest, driest, driest tree on the driest, driest, driest land comes a fruit which is basically of no use unless you transform it from what it was into something else. Then to get its secret you have to crush it until there is nothing left of it and when you have obliterated it, then you get the oil. So this very secret is based on the obliteration of its sources in the physical and the intellectual world. Our meeting with him is based on our abandoning on what we have come from. Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, says in a famous hadith, “The search for the haqq is an exile.” So to reach this gnosis this crushing has to happen, this rejection of everything we possess has to happen to get to this oil, to this essence that is the light from which the light comes.

“…its oil all but giving off light even if no fire touches it.”

It is light in itself before the fire has even touched it. The human being’s secret is light before it is even ignited. Man is the khalif of Allah, if he only knew! “Truly man is in loss,” Qur’an says. Why is he is loss? Because he does not know his own secret. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radiyallahu ‘anhu, says in his Diwan, “Truly if a man knew the secret of his own heart he would never speak again, he would shed a tear with every breath he took.” It is already luminous before it is even lit and the gnosis lights it.

“Light upon Light.”

In other words, once this point is reached of illumination then it is Nurun ’ala Nur. Then all the effulgence of the lights of Allah manifest and, again, everything is turned around the other way-from the blinding illumination of the sun is the clear outline of the Nuri Muhammad. From the Nuri Muhammad all the attributes which were darknesses show their face, show their power, show their qualities-unveil them to the seeker. He sees the power of Allah in the witnessing of what he sees and in the amr of Allah in the creation of the universe, whether it is the chromosomes or the crystals or the stars.

“Allah guides to His Light whomever He wills…”

He guides them to this knowledge. He does not guide everybody so whomever denies it is denying Qur’an. If what they say is true, Allah is not guiding anybody because that is the claim of the people who deny the Ahl as-Sufiya. And here it says that Allah guides whom He wants to this ruhani knowledge that speaks of Nurun ‘ala Nur. If they are denying that man can be guided to this knowledge they are denying Qur’an.

“…and Allah makes metaphors for mankind…”

in other words Allah gives access to this knowledge. The mithal is to take you to the knowledge. What I am saying indicates for you the whole of the way. There only remains for you after this the khalwa. There only remains for you after this the tasting, the experience.

“…and Allah has knowledge of all things.”

That is the situation of the human being. That is why he is called khalif. And it is this tremendous power that has kept Islam alive for over fourteen hundred years despite the ignorance and darkness of people who claim to be ‘ulama in this day and age and despite the ignorance and darkness of the people who rule over the muslims when they are in clear, open shirk in the worship of powers that do not return authority to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Love of the Prophet

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi
Ihsan Mosque, Norwich 19.8.81

Surat al-Ahzab: 55
Certainly Allah and His angels pray on the Prophet. Oh you who believe! Pray on him and ask for much peace on him.

We will look at this ayat that has been recited. In it is permission and in it is a command to pray on Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Everything in Islam has two aspects because Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is the Lord of the outward and the Lord of the inward. This is referred to in Qur’an: “We have shown you the two paths.” The Qur’an is divided into surats from Makka and surats from Madina. The surats of Makka are essentially surats of haqiqat, the Last Day and unseen matters. The surats of Makka speak about the attributes and qualities of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The surats of Madina lay down the basic principles of shari’at, the basic outward concerns of an Islamic community. This is in general but each overlaps the other. There is a Madinan element in the Makkan ayats and there is a Makkan element in the Madinan ayats. It says in Qur’an: “Huwadh-Dhahir wal-Batin”—He is the Outwardly Manifest and the Inwardly Hidden.

Shahada is double: Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wa ash-hadu anna Muhammad ar-Rasulullah. In the Shahada Allah has placed Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, next to Him in this statement. He has exalted the Prophet with this high position and it is an outward exaltation because when Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, raises Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, to the Maqam al-Mahmud, to the chosen station in the batin He says, “He took His slave.” He calls him by the word ‘slave’ in the Qur’an—for his batini exaltation he is called by his low name. For his outward presence he is given the exalted name of Rasulullah. It is this that takes him to this position of being part of the Shahada.

You are not in the shari’at of Islam until you say, “Muhammad ar-Rasulullah.” Confirmation of Allah is not enough. You must also confirm Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, because all the knowledge of Allah we get from the Prophet. If you look on him as a military commander, as a great statesman, as a leader of his people—and he is all of these things—you are not understanding the nature and quality of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. When we look at the sira—at the story of the Prophet’s life, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, what is this element that is so important? It is quite clear that he engendered in his people a complete and unconditional love of him, and by this love these people fell in love with Allah. If you are drawn to someone you take on their pattern, you take on their form, and Allah says about sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam in Qur’an, “We have made you in the best form.” This meant that these people around him were aspiring to him and they were taking on a portion of him.

The traditional judgment of our ‘ulama, for example, says that Mu’awiya is higher than the Khalif ‘Abdal’aziz II because he was one of the Companions, because he had this close contact with the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, because he had the honour of writing down these ayats of Qur’an for the first time in history. Also from among the Sahaba we see transformation from how they were before they knew him, once they had become his companion, and even becoming greater after his death. The great example that we all know and that we all like is the example of Sayyiduna ‘Umar, radiyallahu ‘anhu. He was terrible! He was a dreadful man, but look what happened to him by his contact with the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. People pushed their descriptions of him to the limit to praise him, and before everything they praise his zuhud and his self-criticism. They talk about the two lines running down the side of his face which were like the bed of the river where his tears flowed. Then after sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam had gone, look how he made Islam burst out on the whole world. Imagine all that energy without the hudud of Islam, it is frightening!

Look at Abu Dharr, he was a mouse. But he was the mouse of Allah. When sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam was alive he was so completely enthralled by him—he was the miskin of the masakin. He was intoxicated with the Prophet. If dogs were not unacceptable to us we would say that he went after him like a little dog! On the ghazwa, there was Abu Dharr beside the Prophet. At the Yemeni corner of the Ka’ba there was Abu Dharr beside the Prophet. Going with the caravan, there he was beside the Prophet, and he was so pathetic that he would always lag behind the caravan and almost get lost and everyone would be saying, “Where is Abu Dharr, where is Abu Dharr?” and there he was trailing away behind, he could not catch up with them. Sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam would stop the caravan and then he came up to him and the Prophet’s love welled up in him and he said, “Oh Abu Dharr! You were born alone, you come on the caravan alone, and you will die alone!” Look at the purity of the man, he did not worry about dying alone he just said, “Oh Rasulullah! Please make du’a to Allah because I do not want to be buried like a kafir I want to be buried a muslim.”

This is the man who, after the death of the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, became this lion of Allah. He stood in the streets of Madina calling out the ayats about hoarding gold and silver and denouncing corrupt government. First he was exiled from Madina, then he was exiled a limit of miles outside Madina, then he was exiled to Syria. So the mouse became a lion. He found this courage inside him because his love of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, had interiorised, it had gone into his heart, and he had taken on a portion of the courage of the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, so he was totally transformed. But the highest transformation is in ‘ibada. That is why the Sahaba have this transformed quality, not by any virtue of theirs but by this love that had awakened in them for God that came from their love of the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

Mistaken people nowadays who want to present what they think is pure Islam say, “Between you and Allah there is nobody.” But it is not true, because there is still Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Prayer is commanded on us. Ibn al-Mashish said, “If it were not for the means, the end would have escaped us.”—We would not have got to the goal without the means. Our relationship with sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is closer than the relationship that the Sahaba had with him because, again from Abu Dharr, we have this hadith which recounts their sitting together at the Ka’ba and something came up from the depths of the Prophet’s being and he sighed and he said, “Oh Abu Dharr, I yearn for them.” Abu Dharr said, “Who do you yearn for?” And the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said, “I yearn for my brothers.” He said, “Are we not your brothers?” And he said, “No, you are only my companions.” Only. Abu Dharr said, “Who are your brothers?” He said, “They are those people who will love me without ever having seen me.” Look at the maqam that you have. Look at your spiritual condition at the point when in your heart there is love of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.

We say that Islam is founded on Kitab wa Sunna. The Book we know and recognise, but the Sunna is not something dead, it is not a collection of hadith. ‘Sunna’ is the word, not hadith, not sira, but Sunna—the living practice, the living form of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Look at how he was with his people, and everything he did was spontaneous. Whatever came up in his heart he would never hide it, so if you took all the hadiths about this behaviour and went around doing it saying, “Look, I am doing it!”—you would not be doing it because the highest moral quality is modesty. Modesty means you do not see your own actions. Sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam was not aware of his own actions, they were natural to him. He was the flowering of the fitra, the completion of fitra, he was fitra illuminated by wahy, so when the moment came he knew what to do from his heart. On the moment of the taking of the oath at Al-Hudaybiya he took the oath of the men by their hand, but he wanted to get everybody close together so he said, “Bring me a jug of water!” The women of the camp were called forward and he put his hand into the water and he took it out, and they put their hand into the water and they took it out. His heart just gave him the right thing to do so that everybody’s heart was sealed in that oath and yet it was halal because he had not touched them, the women.

When he got to Madina everybody wanted him to live in their house. If he picked a house it was already political trouble so he struck his camel and said, “Where he stops, I will live there.” If that was cunning that would be even worse but it was not cunning. He knew in an instant the way that it should happen, how Allah had decreed where he should stay. On the instant he knew what to do. When he was dying he put Abu Bakr forward, he knew by his heart what was the right thing to do. He would not dictate who would follow him because he was a prophet and nobody followed him.

In event after event you see this perfect behaviour. So your having the beard is not some rule of Deen, it is copying and copying is part of love. I have just heard of a great majdhoub in Algeria who knows everything about the beard in Islam! He knows all the hadith about it and he praises the beard and they say that he leaves behind him a trail of beards wherever he goes! He awakens the hearts to that love of the Prophet so that they sprout on the faces! When our brother Ya’qub came to us there was not a hair on his chin, and now I have to say, “Take a little bit off, you look too old!” But it is by love of the Prophet that it came and I have never known anyone who desired the beard of the Prophet but did not get it, even if he is Chinese!

It is this that makes the muslims come alive. He was the guide then and he is the guide now. If you do not believe me, go to the Hajj and ask the hajjis how many of them have met with him on the Hajj. You will meet ten people who on that night at that moment all saw him in different places and had a different vision of him, and we know the famous hadith that shaytan cannot take the form of sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. The light of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam comes in the hearts of the muslims. There are things we cannot talk about, secret things that we should not talk about in the mosque, which happen between the muslim and his Prophet. Open guidance takes place between the muslim and sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Discourse takes place between him and his people, warnings come from him to the people he loves. Lives have been saved by the vision of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. Even one of the excesses of the Wahhabis was stopped because sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam ordered the leader of the Wahhabis not to do the action the night before the battle. We have a living relationship with Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and it is in the heart. There is no worship in it. It is revealed in the Qur’an that he was a man and spoke of his death and he is Banu Adam. The light of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is in the hearts of the muminun. The love of the Prophet is in the hearts of the muminun and it is this love that changes the characters of people.

Summing up we say that all Islam is a little imitation of his great character. He said Shahada and one of the Sahaba came to Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and said, “My iman is weak what should I do?” He said, “Repeat the Shahada.” He received the Salat, made Salat and the nawafil. He paid the Zakat and paid more sadaqa than any living person ever has done. He fasted and he said, “I have been given a fasting that no man has.” He made the complete, perfect, pure Hajj as the final important act of his whole life, and because it was the first, pure, perfect Hajj it is over all the millions of Hajjs that have followed it because they are following him. We are all followers. We all come after him because we are tabi’in, tabi’in, tabi’in and tabi’in, and so on by generation.

All the muslims are followers and he is the first of the muslims. Is that not one of his names in the Qur’an? He is the first of the muslims and the first of the muminun. Therefore with that picture you are aligning yourself with him psychologically and physically in every aspect. You would want to have the most of things like him, outward and inward: as much dhikr as you can perform, as much behaviour as you can take on, truly to the limit of wives and wars, because we are allowed four, and he had ten or eleven at one time. Everything, he had more. He had one fifth of the booty, nobody else had this and why? Because he did not keep it, he gave it away. If he gave it to the prisoners they ended up richer than before the war.

The muslim should desire the wives, desire the war and desire the booty and by the same token he should desire the presence of Lordship—hadrat ar-Rabbani. He should desire knowledge of Allah by His name ‘the Near’. He should yearn for one bit of his saying, “I have a time with my Lord that no man has.” He said, “He gives me to eat and drink”, so you desire a bit of that and this is your portion, it is what is due you. This is the Deen of Islam. This copying of sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is the Deen of Islam—to the degree that you can, knowing that you can never reach his level. It is that which transforms people and changes history, and it is what we have lost and what we have to find again. The more you love the Prophet the more you love Allah.

You are in the presence of Allah. Always. But there is a knowledge that you are always in the presence and that comes in the heart. It is what sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam had all the time no matter how tremendous the tajalliyat from Allah was. When he had the Ayat al-’Aliyu in Surat an-Najm, Allah says that he did not waver, he did not shake. You should want your portion of that. This is the Deen of Islam. “Allah has bought from the muminun their selves and their wealth in return for the Garden.” This is your contract—signed, sealed and delivered. “Alastu bi-Rabbikum?” They replied, “Yes.” This is your condition. You are not in this world to gather things unless you are stupid. You are in this world to distribute things, that is the Sunna of the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. He took as a gift even the leg of a rabbit to show that taking was a blessing. He gave to beyond the limits of giving that anybody knew. He used to give to people and wept with shame that they had asked. He himself said, “the hand of the giver is over the hand of the receiver.” He also said, “Allah’s hand is between the giver and the receiver.” So the giver’s hand is in the hand of Allah, without shirk, in the ma’nawiya, because this is the contract, the giving is the contract. He gave us Shahada, Salat, Sawm, Zakat and Hajj from Allah and we received it from Allah. Finally he said, “If you do not thank people you do not thank Allah.” Our thanking of Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is salat an-Nabiy. Allahumma salli ‘ala Sayyiduna Muhammadin ‘abdika wa Rasulika Nabiyyil-’umiyyi wa ‘ala, alihi wa Sahbihi wa salim taslima. Subhana Rabbika Rabbil-’izzati ‘amma yasifun, wa salamun ‘alal-mursalin, wal-hamdulillahiRabbil-’alamin.

The Nafs

Shaykh AbdalQadir As Sufi
Tucson Discourses

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim

We start right at the beginning, trying to make a definition of nafs in its totality. So the first thing to understand is that inner science in the Sufic science of the self, and we must grasp Ibn ‘Arabi’s statement that nobody knows the nafs except the sufis. No one understands the nafs except the sufis – no one is able to understand and there is no way they can understand – except the sufis.

Now, it is terribly important in our technical vocabulary that we have no fixed terms. For example, one shaykh says, “There are a hundred stages to Allah,” and designates what the hundred stages are, and another shaykh says, “There are a thousand stages to Allah,” and has written down what the thousand stages are. Shaykh al-Ansari has written what the thousand stages are. Another shaykh has said there are ten thousand stages to Allah and every one of them divides into a hundred recognisable stages, depending on his insights and recognitions. All this is not poetry because they specify what they’re talking about. Having said that, you must realise that each of these is true. They are by perception different ways of seeing, but they are all true, and you can take any of these ways and you will go through it step by step and recognises everything in it. Our terms are interchangeable.

The other thing is that we are quite happy to allow one term to plane into another term in talking about the self. We can be talking about the self and you can go out of the room and come back and we have not changed the subject and it has become qalb, the heart. So we are talking about the heart and you go out of the room and come back and we are talking about the ruh and we have not changed the subject of conversation. We changed the viewpoint. We’re talking about it in another way. You go out of the room another time and we’re talking about ‘aql, intellect. We have not changed the subject of conversation each time. We are looking at the same reality from a different aspect or from a different function.

Now we say nafs, then again someone might say embattled nafs, rebellious nafs, tranquil nafs – the three nafs of Imam al-Ghazali’s system. The nafs that is wild, the nafs that is rebellious, and then is quiescent. It is fighting, and then it accepts. It is in process. The first nafs is the wild horse on the hill; the second nafs is the one with a bit in the mouth and you jump on it and it throws you off. The third nafs is saddle, bridle and rider. These are the three stages of the nafs.

In another way, we take nafs, leaving out the top one, the highest one. We take two and say that is nafs. Then we go from nafs to qalb, from nafs to heart. We then make two separate things. We jump from one to the other depending on what we are dealing with. If we are dealing with nafs in the active, nafs in the passive, nafs in the historic, nafs in the developing, nafs in the situation whatever.

Another thing we say is the nafs and the ruh. The ruh is the spirit, pure light. The ruh and the nafs are fighting over qalb, the heart. The heart is the Beloved and they are two suitors, two lovers trying to have possession of the heart. The light of the Ruh wants the heart and the darkness of the nafs wants the heart. The heart is, in that sense, an arena that these two are trying to take over. You see, all of these depends on what you want to indicate. These are descriptive terms.

We now go on and say when we talk of nafs in its lower senses, in its embattled sense, in the wild sense. We say that nafs does not exist at all. It is not there. We are talking about a non-existent. An identifiable non-existent. It does not exist. It seems to exist, but I mean it not in a mad way and not in an esoteric way, not in a kind of Hindu way. I mean it in the sense that the physicist tells me that the wall is not there: it’s space, ripples in space from the binding of the nucleus of the atom. That the atom is the Albert Hall and there is one chair in it – this is the solid matter. And that is a ripple, an impulse, a charge of energy. So the whole thing is energy charge in vast space, emptiness. So when looked at from the viewpoint of the Khayal – now this is where you must hang on and fasten your safety belts. We are coming to some bitter turbulence.

The Khayal is turbulent. The Khayal is a faculty in us that solidifies objects. What the physicist tells us is not there in some other funny realm. It is there. That there is a solid wall. That there are solid objects is entirely due to a divinely designed apparent flaw that does not let us see that is the secret of existence. We will come to the Khayal later.

The objects are not solid, the faculty of the khayal solidifies them. This is a most important thing in understanding the nafs. So the nafs is a non-existent that we talk about while, let us say because there is a wall and there is a stage and this awful play goes on and we’re all in this play… I want a million dollars; I want four wives; I want to be President and I want to conquer that country over there, and I want to kill that one and get my own back on that one. This is the play. This is the Shakespeare. It is Aeschylus, Thomas Mann, George Lucas, horrible. Because this is apparently urgently real to people.

All people dealing with the nafs as of this minute in the dominant culture will only consider the nafs within the framework of the existing theatre. They are not prepared to look, and this is where we immediately jump back to the principle under which the IWF is created. They are not prepared to look at the biological principle underlying the self. They are not prepared to look at the physicist’s description of the same arena. The people dealing with the self as experts will not look at its biological character. Those who have been challenged to look at its biological character in a crude mechanistic way are not prepared to in a deep genetic way. They are not prepared to look at it in terms of physics. They are simply not prepared to square the two pictures.

The physicist is not prepared to look at the physical matter as he has grasped its constituent parts to be in terms of his own nafs within the sense of the arena. Do you follow? When I said that to Frithjof Capra, who is the level below the Nobel Prize, “But, Frithjof, my argument with you is that Heisenberg said there is a relationship between the observer and the observed. The observer is in the experiment. So I am not satisfied with your mathematical statement of matter because it does not include in it that when Zulaikha’s apple pie arrived on the table, a glazed look came over the eyes of this rational, brilliant scientist – a film passed over his face of sheer intoxicating enchantment. His two hands plunged forward, picked up the apple pie and wiped it off the face of the earth and everybody had a little piece and he had about four. And he didn’t even know. He said, “Emm -ahh-emm” and his eyes were glazed and shining, and he ate all the apple pie. “Emm, yum yum, good apple pie.” All the intellectual conversation finished – everything – atoms, nuclear black holes, everything.

I said, “Now I want that in your picture of the nature of man, Otherwise you have non’t got a complete picture.” It is the apple pie scoffer who smashing the atoms in the Cerne Laboratory at 60 million dollars a go. It is this one who doing this with the atoms. A nursery, and out of due season. In the nursery it is beautiful. In you it is horrific. I am frightened of you, Really frightened of you. I am frightened of the way you ate that pie. Do you understand?

So obviously apart from the inside, you have to allow the scientist – in the same way you have to allow each individual science to plane in to the meeting point which is man, on this side, and plane out to the divine Creator of the forms at that source. So if you are speaking from separation, you still have to connect with the scientists to the science to the sciences. If you’re speaking from gatheredness, you have to connect the manifestation to the manifester … the one who manifests. Do you understand it?

We jump back now to the nafs. First we’ll take the three terms -the wild nafs, the nafs in conflict , and the nafs serene. That is easy to understand because it has a certain ethical case. So we will get it out of the way first. That is simply that these three terms are from the subject’s own point of view. According to us, it is the human experience of the one who desires knowledge.

We are not talking about the savages unless they take this in question, which is why the sick person in that society is more interesting than the healthy person because he has put himself in question. The one who comes to a psychologist is a higher being than the one who is sitting governing a place, saying everything is fine. He is the madman. The real mad people don’t get locked up in an asylum. They get locked up in history. They get locked up in history because history is fantasy in process. Rumi said this. Rumi said the whole existence in culture is based on forgetfulness. Wherever you find remembrance, all that is gone. You simplify your architecture. You simply your social project, and inwardness dominates outwardness. Health dominates sickness, inwardly. Sickness dominates health outwardly but the science of healing dominates ignorance to deal with it.

So then there are three terms – one of them and then another. We will now look at these three terms. Let us say that there is the person in motion and the person asleep. The person who is static and the person is dynamic. So we will drop all these categories because we’ve already put our lolly on the person who says they are on the moon: who comes along to the Muslim psychologist rather than the heads of the corporation in terms of potential. We put our money on him because he is moving and this one is stuck.

The man who gave this doctrine got to this doctrine because he was the head of the corporation and he flipped. Imam al-Ghazali was the greatest ‘alim. He was like the dean of the faculty of theology at Yale University. And he got more and more in crisis. He said, “What does this mean? It all means nothing. What is this thing? I’m not anything. I don’t believe any of it. I’m not the dean of this. I don’t want to have dinner with the sultan and I don’t believe in any of it. What am I talking about? Why am I teaching these people when I know nothing?” And he got up to speak one day and he could not speak. He had 2000 students in front of him every day and he got up and said, “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,” and ran out the door, He went home, packed his bags, handed out the money to his servants, called his family, gave out the money for the running of his family affairs and went to the desert to find the Sufis.” To find the doctor of the heart.

And from him comes this theory, this description of the three nafs. What we find out about existence gives him regret at leaving it. What we find out about existence gives us desire to pass to the next stage of it. So this first thing is really simple: we will find it so simple that there is no difficulty with it.

This describes the person who has a path as opposed to the person who has no path in terms of knowledge. Although everyone has a path, we are talking about those who know it. And that first stage of knowing has to be not knowing, So there are some people, although they’re destined for knowing, they have to be given naturally a not-knowing.

So you have the kafir beginning – you have outward wildness. And the one who is in outward wildness has no constraint. “I can do what I like.” It is, to the Sufis, the maqam of the child. Not only does it do what it likes but it does not know that it is doing it. The child pees and shits. It does not know. It is time. It is not, “I am doing this thing” that we have to clean up. It is time. There is this stuff and then it goes. It does not know it’s doing it. It only finds out by this fuss that goes on every time it does it.

So it is that maqam in the adult about existence. Total ignorance is to do wrong and not know you are doing it. Not so anything, Why shouldn’t I do it? I’m totally gratified. Total gratification: Do what I want. Real wildness is a wonder thing. The wild horse is wonderful, Wild nafs is not wonderful because it is out of due season.

The kafir society encourages the wild adult and punishes the wild child. Punishes the child who defecates and pees instead of learning to stop it before even the biological structure of the body and the sphincter muscle is working to stop. So it is inhibited and punished when it should be wild and free. The training of the body should come with the biological growth of the body. Leave them uncovered, let them drop everything and hose it down afterwards. That is the traditional Muslim way. So then the deep underpinning of the self are based on that and not on guilt about this. This is the traditional Islam, Now, of course, we have modern Egyptians, Muslims who are very proud of the fact that they know how to use the lavatory. They are proud of it.

So this wild nafs is out of due season. This adult doing what it wants, this person who says “I”. You know the little boy or girl who shows its belly. Everybody laughs – it is beautiful. When you see adults doing it in Golden Gate Park, when you see them expressing an abandon – it wearies people. Why? Because it’s out of due season, It’s not that maqam. That maqam is there and they did not have it there and they are doing it and it is too late. It is too late. It’s gone. When you had no teeth you drank liquids. When the teeth came .. are you going to eat pop always? Are you going to be this person or are you going to find out what the next is? The four year old, the three year old or the two year old sees a stair, climbs it once it knows there’s a stair -hump, hump, hump. How thrilling!

And they are not at that maqam. They see the staircase of knowledge and meanings and it’s awful because there’s no beauty. Their beauty is elsewhere. There is a beauty but it is not there. If we’re talking about knowledges, then we see people who are out of harmony with existence. The wild nafs first of all does not know it is wild. Then there is a wild nafs which does it knowing that is not it. Too wild. There is a wild nafs which does it knowing that it is not it. To them the party is no longer fun. The yields of the society are no longer gratifying. The goals are no longer satisfying. And this immediately expresses itself, of course, in that the pleasures are not pleasurable. And put alongside that the bitternesses are intolerable. Until you turn into a battle with them.

We move into this second realm which is the embattled nafs. They start to wrestle with themselves. They are discontented with themselves. This is the gift of Allah. This is the most wonderful thing. This is the ploughing of the field. It is a knife that cuts, but that knife turns over new soil. This trouble is wonderful. It is the most wonderful thing that can happen.

Out of this comes flight, turning over. Rejection, contrariness, doing the opposite in any sphere of action. Punk. It’s punk rock. It is a high mental plane in relation to the directors of Coca Cola. It is a high mental activity in relation to the Prime Minister of England the President of France: a high, high mental plane. Punk rock is Shakespeare, Aeschylus, genius in relation to them because they have tried to get at the meaning by the secret of the law of existence which is that everything is hidden in its opposite. Only there is no one to explain to them they have done it. So in the kafir society, so beauty-ugliness is to cut their face down like that. One half is one thing, one is the other. They have a razor blade down there, a safety pin in there and everyone says it’s horrible. It is ugly. It is beautiful. It’s outwardly ugly because they want a meaning that is beautiful. A spiritual search. Every age, that is why we go back to the park.

Every age expresses that in a different way because this search among people has to happen and no society can censure it unless they actually alter their hypothalamus which they are prepared to do to the already so-called sane person. You would not use the term sane. We say there is a complete person, structurally. You put them in any situation, then they could be the free one. Once, of course, you put in the chemicals, then they are in the shopping mall forever.

These are the people whose nafs is in trouble. This trouble is a gift of Allah. Now I am not yet talking about repair. I am talking about the sign of life, the sign that there is actually something happening. I’m not talking about what is the way this is healed. We will come to that later. If this person is not destroyed by the act of going to the opposite. Because it is dangerous. It can shatter the personality. It can destroy it beyond help by the action or by the station of shame, of disgrace to which they arrive. If they, in their search, by their intention for self over beauty of the ugliness, break through, then that person will begin precisely to try to discover the meaning of existence. The meaning of existence is discovered inside the self and this is achieved by your conquering you. The enemy is you! In the rebellion you think that the enemy is society, the class.

However, the language of the culture has described it, the king, the president, women, men, everybody. The creation, existence itself, The way is recognition that existence is perfect, flawless. The flaw is in the eye You cannot see. You are seeing trouble. From where is the trouble? Is it out there? No, because this is a mirror. What a horrible mirror! It has got a nose and it has got ears. It is you. Can’t smash the mirror. It is you. There is nothing wrong. Everything that is wrong is here. It is fascinating, is it not? It is enthralling that human beings could participate in this, not 100%, but 99.99999%. I mean everybody is participating in this lie. Society is built on it. History is built on it.

I am looking at this object and what’s wrong with it? The biologists say that the bird could not survive. There i’s something wrong with it, so it died. What is this? It’s complete, absolute lunacy. These law of forms have to be swept aside by natural selection in the calm march to higher forms. It ended with me. It is extraordinary. He is a bag of worms. He is a virus of typhoid and he got all this waster and stuff inside him, blood and phlegm.

What is this? It is in the eye that cannot see. It is like the television. I must give you this physical picture because we all forget just how mad the world has become. The children were on the television and they had this popular sportsman interviewing the children, this idiot. He had this little boy who collected beetles. He had a collection of these black things with these pincers and they were all crawling about and this awful lout was trying to emphasise with this child. He said, “Oh, but aren’t you frightened of the beetles. I mean, don’t you find them ugly?” He was using this sort of child talk, “Don’t you find them all very creepy, crawly, ugh, don’t like beetles.” And the boy looked at him like he was demented. He said, “But they’re beautiful. Beetles are beautiful.” And he said, “They may be to you, but they give me the creeps.” And you saw him like the beetle. Isn’t it wonderful? Allah ta’ala says in Qur’an, “You will not find any flaw in creation.”

So back to where we were. The nafs sees creation by its station. You see creation by your station. Sitting with the Salihun and the awliya’ is the science of the Sufis because you want to see with their eye. You want to see with a clear eye. If I walk with him, he will show me this plant and that plant in the dhahir because he knows them, If I want to know meanings, I sit with the people of meanings and they show the meaning, And then I see with an inner eye. My eye is trained and then I will do what they do and practise what they practise and so it is my eye.

But you understand I have taken it from them. All meaning is hidden. I take it from you. If I Am in your company, I can take from you and I do not then, in the end, need words to be spoken. The murid wills peak the wisdom of the shaykh from things he has not been told by the shaykh. He will take it from it. In one glance volumes are transmitted, and this is not metaphor. This has been categorically demonstrated. You speak of the sciences of the shaykh because he has transmitted everything to you in one glance, in one instant. These knowledges do not take time to transmit. You put a camera in front and click, that is enough. You have got the picture. We are camera. We go click and we are finished, done. IBM is child’s play. Computers are cake mixers to this knowledge, child’s play in relation to it.

So now we come to repair our friend, the troubled nafs. We assuming that the creature wants out of this dilemma and wants to arrive, and now sees that the goal of the nafs is not total abandon, not total outward freedom, but complete inner freedom, serenity, tranquillity. And so not serenity in serenity, serenity in serenity and serenity in turbulence. Stillness in movement and movement in stillness. Outwardly still, inwardly moving. Outwardly moving and inwardly still. This is the goal of perfection; the ikhlas of liberation.

Now we come to what is the repair job. Now this is so enthralling I have to do a commercial for it. It is so intriguing. You see how stupid people can be and what a nuisance the Christian mess of theology has brought and the bother it has been to true teaching. They use words like sin and repentance. The words are so dishonoured by false transaction. Do you understand? Let us take the words sin and repentance. These terms have been poisoned by the Christian mess. Why? Because it is not based on tawhid, it’s based only on the arena. It is supposed to be a religion, but its only reality is the theatre arena of the middle self, of actions, the psychodrama. So then they say, imposing from this higher sphere that you can’t get into… “We have this information that it’s wrong for you to do that.” So you go, “Ooh, you see, I’ve done this terrible thing. I don’t know what to do.” They go, “Repent, repent.” So you go and calm it down, put a layer of cement over it, put a wreath on it, lots of flowers, have a fiesta, light some candles, then you go on and there you go again, la même chose.

So naturally we, all people of ‘aql, have kicked this out, but they have all ended up in the park showing their bellies. That sin and rebellion and they’re back to these idiots. Now here is the ironic (depending on how you look it) extraordinary, ravishing fact: that, in these two terms, in fact, should be understood in their reality not as ethics at all, but as basic biology of the function of the human self in the arena of it species is how the self develops and transforms.

We jump back to my discourse on the oneness of the action of Allah and how action adheres to self. Do you follow? We said in that discourse that action adheres to the self. It sticks to the self.

So let us now jump to bring in another term – the heart. Let us call the heart that inner arena in which all these impressions and experiences are impacted, are recorded, are held. They go in there and they come out from there. So the heart makes wrong action, so the nafs makes wrong action, and it is recorded, it is imprinted, it is rusted onto the heart. Now the ethical way, both of these Christian shaytans and the humanists – the christian shaytans are the same as the humanists because it’s a false transaction. It is a lie, nothing has happened You have just repressed it, as the analysts will say. In both of these instances you have held on to the previous acts, they are still in there. They say repress – it is there, it is written, it is stuck on you. The rust is there. Do you see what I am taking you to?

Therefore they say then you do it. You are still this one, you are still that one – only you are now on tour. You were in the capital and now you’re in the provinces. But it is the same play, the same dialogue, with a different touring cast. You are the great actor and they are all your extras. Strindberg drama. It happens here. They all go away and thus person ages and finds a new lot and does it all again. The basis of modern psychiatry is in that situation. Even my looking at the script, my looking at the parts does not remove it. I’m still carrying it. So it’s not a knowledge to know if the psychodrama reveals the oedipal pattern you’re still carrying, imprinting, and the event of the previous traumatic experience inside you.

Now, Sufiyya says turn to Allah. Allah is the Ever-Returning. We are not dealing with Allah, Allah is dealing with us. We are not dealing with the process called creation, the process is dealing with us. Whose? By Allah’s process.

So there comes into the heart of this seeker, recognising the wrong action that he is given an indication of how to be free of it, which is tawba. Tawba means to turns back, turn around, turn away. So you turn away, you turn away from the wrong action to the source of all action. If I do not see where the action comes from, I am weighed down because it all comes from me and I cannot deal with it. If I know that the action comes from Allah then the decree of Allah has been. “You are in wrong action.” If you are the fly, you are the filth.

At this point in comes only this one dimension in which everything matters, which is awareness. Which says, “If that is a fly, I do not want to be a fly. I would rather be a bee. I would like to carry pollen on my legs and make honey. I do not want to carry filth and make infection and sickness. It is not interesting.” Some people do and find it rather nice. “I like dirt, filth and bzzz.” But some people say, “I do not like it. I really rather like these flowers over there. I’d like to have these legs with pollen on them and make honey in the honeycomb.” If you are a bee you will be a bee. You will not be a fly. You are just a bee that gone over the filth and buzzed past it. It is already decided. You do not suddenly turn from a fly into a bee. You were a bee in the wrong place. And you say, “Bzzz, I don’t want that.”

The Sufis say that the bees scent the honey, scent the nectar and they arrive at it. They get there. The bees get to the flowers. You will only be who you are designed to be. The horse is not going to be a fish. Excuse me giving you this surprising information.

But it is the same with the self. It is under the decree. But it is constantly volatile, discovering who you are. If you say, “I am a reptile,” you see, and you slither along in the mud. He must look like a reptile and he is certainly behaving like one. He does not look like it but he is certainly behaving like it. Maybe he is. I guess he is. Look, he has got fangs, and, in fact, you were and we had not noticed. If the man says, “I am reptile and I am disgusting,” and a voice of creation which is him says, “No, you are a lover of Allah,” he says, “That sounds nice.”

It is what I told you about earlier, “There’s a wali on the mountain.” But you will not be unless you go. Whatever you want. You have possibilities and you will actualise them. Qur’an, the whole Book of Qur’an: “It is for those who spend of what We have given them.” Your potentialities, your capacities. If you use them this book is for you. Then you cannot stop. Wisdom on wisdom on wisdom. And power on power from Allah.

How is it that the modern child knows how to clean its teeth every day in order that it can go on putting food into its belly in a satisfactory manner? It is not taught every day to make tawba in preparation for being an adult when it is of use because it is no use to him as a child. But he knows how to clean his teeth as a child so he always does it. If you didn’t learn as a child, you have to be very strong to teach yourself to clean your teeth.

Why can you not clean your heart? If you make tawba the heart is clean. You do not change, you discover you. You do not change yourself. You cannot change yourself. You discover who you’ve always been from the beginning. If you take someone in the night and kidnap them and fling them into a dark place and it is all cold and they are huddling on the floor, they think, “I’m in a cellar. How terrible. I’ve been flung into a cellar. I’ve been kidnapped.” If that passes, “I must know my position. I must know why,” and they put on the light and they are in a palace. Do you understand?

Rumi says this knowledge is like a peasant and his wife living in rags, covered with lice, and all the creepy crawly things that we were talking about; living in degradation, eating bits of crusts and roots of radishes and drinking brackish water in a hovel with the spiders coming and earth falling on their heads while they sleep. And a man, a traveller, comes and says, “You do not need to live like this. Over these mountains is Baghdad. There are mosques with tiles and mosaics and every house has water running through it. There is work for everybody. There are beautiful clothes. There are silks. There is a whole life there, beautiful food, fresh vegetables and meat for everybody. Come with me. I am going.” and they say, “No, I do not believe. I’m staying here.”

We call this the kafir. The mumin says, “I believe you. I trust you. Why should you lie to me? You have nothing. You cannot. There’s nothing to take from us. There is no gain in it for you. It must be true. I trust you. I am mumin. I trust you.” The Messenger comes and gives you this news … I trust you.

The unseen reality is more terrible and more wonderful than the visible reality. The world is the hovel. The experiential zone of phenomenal existence is that hovel. The cosmos is that hovel. The Baghdad of that picture is ‘alam al-mithal, ‘alam al-Malakut, ‘alam al-Jabarut. The world of the Unseen and the world of the Lights from the Essence of Allah.

So any doctrine of the self has to take in everything in the hovel to everything in the Jabarut. Do you understand? Because we have only looked at the lower self. We are now at the bottom bit of this troubled self. And already we’re into unseen dimensions, Already we are into another element of the self. We have not got to the third thing at all. We are still dealing with the sick, troubled self.

Only I insist that the sick one is not the one who would go to the doctor. It is the one who is ruling in the world, highly placed in the world and honoured by the world. All your professors. All your leaders of industry. All your military. All your paraphernalia of society. All these turned upside down. In the realm of knowledge everything is turned upside down.

So we are still in the embattled nafs and I say the first step to this transformation is by your wanting it, but you later discover that it is not you wanting it. It is Allah wanting it. Because you are not the willer. Allah is the willer. But we have not got to attributes yet. We are trapped in action, I am in wrong action. I do not know about attributes yet. I do not seen know that I am doing it by the decree of Allah and even by the power of Allah. The hand that strikes is Allah striking. And the one who gets struck, it is Allah who had them struck by my wrong action, In truth, in reality, in Haqiqa. By Shari’a, I have to answer for everything I do.

Do you follow? So we’re still in the zone of action. Tawba, therefore, I say, is the first step to the transformation of the self. There is no other first step. There is no other means to transformation of the self except, first, to act of tawba. This is the basis therapy that you must teach people to transform them and you will find a very interesting thing. There will be one person who goes away and one person who draws near. The medicine of Tawba is for the mumin, not for the kafir. And you will not get them to take that medicine. They will not take it. You do not feed a fish with the food of a land creature. Its food is its wrong action.

We had a public meeting, You must allow another one of these crude vulgar examples. We had a public meeting in London two years ago in Hampstead and a man came to me and he had all these theological questions all about why in the world of suffering. How can there be an absolute if there is so much suffering in the world? What you do at school in the debating society. All these theological questions – Why this? Why that? I said, “I have one question, why are you here? Why did you come here?” He said, “Ah, because I want to know God.” “Please now, answer me, may I ask you one more question?” “Yes.” I said, “I do not believe that. What do you really want?” He said, “What I really want is to own a lot of real estate. I want to own Centre Point. I want to be a rich man. I want to let it out to people and make massive amounts of money. I want to have big ears and I want very beautiful women. And to buy them jewels and hang them on their necks and go to all the discotheques in London and have a good time.” This is wonderful,” I said. “Now,” I said, “I am so glad you came. Go out tomorrow. Get it.” And I said, “Get it. Get every single one of these things. And when you are sitting at the top of Centre Point in the penthouse with your car down below and your beautiful woman with her Cartier diamonds and you are sipping your champagne and they say, ‘How did you do it?’ say, ‘All this is from the Sufis.’ And you will have what you want and we will have want we want. Leave us alone and go. You are in the wrong place.” Now I guarantee you that he will get it.

So one patient you will send to his goal once you’ve given him the news – you have to give him the news. The good news is that if you take the way of Allah you will have a garden in the unseen. If you go against the way of Allah, you will be on fire in the unseen. I gave you that example because there are two people who will come to you with the same complaint. One person you can help and one person you cannot help, and if you try to give them that medicine you will kill them. One person will come and if you gave it to them you would make them mad, majnun. And if you gave it to the other person you would make them wali. So you have to know who to give this medicine to and who not to give it to. It is not the same for everybody. There must be some medicine that should do it but it would destroy the person. The same with the nafs. One person you can give it to. The same condition, but a different decree on them, a different seal on them, and you have travelled enough to know when to speak and when to say, “Go and get your dunya, Don’t worry us.” This is the question.

So we were examining the stage of tawba. This is the first stage. And I say it is the necessary first stage of transformation of the self. Let me give you the definition of tawba according to the elite and according to the elect of the elite. According to the elite, tawba is to say, “I have made wrong action,” and to not let yourself get away with it. Do you understand? But keep remembering it. “Now I have done it. I have got to watch.” So you hold down the self.

This is not our way, The Junaydi way is not to make tawba with remembering, but to make tawba with forgetfulness. In other words, you say sincerely to Allah, “I am tired of it. I am finished with it. Help me. Return, come back, give me mercy. I am tired of it, I am finished with it.” Having done that you get up. “Allahu Allahu, Hayy, Hayy,” and you have a good time, clear in the conviction that it will be removed from you and that you will not return to it. Because you know the operation works.

These are the two ways. The first way we do not accept – it is too difficult. Only great men can do it. We are rubbish, extras, mere walk-ons. So we do this other way. So naive, childish, and it works. It works and it takes the person to the source, the Forgiver, the Lover. And you are the beloved. Who is forgiven but the beloved, not the lover? The beloved is forgiven.

So the second element after tawba. Then, of course, life becomes interesting. Tawba is difficult, and after hardship comes ease, and there is the true fact of the matter: that for the Sufi is the transformation of the self is easy. And it’s sweet.

But the thing that everyone else has this terrible struggle. These awful Christians trying to do good works from a solid based nafs. This is disgusting, obscene. “I am doing good” – you spit it out, vomit it out. You see, like some of our brothers in Islam who say “I am greeting you because you are my brother.” You say, “Oh, don’t be. Be my enemy. You’re so good at it!” Do you understand? It is not that. It is from here. It;’s telling people it’s sunna to do this – we are brothers, we are all the same. Like when I was in the mosque in London and one of the Imams came to me and said, “I’d like you to come and meet someone to show you that in Islam we are all brothers. We are all the same, there’s no difference between the common person (looking at me) and the great rulers of society.” He said, “We are all one. All the same. And I’d to present to you the mufti of Sudan,” and the man punched him with his elbow and said “the grand mufti.” But it is so beautiful, it is so charming how strong they are. It is so wonderful. That is putting right action without tawba underneath it.

The next stage is to replace bad qualities with good qualities. That’s not difficult, is it? To replace bad qualities with good qualities. It’s not difficult if it’s preceded by tawba. The tawba is difficult. But if you’ve made tawba, it is fine. You were mean, now be generous. You ate too much, now eat little, You envied people, why should you? You are on a path to Allah. Who could be better than you? You’re going to your goal. How can you envy anybody anything? You are the highest. Move from it whatever it is.

You become angry now. You know what, you must replace anger with sweetness. “Anger is fire,” the Prophet said, and it is put out by water. If you are angry, do wudu’. He said, “Have you not seen the anger when veins stand out on the neck and temples? This is fire. Do wudu’ and you put out the fire.” And the meaning of the act of wudu’ is purification. And you do wudu’ and it is a tawba and the anger is gone.

What a wonderful thing. You see, anger is not to be removed from you. It must not leave. It must be under your control. If you did not have these volatile energies you would be dead. If you do not have the sexual drive, if you do not have the drive of anger, if you do not have all these energies, there would be no creation. But they must be in their place. You are arriving not at some kind of emptied shell – we are arriving at a balanced being. We are bringing everything to the middle. We bring appetite to the middle; belly appetite, sex appetite, possession appetite, reputation appetite. We bring everything to middle.

Now we look at the middle zone of the nafs. We will jump to three new terms, which is what is going on in this thing: Nafs, Hawa, Shaytan. Let us now look at what these three terms are in the arena of action. This is very interesting and will help a lot in your understanding of the process of behaviour. What is the experiencing self? It’s very simple. It’s you experiencing what’s there. So someone comes in. Wrong action. Nafs. Something appears, appetite, you take it. Hawa. What is front of you. It’s yours. You acquire what is there. You are acquisitive. You take what is yours. The belly, sex, head, reputation, study, being a scholar. You take, you acquire. You are possessed by appetites.

Now shaytan, shaytan with a tail and a samsonite briefcase. Shaytan has form. Shaytan has the form of many things. It changes form. Shaytan is a subtle energy of jinn in the unseen and he has a job to do. He is like the man who does the swamp cooler. When it breaks down, he turns up. When the nafs leaves a crack, he can come. He answers the call. We say, “Please come, the swamp cooler has broken down,” and the swamp cooler man comes and fixes it. Shaytan: whenever your nafs gets something wrong, there’s a crack in it, he’s got a complete service. He gets the message on his CB and he’s out the door. “Right, here I am.” Now shaytan is the volative activator at your already existent wrong action. Shaytan is when the creation comes back to inviting you. Suddenly your wrong action from you that was passive becomes active where the creation calls you to it. This is the meeting with shaytan. This is what is called shaytan. This is the identity of Iblis. That is why one day he is tall and thin, the next day he is small and fat, depending on what the situation is. In other words, if passively your intention is bad, then from intention to action, he is the action dimension of the wrong intention.

But you are judged. His job is that. Like the other man’s job is to clean the … He is under strict orders from Allah. You have wrong intention now, then give them up. You see. He says, “I will.” In Qur’an shaytan says, “I will not cease to try men until the last day.” That energy is persistent in man. When he has wrong intention, shaytan then comes in on his jet plane. “Come on, do this. There’s the trouble, make that one.” He pauses for breath. You jump in with the interrogation. Shaytan. The attack. The Shaytan. From the passive to the active. Nafs to shaytan through our old friend Hawa. Nafs, shaytan, hawa. Got that? So to cheer people up because they think, “How awful, what a mess. Allah, what a mess.”

We now look at it another way to cheer us – give us himma, yearning to get past it. We now take three more pictures: the dog, the pig and the sage. These are the three elements of nafs from another picture of what’s in there. Here are three creatures. Inside is a dog. This is nafs. What is nafs? Nafs and hawa.

How now, we are now going to look at it in another way. As a dog. One of the characteristics of the dog is this picture. In this picture it is the dog returns to its brother. You do it and you still do it. You go back to it. The dog plays a double game with the master, wagging tail, but it is not all friendly. Friendly, friendly, and then you go and cringe, tail shuddering, it’s awful. The dog chases round the side when it is terrified. There is all that cringing and slobbering. You are this you. You are this to you.

And what is the other characteristic of the dog? It is that the dog is treacherous to its own master. The dog will defend you as much as you defend yourself against the world. But at a certain point, you turn around and you savage yourself. Like the person we were talking about the other day. That has to happen. They will turn on themselves and savage themselves. They will do everything against their own interest – to the edge of suicide. And, of course, some people are torn to shreds.

The pig is appetite. What is this aspect of appetite? The aspect of appetite is if you allow it, if you feed it, it won’t stop feeding. The pig will not stop the feed. What is interesting is that the pig is abhorred in Islam and the dog is technically abhorred except as a hunter when you use its high qualities and ignore its low qualities. The dog in Islam is not allowed in the house because we will get all that and pick it up from it. It would rule us. But its higher qualities are something else. It hunts and guards.

The pig is haram because the character of the pig is appetite itself and if you feed it, it won’t stop feeding until it kills itself. It stuffs. Appetite feeds, “Grows by what it feeds on,” Shakespeare said. Appetite grows by what it feeds on. It keeps on and on and on. So it is a pig. And it gets fatter and fatter and fatter until it even will cannibalise. It will eat its own. Appetite will eventually eat its own, Devour everything, en famille. The child will devour the parent. The parents will devour the children and so on and so on. Devour by appetite.

These are two aspects of the nafs. Now, the Sufis say: if you kill these two the sage will die. We have not come to the sage yet. If you kill them the sage will die. They are these medieval chairs. When you sit on a chair and there are beasts under the chair that hold it up. In Spain they have wooden chairs that have an animal underneath and it’s sitting on it. This is their proper place, You do not kill them. If you kill them, you’re finished. The zahid may kill them and lose the day. The one who is an ascetic may destroy everything. We are not ascetic in this way. We say you subdue the pig, but you need the nourishment. You need the appetite. You need eating, but you subdue it. If you give the pig enough, it is all right.

The other aspect of the pig, its negative qualities is that it wallows in its own dirt. Its filth becomes its scent. It turns in on itself and wallows. Subdue the appetite, and it will carry you. Control the dog and it will guard you. You will get from it what its task it. It will guard you It will hunt for you. It will retrieve for you. It’s used for that in its place. If these two are subdued, they are, as it were, the chariot on which rides the sage. The sage is the raw insaniyya in its highest level. Then the true high aspect of the nafs emerges. These two are necessary in their place and onto this comes the sage, the man of wisdom, the creature of knowledge. He rides on a conquered appetite and a subdued anger and all the dog in us. Another picture of man.

So now we say that this, we come back to the first thing of the middle nafs. The embattled nafs is then busily involved in replacing wrong action with right action. This is, as it were, this middle part of the journey, once you get past its first stage from tawba, has two stages to go on to the third one. The first stage is to remove wrong action. The next stage is to acquire qualities.

The first of these qualities has to be – otherwise the journey cannot be made – sabr. Sabr means patience. But it means something more in Arabic. It’s a wonderful language. Sabr means something much more than this. Let us say it is an aspect of patience. Sabr is also strength in Arabic, fortitude, being able to deal with, staying power. That when you get knocked down, you do not go to pieces. Sabr means that you have staying power, that when the first hit comes, the first negative signal, the first trouble, you do not go to pieces. You just keep going. You have power. Sabr is the first thing to acquire.

Sabr, the Sufis say, is patience. It is a medicine. All of its taste is bitter and all of its results are sweet. It is wonderful. This is the position of the elite. Sabr, patience, is a medicine which is bitter, the results of which are sweet. This is why, seen from the view of the elite, the elect of the elite, patience has to be that in bitterness and sweetness are the same to them. So when al-Junayd was asked, “What is patience?” he said something tremendous. He said, “Patience is being patient with patience.” So its bitterness is sweet, and its sweetness is sweet. This is beautiful.

Do you see? They are the same to the man who has achieved, they are both the same. And this is the man of perfection who, remember, is a man of action. The one who has arrived is the one of action. Because action follows knowledge. Knowledge is the journey. Action is the proof. So this is the stage where this sabr becomes this – what a wonderful thing! It is the most interesting thing.

And the thing is we know everything about the nafs. So the first news of the Sufi is that there is nothing to be afraid about in the nafs. You see in the current way of looking at the nafs it actually quite frightening, because they bring these myths, like the Oedipal myth and these great Greek myths to dramatise this little arena which they are all so worried about. It is frightening. People see themselves pitted against these vast destructive figures. It is awful. They cringe before it.

Now the Sufi view is not this. The self. First of all, it’s very reassuring. There isn’t any aspect of the self that we do not know. You cannot bring a mystery self to the Sufi. You bring one you cannot do anything with, but never one that you do not know what it is. It is totally plotted, it is all as clear as daylight. It is very simple. It is all within the parameters that I have described. Even before I came among the Sufis I used to say to people, “Well, you can only do what a human being can do.” Because one of things of the nafs is to say, “You do not realise the un-nameable, unspeakable things that I have in my heart.” They make themselves into dreadfulkings. They make themselves into these mythological figures. They say, “You do not realise. It may be all very well for you if you do not know the terrible things that there are, these serpents that all squishing around in me. A’udhu billah min ash-shaytan ar-rajim. Really you can only do what a human being can do, What is there else that you can do? The worst you can do is to destroy everything and everything, yourself included. It is quite human. There is nothing unexpected in it. So again the attitude if the Sufis to the nafs is not that it is a sickness, not as this dreadful thing. But that we are, it is a simply necessary ingredient of the recipe of what may turn out to be a very good dish, a very good cake, a very good morsel of nourishment for everybody. Of course, if you botched it, you can burn the cakes. But it’s basically the ingredients from which something tremendous can be made.

Sharh of the Diwan of Abu Madyan al-Ghawth

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi al-Murabit ad-Darqawi
(Weimar, German, 1998)

The pleasure of life is only in the company of the fuqara. They are the sultans, the masters, the princes.
There is no higher company. As they are the least of men and make no claims, they are the elite and the two worlds are their property. With them is the Maqam al-Mahmud, for the Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, has said, ‘Look for me among the poor, for I was only sent among you because of them,’ and ‘Poverty is all my glory,’ and “Allah loves the poor.”

Therefore keep their company and have adab in their assemblies. Leave your portion behind you whenever they send you forward.
Keep their company – in this is half the science of knowledge. Our knowledge is not informational, it is transmitted. The company of the fuqara is like a developing fluid in which the murid is soaked, until by its properties, the self emerges and is recognised. As we see later in the poem, the imprinting of the image is due to being exposed to the light of the Shaykh.

Spiritual courtesy has three levels:
1) adab to Allah
2) adab to the Shaykh
3) adab to creation

Adab to Allah has three parts:
a) Performance of the obligatory
b) Nawafil (extra) acts of ‘ubudiyya – night prayers, recitation of Qur’an, wirds, wazifas, diwan, Asma’ al-Husna.
c) Muraqaba. The invocation of the Supreme Name with deep contemplation and stillness until the falling away of the attributes and the secret is revealed. The secret of muraqaba is mushahada (That is, the secret of watching is witnessing.)

Adab to the Shaykh has three parts:
a) Action. That is service without judgement.
b) State. Taste the states of the Shaykh in three conditions:
i) dhikr – follow him in concentration on his Lord.
ii) fikr – follow his exposition of the glories of his Lord.
iii) himma – follow him in his yearning for his Lord.
c) Station. Recall that his maqam is the ayat of YaSin:
‘And there came a man, running, from the furthest part of the city saying, “Follow the Messengers.”‘

Love of the Shaykh vanishes in love of the Messenger.
Love of the Messenger vanishes in love of Allah.

Adab to the fuqara has three parts:
a) This is contained in the last phrase of this line: ‘Leave your portion behind you whenever they send you forward.’
b) See their faults as your mirror in which you discover what is wrong with you.
c) When you look at the fuqara, see the Shaykh.

Seize the moment and always be present with them. Know that rida is bestowed on those who are present.
Do not think that learning comes only from the discourse. It comes in the ‘keeping company’. Keeping company is an intellectual activity. Discourse is an ecstatic activity. Sama’a is a serene activity. All three are the conditions of ‘being present’, This is the transformative process that we call alchemy.

Cling to silence unless you are questioned. Then say, ‘I have no knowledge’ and be concealed by ignorance.
Silence must not be to draw attention, but to ward off attention. Do not be afraid among the fuqara. No one should notice your silence. Your reticence is your victory, and by it your ignorance will rapidly be transformed into knowledge.

Do not look at fault unless you see a clear fault appear in you, but it is concealed.
The fuqara are flawless. When you see them as flawless you have become flawless. When you are flawless, you have reached your Shaykh.

‘You will not find any flaw in the creation of the Merciful.’
Until you can understand this to be true of the lovers of Allah, how will you grasp it among the people of suffering and the people of wrong action?

Lower your head and ask for forgiveness without cause. Stand apologising in just treatment.
No blame. This is the rule of the zawiyya and the maqam of the awliya. It is the station of the ‘the stranger will cast out the weaker’ and the defeat of hypocrisy (nifaq).

If a fault appears from you, then apologise and lift the face of your apology for what has flowed in you from you.
Do not cling to wrong action. Do not nurse any bad feeling. Let everything go. The fuqara must have hearts like children of whom the Messenger of Allah, blessings and the peace of Allah be upon him, said, ‘Allah loves them for three things.

One, they cry easily, Two, they hold no rancour. Three, if you take away a gold toy and give them a clay one it is the same for them.

Say, ‘Your insignificant slave is more entitled to your pardon. Act kindly in forgiveness and adhere to gentleness, O fuqara!’
The progress of the seeker lies in this verse. Here is the quick ascent and the victory over the nafs.

They are not entitled to condescension, and it is their practice. Fear neither overtaking nor harm from them.
Until you taste this ease in the company of the fuqara, you can never taste ease in your own company. Until you taste ease in your own company, you cannot reach the stage of entering the ahwal (states) of the Shaykh. Once you trust the fuqara you can trust yourself. When you trust yourself, you meet the shaykh at last, not as a guide or a teacher, or a leader, but as a light calling to a light.

Always be generous in singing the praises of the brothers in the senses and the meaning. Lower the eye if someone slips.
Praising the fuqara has expansion in it, and release, and freedom from fear, and the end of loneliness. It has compassion for the sick in it, patience with the old, and generosity with the young.

In it faqirat learn to honour their husbands and fuqara to be sweet to their wives. Lower the eye if someone slips. This is a high prophetic sunnah – covering the faults of the brothers. It is the effect of the dhikr of astaghfirullah. It is the cause of the dhikr – tabaraka’llah. From it comes the Shaykh’s love of the murid. The Shaykh rejoices in two things – when his murid is spoken against and when his murid refrains from speaking against.

Watch the Shaykh carefully in his states, perhaps a trace of his approval will be seen on you.
The Shaykh has three states in public.
i) Meeting. Like a host with his guests or a father with his children. Here all is hidden under the light of welcome, attention, news, and the exchange of courtesies. This is the most difficult ground for the new murid. Levity is for the nursery and where there is play there is no work.
ii) Guidance. When the Shaykh speaks to one person, take it as meant for you. The Shaykh conceals his serious admonition and hides his target both in reproach and in love. When the Shaykh speaks to you consider it is cross-roads – do not turn back on your path. If he is pleased with you, resolve to strengthen your purpose. If he is displeased, delight in his noticing it. When he speaks of Allah – take it in – all his words will become realities for you.
iii) Absence. When the Shaykh withdraws from the company inwardly during sama or in a meeting, go with him. It was for this that you set out. It was for this that you et out. This draws you into the audience chamber of the heart.

‘Perhaps a trace of his approval will be seen on you.’
This is a light from Allah and without intermediary. The Shaykh does not ‘do’ anything. He recognises those Allah loves. This recognition has wisdom in it for him and for you. Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi of Fes, may Allah be merciful to him, said, ‘One glance from the Shaykh wipes out a thousand wrong actions.’ This is very difficult for the people of thought-forms to understand and easy for the people of states. This concerns the inner zone of the lubb, or core of the human self’s awareness. Its mithal is the sun’s rays. If you sit in the sun you become sunburned. If you sit with the Shaykh you become purified, later intoxicated, and finally annihilated. As the one who is first warmed, then burned, and at the end finally blinded by the rays of the sun. In this zone is the innermost reality and the secrets of ‘keeping company’.

Advance with seriousness and leap to serve him. Perhaps he will be pleased, and beware lest you become irritated.
Your service to the shaykh is a tremendous thing. Greater than it is his service to you. Wrong feelings against the Shaykh endanger the murid by confusion and the illusion that the nafs is other, and there is no other… Abu’l-’Abbas al-Mursi, Allah’s mercy be upon him, said, “The one who says, ‘why?’ to his Shaykh will never be happy.’ Never forget the contract with the Shaykh is to move you from ‘ilmi nafsika to ‘ilmi rabbika, from knowledge of yourself to knowledge of your Lord.

The pleasure of the Creator is in his pleasure and his obedience. He will be pleased with you. Beware of the one who leaves it.
There is no shirk here. It is the secret of the people of the path. Without a Shaykh a man cannot defeat his nafs. The more he fights himself the more powerful the elf becomes. Attention confirms the nafs. The activator of the nafs will be either outside or inside the nafs. If it is activated from inside, this is the work of Shaytan, the whisperer, who instigates wrong action. That is why, following the word of Moulay ‘Abdalqadir al-Jilani, the murid must make himself like the dead body in the hands of the washer in relations with the Shaykh. Abu Yazid, Allah’s mercy on these great awliya, said, ‘He who does not have a Shaykh as a master will have Shaytan as a master.’ This is why keeping company is a necessary condition of the path. How can the doctor heal the patient unless the patient is brought before him? At the heart of the matter, however, there is no rule over the murid. The murid must want what the Shaykh wants, in that is his cure. The murid is the one who has handed over his irada – his will – to the Shaykh in order to come quickly out of the fantasies of the khayal, (the faculty investing solid objects with their reality) and the kufr, the covering that is the self.

‘Fear Allah and He will give you discrimination.’
That means not by you but by Him. Then separation does not veil you from gatheredness and gatheredness does not veil you from separation.

Know that the path of the People is study, and the state of the one who claims it today is as you see.
The homeland of the People is ma’nawiyya. In this realm the bird of the secret flies freely into the open space of open space. The intellect must be trained to move in the realm of ishara, indication, that is the subtle zone of meanings arrived at by hints and coded signs, inaccessible by the lower faculty of reason. The faculty of ishara only emerges by the practice of dhikr, not by the practice of fikr. It in return is dependent on himma – constant yearning that increases and becomes more intense. There is no end to this except in the Beloved.

When will I see them, where will I see them? When will my ear hear some news of them?
Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi of Fes, may Allah be merciful to him, said, ‘If you have seen the fuqara, then you have seen Allah.’ Once some ignorant scholars denounced the fuqara for performing the hadra. They asked what happened when the fuqara danced. The reply was, ‘We see Allah.’ The scholars exclaimed that this was just as they had thought. It was shirk. ‘Why?’ asked the fuqara, ‘Do you see other-than-Allah?’

Who is mine and where will my like compete with them in wells about which I do not recognise impurity?
Once love of Allah becomes established in the heart, the faqir becomes a means of contemplation, and a place of meeting, and a cause of delight in the heart.

I love them and I treat them gently and I offer them my heart’s blood – especially a party of them.
Among the elite are the elect. Some are drunk, wandering, helpless, in love with the Majesty. Some are sober, still, powerful, in contemplation of the Beauty. Some are sober/drunk, still/moving – majesty does not veil them from beauty and beauty does not veil them from majesty. They are the people of perfection.

A people with noble qualities – Wherever they sit, a fragrance remains in the place after them.
This is baraka. Baraka is from the hadrat ar-Rabbani, the presence of Lordship. Whoever denies baraka, denies that Allah is the Living who does not die. To the muslim, baraka is at the Black Stone, in the Rawdah, on the Laylat al-Qadr. To the mumin, baraka is in the mosque, at the tombs of the awliya – without shirk or bida for there is no need to do anything to experience it – and in the presence of the salihun. To the muhsin, baraka is in every tree and every stone and every flower and every face and every star. Tabaraka’llah.

Tasawwuf is guided by their character in the Paths. Excellent harmony is theirs, that delights my eye.
Sufism is not a coded doctrine. It is the acts and states of the men of Allah, the rijala’llah. It is dhawq. Taste for the people of state. Witnessing for the people of witnessings. Annihilation for the people of annihilation.

They are the people of my love and my lovers who are among those who trail the coat-tails of might in magnificence.
Love of the lovers is a tremendous thing. If you are present when they meet and express their love, Allah has given you a great overflowing (fadl). Their meeting takes place but is not witnessed. Their parting is witnessed but does not place. Their sole concern is the contemplation of the Beloved. This is the maqam of Ihsan.

May I be united with them in Allah, And my wrong action forgiven and pardoned in Him.
What a du’a and what a goal! This is the maqam of Ibrahim.

Then blessings be upon the Chosen, Sayyiduna Muhammad, the best of those who fulfilled and who vowed.
What a prayer and what a reward! This is the maqam of Islam. We thank Allah for the gift of Islam and it is enough for us. Ameen. (document ribat jakarta/ abbas)

The Way of the Shadhili

The Shaykh Abu-l-’Abbas al-Jami related to me that a certain man asked Sidi Abu-l-Hasan, “Who is your spiritual guide Sidi?” He said to him, “In the beginning it was Sidi Shaykh Abu Muhammad ‘Abd as-Salam Ibn Mashish. At present I draw from ten seas, five of the sons of ‘Adam and five of spiritual origin. The five ‘Adamic are Sayyidina Muhammad and his companions, Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman and ‘Ali. The five of spiritual origin are Jibril, Mika’il, Israfil, ‘Izra’il and ar-Ruh {the Holy Spirit}.”

Thus the Way of the Shadhdhuliyyah, though traceable back through Sidi ‘Abd as-Salam Ibn Mashish as well as Sidi Muhammad bin Harazim and Sidi Abu-l-Fath al-Wasiti, really has its beginning with our Shaykh, Sidi Ali Abu-l-Hasan.

Sidi Ibn ‘Ata ‘illah reported on the authority of Sidi Shihab ad-Din Ahmad, the son of our Shaykh, that at the time of his death his father said, “I have brought to this Way {Tariqah} what no one has before me.”

Thus the Way of the Shadhdhuliyyah, though it has many areas in common with the various Turuq, may Allah be pleased with them all, is a unique Way unlike any other.

The Shaykh, may Allah preserve his secret, said, “Of all the Ways there are two: the way of travelling {suluk} and the way of attraction {jadhb}. Our Way is the Way of Jadhb. Our beginning is their end. Their beginning is our completion ” Shaykh Ibn ‘Ata’ illah, whose books greatly aided in the diffusion of the teachings of our Shaykh, says in the Kiatb al Hikm, “He who is illumined in the beginning is illumined in the end.” Thus the Way of the Shadhdhuliyyah is firmly based on the reality {haqlqah} that Enlightenment or Illumination {-ishrdq} is both in our beginning mid at our end with the certain knowledge that both our beginning and end are in His Presence and by His Grace.” {see 7:172}

Shaykh Ahmad az-Zarruq, commenting on this, said, “The variety in a branch is due to the variety of its origin. The origin of Tasawwuf is in the station of ‘Ihsan and it splits into two kinds: ‘to worship Allah as though you saw Him’ and ‘knowing that if you do not see Him, He sees you.’ The first is the degree of the Knower; the latter is the degree of the Seeker. The Folk of ash-Shadhdhuli revolve around the first and Folk of al-Ghazali revolve around the other.”

Shaykh Ibn ‘Ata’illah as-Sakandari said, “Do not think that the ‘attracted’ {al-majdhub} has no path. He has a path that has been enveloped by the providential solicitude of Allah {’ inayatu-llah} so that his way has been speedily expedited Too often we hear that the traveller {as-salik} is more perfect than the attracted due to the traveller’s experience of the Path and the Attracted’s lack of experience. This is not true. He does not miss it but misses only its hardships and the length.” Thus ‘attraction’ {al-jadhb} was a necessary prerequisite for the Folk {al-qawm} who took the Way of our Shaykh as the Shadhdhuli Way was par excellence that of “witnessing” {mushahddah} Allah at the beginning of the Way which in turn fostered a great concern with ‘intuition” {kashf} in contradistinction to the other ways more concerned with ‘intellect’ {the rational faculty = ‘aql } and not The Intellect { al-’aqi} understood as The Existentiating Reality}.

Ibn ‘Ata ’illah, to whom we are so indebted for our knowledge of the Way of our Shaykh, made abundantly clear that the Way of Arrival to the knowledge {al-ma’rifah} of Allah by insight, direct witnessing, and tasting at the beginning was the way of the elite who are the chosen of Allah whilst the Way of Arrival to Allah by intellection, reason and proofs was the way of the commoners who have chosen Allah. He indicates that arrival to the knowledge of Allah is not attained by struggle {jihad} with the self {nafs}, neither by obedience nor good deeds, for these are the product of human will {‘irddah} and humans have no will in relation to the Will of Allah. Man cannot reach Allah by his will alone, not by renouncing himself, humiliating himself, or destroying himself for “there is no logical nexus between the transcendent and the contingent.” Arrival to the knowledge of Allah stems from the providential solicitude of Allah. Real and ineffable sanctifying grace in conjunction with amorous wisdom. The ’spiritual life’ is not so much a question of choice as it is a matter of vocation and an abiding sense of having been chosen in eternity on the day of -Alastu bi-rabbikum?

In his book Kitab fi ‘Isqat at-Tanwir fi ‘Isqdt at-Taddblr {Light on the Cessation of Self Direction} he says, “Know that The Truth {al-haqq} has always taken the best of care for you throughout all of your life since He brought you into existence on the Day of the Decree [yawm al-muqadir}, the Day of "Am I not your Lord" and you said, "Yes, we bear witness!" Among the signs of His Care is that He caused you to know Him. He revealed Himself to you and you witnessed Him. It was He who made you speak and inspired you to affirm His Lordship [rububiyyatahu] and so confirm His Oneness.”

wa ‘idh ‘akhadha rabbuka mim banii ‘aadama min dhuhurihim dhuriyyatahum wa’ashhadahum’alaa’anfusihim ^alastu bi-rabbikum qalu bala shahidnaa ‘an taqulu yawma-l-qiyamati ‘inna kunna ‘an hadha ghafilin

And when your Lord took from the children of Adam, from their spines, their seed and made them to witness of their selves “Am I not your Lord ?” They said, “Yes! we bear witness.” lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, “As for us we were not aware.” { 7:172 }

This statement concerning the pre-etemal celestial witnessing is crucial to the understanding that within all human beings there is a part that always has known the Truth both of origin and destination. The whole question of the spiritual path {at-tariqah} is thus not so much a matter of going ’somewhere’ as it is an awakening to where one already is and a remembering of who one is, was and will be.

The literalist objection to the sufi doctrine of arrival {wusul} is completely misguided as it is clear that ah origine all humans had direct knowledge and direct witnessing of their Lord and, moreover, directly entered into a covenant of witness with their Lord, in the beginning and at the end. The goal of the path is, simply stated, the return to this realization by the elimination of forgetfulness.

For some it is a lengthy process whereas for others, less mindless {ghaflah} perhaps, it is clearly evident by virtue of insight which is a grant or bestowal of grace from their Lord. The view of our Shaykh was that the cessation of self-direction, in itself a recognition of the necessity of a continual ‘Islam {self surrender}, was the means par excellence for the cultivation of insight [kashf}, which best blooms undisturbed by agitation and the sense of ‘doing’ so much evident in the contemporary world.

Commenting on the saying of one of his contemporaries, “Spiritual knowledge comes from Allah in two ways: one way, the path of the Source of generosity, and one way, the path of enormous self-exertion,” our Shaykh said, “Regarding the Source of generosity, it refers to those whom Allah has initiated with His Divine Gift and who by this Gift have attained to obedience unto Him. Concerning the great self-exertion, this refers to those people who, by obedience unto Him, have attained to His Divine Gift.” He continued saying, “Certainty {yaqin} is a word pertaining to the apprehension of realities without a doubt and without an intervening veil. Spiritual knowledge {ma’rifah} is a disclosure of the sciences along with the veil. When the veil is removed, we call it certainty. He who has access to the realities [haqd’iq} is carried away in rapture {nashwata-l-tarab}. The one who has spiritual knowledge is drawn by it away from the self {nafs}.

Ref: THE SCHOOL OF THE ShADhDhULIYYAH: VOLUME I

First Letter from Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi

First Letter from Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi
(Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi was the student of Shaykh Moulay al-’Arabi al-Darqawi)

In the Name of Allah, the All-Merciful, Most-Merciful

There is no power nor strength except by Allah, the High, the Immense, and may Allah bless our master and Prophet Muhammad and his family and Companions and grant them peace abundantly until the Day of Rising

Allah. Allah. Allah.

To all the slaves of our Lord who follow us, wherever they are, especially our lords and masters of Ayt an-Nubu’a, and our lords and masters the scholars, and our lords and masters the descendants of the salihun whose ancestors were salihun, and our lords and masters who are the esteemed muqaddams and esteemed muqaddimat* (*Women with the position of muqaddam), since they are our representatives who represent us and are our support and the pillars supporting our brothers. They are the dogs of the fuqara’, barking at their heels and guarding them, bearing their loads and urging them on and never being irresolute. That is the reality of the muqaddims, so how great is their happiness and what good news for them because of that since as is reported, “The servant of the people is their master.”

If you do not busy the nafs with the truth, you will busy it with the false. And anyone who does not serve the elite will be tried by having to serve thieves. May Allah make us people whose goal is Him alone since that is what is necessary for attaining the three stations of the deen: Islam, Iman and Ihsan. “So worship Allah making the deen sincerely His.” The people of the station of Islam are distinguished by what goes from them to Allah. The people of the station of Iman are distinguished by what comes from Allah to them. And the people of the station of Ihsan are distinguished by what goes from Allah to Allah.

May Allah drown me and you in witnessing the oceans of the perfection of immensity as He has always drowned the people of purity and love in it. They are in three ranks: the rank of the knowledge of certainty, the rank of the eye of certainty, and the rank of the truth of certainty. In the first rank Allah makes you witness His nearness to you; in the second He makes you witness your non-existence through His existence; and in the third He makes you witness His existence without awareness of either your non-existence or your existence. “Allah was, and nothing was with Him. He is now as He was.”

Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah ta’ala and His blessings, and also upon all those whose inner eye has been opened by Allah and whose secret He has illuminated so that they witness all existence as being from Him, annihilated in the present, past and future. Among them are those who only love Allah, only exist by Allah, are only occupied with Allah and remember Allah often without calculation or limit as Allah has commanded. Allah jalla wa ‘ala says, “O you who believe, remember Allah much, and glorify Him in the morning and the evening.” (33:41-42) Imam al-Wasiti, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “Never forget frequent remembrance.”

Following on from that, the nub of my advice to you is: Always confirm your hold on your natural aptitude and intense yearning by serious study since it is the spirit of the Muhammadan Path. Constancy in it has an effect on the heart and elevates it to stations, stages and high degrees. Memorising two lines is better than bearing two heavy loads and two people engaged in study is better than both of these since your Lord, glory be to Him, is only worshipped through knowledge.

There are two types of knowledge: direct knowledge of Allah and knowledge of the command of Allah. The people of the Path of Allah are not concerned with anything other than these two. The fruit of knowledge of the command of Allah is direct knowledge of Allah. The fruit of direct knowledge of Allah is knowledge of the command of Allah. This rises in a continual spiral without end or cease for the one whom Allah makes firm.

The hadiths which have come about the excellence of knowledge and those who study and the reports of the righteous Salaf are numerous. They include the words of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “The angels lower their wings to the seeker of knowledge out of pleasure at what he does.” “Allah guarantees the provision of the seeker of knowledge.” “Gaining a point of knowledge is better than a year’s worship.” “The movement of a scholar in his bed is better than forty years of the worship of a worshipper without knowledge.” “Anyone who attends a gathering of knowledge and does not understand anything at all gains six degrees.” Imam as-Samarqandi, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, related that. It is also related that the gathering of knowledge is better than the worship of seventy years.

It is a confirmed instruction that wherever you find gatherings of knowledge, you should attend them. Our shaykhs, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them and give us great benefit through them, gave us idhn for that. Mawlana al-Junayd, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “Stories told about the righteous are one of the armies of Allah by which Allah strengthens the truthful.” He recited the words of Allah, ‘azza wa jalla, “We have given you all this news about the Messengers so We can make your heart firm by means of it.” (11:120) Our master and teacher, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “I have not seen anyone who dives into the mercy of Allah tabaraka wa ta’ala like someone who attends a gathering of knowledge. Strive for that. Strive to the utmost in the study of the books of the people of Allah, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them. We were also given idhn for that.”

The secret that we ourselves found in doing that is beyond description. One of the gnostics, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “My brother, so-and-so lived a life of great luxury and Allah inspired him to study the books of the People and that elevated him to a high station without any action or striving on his part.” Our master and teacher, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “Someone who persists in studying the books of the People and memorising their words can change his state and reach Allah without a shaykh.”

But, my masters and brothers, may Allah be pleased with you and help us by you, study the books of the famous perfect ones, such as the Qut al-Qulub, and the al-Ihya’, by the great imams, Abu Talib al-Makki and the Proof of Islam, Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali. Also Sunan al-Muhtadin and the Tabaqat by the great Imam ash-Sha’rani, al-Mabahith and its commentary by the great Imam at-Tadili, and the Sharishiyya in ra’ and its commentary, The Antimony of the Eyes, by Mawlana Ahmad al-Fasi, the Hikam al-’Ata’iyya and its commentary by the majestic imam, Ibn ‘Abbad, and the Tanwir Lata’if al-Minan by the imam, the shaykh of the shaykhs, Ibn ‘Ata’illah, and similar books of the perfected masters, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them.

Beware and again beware of studying the books of the two great imams, Mawlana Ibn al-’Arabi al-Hatimi and Mawlana al-Jili and those who follow them in the way they write, except for what they write on the adab of dhikr and its excellence and the order of travelling through the stations of Islam, Iman and Ihsan. I say this because, although their words, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them, are fine and deep, from the source of the Divine Presence and the Muhammadan presence, they can only be understood safely by someone who has reached their station. As for the beginner, he will not benefit from them at all. Rather it is feared that the opposite might happen. Allah jalla wa ‘azza says, “The fact is that they have denied something which their knowledge does not embrace and the meaning of which has not yet reached them.” (10:39) “No one knows its inner meaning but Allah. Those firmly rooted in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it. All of it is from our Lord. But only people of intelligence pay heed.’” (3:7) And the fact is that someone who has arrived at understanding of their words, no longer needs them because he is enriched by Allah and effaced in witnessing Him.

Do you then show me the knowledge of tawhid
when here are seas which are unexplored?
This is the station of the people of tajrid
who stand in the presence of my Lord.

Dhu’n-Nun al-Misri, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, was asked about what a gnostic is and he said, “He is here and he has gone.” The greatest master, Sidi Ibn ‘Ata’illah, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “The gnostic is not someone who makes an indication and then finds Allah nearer to him than his indication. The gnostic is without indication – by his annihilation in His existence and his total absorption in witnessing Him.” Our master, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “The gnostic of Allah is unfettered, not bound, and he is water itself, meaning submitted, remembering Allah constantly.”

Beware and again beware of speaking about the ruh. Speaking about it is of no use to anyone. Rather someone who does that has wasted his life uselessly because only Allah – majestic is He – He who created it, knows its reality. Enough proof of the prohibition of doing that is the words of the Jews, may Allah curse them, when they wanted to ask the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, about it. If he answered them he was not a Prophet. If he did not answer, he was a Prophet. He did not answer them and Allah revealed to him, “They will ask you about the Ruh. Say: ‘The Ruh is my Lord’s concern. You have only been given a little knowledge.’” (17:85) The righteous Salaf, may Allah be pleased with them, did not speak about it at all and the later ones have followed them in not doing it, and they had more knowledge of Allah and the command of Allah than those who came later. It is, however, true that some of the great guides of the Sufis and others among our masters, the scholars of the people of the outward, have spoken about it. There is evidence supporting both positions and there is mercy in the disagreement of our masters.

Beware and again beware of speaking about mutashabih ayats and mutashabih hadiths. Our ancestors, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them, were also silent about that. They said, “We believe in them as they have come,” as they also say about belief in Allah and in His Messenger: “We believe in Allah as our master the Messenger of Allah has commanded us to and we believe in the Messenger of Allah as Allah has commanded us to.” What a majestic statement! How radiant and perfect! They were snatched from the mires of tawhid and saved from doubts and uncertainties. May Allah repay them with immense good on our behalf and on behalf of this community.

The slave of his Lord, Ahmad, (the writer) says, affirming the creed of his great predecessors: I am a slave of Allah believing what our master, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, believed regarding Allah and himself, and holding to his intention, and his forms of worship, his acts of devotion and his customs. Our noble excellent master gave an excellent notification to us, “How excellent are the divested brothers, the masters!”

Beware and again beware of speaking about the essence (kunh) of Divine Sovereignty and the Message. Speaking about them wastes the moment in trying to do what is impossible and displays bad adab towards the Great Highly Exalted Lord. The Universal Ghawth, the master of our master, ‘Ali al-Jamal, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by it, forbade that frequently and with great force.

Beware and again beware of speaking about quarrels between the Companions, Tabi’un, and Tabi’i't-Tabi’in because they had clear reasons for the disagreements between them, may Allah be pleased with them and help us by them. “The one who strives to come to the truth and is right has a double reward, and the one who strives and is not right has one reward.” The testimony of the Messenger about them is sufficient evidence of their worth and importance and rank to prove that that they are the best of the community when he said, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “The best of you is my generation and then the one after them and then the one after them.”

Beware and again beware of preferring this person to that one. That is the worst of bad adab and results in hatred and destruction, except in the case of someone who is merely clarifying their rank and only the firmly rooted scholars are able to do that. Allah jalla wa ‘ala said, “We preferred some Prophets over others.” That is how the awliya’ are also ranked. Some are perfect and some more perfect.

Beware and again beware of turning away from the company of the people of Allah. They are the treasure trove that has no end, the impenetrable fortress, the universal interspace and the overflowing sea. Their gathering contains all good, in both the sensory and the meaning. Sufficient evidence for their excellence is that they are the people, of whom it is said that “no one who sits with them is wretched,” as is reported in the Sahih. Enough evidence against turning away from sitting with them can be found in the words of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in Sahih al-Bukhari, “Shall I tell you about the three men? One of them took himself to Allah and Allah took him in. The other was shy, so Allah was shy with him. And the other turned away, so Allah turned away from him.”

Part of my complete counsel to you is only to leave their company if you have a strong legal need to do so. The connection of your sensory to their sensory guarantees the connection of your meaning to their meaning and that will result for you in the love of Allah which is the source of every good and will erase love of this world, which, as has been reported, is the source of every evil, from your hearts.

Strive as hard as possible to have a good opinion of Allah and the awliya’ of Allah. The one who is truly deprived is the one who is deprived of the baraka of the awliya’ of his time. Anyone who denies true wilaya has disbelieved by consensus as was stated by the greatest imam, Sahl ibn ‘Abdullah at-Tustari, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, because he has denied the light of Prophethood. An aspect of the kindness of Allah to this community, however, is that the reality of wilaya is rarely definitively known. Its qualities are well-known but its seal is unclear. Its true stamp is that of which there is no proof: the collapse of lower desires and having love for the Master, as the Universal Ghawth, Abu’l-Hasan ash-Shadhili, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said. Our master, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “Whoever turns from his lower desires and advances towards his Master is a wali of Allah.”

The majestic imam, ash-Sharishi, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said:

His signs are that he does not incline to passion.
His world is wrapped up and his other world is in the gathering.

The treasure of wilaya is immense and great beyond “howness”, description or quality. True are the words of the one who said, “The wali is the one whom Allah takes as a friend, whose quality is covered by His quality and whose attribute is covered by His attribute. The wali is the word of Allah which does not run out. Even if the trees had been pens and the sea ink and all creatures were to write, they would not be able to write the amount of a gleam which occurs to the heart of the wali of Allah, ‘azza wa jalla.” How and again how, can the person with this sublime state be recognised? The key of this treasure belongs to those whom Allah prepares for it by choice and preference so that they leave this world and devote themselves completely to Allah in secret and in public. Our master, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “All who go without this world, by Allah, join the awliya’.” The substance of my advice to you all is to hold as strongly as possible to giving up any hopes of this world and to abandon it and its people. Only take of it what is absolutely necessary, since when someone takes more than what is enough for him, Allah blinds the eye of his heart, as is reported. Do not mix with its people at all. The Universal Ghawth, the master of masters, ‘Ali al-Jamal, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “The leper should be kept a spear’s length away from you but the lover of this world should be kept two spears length away.” Allah Almighty says, “So turn away from him who turns away from Our remembrance and desires nothing but the life of this world.” (53:29) The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace said, “Do not sit with the dead or that will make your hearts die.” He was asked, “Messenger of Allah, who are the dead?” He replied, “Those who love this world and desire it.”

Part of the instruction which the Qutb of Qutbs, Mawlana ‘Abd’s-Salam ibn Mashish gave to his student, Imam ash-Shadhili, may Allah be pleased with both of them and help us by them, was, “My son, Allah Allah Allah. People! Free your tongue from mentioning them and your heart from images of them and prepare for their coming to you at night and shunning you in the day. Do you not see that when they come, they are test?” A poet has said, and, by Allah, it is the most majestic of what is said:

Fear the people of your species and be afraid of them,
as you fear wild animals and leopards.

Beware of them and stay away from them, and be like the Samiri saying, “Do not touch.”

Take Allah’s earth as a companion,
and leave people aside.

 All people, if you examine them, are scorpions.

Say ‘Allah’ and leave existence and what it contains
if you want to reach perfection.

Allah jalla wa ‘ala, said addressing His Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “Say: ‘Allah!’ Then leave them engrossed in playing their games.” (6:92)

If you are sincere in your tawba, then you will be successful with those who are successful, be saved with those who are saved and reach the stations of the awliya’ of Allah who are brought near. The greatest Imam, Mawlana ash-Sharishi, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said:

All the stations are in tawba and zuhd.
A sweet fragrance spreads from their meadows. And one must constantly and always have certainty by Allah and reliance on Allah, trusting in the truth of His promise and threat. Allah jalla wa ‘ala says, “Whoever puts his trust in Allah, He will be enough for him.” (65:3), meaning He will give him what is adequate for his needs and help him. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “If you were to rely on Allah as He should be relied on, He would provide for you as He provides for the birds. They go out in the morning hungry and return in the evening full.” We read in the Sahih Collection, “Seventy thousand will enter the Garden without reckoning. They are people who did not have themselves cauterised or use incantations or seek omens and they put their trust in their Lord.”

Enough proof of the excellence of having trust in Allah is escaping the Reckoning and Allah’s representing His slave and being enough for him, looking after his needs and enriching his children after him. It is reported that a poor person who relied on Allah and did not store up and did not own anything will stand before Allah at the Standing and He will ask him, “My slave, how did you leave your family?” He will reply, “My Lord, I left them poor.” He – glory be to Him – will say to him, “I have made them rich after you.” The rich man who relied on means and his worldly portion will stand and Allah – glory be to Him – will ask him, “How did you leave your family?” and he will reply, “Lord, I left them rich.” He will say, “I have made them poor after you.”

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “O Allah, let me die poor. Do not let me die rich.” He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “If someone devotes himself to Allah, Allah will spare him every burden and provide for him from where he does not expect. If someone devotes himself to this world, Allah will entrust him to it.” It is said that the true faqir is someone who does not store up for himself and does not seek help. The faqir is the one who is in need of Allah’s power, strength and existence and enriched by witnessing the One he worships. Our master and teacher, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, used to say, “By Allah, and there is no god but Him, everything except devotion to Allah is play and falsehood.” He said, “By Allah, we have specified what we have specified and that is devotion to Allah, ‘azza wa jalla, since there is no delay in gaining a goal you seek by your Lord and a goal you seek by yourself is never easy to achieve, as is said.” The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “The truest phrase a poet has said is the words of Labid, ‘Everything except Allah is false.’”

Know that tawba has three degrees: the tawba of the common, which is on account of wrong actions; the tawba of the elite which is on account of being occupied with stations, stages and degrees rather than the Beloved; and the tawba of the elite of the elite which is on account of lapses due to pricks from Shaytan and moments of heedlessness, since no one possesses constant awareness of the Real, majestic is He. Firmness of election does not demand absence of the quality of humanness, as is said.

My Master inspired me with something from Him which I did not take from anyone and which I have not heard from anyone else. It is to say: “O Lord, the only thing You have given me to rely on is success and generosity from You in having been able to perform all sorts of righteous actions and acts which have brought me nearness to You. This is in any case conditional on Your beautiful veiling of my faults since if it had not been for the beauty of Allah’s veiling, there would be no action worthy of acceptance. I have divided these actions into a hundred parts. Ninety-eight are a gift for our master, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. One goes to the people of the house of the Prophet and the shaykhs, scholars, martyrs, righteous and all the believers. One quarter of the remaining part is for anyone who has a right against us, a second quarter is for my parents, a third quarter is for the rulers of the Muslims, and the remaining quarter for everything else which Allah ‘azza wa jalla created, seeking mercy from Him, each according to his state and station.

The dedicated, humble, sinful, insignificant slave Ahmad, who has nothing and is bankrupt before You, says with a tongue of supplication, abasement, weakness and need:

 I have all faults; that is my quality.
You have all praise and lauding.
Grace, kindness and generosity come from You.
Poverty, bankruptcy and non-existence are my contribution.

My God, if someone’s realities are merely claims, how can his claims not be claims? If someone’s good qualities are evil qualities, how can his evil qualities not be evil qualities? My Lord, I hope for Your mercy through Your mercy and the intercession of your Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, by Your generosity and nobility. There is no god but You. Glory be to You, truly I am one of the wrongdoers.

It is certain that the best of your moments is the moment in which you admit to your absolute poverty and return to your abasement and in which you are safe from the suggestions of your lower selves and people are safe from your bad opinion since there are two characteristics which are not surpassed by any other good quality: having a good opinion of Allah and a good opinion of the slaves of Allah; and there are two qualities than which there is nothing worse: having a bad opinion of Allah and a bad opinion of the slaves of Allah, as is reported. Allah jalla wa ‘azza says, “O you who believe, avoid most suspicion. Indeed some suspicion is a crime. And do not spy and do not backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat his brother’s dead flesh? No, you would hate it. And fear Allah.” (49: 12)

Our master and teacher, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “We may see the water of the fuqara’ being held back and the reason for that is bad opinion and arrogance. If they were to have a good opinion and lower their heads, then Allah would release their water. May Allah curse the one who denies them.” Be also certain, then, that any words that are not dhikr are a distraction. That is why the Messenger, may the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him, never spoke except to remember Allah. Allah jalla wa ‘ala says, “You who believe! do not let your wealth or children divert you from the remembrance of Allah. Whoever does that is lost.” (63:9)

In short, put all your efforts into belittling this world and disdaining it and being content with little of it, and do not store up anything beyond your food for the following day, relying on Allah. Be content with everything that comes to you from Allah. Always be sad about acts of obedience to Allah you have missed. Do not talk about what does not concern you and only mention Allah. Fill your hearts with hope for success and fear of Allah. Close your eyes to the faults of others, dismiss their slips and overlook their evil deeds and repay them with good actions. Accept people’s intercession and excuses. Purify your hearts of avarice and maintain ties of kinship and put things right between yourselves. Unite and do not separate. There is no good in those who are not friendly. Respect your brothers and honour them and receive them in every state. They are your support. Meet them with kindness and do not meet them with knowledge. Kindness makes people friendly and knowledge alienates. Leave what pains people’s hearts.

Hasten to what is obligatory and recommended. Stop trying to look after yourself in all states. Looking after the self is bad news and inclining to it is a sign of hypocrisy in the heart. Self-satisfied people have the gates of mercy locked in their face and they are veiled from the secrets of the Unseen.

Keep contact with those who cut you off and give to those who refuse to give to you. Pardon those who wrong you. Give sadaqa to all believers in Allah. Always always keep your bodies, garments, places of worship, zawiyyas and houses clean. Be scrupulous with regard to istibra’ and be extravagant in istinja’ and encourage your wives to be extravagant in it. Every harm which afflicts your family in terms of serious illness, madness, the itch, leprosy and other such things comes from deficiency in doing istinja’. Do not allow your wives any laxness regarding purification from janaba. Every harm which comes to a woman with respect to her honour comes from her failure to ensure purity from janaba. When that happens the shaytans gain control of her and lead her by the forelock to every evil. It is related that janaba is hiding under every hair is and there is a shaytan connected to every state of janaba. It is also related that the angels do not go near anyone in janaba until they are purified.

 *(Istibra’: a process used by a man to ensure he is free of urine. istinja’: washing the private parts with water. janaba: impurity resulting from sexual intercourse. )

Every harm which comes to a believing man or woman is the result of delaying the Subh prayer beyond its time since it is related that shaytan urinates in the ear of anyone who delays it and because of this the lower self begins to be lazy. Perform the prayer and pay the zakat. The prayer of someone who does not pay zakat is not accepted, as is related. Pay it with resolve at the end of the year and do not distribute it on the basis of your own opinion to other than those who are entitled to it. Those who are entitled to it consist of eight categories. Allah jalla wa ‘ala said, “Zakat is for: the poor, the destitute, those who collect it, reconciling people’s hearts, freeing slaves, those in debt, spending in the Way of Allah, and travellers. It is a legal obligation from Allah.” (9:61) Do not be overcome by shaytan, your appetites and your nafs so that you fail to pay it, or let this world distract you so that you abandon the prayer or delay it beyond its time. Allah jalla wa ‘ala, says, “As for those who hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in the Way of Allah, give them the news of a painful punishment on the Day it is heated up in the fire of Hell their foreheads, sides and backs are branded with it: This is what you hoarded for yourselves, so taste what you were hoarding!” (9:34-35)

Anyone who abandons the prayer should be executed for unbelief according to the position of hadith scholars and that is also the position in our school in the opinion of Imam Ibn Habib, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Allah does not bless any work which distracts one from the prayer.”

Fear Allah in respect of your women and what your right hands own [i.e. slaves]. That was the last instruction of the Messenger, may the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him. Fear Allah in respect of the prayer. “Fear Allah in respect of women. Fear Allah in respect of what your right hands own.” Do not ever turn away a beggar disappointed. If the beggar is truthful, whoever repels him will not prosper, as has been reported. Do not prefer your sons over your daughters in respect of gifts and waqfs, based on opinion and appetite. There is an immense sin in doing that except in an instance when the Shari’a demands that boys be singled out. “Do not let the life of this world delude you and do not let the Deluder delude you about Allah.” (35:5) “As for him who overstepped the bounds and preferred the life of this world, the Blazing Fire will be his refuge.” (79:37-38) Anyone who does not accept good advice should prepare for disgrace in this world and the Next. Those who oppose Allah’s command should beware of a trial smiting them or a painful punishment striking them.

Feed people - no action is equal to feeding people in the way of Allah. Its rewards and special qualities are countless, beyond number in this world and in the Next, as is confirmed by the Book and Sunna and the consensus of all the Muslims. One of its qualities is that it makes property grow and causes no decrease since property is never decreased by sadaqa. Another is that anything spent in the way of Allah is multiplied by ten up to seventy times and even up to seven hundred times to numbers without end. Another is that it is source of shade for you in this world and the Next. Another is that Allah makes it grow for you until the Last Hour. Another is that it distances you from the Fire. Another is that it extinguishes the anger of the Lord and brings the fruit of His pleasure. Another is that it brings about love and nearness to Allah and the Garden and other people. Another is that power will be with the poor and the very poor at the time of the Immense Standing since they will have the right of intercession at that time, as is related. Another is that it makes hearts soft, brings about strength of certainty and belief, expands provision and increases good character in the case of those who are lacking in good character.

One of my stressed and confirmed commands is that any of you who has an opening to any of knowledge of haqiqa should bury it and conceal it and not speak about it except by using subtle indications to its people. When you see people from among you or others divulging it, shun them, do not speak to them and do not be connected to them. Close connection with them is a poison which will penetrate your hearts, because such people are hated, disappointed zindiqs and suffer disgrace in this world and the Next unless they repent. Anyone who repents of wrong action is like someone who has no wrong action, as is related. Allah jalla wa ‘ala said, “Say to those who disbelieve that if they stop, they will be forgiven what is past.” (8:38) The Qutb, Mawlana ‘Abdu’l-Warith al-Yasluti, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said:

Those who divulge the haqiqa to ordinary people
are zindiqs. There is no god but Allah.

Do not divulge the secrets of your deen and this world except to a true brother. In the case of others, do not do so. Our master and teacher, may Allah be pleased with him and help us by him, said, “Do not divulge your secrets to anyone, even if he is loved by you, because he also has someone he loves who in turn has someone he loves who in turn has someone he loves and so on. So your secret will be spread among people everywhere and corruption will spread. That might lead to harm unless Allah prevents it.”

Bury your secret seventy feet deep in the earth and level it.
Let people complain to Him on the Day of Rising.

May Allah give you success and guide you and give us happiness in both the worlds. May He relieve us of our cares and give us the best of both the worlds. May He cover us always in might, well-being, taqwa and righteous action which pleases Him and with which He is pleased, until certainty comes and we are with the Highest Companion, our master, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his party in this world and the Next. His greatest pleasure results in total delight with no anger after it ever. May He grant us health and well-being in the deen and this world and the Next World. May He preserve us from punishment. May our evil deeds be transformed into good deeds and may we receive the greatest intercession and gain the upper hand in this world and the Next World by Allah’s pure mercy, generosity and forbearance. Amin. Amin. Amin.

We end our supplication with the words: Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, there is no power nor strength except from Allah, the High, the Immense. My success is only from Allah. I have relied on Him and I repent to Him. “Glory be to You. We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. You are the All-Knowing, All-Wise.” If You do not forgive me and have mercy on me, I will be among the losers.

This letter should be recited out loud slowly and clearly to all the brothers and sisters whom it reaches. Each and every group should honour it greatly out of thanks to Allah, ‘azza wa jalla, and follow it by doing the great dhikr of al-Latif and of His name, as-Sattar, according to the numerical value of its letters. Each group should write a copy of this letter in a clear script and the writer should be both a faqih and grammarian. It should be given to anyone who wishes to copy it. The master copy should be given to our relation by marriage, the source of great blessing, the wali of Allah Almighty, Sidi Muhammad ibn ‘Umar, to be kept in his house and shown to the brothers and sisters as a special honour with thankfulness to Allah ‘azza wa jalla. This should be done quickly.

There must also be much visiting – it is an immense pillar in the Path of Allah – especially visiting your daughters because maintaining ties of kinship increases life. It is related that kinship is suspended from the Throne which says, “Whoever joins me, Allah joins him. Whoever severs me, Allah severs him.” May Allah support you and make you firm. As soon as this arrives letter send me your news with the first trustworthy person to come. May Allah guard you.

Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah Almighty and His blessing with a complete universal and general peace and on your blessed happy circle. May Allah put it right and put others right by it and clothe us all in the immense ghawthiyya until the Day of Rising by His grace. Amin. Amin. Amin.

 At the end of Shawwal 1268.

The most insignificant of the insignificant, the dog of the people of the presence of Allah, Ahmad al-Badawi. Allah is his Guardian.

Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib al-Filâlî

Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib al-Filâlî

(1295/1876-1391/1971)

His lineage:
He is the Sufi sharif, teacher, guide to Allah and shaykh of the Darqawi tariqa, Sayyidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib ibn as-Siddiq al-Amghari al-Idrisi al-Hasani.

His ancestors were based in Marrakech, and he is related to Moulay ‘Abdullah Amghar*, who is buried at Tamsloht , near Marrakech, a descendant of a line which goes back to ‘Ali and Hasan. This branch of the family emigrated to Tafilalat and settled there. His father emigrated to Fes, settled there and his descendants still live there.
*I’ve been informed that this should be Sidi Husayn.

His birth and primary education:
He was born in Fes, the cradle of knowledges and fount of gnoses, in 1295 AH. At the proper age, he went to the Qur’anic kuttab at Qantara Abu’r-Ru’us in the Sharabiliyyin quarter where he studied with the faqih and righteous wali, Sidi al-Hashimi as-Sanhaji, learning the basics of reading and writing and recitation of the Noble Qur’an. He also studied that with the faqih Sidi Ahmad al-Filali in the school of Qasba an-Nawwar and memorised the Qur’an under him.

His secondary education and instruction:
After he completed his goal in the Qur’an school, he left it and began to imbibe the finest nectar of dependable education and beneficial knowledge from its pure springs. That was around 1312. In the Abu’l-Junud Mosque in Fes he studied with the renowed faqih with pure recitation, Sidi Mahmad al-Irari, concentrating on the Ajrummiyya, the Alfiyya and as-Sullam by Bannani and the Qualities of Muhammad by at-Tirmidhi.

Then in the Qarawiyyin mosque, which enjoys widespread renown, he studied the Mukhtasar of Khalil with az-Zurqani, Bannani and al-Kharashi with the faqih and Shaykh of the Community, Sidi Ahmad ibn al-Jilali al-Amghari.

He studied the Tuhfa with the commentary of Shaykh at-Tawudi ibn Sawda and the Collection of the Adab of the Teacher and Student by Shaykh Khalil with the faqih Sidi Abu Bakr ibn al-’Arabi Bannani.

He studied part of the Sahih of Imam al-Bukhari and the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’llah with the faqih Sidi Ahmad ibn al-Khayyat az-Zargari.

He studied az-Zaqqaqiyya with the margin which the shaykh himself wrote on it with the faqih Sidi ‘Abdu’s’-Salam al-Huwari.

He studied the Alfiyya with al-Makudi and al-Muwaddih with the faqih Sidi Khalil al-Khalidi.

He studied part of the Jami’ al-Jawami’ and part of the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal with the faqih Muhammad ibn Ja’far al-Kittani .

He studied part of the Mukhtasar of Khalil, a summary of the Mukhtasar as-Sa’d, and part of Tawhid al-Murshid with the commentary of Shaykh at-Tayyib ibn Kiran with the faqih who is skilled in knowledge and a master of sciences, Sidi J. Muhammad Fatha Junun.

From the faqih and Shaykh of Islam, Moulay ‘Abdullah ibn Idris al-Badrawi, he learned the Sahih of al-Bukhari, part of the Mukhtasar of Khalil, al- Isti’ara of Shaykh at-Tayyib ibn Kiran, and part of the Hamziyya by al-Busiri with the commentary of Ibn Hajar.

He learned part of the Mukhtasar of Khalil, ash-Shifa’ by Qadi Abu’l-’l-Fadl ‘Iyad as-Sibti and part of al-Murshid al-Mu’in by Mayyara from the Sufi faqih, Sidi Hammad as-Sanhaji.

He learned al-Murshid al-Mu’in from the faqih Sidi Muhammad ibn ‘Abdu’r-Rahman al-Filali.

Then he stopped his studies in 1319 when he achieved his desire and filled himself with knowledge and education, and he began to teach knowledge on a voluntary basis in the mosque of Qasba an-Nawwar in Fes, teaching al-Murshid al-Mu’in, the Mukhtasar of Khalil, the Muwatta’ of Imam Malik, as-Sanusiyya, and tafsir. He continued to undertake the tasks of his educational and secondary work until he emigrated to the city of Meknas and took up residence there in 1355. There he continued his distinguished scholarly activity by giving lessons in the Zaytuna mosque on tafsir and fiqh using the Risala of al-Qayrawani, and in tasawwuf using the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’llah and al-Murshid al-Mu’in, and ash-Shifa of Qadi ‘Iyad, and as-Sullam by Bannani and the Alfiyya by al-Makudi.

His ijazas:
Shaykh Sidi Badru’d-din ad-Dismishqi gave him a written ijaza in Damascus and he also received one from the Qadi of Tlemcen, Sidi Abu Shu’ayb, and he had oral ijazas from the scholar Sidi Ahmad ibn al-Jilali al-Amghari, and the faqih Sidi Abu Bakr ibn al-’Arabi Bannani.

His journeys:
In 1350 he travelled to the holy lands to perform the blessed obligation of the hajj and went to the land of Kinana. He met with some of its scholars, including Shaykh Bakhit al-Muti’i and Shaykh as-Simaluti. He travelled to Syria and met some of its scholars, including Tawfiq al-Ayyubi and Shaykh Badur’d-din ad-Dimishaqi. He went to Algiers also after that and met some of its scholars. Among them in Blida he met Shaykh Sidi Muhammad ibn Jalul and Sidi Ahmad, and to Fagig in the area of Oujda and meet its scholars, including the Shaykh al-Islam, Sidi Muhammad al-Qadi and Qadi Sidi Jalul. He gave lessons there on the Sahih of al-Bukhari and al-Murshid al-Mu’in with the commentary of Shaykh at-Tayyib ibn Kiran.

Then he travelled to the Hijaz and made hajj to the Sacred House of Allah again in about 1360.

Then he set out from the Isma’ili capital, Meknas, in the company of his wives, making for the pure lands to perform a third hajj to the sacred House of Allah in 1391, but died on the way before achieving his desired goal. So the words of Allah Almighty which are unequivocally clear apply to him: “If anyone leaves his home, making hijra to Allah and His Messenger, and death catches up with him, it is Allah who will reward him. Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (4:100) The Prophet, peace and blesing be upon him, said, in a noble hadith, “Whoever leaves in this way for hajj or ‘umra and dies during it will not be examined or reckoned and will be told to enter the Garden.”

His intellectual legacy:
He wrote a diwan which is called “The Desire of the Travelling Murids and the Gift of the Wayfaring Gnostics”. It has been published twice. He wrote a commentary on the Hafidha of the Shaykh Sidi Muhammad al’Arabi al-’Alawi al-Madghari which contains supplications of the Prophet, ayats of Qur’an and some of the Shadhili hizbs. He also wrote a commentary on the Salat al-Mashishiyya.

His scholarly position:
He was a scholar and faqih with great perception. He was familiar with many sciences, while being particularly proficient in tafsir and tasawwuf.

His poety:
He dipped a bucket in the well of poetry when his talent produced several qasidas about tasawwuf, good character, praise of Allah, praise of the Prophet and religious admonitions.

His death and burial:
He moved to his Lord with his face directed towards the Holy lands to perform hajj to the Sacred House of Allah in the city of Blida, Algeria, on Monday, 23 Dhu’l-Qa’da, 1391. He was buried in the same day in the Darqawi zawiya which was recently built and he himself had inaugurated. That was in the Belqasim al-Wizri Street in Blida. Then he was moved from this burial place to his second home, the city of Meknes, where he was re-buried after ‘Asr on Monday 14 Dhu’l-Hijja of the same year in his zawiya in the place where he had ordered that he be buried, in Darb al-Pasha, near the Zaytuna msoque.

May Allah forgive his sins and veil his faults and accept him with honour and beautiful covering and make him dwell in the highest part of ‘Illiyin in the company of the Prophets, truthful, martyrs and righteous. Amen.

Shaykh Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhili

Shaykh Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhili

This now is something of the story of the life and sayings of the Shaykh and Master Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhili, whose full name was `Ali ibn `Abdullah ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar, who, on his father’s side, descended from the Fatimid-Hasanid line, and on his mother’s side from the Fatimid-Husaynid line.

He was born in the year 593 A.H./1196 C.E., in the mountain village of Ghumara in the Rif area of the northern Atlas mountains of the Maghrib. The Berber tribe to which he belonged had virtually separated itself from the rest of the Maghrib by refusing to accept the Religion of Islam, which was otherwise universally followed in this region. Sidi Abu Madyan had tried to teach and guide this tribe to the Truth, but they had preferred to live in their state of spiritual ignorance, relying mostly upon witchcraft, magic and idols for their form of worship.

There is little recorded about the very early life of `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar, but it is assumed that whilst he was still very young he would have been taught the basic rites of the Religion because he and his family were of the shurafa, that is, people who are related in the body to the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him. These are people who are untouched by the desire for worldly power and office or for material gains. Therefore, it could be expected that he would have studied, first of all, at the famous madrasa of Qurrawiyyin in Fez (Fas) which had been founded by the great grandson of Sayyidina al-Hasan, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him.

His first Shaykh and Master was Sidi `Abdullah ibn Harazim, a follower of Sidi Abu Madyan, may Allah have mercy on them both, through whose guidance he entered the Path of Allah, the Way of Tasawwuf. It was also through him that he was later moved to find the Qutb of his time.

It is known that in the year 615 A.H., at the age of twenty-five, he travelled to the East and notably to al-`Iraq, searching for the Master who possessed the complete knowledge of the Path of the Truth of Allah, Praised and Exalted is He. There he was led to the Shaykh Abu al-Fath al-Wasiti who was the inheritor of the holy and renown Shaykh and waliy of Allah, Sidi Ahmad ar-Rifa’i, may Allah be pleased with him, who had founded and guided one of the first and largest tariq in the Way of Allah in the southern marshes of `Iraq. Here `Ali `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar remained for a short time, until it became clear to the heart of the Shaykh Abu al-Fath that this follower could only be satisfied by the deepest Spring of the Knowledge (al-ma`rifa). Therefore he said to him, “You have come here seeking for the Pole (Qutb) of Islam, but you have left him in the Maghrib.”

In this way the murid `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar returned to his own country, until he was led to his true Master, Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish on the mountain of Jabal `Alam in the Habt region of the Maghrib. The account of the first meeting between them has been given in the previous chapter in the story of the life of `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, but one of the Knowers of Allah, referring to such a meeting said: “Know that in his beginning, the first of what the seeker of this Path needs is that he casts himself on the Shaykh who is a Knower of Allah, skilled in the journey of descent and ascent. Before him he is like the corpse in the hands of the one who is washing it. He does not resist the Shaykh when he understands something to be lacking, even if it is not in the Law (ash-shari`a), as the Shaykh Sidi `Abdu ‘l-Qadir al-Jilani, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “If I am a rebel in the judgement of the shari`a, I am obedient in the knowledge of the Reality.” Therefore he must wash himself of all other knowledge and actions, and turn in repentance (tawba) from his bad deeds. As one of the Knowers of this Path said, “The tawba of the act of rebellion is one tawba, but the tawba of the act of obedience is a thousand.”

Another of the Knowers said, “Make ablution with the Water of the Unseen, if you carry the Secret. For with this he clings to him and keeps him company until the Shaykh is dearer to him than himself, his property and his children. Until if he commanded him to do the impossible, which cannot be thought of in the mind, he would do it without weariness or turning away.”

In this way, everything that Allah revealed to them of the outside and the inside knowledge passed between the Shaykh `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish and his follower, until `Ali ibn Abdu’l-Jabbar became the true inheritor of his Master.

After a period of time, as Allah willed, Sidi `Abdu as-Salam told his beloved son and follower to proceed to Ifriqiya, now known as Tunisia, where he should settle in the village of Shadhila until Allah would send His Order for him to move to the city of Tunis, where he would meet with certain difficulty and opposition. He was told nevertheless that he should remain in Tunis, until the coming of an event which would permit him to leave this city and to travel to the East where, as his Master said, “You will become the Qutb of your time.”

Before leaving Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam’s presence, his young inheritor asked him for parting words of guidance, so that he might receive from him his message of the Order which Allah, Exalted is He, intended for him at that moment. His Master, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “O `Ali, Allah is Allah, and the people are the people. Therefore, let Allah’s remembrance live every moment in your heart. Leave behind all dependence on people, and keep your heart from inclining towards them. Perform your duties and Allah’s Guidance will always be with you. Do not refer to people unless Allah, the All-Mighty, orders you to do so. He has perfected for you your authority and friendship (walaya) with Him. Say, “O Allah! I ask Your Mercy that I do not incline or yearn for people. Protect me from their evils, and provide for me by not seeking help from them. Set me apart from them, for Thou art powerful over everything.”

Then `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar set out for the village of Shadhila, between Qayrawan and Tunis where, rather than looking for a place to lodge, he retreated to a cave on the mountain of Jabal Zaghwan, accompanied by his spiritual brother and companion, one of the Knowers of Allah (ahli al-kashf), `Abdullah ibn Salama al- Habibi. Here they both lived for a period of time, as Allah, the All-mighty, willed of them. `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar chose this seclusion because he had not yet received permission from Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, to guide others, and he recognized that a period of retreat from the world was necessary for him, so as to strengthen his heart. He was shown that he still needed to concentrate on the inner battle (jihad) with his self, which he had embarked upon with his beloved holy Master Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish. This he must do until he was certain that he had emptied himself entirely of everything that was not for Allah, and he had effaced himself in Him.

It was a very holy period of asceticism, seclusion and spiritual practices during which the depth of his self-denial was accompanied by the manifestation of many spiritual gifts (karamat) from Allah, some of which were recorded by his companion, Abu Muhammad al-Habibi, who said, “One day on Mount Zaghwan, the Shaykh was reciting from the surat al-An`am until he reached the Words of Allah: ‘Remind hereby, lest a soul should be given up to destruction for what it has earned. Apart from Allah it has no protector and no intercessor; though it offer any equivalent it shall not be accepted from it.’ (6:69). (It, referring to the self of the human being.) At this point the Shaykh became absent as he repeated this aya again and again until his whole body was shaken by the Word of his Lord, and as often as he leaned to one side, so the mountain leaned in like manner, and this continued until his Spirit returned to his body, when the mountain also became still.”

This same companion also recorded: After forty days of his keeping company with Sidi `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar, feeding on nothing but herbs of the fields and laurel leaves until the sides of his two cheeks began to pain him, he, may Allah be pleased with him, said to him, “O `Abdullah, is it that you wish for food?” He replied, “O my Master, my looking at you enables me to do without it.” The Shaykh then said, “Tomorrow, if Allah wills, we shall go down to Shadhila and some Gift from Allah will come to us on our way.”

`Abdullah al-Habibi continued: So the next morning we descended, and while we were walking through a valley the Shaykh said to me, “O `Abdullah, if I should leave this road do not follow me.” Then he became absent from the world, and he left the way until he was some distance from me. Then I saw four birds, about the size of a stork, come down from the sky and fly over his head. Each one of them came and spoke with him and then flew away. Amongst them were birds about the size of swallows which surrounded him between the earth and the horizon, hovering in circles about him. When they had disappeared from sight, he returned to me saying, “O `Abdullah, did you see anything.” I told him of what I had seen and he said, “The four birds were some of the angels of the fourth Heaven who came to question me about Knowledge, and about this I spoke with them. The birds resembling swallows were the spirits of the Saints which came to receive a blessing from our arrival.”

It is recorded that Sidi `Ali ibn `Abdu ‘l-Jabbar said: In the beginning of my travelling with the Path of Allah I was wont to pursue the science of alchemy, and I would make petition to Allah about it. I was told, “Alchemy is in your urine. Put into it whatever you wish and it will become what you desire.” So I heated a pickaxe, quenched it therewith, and it turned to gold. Then my presence of mind came back to me and I said, “O lord, I asked Thee for a certain thing but I did not attain it except by the use of unclean devices, and this is not lawful.” Then I was told, “O `Ali, the world is full of impurity, and if you desire it, you will not attain it except by impurity.” I replied, “O my Lord, deliver me from it.” I was told, “Heat the pickaxe and it will return to iron.” I heated it, and it returned to iron.”

After that he learnt that the basis of the search for, and the realization of the Truth of the knowledge of all sciences coming from Allah, Most High, lies in the truthfulness of the seeker’s intention.

About this he, may Allah be pleased with him, told the following story: While I was in the Maghrib, a certain man came to me and said, “I have been told that you possess a knowledge of alchemy–so teach me.” He replied, “I will teach it to you without omitting a single particle, if you are able to receive it.”

“By Allah I am able to receive it,” the man replied. So I said to him, “Eliminate creatures from your heart, and stop desiring that your Lord give you other than what He had previously ordained for you.”

He replied, “I am not able to do that.” I said, “Did I not tell you that you would not be able to receive it?” Then he left me.

He, may Allah be pleased with him, told of another story: While I was wandering one night in the beginning of my travelling on the Path, I slept in a place where there were many wild animals. These began to growl at me, so I went and sat down on a high hill and said, by Allah, I will pray to His Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, for has he not said, “Whoever sends blessings upon me, by that act the blessing of Allah, the All-Mighty, will be upon him tenfold, and if the blessing of Allah is upon me, I shall pass the night under His Protection.” So I did this and feared nothing. When the dawn appeared, I went to a pool of water to make the ablution for the morning prayer (al-fajr), and there was a mass of reeds from which partridges broke forth with a great fluttering of wings. Fright overtook me and I turned back. Then I heard a voice say, “O `Ali, when you passed the night under the Care of Allah amongst the growling animals, you did not fear, but when you arose today under your own care, the fluttering of partridge feathers has made you afraid.”

It was at this time that he was given his title (nisba) of ash-Shadhdhuli. He was shown that this name was not due to the fact that he was an inhabitant of the village of Shadhila, but that Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, said to him, “O `Ali, you are ash-Shadhdhuli with a tashdid on the dhal, meaning one who is set apart (shadhdhu-li) for Me.”

Shortly after this the Order came to his heart, “Go down to the people. They will benefit by you.” When he heard these words he said, “O my Lord and Sustainer, relieve me of their company.” Then he was told, “Go down `Ali. Peace will be with you.” He said, “Will You leave me to the people to eat from their money?” He was told, “Spend as you like, O `Ali, for I am your Financier. Spend as you like from your pocket, or from the Unseen.”

So it was that about the year 640 A.H./1242 C.E., the Shaykh ash-Shadhdhuli went down to Tunisa and found lodgings near the al-Balat (the Tiled Mosque) where he began calling people to Allah, and teaching them His religion, receiving help and support from the Sultan Abu Zakariyya. The Shadhdhuliyya Order was first founded there around forty of his students who were known as the forty friends (al-awliya’ al-arba’un), and soon a great number of people from all walks of life began to come to him for inspiration and guidance, as the word spread of the great learning, purity of heart and wisdom of the holy Shaykh.

Tunis in those days was a big city and a centre of commerce and trade as well as a gathering place for those seeking both religious and secular learning. Many people who were already following the religion of Islam were seeking something purer, more complete, and at the same time, simpler than what was being taught in the institutions of religious learning. They were also looking for a message which would speak to the hearts of city-dwellers whose everyday life and occupations were an important matter for them. Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli’s Teachings gave these people exactly what everybody was looking for.

Someone has said, looking at the outside of Sidi Abu al-Hasan’s message, and referring to some of his letters to his followers, “This correspondence shows not only that Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhiuli had a deep knowledge of the Sufi Teaching of the eastern doctors, but also a personal experience of spiritual realities. If he knew how to inspire his followers it was not so much that he taught them a simple Sufism, but because he had the qualities of a spiritual Master as is revealed in his letters. He certainly formed no intellectual system, but he had qualities of spiritual discernment, and he knew how to extract from his own experiences what was valuable for others.”

In the same manner, another person has said, “It is a fact of basic importance that the Shadhdhuliyya was born out of an urban surrounding, not necessarily in revolt against it, but as an outcome of the existing patterns of political, religious and economic life.”
It was also Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli’s message to his followers to encourage them, unlike many of the shaykhs before him and after his time, not to abandon their professions and trades which they had been following before coming to the Path, and to dress themselves in the same way as all the people with whom he, may Allah be pleased with him, taught them to mix. It is said, in fact, that he did not like to take any student into his Way who did not have a trade or profession. This was from the outer face of his Way, and it was as though it was the outer key to the door of his Path which attracted many of those who would have turned away from a more obviously ascetic Master.

From the inner face of his Way, and for those who were searching with the inner Eye, Abu al-Hasan’s presence and Teachings carried a certain power of the Spirit which was the Gift which Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, had bestowed upon him, and which came to him as the inheritor of the Spirit of his Father, the Guide Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, Allah’s mercy upon him. It was known that the Love from his eyes was enough to bring the wandering perplexed seeker into the Net of Allah. This was a special Gift from Allah, Most High, for His beloved slave. It is the same Gift of the bestowing of the Essence of the deep Secret Love of Allah coming from the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, and which has been passed down through this Shadhdhuliyya Line to this moment. May Allah be praised and thanked in everything.

It was this relationship, springing from the deep Secret Love of the Essence, which revealed to the orthodox Muslims the elite bond between the Master and his followers–the Shaykh with his beloveds. Although it had always existed, it was through Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, may Allah protect his secret, that it took on a new spiritual depth. This added depth came from the tasting of the true meaning of the annihilation (fana’) in the Shaykh, who is the living Spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, in his time. It is he who guides Allah’s lover from his perfect annihilation of himself in himself, to the perfect annihilation of himself in Allah, Most High, followed by the perfect subsistence (baqa’) in his Spirit.

Abu al-Hasan, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Real truthfulness (sidq) and piety (taqwa) are experiencing with the Master what you desire. Allah Praised and Exalted is He has said, “He who comes with the Truth and believes it to be the Truth, they are the godfearing. They have with their Lord what they desire.”(39:34). This can be found only with the true Master, he who gives the right intention to the student’s heart. The real intention means the absence of everything except the act intended upon undertaking, and its perfection is a holding fast to it until its completion.”

This teaching and its practices seemed to the orthodox believers to threaten the whole structure of Islam as they knew it. But Sidi Abu al-Hasan, like his Master Sidi ibn Mashish and his Master Muhyi-id-din ibn al-`Arabi before him, considered that only the knowledge acquired through tasting could be true Knowledge. In this way he was indicating that the knowledge of the inner Sufi Path was of a degree above that of the jurists and the people of the outside Law (ash-shari`a).

In fact a certain person of the government of the Maghrib went to Sidi Abu al-Hasan and said to him, “I do not see that you perform any great religious works. So tell me how it is that you have reached such an elevated place amongst the people that they regard you so highly?”

He, may Allah be pleased with him, replied, “I have a single work that Allah, the All-Mighty, has prescribed to His People, and to which I cleave.”

“What is that?” he asked. I replied, “Withdrawal from you, and your world. Allah, Most High, has said: So turn thou from him who turns away from Our remembrance and desires only the present life.” (53:29).

Sidi Abu al-Hasan then said, “Vision of the Truth came upon me and would not leave me, and it was stronger than I could bear, so I asked Allah, the All-Mighty, to set a veil between me and It. Then a voice called out to me saying, ‘If you besought Him as only His Prophets and Saints and Muhammad His Beloved know how to beseech Him, yet would He not veil you from It. But ask Him to strengthen you for It.’ So I asked for strength, and He strengthened me, Praise be to Allah.”

One day when one of his followers asked him, may Allah be pleased with him, to speak about Union and Separation, he said, “My son, when you want that in which there is no censure, Union is witnessed in your Secret, and Separation exists in your tongue.” In other words, the beloved of Allah is he who travels through things, recognizing them and their Orders, and seeing the Face of Allah in everything. The knower, as Sidi Abu al-Hasan indicated, is he who travels joyfully and happily obtaining the good of all things, and because he trusts in Allah, the evil of things passes him by. But he who does not know and does not trust, travels through things fearfully, anxious, restrained and imprisoned, and so he attracts their evils, and their good misses him.” Has not Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, said, “Are they equal, those who know and those who do not know?”(39:9).

Sidi Abu al-Hasan said, “Know that the Secret of all the ranks is gathered together in a rank, and it is the noblest, the highest, the greatest and the most immense. It is that your inward is truly with Allah and your outward with the Creation by Allah. When your outward is with the Creation and your inward is with Allah, then all your states are pure, from the side of the outward. So the Creation does not reject you. From the inward side there is no intermediary between you and Allah.”

For that he, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Make us Your slaves in all states, and teach us knowledge from You by which we may become perfect both in our life and in our death.”

Again and again he, may Allah hallow his secret, returned to this Truth of the relationship between the Knowledge of Allah and the state of being His slave. He said, “Allah, Praised and Mighty is He, has said, “Only those of His servants who have knowledge fear Allah.”(35:28).

Then Sidi Abu al-Hasan also said, “The slave of this world is a prisoner, the slave of the Hereafter is a hireling, but the slave of Allah is an `amir.”

He, may Allah be pleased with him, counselled his beloveds as he said to them, “If you desire to look towards Allah with the eyes of faith and firm belief at all times, then be thankful for His favors, and be content with His Decrees. Whatever favor you have is from Allah. Then, whenever evil touches you, call upon Him. If you desire it to turn away from you, or yourself to turn away from it, worship Allah lovingly, not bargaining with Him, but knowingly, with due respect and modesty.”

A Knower who understood Sidi Abu al-Hasan’s Secret said: “Allah made selves incline to freedom and to love it, and He made them flee from bondsmanship and hate it. Whoever is a knower and who entrusts himself to a Knower, only finds ease in bondsmanship. He who is ignorant, or who entrusts himself to one who is ignorant, only finds ease in freedom.” For which he said, “Only the giving of the Perfect is perfect.”

It was in this way that Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli taught his followers and students and always reminded them, “Whatever Allah has willed will be, and whatever He has not willed is not. There is no strength and power except with Allah.”

However the Master’s presence, and his continually growing influence amongst all manner of people in Tunis, began to stir up envy and apprehension in the heart of a certain lawyer (faqih) known as Abu ‘l-Qasim ibn Bara. This person tried to bring legal charges against him, and when this proved unsuccessful, he then sought to get the Sultan Abu Zakariyya’s ear by declaring that Abu al-Hasan was a fraud and an imposter who claimed to be of the Fatimid line. He also charged Sidi Abu al-Hasan of being a potential agitator who was stirring up trouble amongst the people against Abu Zakariyya’s rule and authority.

Although the Sultan was generally speaking a just man, the charge of possible insurrection to his rule brought apprehension to his heart, so he called a gathering of the `ulama and fuqaha to question the Shaykh about his belief and intentions, while he himself sat listening, but hidden from sight behind a screen. The outcome of this meeting was that none of the charges brought by Ibn al-Bara’ were in any way proved to exist, and the Sultan said to him, “This man is one of the greatest Saints, and you have no power over him.” He therefore dismissed all those who had been gathered together to question Abu al-Hasan, except the Shaykh himself whom he still retained in his presence. Then Abu al-Hasan asked of him only to be allowed to have a jug of water to make ablution, a carpet for praying, and to be able to speak to one of his muridun who was anxiously waiting outside. He, may Allah be pleased with him, said to the Sultan, “By Allah, were it not that my Way teaches us to act in accordance with the Law (ash-shari`a) I would surely walk out from here, or there.” As he said this, he pointed to one wall of the room, and then another which immediately opened for him. He told his student to inform all his followers that he would be absent from them for that day, but that, if Allah willed, he would pray the night prayer together with them.

After he had finished his prayer, Abu al-Hasan was about to make a du`a to Allah, the All-Mighty, asking him to bring some judgement upon Ibn al-Bara’ and the Sultan for their opposition to him, but then he heard the words. “Truly Allah will not be pleased with you if you ask Him in anger towards a fellow creature.” So he offered up the following du`a, which later became a part of his well-known Invocation of the Earth (Hizb al-Barr): “O You Whose Throne is spread over the heavens and the earth, the preservation of which is no burden, the Sublime, the All-Mighty (2:256), I ask You for faith in Your Care, a faith by which my heart will remain undisturbed from anxiety for my sustenance, and from fear of creatures. Draw me near to You in a way that tears away the veils as You did with Ibrahim, Your Friend and Messenger, who spoke to You and thereby did not need to ask You, for You kept him safe from the fire of his enemy. How can anyone be in need of a veil to shroud him from the harm of his enemies when You have made him not to be in need of the help of Friends? I pray that You will conceal me in Your Nearness until I cannot see or feel the nearness nor the distance of any other thing. You have the power over everything.” (2:19).

One of Sidi Abu al-Hasan’s students told about a certain incident relating to this lawyer, Ibn al-Bara: One day the Shaykh met Ibn al-Bara and greeted him, but he turned away from him and did not return his salutation. Shortly afterwards the canon lawyer, Abu `Abdullah ibn Abi ‘l-Husayn, the Sultan’s chamberlain, passed by. When he saw the Shaykh, he dismounted from his she-mule and hastened towards him greeting him by kissing his hands, weeping and begging him for his intercession on his behalf. So the Shaykh interceded for him and then continued on his way.

When Abu al-Hasan entered his house he said, “Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, has just revealed to me concerning these two men, for I have been told, ‘O `Ali, the marking (wasm) of a person (`abd) with ill-fortune is in accordance with the fore-knowledge of Allah, and he is blind to it, though he be very learned, and the marking of a person with good fortune is according to the fore-knowledge of Allah, and it comes to him, do what he may.’”

On another occasion he, may Allah be pleased with him, told of an incident, once more involving iIbn al-Bara’, which he recounted saying: I came upon a group of jurists among the companions of the Chief Qadi of Tunis, Ibn al-Bara, a man with whom Allah, the All-Mighty, was not well-pleased, and I greeted them and they turned away from me. That was a painful experience. Then I heard the voice saying to me: “O `Ali, indeed you have exaggerated your own importance and overestimated your worth, since you were sensitive to their turning away from you. But who are they when they turn towards you, and how is it when they turn their back? If you were one helped by Allah, you would be distracted through your turning to Allah from their turning away from you. If you were under right guidance, you would be distracted through Allah’s turning to you from your turning towards Him.

In His Wisdom, Allah, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, sent ibn al-Bara as a deep blessing for Abu al-Hasan at a time when he, may Allah be pleased with him, was testing him and teaching him the deep Knowledge of His Path. He said, I heard someone say, “He who is sensitive to the first shock of misfortune is not patient. He who burdens himself with trouble has not resigned his affair to Allah. He who asks is not content with Allah. He who manages his own affairs has not committed them to Allah. He who calls for help has not trusted. These are five things, and how great is your need to be attentive to these five!” Say: “My Lord, I stand in need of the good that You have sent down to me. So increase for me Your Bounty and Beneficence, and make me one of those who are thankful for Your Favors.”

Shortly after this, Abu al-Hasan decided to leave Tunis to make the Pilgrimage (Hajj ) if Allah willed, and for this purpose he set out with his followers to the East. When the Sultan Zakariyya heard of this he was very troubled and sent a message begging the Shaykh to remain in Tunis. But he, may Allah be pleased with him, said to him. “I am not leaving except with the intention of making the Hajj if Allah, Exalted is He, wills, but when He, Most High, will have fulfilled for me my intention I shall, if He wills, return again.”

Accordingly, Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, together with some of his followers, journeyed to Egypt, arriving in Iskandariya (Alexandria) where they were greeted with being detained in the military camp by an order of the Sultan of Egypt. This was because Ibn al-Bara had sent a message warning the Sultan that the Shaykh was a dangerous man who would stir up trouble in his country. However, Allah, the All-Mighty, intervened, bringing proof to him and all those around him, that the Shaykh, far from being a troublemaker, was a person of great spiritual power, intent only to make peace for all the people wherever Allah, the All-Mighty, sent him to be.

One of his students who was accompanying Abu al-Hasan said that he did not hear the Shaykh pray against Ibn al-Bara, and he did not even mention him in any way until they were by `Arafat, and this was on the Pilgrimage after leaving Egypt, when he said, “Say Amin to my du`a, for just now I have been commanded to pray against Ibn al-Bara.” Then he said, “O Allah, lengthen his life, make his knowledge to be of no avail to him. Bring him tribulation through his offspring. Assign him, at the end of his life, to be a slave of oppression.” And to Allah belongs the Order before and after (30:4).

Then after a few days Sidi Abu al-Hasan was able to leave Egypt with his followers, and to fulfill the Pilgrimage, after which he returned to Tunis. There he remained for a number of years until one day Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, brought him the young man who was to become his successor and the inheritor of his station and his holy line. This was Abu ‘l-`Abbas al-Mursi. As soon as the Shaykh looked at the face of this young man from Spain, he said, “Truly no one has brought me back to Tunis except this person.”

Soon after this, Abu al-Hasan was given the Order to move to Egypt, which would be his final home, about which he, may Allah be pleased with him, said: I saw the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him in a dream and he said to me, “Ya `Ali, go to Egypt and raise up forty true followers (siddiqun) there.” It was summer time and intensely hot and I said, “Ya Rasul Allah, the heat is very great.” He said, “Lo, the clouds will give you shade.” I said, “I fear thirst.” He replied, “Lo, the sky will rain for you every day.” He promised me many miraculous gifts (karamat) on my journey. So I instructed my followers to prepare to depart to Egypt.”

One of the gifts which he had been promised and was shown was that he had become the Qutb of his time.

So it was that in the year 646 A.H./1246 C.E., when he was fifty years old, Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli entered Egypt and took up his residence in al-Iskandariya where he lived for the rest of his life. He set himself up with his family and followers in one of the great towers rising from the walls surrounding the city. The tower was well equipped for this purpose since it comprised several stories which provided accommodation for his family, a Mosque, a zawiya for his students where the Shaykh gave teachings, and rooms for other guests.

Meanwhile in Ifriqiya his Spirit was kept alive by a small group of his students with whom he kept up correspondence. Two of them wrote a book about the life of their Master. One of these two students, Muhammad ibn as-Sabbagh was the author of The Pearl of the Secrets and the Treasure of the Righteous (Durrat al-Asrar wa Tuhafat al Abrar), the source book for the greater part of the life and sayings of his Master Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli.

Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, may Allah have mercy upon him, was the founder of what became a great Sufi Order, and which is still one of the biggest of the Sufi Orders to this day. Yet he left no manual of instruction for his students, no handbook of practices, and no treatise to follow. He used to say, “My companions are my books.” What do exist however are several Litanies which he composed including his Litany of the Ocean (Hizb al-Bahr), Litany of the Light (Hizb an-Nur) and Litany of Victory (Hizb al-Fath) which he used to like to recite, and which he urged his students to learn by heart, and to make their recitation a regular part of their spiritual practices. In the same way as the Wazifa of Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish is known to carry many unseen blessings, so are the Litanies of Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli. It is recommended by our Shaykh, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rifa`i, that these should be read and recited by his followers in this holy Way, so that our souls may be purified by them, and that our spirits may find inspiration and benefit from them, with the lifting of veils from our hearts. One of the Knowers of Allah said about the Way which our Master Abu al-Hasan set out for his followers: This Path of ours is the pure Shadhdhuli Path. Its seeker must be based on its ’Imam. He is the Pole of the Poles (Qutb al-Aqtab), Abu al-Hasan who when he first met his Shaykh said, “O Allah! I have washed myself of my knowledge and my actions so that I do not possess any knowledge or action except what comes to me from this Shaykh.” This example became a condition for the follower of the Path, that he should leave his own knowledge of existence, and judge by that of the existence of the Shaykh, without turning away or dissatisfaction.” It was also said, “One of this Shadhdhuli Path is approached, and he does not go to anyone. He is needed and does not need anyone. He is always desired by everyone but does not desire anyone, except the One, the Unique, the Self-Subsisting (samad).” Another of them said about the Way of Abu al-Hasan, “Know that this annihilation (fana’) to which the people of the Shadhdhuli Path refer, is like death, no more no less. The dead, annihilated one in Allah, only dies by the self which emerges and enters by the mouth, and no more, because he is like a corpse in the Essence without Attributes.” And this is what our Master Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, may Allah have mercy upon him, said, “Drown me in the Spring of the Sea of Oneness, until I only see, only hear, only find and only feel by It.” Abu al-Hasan said, “When Allah wishes him to reach Him, He eases it in this way: He makes manifest to him some of the Sublime Attributes and Holy Qualities whose Divine Nature hid his own attributes and qualities from the soul of the slave. This serves as a sign that Allah loves him, as the Prophet, may prayers and peace be upon him, said in the hadith al-qudsi from his Lord: When I love him I am the hearing by which he hears, and the sight by which he sees, and the hand by which he strikes, and the foot whereon he walks.” For he, may Allah have mercy upon him said, “If He did not love you, He would not make you to witness the Unity. The sign of His Love for His beloveds is that He puts the love of His remembrance in our hearts.” Then Abu al-Hasan said, in speaking about the meaning of the quality of dhikr, “It is that you are making mention with the tongue and gazing with the heart.

” The remembrance of Allah (dhikr), as he, may Allah be pleased with him, said, is one of the essential means of walking with success and fulfillment on His Path. Therefore he counselled his students: “Know that it is important for the student of the Sufi Path for reaching the goal of attaining Union (wusul) with Allah, to ask Allah’s help, and to sit upon the carpet of truthfulness (sidq), contemplating him by truthful dhikr. Also one’s heart must be bound to the practice of pure bondsmanship (`ubudiya) so as to reach the knowledge of Allah (ma`rifa). Then continue in remembrance, thankfulness, watchfulness (muraqab), repentance and seeking forgiveness.” When Sidi Abu al-Hasan spoke about his Path, the Shadhdhuliyya Way, he said, “Its confirmation is Sainthood (wilaya).” By this he meant the witnessing of the knowledge of the Love of the Essence, through tasting and sincerity (ikhlas). And he said, “The People of this Path seek the benefit of evil just as they seek the benefit of good.” In the same way he said, and may Allah protect his secret, “O Allah! People are sentenced to abasement until they become mighty, and they are sentenced to loss until they find. The one who has no abasement becomes the one who has no might, and the one who has no loss becomes the one who does not find. The one who lays claim to finding without loss is a liar.” In one of the prayers which he, may Allah be pleased with him, liked to use, he said: “My God, if I ask You for help, I have asked for something beside You. If I ask for what You have guaranteed me, I show suspicion of You. If my heart rests in anything but You, I have been guilty Of the sin of associating something with You. Your Attributes in their Majesty are above contingency. How then can I be with You? They are beyond the reach of causes, How then can I be near You? They are exalted beyond the dust of earth, How then can my stay be other than You?” He, may Allah be pleased with him, also said that so long as the seeker stops with his own attributes, he is still with his self (nafs), and one of the attributes of the self is the desire to have vision and eye-witnessing of Allah. He said, “The desire for Union with God is one of the things that most effectually separates from Him.” And he said, “Scrupulousness has to do with what goes out and enters here (he pointed to his mouth) and with the heart, that there should enter it nothing except what Allah and His Messenger love.” Then he followed that, and said, “Whenever the spirit is abundantly watered with the showers of sciences, and the self (nafs) is firmly rooted in good works, then all good results. But whenever the self has power over the spirit, then drought and sterility result, the Order is overturned and every evil befalls. So take heed of the guidance of the Book of Allah and the healing words of His Messenger, prayers and peace be upon him, for you will never cease to enjoy the good as long as you love these two the most. But evil has already come to him who turns away from them.” The People of the Truth upon hearing vain talk, turn from it (28:55), and upon hearing the Truth welcome it. Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, says, “Whoever performs a good deed, for him will We increase it with goodness.” (42:23). Then he, may Allah be pleased with him, added to that, “Make us Your slaves in all Your Revelations (tajalliyat) so that we do not become too proud for Your bondsmanship (`ibada) in Your Revelations.” One of his followers said about the nature of Sidi Abu al-Hasan’s Teachings: Listen to these words of a Discourse coming from Allah in the Unseen through our Shaykh: “The Cup of Allah is full of the knowledge (ma`rifa) of the Truth (al-Haqq), whose clear Water is given to whom He wishes of His chosen slaves amongst the Creation. Sometimes it is in a material image, sometimes as meaning (ma1nawiya), sometimes as knowledge (`ilmiya). In its material picture it is bestowed for bodies and selves (anfus). In the form of meaning it is for hearts and minds, and in the form of knowledge it is for spirits (arhah) and for the Secret of the Secret Selves (asrar). Sometimes a group of Lovers will come together and they are given to drink from a single Cup, or it may be that they are given to drink from many Cups. Sometimes a person is given to drink from a Cup, and more than one Cup. It may be that the drinks will vary according to the number of Cups. Or it may be that the drinking from any one Cup will vary, even though a great number of lovers drink from the same Cup.” When he, may Allah have mercy upon him, was questioned another time about Love he said, “Love is granted by Allah to the heart of His slave, and it is that which distracts him from everything else other than Him, so that he will see his Spirit enfolded in His Presence, and his Secret Heart overwhelmed in contemplation of Him. Thus the slave asks for more, and more is given, so that he enters into the sweetest of joys in the Union of his spirit with Him. He is dressed in garments fitting for him who sits in proximity to him, and he reaches to the knowledge of the Hidden Reality and the Revealed faces of Allah.”

For that reason, it is said that the Saints are the Brides of Allah. The same questioner said to the Shaykh, “Now that I have come to know of Love, tell me what the Drink (sharab) of Love is, what the Cup of Love is, who is the Bearer of the Cup (saqi), what the meaning of tasting (dhawq) is, what the drinking (shurb) is, what the quenching of thirst (riyy) is, what intoxication (sukr) is and what sobriety (sahw) is?” He, may Allah hallow his Secret, replied, “The Drink is the Light radiating from the Beauty of the Beloved. The Cup is the Essence of the Subtlety of the Mercy which is in the tasting of the heart. The Cupbearer is he who is the Friend of the Greatest of the Chosen Ones and the Righteous among His slaves. He is Allah, the One Who knows the capacities and capabilities of His Friends. If that Beauty is revealed to a person, and he enjoys it even for one breath or two, and then the veil covers it again, he becomes the yearning taster. If he continues drinking for an hour or more, he is the drinker. If this state continues and lasts until his very veins and all his members become filled with the treasures of the Lights of Allah, then this is known as the quenching of thirst. When a person is absent from his senses and his mind has left him, so that he does not know what he says or what is said, that is known as intoxication. Sometimes when the Cups go round, the states differ, and the knower is returned back to remembrance (dhikr) and religious duties of the Law (ash-shari`a), or to subsistence (baqa’) after intoxication, and that is the time of their sobriety. This is when their vision is strengthened and enlarged and their actions are increased.” Allah Praised and Exalted is He, has said, “These are of the Party of Allah … and lo, is it not those of the Party of Allah who are the victorious ones.” (58:22). When Abu al-Hasan, may Allah have mercy upon him, once became ill in Qayrawan, as he said: The Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, came to me in a dream and said, “Cleanse your garments of all impurities and then with every breath you breathe you will enjoy Allah’s Help.” I asked, “What are my garments, Oh Rasul Allah?” He said, “Allah has clothed you with the robe of knowledge (ma`rifa), with the robe of Love (mahabba), with the robe of Unity (tawhid), with the robe of Faith (iman), and with the robe of Surrender (islam). Whoever has spiritual knowledge, for him everything becomes of little importance. Whoever loves Allah, for him all things become easy. Whoever affirms the Oneness of Allah, nothing is associated with Him. Whoever has faith in Allah is safe (amina) from everything. Whoever is surrendered to Allah does not disobey Him, and if he does so, he returns repentant, asking to be forgiven, and finding forgiveness.” As he, may Allah be pleased with him, said: I knew then the meaning of the Words of Allah, “Your robe, cleanse.” (74:4). Another time he, may Allah be pleased with him, was explaining the meaning of the Prophet’s saying, prayers and peace be upon him, Prayer is the link of union (silsila) of the slave to his Lord, and he said: “The sign of Union is the outpouring of Mercy with the manifestations of Love. The manifestations of Love are the removal of the Veil and the happiness in communion.” On another occasion he said: I saw Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, in a dream and he asked me, “Do you know what the sign is for the love of the world leaving the heart?” I replied, “No.” He said, “Forsaking it upon finding it, and finding relief upon losing it.” He, may Allah be pleased with him, then said, “The practices (awrad) of the faithful (saddiqun) are fasting, prayer, recitation of dhikr, reading of Qur’an, guarding of the private parts, the turning of the lower self from desires, enjoining what is halal, and forbidding what is prohibited, according to four principles, which are: abstinence from worldly things, trust in Allah, submission to Allah’s Decrees, and patience in His testing. Sincere love is built on four corner-stones, the first one being faith, then comes the belief in the Oneness of Allah, thirdly comes right intention, and fourthly high himma. Also if a person does not have four virtues in himself, let him abandon hope of happiness, these virtues being: knowledge (ilm), scrupulousness (wara), fear of Allah (hayba), and humility towards the slaves of Allah. The principles, corner-stones and virtues are all necessary for the seeker.

” Sidi Abu al-Hasan also said, “The bondsmanship (`ibada) of those who are trustworthy consists of twenty things: eat, drink, clothe yourselves, travel, marry, settle down, do everything that Allah has commanded. Do not be neglectful but serve Allah. Do not associate anyone or anything with Him. Be thankful to Him. Avoid injuring others, and spend generously. This is one-half. The other is performing prescribed duties, avoiding what is unlawful and being content with whatever Allah decrees. Truly serving Him consists in reflecting upon His Orders and thoroughly understanding the Religion (ad-din). The best kind of service is asceticism towards the world which comes from an absolute trust in Allah. This is the bondsmanship of the best of the believers. If you are ill, seek for a remedy. Listen carefully to the Knowers and choose the holy ones from amongst them, the true Guides, who put their trust in Allah.”

When Sidi Abu al-Hasan had once asked his own Master, Sidi Ibn Mashish, concerning the Well, or Spring (wird) of the People of the Reality, he said that Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam, may Allah be pleased with him, had replied, “It is essential for you to have destroyed passion and desires (hawa) and to love the Friend of Allah (al-waliy). The sure sign of Love is that the lover is occupied with nothing except his Beloved.” By this question he, Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli was in truth asking about the holy bond between Master and student. The answer came to him, without any doubt, that only in the total surrender of the student’s complete being could he receive the perfect blessings which Allah had set aside for him. Therefore Sidi Abu al-Hasan himself said, “If anyone is satisfied by his possessions he is poor; if anyone is satisfied by his high reputation he is to be despised, if anyone is satisfied with his kinsmen he is worthy of contempt and if anyone is satisfied with Allah he is truly rich.” Then he, may Allah be pleased with him, added, “The sign of commitment (tafwid) is a lack of distress when distasteful things befall.”

In addition to his verbal Teachings Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli also kept an extensive correspondence going with his followers, especially those who had remained behind in Tunis. In particular, many letters passed between him and Shaykh Abu al-Hasan as-Saqalli, and also with his companion and friend of the cave of Jabal Zaghwan, the Shaykh `Abdu ‘s-Salama al-Habibi, who had remained in Ifriqiyya keeping up a zawiya for the muridun of the village of Masruqin. As was said, “These letters are considered to be of great importance for an understanding of his Way, since his love and compassion for all his followers was well-known. He considered it to be a duty for the Shaykh, as the Father (rabib), to know his beloveds intimately, and to help them wherever they might be.”

Abu al-Hasan’s follower, Ibn Sabbagh, recorded many stories about the karamat (gifts or spiritual attainment) of Sidi Abu al-Hasan, a number of them having been related to him by the follower, Abu ‘l-`Aza’im Madi who kept company with the Master in the latter part of his life in Egypt. One such story is as follows, as Abu ‘l-`Azaim Madi said: The Shaykh sent me from Iskandariyya to Dumyat for something that he needed. There was a man with us of the people of Dumyat who asked the Shaykh’s permission to accompany me and to travel with me, and permission was granted him for this. On approaching the Gate of the Lotus Tree (one of the Gates of Iskandariyya), the man took out some money to buy bread and condiments. I said to him, “You do not need anything.” He said to me, “We shall find the shop of a certain person in the desert.” He mentioned the shop of a man from Halwan in Iskandariyya. I said to him, “It is better, if Allah wills, to do as I say.” Now I had been accustomed, whenever I travelled, to take no provision of food with me, but when I became hungry I would hear the voice of the Shaykh saying to me, “O Madi, go over to your right and you will find something to eat.”

In like manner, when I was thirsty I would find fresh water and cooked food. We left Iskandariyya and walked, hastening on our journey until the day was well advanced. Then my travelling companion said, “O Madi, give me something to eat for I am hungry.” Immediately I heard the Shaykh’s voice saying to me, “O Madi, your guest is hungry. Go over to your right and you will find wherewith to feed him.” I went over to the right-hand side of the road and we found a pot full of sweet cakes perfumed with musk and rose-water, and we ate them until we were filled. The man was amazed and wept at what he saw. I asked him, “Which of the two is more tasty, this food or that in the shop of the man from Halwan of whom you spoke?” The man said, “By Allah, I have certainly not seen the like of this before, and such as this has never been made in the palace of a king.” The man wanted to gather up the remnants of the holy food, but I prevented him from doing this, and I left them as they were. When we had walked on a short distance we became thirsty. Instantly my beloved Shaykh’s voice came to me saying, “O Madi, go over to your right-hand and you will find water.”

Thereupon we found in the sand a pool of fresh water, from which we drank, and beside which we rested for a while. On arising we found not a drop of water to be seen. Thereupon the man said, “Where is the water which was here in this place?” I said, “I know nothing about it.” Then the man said, “By Allah, this Shaykh is truly endowed with great powers. By Allah, I will not return to my people until I shall have obtained what this Master has obtained, or I will die in Allah.” So he left his fur-lined cloak with me and walked off into the desert exclaiming, Allah! Allah! Abu ‘l-`Azaim Madi continued: When I had finished my journey and returned to my Master, he said to me, “O Madi, you have lost your guest.” I said to him, “You are the one who has lost him whom you fed with the sweet cakes in the desert, and whose thirst you quenched with the water in the sand.” Then he, may Allah be pleased with him, said to me, “He has passed along with those who are betaking themselves to Allah.” Abu ‘l-`Aza’im Madi also related: One day the Shaykh was talking to his assembly of followers on the subject of asceticism (az-zuhd) regarding worldly goods. In the group assembled to listen to him was a poor man wearing worn out clothes while his teacher wore fine-looking garments. The poor man said, “How is it that the Shaykh talks about asceticim while wearing these clothes? I am the ascetic with regard to worldly goods.” Our Master Abu al-Hasan said, “O you disputer, your clothes are the garments of worldly desire (raghba ad-dunya) which are crying out with the tongue of effort and poverty, but our garments cry out with the tongue of abstinence (ta`affuf) and sufficiency (ghina). As soon as he heard these words, the poor man stood up before all those assembled, and said, “I, by Allah, the Mighty, am the one who says likewise in my heart, and I ask for forgiveness of Allah, and turn to Him in repentance.” Then the Master told Madi to clothe the poor man in fine garments. It was related that when Sidi Abu ‘l-`Abbas’ son, who was called Ahmad Shahabu-id-din, reached puberty, his mother said to Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash -Shadhdhuli, “O my Master, my son Ahmad has come to manhood.

” Then he, may Allah be pleased with him, said to her, “Bring him to me so that I may give him my final injunction, and teach him those rights of Allah which are required of him.” So his mother brought her son to the Shaykh’s presence. He, may Allah be pleased with him, looked intently at the young boy, for a moment, then he turned his eyes away from him. Then he said to him, “Arise, O my son, may Allah always guide you”, and he made du`a to Allah for him. When the youth had left the Shaykh’s presence, his mother said to the Master, “Sidi, indeed I did not hear you give him your final message, or even address a word to him.” He, may Allah be pleased with him, said to her, “When he was sitting in front of me, Allah allowed me to see the outcome of his life, and I found nothing in his actions against which to warn or counsel him, so I felt ashamed before Allah to speak to him.

” There is also a story about the Master Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, which was related by a man named Abu `Ali `Umar whose father told him that two of his friends had told him of how Sidi Abu al-Hasan had drawn near to them one night while they were in a small fort. Abu `Ali `Umar said: We had ten sheep which we had received on credit for the purpose of making a profit from them. We had killed one of the choicest of our small flock for the Shaykh, who asked us, “Why have you done this?” We said to him, “This is for the blessing, if Allah wills.

” One of the two men said to the Shaykh, “By it (the blessing) will a thousand measures of grain be stored up for us?” He said, “And by it a thousand measures of grain, if Allah wills.” They then told of how, after only a short time, they had acquired a thousand sheep and had stored up a thousand measures of grain. Abu Ali `Umar added: I was present at the time of their counting, and I ate of their offspring. Finally, many stories are told about the Battle of al-Mansurah in the year 1250 C.E., when the Crusader King Louis of France invaded Egypt, and in which the Shaykh took part fighting in the front line with his followers. When Sidi Abu al-Hasan and many of his beloveds, as well as his friends amongst the `ulama and the awliya, heard that the Muslim community was under attack, they immediately made their way to al-Mansurah to join in the battle for Victory or Paradise (an-nasr aw al-janna), knowing full well that Paradise is under the shadow of the sword. On the day of the battle the Shaykh mounted his best horse, one of his followers then handing him his sword. When he clasped it in his right hand he asked for another, and with one in each hand he rode out into battle. When he was asked afterwards how he could fight so marvelously, because at that time his eyesight was very weak, he pointed to his heart saying, “If the Eye of the heart sees clearly, what is the need for the eyes of the body?” The Master Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli had made it his custom that every other year he would travel to Mecca for the Pilgrimage. Likewise in the year 656 A.H./1258 C.E., the very year in which a few weeks earlier the Mongol ruler Hulugu Jenghiz Khan had sacked Baghdad, he made preparations to go on the Pilgrimage as usual. However, this time he asked that a pickaxe, shovel, and a shroud should be included in their baggage. As was his custom he set out on the southern route, known as the spice route, overland to Damanhur, then via Qahira, up the Nile to ‘Idfu in Upper Egypt. From there he would cross the Red Sea to Jiddah, and finally make the two-day camel ride to Mecca. At Damanhur, a young boy, who was a student of the Qur’an, begged his mother to let him go with the Shaykh and his party to make the Pilgrimage. His mother, who was a widow, earnestly requested the Shaykh for her son that he be allowed to travel with his party, to which he replied, “We will look after him as far as Humaythira.

” And so it happened. It was related that Abu al-Hasan, may Allah have mercy upon him, had said, “When I entered the land of Egypt and established my dwelling there, I prayed to Allah, the Most High, saying: Ya Rabb, have You caused me to dwell in the land of the Copts, to be buried amongst them, until my flesh becomes mingled with their flesh and my bones with theirs? A reply then came to me: No `Ali, you will be buried in a land which Allah has never oppressed.” It is also recorded that in the year of his death Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli was heard to say, “Once when I fell ill, I said: Allah, O Allah, when will the encounter with You take place? I was told: Ya `Ali, when you reach Humaythira, then the encounter will come.” He said, may Allah have mercy upon him, “I saw as if I were buried at the base of a mountain before a well containing a little salty water, which became more abundant and sweet.” And he said to his beloveds, “This year I shall perform the Pilgrimage of substitution (hajjat an-niyaba).

” One of Abu al-Hasan’s followers recorded what happened: Soon after entering the desert of `Aydhab, both the young boy and the Shaykh fell ill, the boy dying the day before we reached the watering-place of Humaythira. The followers wanted to bury the youth where he had died, but the Shaykh said, “Carry him to Humaythira.” When we arrived at this resting-place we washed the boy, and the Shaykh prayed over him before we buried him. That evening the Shaykh, who was also very sick, called his companions around him and spoke to us, counselling us to recite his Litany of the Sea (Hizb al-Bakhr) often, and he said, “Teach it to your children for the Greatest Name of Allah (al-ismu ‘l-`azam) is in it.” Then he talked privately to Sidi Abu al-`Abbas al-Mursi, giving him his orders as his successor with his special blessing. He, may Allah have mercy upon him, said to his followers, “When I am dead, look to Abu al-`Abbas al-Mursi for he is the Caliph (Khalifa) to come after me. He will have an exalted station amongst you for he is one of the Doors (abwab) of Allah, Praised and Exalted is He.” Later that evening he called for a jar of water to be filled from the well of Humaythira. When he was told, “Ya Sidi, its water is salty and bitter, but the water we have is fresh and sweet,” he replied, “Give me some of it for my intention is not what you think.” When we brought him the well-water he drank a little of it, rinsed his mouth with it and spat into the jar. Then he said, “Pour the water into the well.

” Immediately the well-water turned sweet and fresh to taste, and it was abundant enough to refresh all the travellers who stopped to replenish themselves at this place. His followers said, “The Shaykh passed the night in holy preparation and discourse with his Beloved God, continually mentioning His Name until the dawn came when he was still.” Thus the words of Sidi Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli became true, because he had said, “This year I shall perform the Pilgrimage of substitution.” By this he informed his followers of the hadith of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, “If anyone leaves his home for the purpose of performing the Pilgrimage and dies before accomplishing it, Allah deputizes an angel to take his place in performing the Hajj each year until the Day of Resurrection (yawm al-qiyama).” Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, the Beloved and Friend of Allah, had asked Him to allow him to die in a place without sin, and in this Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, granted him his wish. He, may Allah have mercy upon him, had told his son-in-law and successor, Abu al-`Abbas al-Mursi, that he should give his body to a veiled man on horseback who would appear, wash him and bury him, leaving then by a path up a steep hill where Abu al-`Abbas should not follow him. Everything happened as Abu al-Hasan, may Allah protect his secret, had said.

However, Abu al-`Abbas did follow the veiled horseman up the hill, and he saw his face, which was that of Abu al-Hasan himself, who told him to return to the valley again. Then the veiled man disappeared. From this sign Abu al-`Abbas understood that, in fact, it was the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, himself who had appeared in the face of his Master. There is now said to be a handsome Mosque at the tomb which is visited by pilgrims every year going and returning from Mecca. From the hill above the Mosque the beloveds of the Way of Allah can see the light shining from the tomb of the Prophet, may prayers and peace be upon him, lying to the East across the Red Sea. Our Shaykh and Master, `Ali ibn `Abdullah Abu al-Hasan, the founder of this great Shadhdhuliyya Way, left behind him, as he did for many people of his time, so also for us today, a spiritual Path within the Religion of Islam, which gives to those who follow it in sincerity and humility, deep meaning and purpose to our lives in this material world. It is the Straight Path to God, so that the Order which he founded still lives and flourishes in many parts of the world, and especially in the West. There is the well-known saying amongst the People of Allah, “The Last Days will fall on the Shadhdhuliyya Path.

” Above everything else, the Master Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli left the transmission of the Highest Essence (ad-dhat al-1aliya) to all his successors, the Guides who inherit from him, and who have kept the Spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, alive in every time. With the complete and perfect annihilation (fana’), and the complete and perfect return to subsistence (baqa’) in and through the presence of the Master, the follower of this Path can receive the knowledge of this highest Essence, which is that of the Spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, the Last of Allah’s Messengers for the world. None of the deep meaning of this holy knowledge can be passed on through learned treatises, nor does it live in any books, except in the Book of Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, the Holy Qur’an. It is only through the Good Pleasure and Grace of Allah and for the fulfillment of His Order that He bestows this blessing upon whom He wills of His slaves.

He, the Most High, said, “The People of the Book know that they have no power over anything of the Bounty of Allah, and that the Bounty is in the Hand of Allah, and He gives it to whomsoever He wills, and Allah is of Mighty Bounty.” (57:29). May Allah, the All-Mighty, cause the blessing of our Master to be repeated, and may He gather us together with him in the assembly of our Prophet, our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Beloved Muhammad, may prayers and peace be upon him. May Allah bless him and give him abundant peace so long as the Sovereignty of Allah shall endure.” All Praise is to Allah the Lord of all the Worlds.

Allah Allah Allah

Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish

*diterbitkan oleh ribat-jakarta

Shaykh Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish

This now is some account of the life and wisdom of the Master, the mawlay, Shaykh Muhammad `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish whose full name was ibn Mansur ibn Ibrahim al-Hasani al-Idrisi, ash-sharif of the Bani `Arus of the Jabal `Alam, to the south-east of Tetuan in the Maghrib.

Very little is recorded of the early life of Ibn Mashish except that it is said that he entered the Path of the People of Allah while he was still a child, and that his first teacher was the Shaykh `Abdu ‘r-Rahman al-Madani az-Zayyat who, in his presence, lived in al-Madina al-Munawwarah, the City of the Prophet, may prayers and peace be upon him, but who would travel to instruct his follower in a matter of but one hour, returning then to his dwelling-place in al-Madina.

It was said that while `Abdu ’s-Salam, may Allah be pleased with him, was being instructed on the Path that he would be in frequent prayer, above the number required for religious observance, and at times, when he had finished his praying, he would find his food prepared and laid out for him to eat. One night, however, when he felt distrust towards this food, his Master Sidi `Abdu ’r-Rahman al-Madani appeared before him and said, “Eat of this food without fear, for you are always under the Protection of Allah.” From the very beginning of his entering onto the Path of Allah until his last moment, Sidi `Abdu’s-Salam had deep humility, and no one visited him without becoming aware of this.Then after some years he took the hand of Sidi Abu Madyan Shu`ayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ghawth, receiving all the holy knowledge from this great Master.

After leaving his Master Abu Madyan, he, may Allah be pleased with him, returned to his own country where he lived amongst his people as a member of the shurafa, those who are dedicated and devoted to upholding the Religion of Islam, untouched by connection to worldly positions. He was said to be a strict follower of the Qur’an and the Sunna and was deeply rooted in the Law of Islam (ash-shari`a), and once, on being asked to recommend spiritual practices for a seeker, said, “Am I a Prophet? Perform the obligations of the Law and avoid sin. Keep your heart aloof from all temporal attachments. Accept, and be content with, everything that Allah sends to you and above everything else put the Love of Allah.”

They said that, “As a young Shaykh Ibn-Mashish’s intention was to safeguard the purity of the Religion in a sea pervaded by Berber clans devoted to the practice of magic and suchlike things. Sidi ibn Mashish never encouraged insurrection, and always condemned those who took part in political uprising under the pretext of religious activities, so that his teaching was always towards peace and against all acts of aggression. He said, may Allah be pleased with him, “Let your heart attach itself to the Creator instead of attaching itself to the Creation. Purify your heart of doubt and vain thoughts by the Water of Certainty, and say: ‘Do not drown me without having obedience to Allah in sight.’ Never bare yourself but where you are certain not to meet revolt against Allah.” And his actions always confirmed his words.

He would also say, “Pray to Allah ceaselessly, and do not speak of anything else, and preserve your hearts from the longing to see people at your feet. The Love of Allah is the only pole around which good deeds turn. Let your tongues speak of nothing but Allah, instead of occupying themselves with the things of this world.”

Four fundamental themes ran through his Teachings: The Oneness of Existence (al-wahdat al-wujud) which he said could be realized only through asceticism, Fear of Allah and His Judgements (al-hawf bi ‘llah), the belief that Allah is everywhere and that it is necessary to see His Face in everything that He has created, and fourthly, that only through the drowning in the Ocean of the Unity (`awnu fi bahri al-wahadati) can the seeker cast off and leave behind his own existence and attributes to be merged and absorbed into Allah and His Attributes.

Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam said, “Love (al-mahabba) comes from the way in which Allah takes the heart which He loves, in unveiling to it (something) of the Light of His Beauty, and the Holiness of His Majesty. The Wine (sharab al-mahabba) brings about the blending (mazj) of the Divine Qualities with the human qualities, Characteristics with characteristics, Lights with lights, Names with names, Qualities with qualities and Actions with actions. Allah extends the seeing of whom He wishes. The Wine (al-sharab) waters the hearts, the arteries and the veins.” By Wine (the Arabic word is drink) Sidi Ibn al-Mashish meant the Highest Essence (ad-dhat al-`aliyya).

He said, may Allah be pleased with him, “O Allah! the strongest of what they ask You is the subjugation of the Creation to them, and they are pleased with You by that. I ask You to hand the Creation to me so that I have no shelter nor refuge except You.”

One of the Shaykhs who was one the Knowers of the People of Allah of the Maghrib, Sidi `Abdu ‘r-Rahman al-Fasi, told of how Sidi Ibn Mashish visited him in a dream and said to him, “My son, this Path of ours is only obtained by Abasement and something of having little of this world.”

Later in his life `Abdu ‘s-Salam retired to a cave on the top of the mountain known as Jabal `Alam, which is situated in the middle of a valley surrounded on all sides by the Atlas mountains in the Habt region of the Maghrib.

Although he lived his entire life as a recluse from the world of everyday life, he was well known to the Folk of Allah for his deep piety, sincerity and devotion to his Lord, and it was he whom Allah, the All-Mighty, chose to be the only Master endowed with His perfect and complete Knowledge (ma`rifa), and who could pass this Knowledge to a successor, Abu ‘l-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, who was to found the great school of the Shadhdhuliyya Way which prevails in many parts of the world and especially in the West, and which is blessed by Allah to this day.

Several accounts relate to the meeting between the Master `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish and his student and successor Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli. Although Abu al-Hasan was born in Gumara, a small village in the Rif mountains of the Maghrib close to the Jabal al-`Alam where his future Master and Guide lived, he did not find him until he had travelled for some time to the East. There he studied in Baghdad with the Shaykh Abu Fath al-Wasiti, a student of Sidi Ahmad ar-Rifa’i who was one of the Qutbs of his time.

After a few months Abu al-Hasan’s Shaykh, Sidi Abu Fath, said to him, “You have come here seeking for the Pole (Qutb) of Islam, but you have left him in the Maghrib.” When Abu al-Hasan asked him, “Where will I find him, in which part of the Maghrib?” he was told, “You will find him there where you see a Light which rises up from the direction of the Maghrib, and this will be the Pole of Islam. If you follow that light you will reach your goal.”

So Abu al-Hasan returned to his own country of the Maghrib and found the Light of the holy mountain of Jabal `Alam, as he had been told. He set out on the steep ascent to the top of the mountain, having first washed himself and made ablution (wudu) at a spring at the foot of the mountain, known to this day as `ayn ash-Shadhdhuli. When he reached the top of the mountain he found the Shaykh reciting from al-Qur’an al-Karim with one of his sons.

As they recited together the holy Words, Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli saw that their bodies began to sway from side to side, but in truth it was not their bodies which were moving thus, but the whole mountain which was swaying from side to side in accompaniment with their recitation. From this sign he knew that this was truly the Qutb for whom he was searching.

He went forward in reverence and awe to meet his Master, who greeted him with the words, “Have you made ablution (wudu)?” When Abu al-Hasan answered him saying, “Yes,” he was told, “You cannot come to us in a state of impurity. Return and make wudu.” So Abu al-Hasan returned to the bottom of the mountain, remade his ablution and climbed again to its top, and having reached the presence of the Shaykh, asked him if he would accept him as his student.

The Shaykh replied, “I told you to return when you had purified yourself with the ablution.” Once again Abu al-Hasan returned to the bottom of the mountain with the question for his rejection turning in his heart, until he was shown what was necessary for him to do, because he came to realize the meaning of this initial trial and test, and the depth of the purification which it was necessary for him to make before he could enter into the Path of Allah with this holy Shaykh.

This time, as he made his ablution, he emptied himself of everything that he knew, or thought he knew, or that he had learned and taken in from other teachers, and he destroyed all his attributes, pictures, and prejudices, until he knew that he was left with only a vast space of nothingness inside him which was waiting to be filled. He was now totally surrendered to whatever this Master, whom he desired with all his being, would send him.

He climbed once more to the top of the mountain, but before he reached its summit he was met by the Master who greeted him by pronouncing his full line of descent back to the Prophet Muhammad, may prayers and peace be upon him.

The Shaykh now embraced him with the deep Love of acceptance. He could find no words with which to return the greeting, but the Master said to him, “If you wish to fetch water, you take an empty bucket to the well to do so. A full bucket has no room for water.” With these words he took his beloved student by the hand and filled him to overflowing with the holy Water.

Afterwards Abu al-Hasan said: “Allah! I have washed myself of my knowledge and my actions so that I do not recognize any knowledge or action except what comes to me by the hand of this Shaykh.”

The knowledge of this ablution has become the habitual practice (sunna) for all those of this holy Path who have followed after him, because it is the only way to reach the knowledge of the Reality, and the Light from that meeting continues to pour out without ceasing to both the East and the West.

While he was living with his Master, `Abdu ‘Salam ibn Mashish, on the holy mountain, many wonderful signs from Allah came to Abu al-Hasan, through this holy Guide. One such sign was that on the night of his arrival on the mountain he was sleeping at the entrance of the cave where his Master lived. He dreamt that he was asking the Shaykh to grant him certain wishes, one of them being that Allah, the Mighty and Supreme, would incline the hearts of His creatures in favor towards him. Then he wished to ask his Master if it was necessary for him to live in solitude, or in the desert, in order for him to be in the right station (maqam) to perform his religious tasks, or whether he should return to the towns and inhabited places to seek out the company of scholars and virtuous people. While he was turning these things in his heart he heard the Shaykh praying fervently and calling out, “O Allah! People ask You to make their relations with other people easy, but I ask You to make them difficult, so that I may always seek refuge and protection in You alone.”

The next morning when Abu al-Hasan asked his Master about this state, he replied, “I complain to Allah of the contentment which submission and abandonment to the Will of Allah brings.” When he saw the astonishment on his student’s face at hearing his words, he added, “Because I fear that the sweetness of such an existence would make me neglectful of my duty towards Allah.”

Then Abu al-Hasan said, “This is the Pole of Islam. This is the Sea which overflows.” He knew then that his Master had taken hold of his whole heart, and he was thereby completely illumined.

Then one day, as he sat in the presence of his Master who had his young son on his knees playing and enjoying himself, the thought came to him to ask him about the Greatest Name of Allah. He, may Allah be pleased with him, said that at that moment the child who sat on his father’s knees put his hands on his shoulders and shook him, saying, “O Abu al-Hasan, you want to ask about the Greatest Name of Allah. It is of no importance to ask about the Greatest Name of Allah. It is important that you should be the Greatest Name of Allah–that the Secret of Allah should live in your heart.” When his son had finished speaking, the Master smiled and said, “Such a one has answered you for me.”

Abu al-Hasan remained with `Abdu ‘s-Salam’s presence for the time that Allah, the All-Mighty, willed that he should, and when he was about to leave him to continue on his journey, his Master counselled him saying, “O `Ali. Allah! Allah! When you are amongst the people, refrain from mentioning the Secret. Remove your heart from their presences. It is for you to provide for your needs, and to observe what is prescribed by the Law (ash-shari`a). Thus you will attain the highest rank of holiness. I adjure you, by Allah, to this. You are under obligation to give to Allah that which is owed to Him, and He will do the rest, and will protect you. Say, “O Allah! Deliver me from their mentioning, and of accidents which should befall me because of them. Protect me against their wickedness, and by Your Kindness enable me to avoid their snares, for You are powerful over everything.”

`Abdu ‘s-Salam also counselled his beloved student saying, “Do not take for friends those who seek your friendship. These are cheap people. Do not take in friendship those who prefer their own self to you, and do not take for friends those who prefer you to themselves, because their sincerity is only based on appearances. But take those friends who when they make mention of anything say, ‘Allah!’ They should be humble towards Allah and none other but Him.”

Ibn Mashish, may Allah be pleased with him, also said, “Guide the people to Allah, and do not guide them to anything but Him, for he who guides you to the world has cheated you, and he who guides you to work has made you suffer. But he who guides you to Allah has counselled you well.”

It was said that when Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam prayed, the Saints of Islam prayed behind him and on all sides, both men and women.

It was recorded that once when Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, desiring spiritual progress, asked his Master to petition Allah in his favor, he, may Allah be pleased with him, answered, “Allah is with you, O Abu al-Hasan, and if He is with you, which needs other than that can you have?”

A man once asked Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam for permission to take part in Jihad. He, may Allah be pleased with him, answered him with Allah’s Words to His Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, “Those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, ask not leave of thee that they may struggle with their possessions and their selves. And Allah knows those who fear Him.”

He, may Allah protect his secret, said once to his beloved student Abu al-Hasan, “If you wish to fight your soul, examine it, let it take hold of the fear of sin, and imprison it in Allah’s possession wherever you are.”

In order to know the Spirit of our Master Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, may Allah have mercy upon him, it is necessary for us to look into his Al-Wazifa since it is the only piece of writing from his hand which is available for us to study. It was revealed to him, he said, in a dream from the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, himself. For `Abdu ‘s-Salam’s heart, may Allah be pleased with him, was chosen to contain this revelation and to transmit it to all the followers who were to come from him. In this holy revelation the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, showed him that his Secret, prayers and peace be upon him, was the key to the Door of the Knowledge of Allah, Mighty and Supreme is He. Therefore Ibn Mashish said, “This is the Secret which Allah preserves and guards. How mighty is he among the Prophets who is a picture and example of the Existence of Allah.”

The Knower of Allah, the Qutb of this time, may Allah benefit us through him, Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Said al-Jamal ar-Rifa`i, has written a Commentary on this Wazifa of `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, which reveals many of its hidden meanings for its readers. It is from this Commentary that we now include some excerpts, which can, if Allah wills, guide us into this Knowledge which was granted to our Master Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, may Allah protect his secret. He said, according to the words revealed to him by his Beloved Prophet, and may Allah hallow his Secret:

“O Allah! Send Your Blessings and send Peace in all the affairs
Of the revealed and the Hidden,
upon the one from whom the Secrets
Which were hidden in his lofty Essence,
Were cleft asunder by becoming revealed.”
And we do not know what befits him of respect and might.”

“And the Lights which were hidden
in the sky of his lofty Qualities,
Burst asunder into full moons,
and in him the Truths ascended, from him to Him;
And the Knowledge of Adam descended through him,
and upon him,
The One who unites all things.
This is the Preserved Secret
which none of us creatures knew before,
And which no one who comes after him can obtain,
In spite of his instinctive yearning for witnessing it.
O Allah! he is Your Secret which unites all secrets.
And the Gardens of the World of the Kingdom
and the World of Dominion,
Enjoying the flowers of his glowing Beauty.
And the reservoirs
which are distinguishing signs of Omnipotence,
Pour forth in profusion the lights of his dazzling Secret.”

In his Commentary on these lines, the Shaykh Muhammad Said al-Jamal ar-Rifa`i, our Master says: The World of Omnipotence is the Presence of the Secrets which manifest the Essence freed of all incidents and choice. Briefly, an analogy can be made. The World of the Kingdom (al-mulk) and the World of Dominion (al-malakut) shine out through him, the Prophet, may prayers and peace be upon him, like spacious gardens on high. Another indication of this is the use of the word ‘garden’ for both these Worlds. His Beauty, prayers and peace be upon him, is like the plants in gardens… and the World of Omnipotence is like a sea on the two shores of which are gardens that are watered from its reservoirs.

The World of the Kingdom is the world of the presences, of bodies which produce manifest deeds and actions, so that everything which is known through the senses is from this Presence.

The World of Dominion is the Presence of souls, and it is the World of Manifestation of the Qualities of Beauty (jamal) and Majesty (jalal). Also everything that is known by the White Mind and by true understanding is from this Presence.

The Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, embellishes the World of the Kingdom and the World of Dominion just as flowers beautify gardens… so that these two Worlds are enhanced by his Beauty, may prayers and peace be upon him.

The Commentary continues: He, my Master, increased the honoring and glorifying and ascended from the station (maqam) of the ‘special’ to the station of the ‘general’ and said:

“And there is nothing that is not dependent upon him.
And which is not tended by his all-pervading Secret.”

“For `Abdu ‘s-Salam was shown that there is nothing that is not founded upon him and linked to him, prayers and peace be upon him, and that this is from the Grace of Existence… because he is the Spring of all things and their Mother.”

“And there does not exist anything which is not cared for
By his all-embracing Secret which is the Protector of all things.

If there were not his Intercession in every ascent and descent,
Those interceded for, as it is said, would disappear.”

In his Commentary the Master explains that these words mean: They would be destroyed, and no trace of them would remain… especially in respect to the travelling to Allah, Most High. It means that there is no possibility for the traveller to witness the Reality, Praised and Exalted is He, except through his, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, mirror.

As regards the station of his Secret, prayers and peace be upon him, there is no hope of anyone knowing It, in his presence, because the difference between the station of his Secret and that of his Soul, prayers and peace be upon him, his Intellect, his Heart, his Self, is that the station of his Secret is the Muhammadan Reality which is Divine Light. And it is not possible for either the intellect or the consciousness of the created being, even the Perfect One, to know and understand if he is in his presence. But if he destroys everything, then he can reach It.

Know, and may Allah protect you, that when He, Glory be to Him and Exalted is He, created the Muhammadan Reality, He put into It for His Creation all that He had apportioned from the abundance of the Hidden and Revealed Knowledge, the Secrets and Revelations, the Lights and the Truths, in all their Decrees and necessities.

Then Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, ascends until now in the witnessing of Divine Completion which cannot be reached by anyone save him, and this Perfection never passes away throughout all Eternity.

Then Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam said: “And give him a new creation unceasingly.”

The Shaykh’s Commentary explains: In these words, `Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam asked that the ‘unending succession’ may be in like measure to the new creations which will never be interrupted, either in this world or in the Hereafter, as Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, says: “What, were We wearied by the first creation? No indeed: But they are in uncertainty as to the new creation.” (50:15).

All existing things, in their manifest and in their hidden state, in their displayed and in their innermost existence, do not remain for two moments in the same state, because the time for their existence is also the time for their passing away. This refers to relative existence and non-existence, but not to true Existence, because there are manifest Realities in every rank according to its measure.

Then the unveiling of the revelation continued as `Abdu ‘s Salam said:

“O Allah! he is Your Secret that unites all secrets,
And Your Light which encompasses all lights.
And Your Guide who leads through You.
So that no one reaches (to You),
but to his unassailable Presence.”

The Shaykh, may Allah benefit us through him, says in explaining these words: Know that the Muhammadam Inheritor is the Secret of Allah which unites all secrets, and his Light contains all lights… as my Master `Abdu’l-Ghani an-Nabulsi, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Know that the possessor of the Muhammadan Inheritance is the Seal of the Saints of his time, just as the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, is the Seal of the Prophets, and there will be no Prophet after him, but in every Time of Allah there are Saints of Allah, Praised and Glorified is He, as numerous as there were nabi before.”

There is a hadith of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, in which he said, “The Knower of this Community is like any of the Prophets of the Children of Isra’il.” Then as Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “The Muhammad Inheritor, who is Your Guide, leads through You, in as much as he is the manifestation of Your Highest Essence and of Your Splendid Attributes. For that reason his Guidance is complete, his words and his actions and all his doings. According to the measure that he follows the noble Law (ash-shari`a) and in the measure of his Love, and to the extent that he is drowned in the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, he can take from this noble Secret. Through this, when he destroys everything that he has, he then gives yearning for another to remember Allah when His Name is mentioned. What I mean is that what is behind this presence cannot be revealed to every traveller, because the presence of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, or the Guide, may Allah be pleased with him, is the Veil which prevents anyone from knowing what is behind it, unless he is annihilated and returned to non-being, and to be completely like the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, or like his Guide. For the return to non-being is only for the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, but as for the Creation, it is returned through him.”

Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam then called to his beloved God saying:

“O Allah! join me to him through his spiritual Line,
And make his praised and noble descent true through me.”

Here, as the Commentary explains in the Shaykh’s words, may Allah benefit us through him: No one knows the Secret of the Line of the Love except the lovers of Allah who contain It. After this bond has been reached, the seeker gains that from which the eyes of the Creation are veiled. For he becomes of the Family of Allah because He, Glory be to Him, brings the Line of the Love down upon His lovers who are His Family…

Know that from the heart of every person who is connected to this noble Line gush forth springs of Wisdom and Knowledge, through which each follower is guided, because he is connected to the Line of the Messenger of Allah, may prayers and peace be upon him.
Then, in asking for the realization of this noble descent, there are numerous signs, one of them being that the setting for his Muhammadan manners, prayers and peace be upon him, and the rules of the praised and noble shari`a cannot be perfected except through realization, which for the Knower of Allah is the complete Knowing and the highest degree of asking.

However, he who claims to be connected to this spiritual Line, the Line of the Love of Allah, Praised and Glorified is He, but who does not practice the rules of the shari`a, is like a liar who sees a mirage in the desert and says that it is water.

As some people said, “Do not obey anyone except Him, then you will make His Love manifest. By my life! This is a wonderful example, because if your love is righteous, then you obey because the lover obeys the one he loves.”

Another sign is that every one of his noble manners, and every rule of his sublime shari`a, contains secrets and realities which not all creatures can contain. Therefore it is necessary to ask for the realization of the rules of the honored shari`a, and the glorification of the Books of the Reality, and their People…

Sidi Ibn Mashish then asked Allah:

“And let me know him,
with a knowledge by which I can see his Face,
And through which I can become his manifestation.”

By this supplication (du`a), as the Shaykh, may Allah benefit us by him, explains, he meant: Let me know him through tasting, feeling and seeing, in everything that manifests of Your ancient eternal Beauty, and this is the supplication from the sublimity of the yearning (himma) where the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, said, “Allah provides for the slave according to his yearning (himma), in as much as he asks for the ascent from the knowledge of certitude (`ilm al-yaqin) to the eye of certitude (`aynu ‘l-yaqin), because the existence of things, from the Muhammadan Light and their appearances, and the Ahmadan Beauty is a realized and established knowing, which is the knowledge of certainty (`ilm al-yaqin).

Concerning the eye of certitude (`ayn al-yaqin), it is the attaining or unveiling of revelation and eye-witnessing, and especially on the horizons of vision or as far as the Eye can see. Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, says, “We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, until it is clear to them that it is the Truth. Suffice it not as to thy Lord, that He is witness over everything?” (41:53).

The Commentary then continues: This is the case of those who are drowned in the Ocean of the Love, as my Master Abu ‘l-`Abbas al-Mursi, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “By Allah! if the Messenger of Allah, prayers and peace be upon him, were to be veiled from me for the twinkling of an eye, I would not count myself to be a Muslim.” He meant that Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, had united His slave with his Prophet in the Unity of the Essence, the Essential Union, in which neither in the fana nor in the baqa of Abu `Abbas was there any possibility of separation, unbinding or dissolution from the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him.

This state cannot be known, in any way at all, by the intellect, but only by travelling through the hand of a complete Guide.

The Master, Ibn al-Mashish, may Allah be pleased with him, then said, as he travelled deeper and deeper into the Ocean of the Unity of the Reality of his beloved Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him:

“I drink directly from it,
From the watering-places of the Bounty,
Through this Knowing, lead me on his firm Path,
On his Straight Path, to his presence which is linked
To Your Holy Presence which shines
With the revelations of his human virtues.”

As our Shaykh, and Master says: These words are a call from the traveller’s heart saying, “May You be be the Traveller with me, and the One Who takes me by the hand on his firm Path, which is his living and clear Way, which is the Way of the highest Proximity, the Way of his noble shari`a, which is free from all faults and errors.” As the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, said, “I leave you a pure white shari`a whose night is like its day.” (Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim). This means that any presence which reaches to his Presence is purified and freed from all false connection and false contact to his Presence.

From this is known that he, may prayers and peace be upon him, has many Presences, and that the one which is here required is that which is linked to the Holy Presence. This is the one in which every traveller seeks refuge in Allah, and through which he witnesses the connection of the Muhammadan Presence to the Holy Presence in all its meanings.
Sidi ibn Mashish then continued his supplication by asking his Beloved God:

“And plunge me into the Ocean of Oneness,
Which encompasses every totality
Made up of its individual parts,
And of every individual part.
And pull me back from the morass of the Unity
Into the freedom of Diversity (at-tafrid)
beyond freedom or limitation.”

In his Commentary, the Master explains this by saying: In this Sidi Ibn al-Mashish was asking for the annihilation (fana’) in the Ocean of Oneness, which is equivalent to the manifestation of the Essence, wherein there is no trace left of the influence of the Names, or the Qualities, or of anything of individual appearances.

As this Presence completely encompasses all things, and as things are never empty, whether they are complex or simple, because the Essence is in everything, therefore he says, “Which encompasses every totality, made up of its individual parts.” This he said in order that it may be known that in the Unity everything is an independent ocean He used the word ‘ocean’ in the plural form in the Arabic language, so that we may know that every person to whom the One is revealed in his rank, falls down into the Eye of the Unity. It then becomes possible for all restraint to be thrown away, and for all the veils to be lifted from the Face of the Secrets. This can be either through belief or in actions. But the trusting traveller does not need to fear the Revelations, because they are the Source of belief and of all evidence.

He, may Allah benefit us by him, continues: Know that the ‘morass of tawhid’ applies to many things, and also states which hold the traveller back, preventing him from reaching the Unity. Other aspects of this morass, for example, are scholastic religious dogmas and the calls of the self and of desire for independence. These are the most harmful impediments that can befall the traveller on his Way, and which present a barrier against his attachment to his Lord, as our Master `Abdu ‘s-Salam Ibn Mashish says.

The freedom of diversity (at-tafrid) is the second separation, not the first, of which the Master gives proof by his words: “Which is beyond either freedom or limitation.” There are three stations, and there is no fourth. The first is that of the first separation, which is the station of alterities and is referred to as al maqam al aghyar, the station of dissimilarities or contrasts, and of how they manifest themselves. They stop the traveller if he believes in them, and gives them an existence other than true existence. These make limitation.

The second station is that of the first Union, which is the witnessing of the many in the One, but here the vision is cut off from the complete Union by the necessity for the Names and Qualities, actions and Commands. This is the station of freedom.

The third station is that of the second separation, which is the witnessing of the One in the many, and the descent of Existence in all its ranks. He who owns this station gives the one with Truth his Truth, and the one with Equity his equity, and this is necessary because it is the complete Perfection, and the perfect Completion. The actions of the person in this station take place at the perfect moment, in the perfect time, and therefore he lacks nothing, nor is he lacking in anything, for the perfect completion of every action and every state.

After this our Master Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, may Allah be pleased with him, then asked for the fourth station, the Union of the Union, as he said:

“And drown me in the Spring of the Sea of Oneness,
Through the witnessing, until I do not see, and I do not hear,
And I do not sense, nor feel, except through It,
While descending and ascending,
as it is and never ceases to exist.”

Then, in his explanation the Shaykh says: My Master requested the fourth station which is the Union of the Union. He asked for the complete and perfect drowning in the Spring of the Essential Oneness, and the state of the Reality of the Order.

“And make the Great Veil the life of my Spirit by revelation
And by eye-witnessing,
since the Order from You is Mercy and Love.”

Sidi ibn Mashish continued with his supplication, and commenting on this the Shaykh said: Here the Great Veil, being the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, Sidi Ibn Mashish was asking to be united to him in the complete bond of Love and surrender through which he, prayers and peace be upon him, might be the life of his Spirit so as to receive Revelation and Witnessing. His words: “Since the Order is like this–a Mercy from You, and Love,” mean that Allah, Praised and Glorified is He, because of His Generosity, His Excellence, His Mercy and His Benevolence, in the Reality of the Order, made the Muhammadan Presence, the Spirit of all the spirits. But this no one understands except those who know Allah, and they are the Masters of Eye-Witnessing and inner Revelation.

Then Sidi Ibn Mashish said about this Union without end which he asked for:

“O Allah! make his Spirit the Secret of my Reality
By tasting and by state. And his Reality,
The Unifier of all my worlds,
In the abodes of Knowledge
In this world and in the Next.
And make this true to me
In accordance with what is with You,
By the realization of the First Truth and the Last
And the Revealed and the Hidden.
O first One, there is nothing before You,
O Last One there is nothing after You,
O Revealed One there is nothing above You.
O Hidden One, there is nothing beneath You.”

Here `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish, may Allah hallow his secret, was asking that the Prophet’s Reality might be the Gatherer of all his worlds, both on the outside and the inside, so that he would not be dependent upon anything else but him, and so that he might follow him in everything that he ordered, avoiding the things that he forbids. He requested that his Reality might not remain either as nafs or heart or soul, but that it might become the Soul of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him, and its Secret. He asked that he might attain this by tasting and by state, and not by knowledge, nor through imaginings, nor thought (hayal). For it should be known that the Muhammadan Spirit, as in Sufi usage, means the Holy Spirit (ar-ruh al-quds) upon which all the universes are founded, and not only all the universes, but also all things. Also, all possible Decrees are based upon his mirror just as snow is built up from its mirror, which is water. Then the meaning of his words, “And O Allah! make the noble Muhammadan Reality true to me in accordance with what is the Order concerning this, with You”, refers to the First Contact of the Day when Allah, the All-Mighty, asked, “Am I not your Lord?”

Then know, that these four noble Names are the pillars of existence, and if the traveller realizes them, then he falls into the station of the Eye of the Witnessing.

Therefore my Master requested help through them, for he meant that You are the First Truth, which existed before my realization of Your Existence in me, or of any knowledge of You, and You are ‘O Last One’ in respect of my complete annihilation in You. There is my annihilation a second time, after which He does not leave any trace of myself, and there is no more humanity. ‘O Revealed One’ means that there is no manifestation above Your Manifestation, wherever You are manifest to me through the appearance of everything. This is where You become my Witnessing after You were my Absence. I witness You through everything, but You are Greater than all the witnessing. ‘O Hidden One’ which means that under Your hiddenness there is nothing, and behind Your Secret there is no other Secret.

For this therefore the Master Ibn Mashish asked his Lord:

“And strengthen me, through You, and for You…
And unite me with You.
And take away Your Veil from my eye,
And place a barrier between everything which is not You.”

This meant that the Master Ibn Maskish asked his Lord for the strength of witnessing and for protection from the tawhid of the descent of desires and forced intentions, as Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli said, “We do not ask You to remove what You want, but we ask You to help us with Your Spirit, in what You want, as You helped Your Prophets and Messengers, and especially the truthful ones of Your Creation, because You have power over everything… And unite me with You, which is the Unity through drowning, and permanent witnessing. Lift me up beyond the witnessing of things which are other-than-You. Lift me up beyond becoming intimate with creatures and multiplicity, and of the manifestation of the Divine Qualities in this world.

It was necessary for him to see only with the pure Eye of his heart, therefore he said: “Destroy Your Veil both from my outer eyes and from my inner Eyes, so that my eye returns to be a real Eye, and withdraw the blindness from it, which is the reason for the Veil. Empty your heart from things that are other-than-God, and He will fill it with Divine Knowledge (ma`rifa) and Secrets.”

Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam then asked:

“And make me of the leaders of Your Goodness and Caring.
O Lord, give us from You a Mercy

And provide for us uprightness in our conduct.
Make us of those who are rightly guided through You,
And of those who guide.
Until no slightest glance falls on anything that is not You;
Until no desire guides us, except to You.”

Sidi Ibn Mashish ended his Wazifa with an Invocation:

“Verily Allah and His angels
Send their prayers upon the Prophet.
O you who believe! Send your Prayers upon him,
And greet him with your deep peace.
O Allah! Send our prayers upon him from us,
The most befitting prayers,
And greet him with the complete peace.
For surely we cannot estimate his great value
And we do not know what befits him
Of respect and glorification.”

“The prayers of Allah, Exalted is He, and His Peace, and His Greetings, and His Mercy, and His Blessings be upon our Master Muhammad, Your slave, your Prophet and Your Messenger, the unlettered Prophet. And upon his Family and Companions, of even and uneven numbers, and upon the numbered complete and blessed Words of our Lord.”

Although Sidi `Abdu ‘s-Salam ibn Mashish left only the Wazifa as a written legacy, this is more than enough holy Food for the thirsty and hungry traveller on the Path of Allah. In it are hidden many holy jewels of the deep Secret Knowledge.

From this we can see that what Allah, Praised and Exalted is He, gave him, in his heart, was a deep Spring of the Water of the Spirit coming directly from the Spirit of the Prophet, prayers and peace be upon him. This Spring which came through Sidi ibn Mashish, still flows out in profusion to all who follow in his way which, through his successor and inheritor, became known as the Way of Ash-Shadhdhuli.

As our Guide of this Way, the Qutb, the Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rifa`i says about it: “It is not like any other Sufi Way. If you know the meaning of the Arabic word shadhdh which means isolated, alone, singular and extraordinary, and the li which means, for Me, then you can feel some of its meaning.

The Way of `Abdu ‘s-Salam Ibn Mashish was to be special only for Him (for Me). There is no Shaykh in this Way, there is only Allah. Through the Spirit, which is linked, without beginning and without end, to the Spirit of the Prophet, the one who truly follows, and obeys from the Reality, can find himself inside the real Garden of the Heart of his Beloved, until when he walks and continues in this Way, he can reach to be He – to be the Reality without any doubts.

The fuqara must ask always to be in change.

note: diterbitkan oleh muqadeem abbas/ ribat-jakarta/ 2007

The fuqara must ask always to be in change.
By Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi

The fuqara must ask always to be in change.

The du’a of the Muslim is, “O Allah, keep me in change.” Keep me always changing because everything is changing and every day Allah is on a new creation.

You must be renewing and renewing yourself. You have to always be in change. You must remember that the company of the fuqara is the highest company. You must keep each other company. You must travel toother places where there are fuqara. You must sit with the fuqara in every place. You must be an example to them and take example from them when you meet people of quality. Seek the people of knowledge, seek the people of love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and the people of love of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. To take the adab of the great ones you have to sit with them, you have to sit with the people of knowledge. It is by your company that you are purified.

Tasawwuf is keeping company, then tasawwuf is listening, then tasawwuf is acting upon what you hear. There is only one enemy and that is your self. The nafs has nothing good in it. The worst of all things to the Sufis is the recognition of their own good qualities over and against that of other people – it is what sets them back and smashes them on the rocks of destiny. You must not look at your good qualities. You must consider them something that in themselves have been spoiled even by your being conscious of them. You do not look at your self.

You do not find fault with others, you find fault with your self.

You must look at your self and say, “What is wrong with it?” Harith al-Muhasibi went over his day, then went over his hours and then went over his minutes, then went over his breath until he had verified that it was pleasing to Allah, that it was acceptable to Allah. Two great `ulama met in Baghdad and they argued and fought with each other. At the end one of them said, “Let us meet tomorrow and discuss this matter further and the other one said, “No, let us meet tomorrow and make peace and forget all about it.”

This is the way of the Sufis – to begin again.

You must not be limited in your forgiveness of the faults of others but you must not have any measurement of any attention to yourself. Any consciousness of your self you must turn from. You must turn away from the nafs and the method of turning away from the nafs is not a psychological method, it is dhikrullah. (Surat ar-Ra’d, 28 ) “Only in the dhikr of Allah can the heart find peace.” You must do dhikr of Allah. You must remember Allah standing, sitting and reclining on your side. You must call upon Allah. You cannot afford to be out of the company of the people who love Allah for any amount of time in this age that we live in. You must be with the people who love Allah, you need them. You need the people of Allah because they will remindyou of Allah. You need the people of knowledge because you have to be strong in your Deen and you have to be correct in your Deen in an age where every mosque has a different way of going into sajda, let alone the higher things of the Deen. You must speak well of people and have a good opinion of people. You must become people of futuwwa, you must become these people who are spoken of because of the high aspiration, the high himma you have which is on a universal scale that when you go to the Ka’ba, with all the troubles that are there, you must look for the people of Allah there and sit with them. Beware of the people of dunya. Beware of the people of dunya until you are safe, and when you are safe it does not matter where you go. If you are not safe then you must be careful. You must have taqwa and you must have wara’. You must take care, take care, watch, until you are on Sirat al-Mustaqim because when things go wrong you have to remember that all you have got is then to turn to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Remember, even tawba is nothing to do with you – it is because Allah has decreed for you tawba because He wants you, so even that is not yours, it is not your good achievement.

Your asking forgiveness is not your good achievement, it is simply Allah claiming you and you recognising that He has claimed you. You belong to Allah. You have come from Allah and you are going to Allah. This is what you have to tell yourself. You must not be hypnotised by dunya.

Remember that Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, indicated that the small coin of the poor person is as dangerous as the gold of the rich, so you must be generous. To be generous is to follow the way of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. You must be generous, you must have a good opinion of other people, you must not say bad things about other people and if you do say them you must go back and clean it out and you must ask their forgiveness. If someone is totally against you and totally in the wrong then you have to forgive them and you have to forget it and you have to go back and put things right. This is how the Deen has always been. This is how these great men have lived in the past.

Just finally to remind you – look what has become of futuwwa – the elders of the organisation of people calling themselves al- Fatah are tying dynamite to youngsters’ bellies and shoving them out to blow themselves up, when the people who fought with Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, pushed the young people aside in order that they could go and fight fisabilillah, fight in the service of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. So the whole Deen has to start all over again.

You are the people who must start it and in this continent is where it will begin. It is from your people and from your children, but you must have an adab to them, you must treat them with courtesy. You must treat your children with courtesy, you must treat the young with courtesy just as you must treat the old with courtesy. You must become the people of adab and if you become the people of adab you will be safe. If you become people of adab you will be Sufis. At-Tariqa kulluha-adab. The Tariqa is nothing but adab, that is all it is – adab.

You must also have some respect for yourself. That respect for yourself is only manifest by the fact that all the people around you are at ease and in harmony with you and pleased that you are there. This is how you must be. You must be a blessing on the earth. You must be a baraka for everybody. You must be ones that when you enter a room it all lights up because of your love of Rasul, sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, your love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and because your tongue is supple with the name of Allah and not the matters of dunya. Dunya will not fail to happen. All its strategems and spoils will not fail to crash about your ears, they have always done it and they will continue to do it. When the People of the Cave came out, there they were again faced with the world and all its problems and all its difficulties, but Allah loves the people of tawhid and loves the people who love Him and this is the company, the company of the Sufis.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, that we prefer to go to the company of people who only want to go to Allah in preference to anyone who may do anything to help us and give us advantage in this world.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to make us ready for the tests that come so that we can respond to Him and remember to praise Him in every situation. Alhamdulillahi `ala kulli hal.

We ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, to bless this mosque and its imams and its guardians and that it continues to be a witness for Islam as it has been in the troubled times of the past. Amin.