11th to 12th Wisdom
ELEVENTH WISDOM
Learn to tell the Demanding self, the Satan and the Divine apart. Some teachers use the word nafs (self) indiscriminately branding it as pure evil. But this should not be so. It confuses pupils. All nafs is not evil. In fact nafs is pure good and Allah Himself uses the term to refer to His essence.
“Allah expects you to fear Him” (3:28)
Expressing this ‘Him’ in Arabic as ‘nafsusu’. Also He allows Jesus(a.s) to address Him:
“You know what is in my nafs while I do not know what is in your nafs” (5:116).
In fact Allah uses nafs in the sense of ruh,(spirit)as well.
“O You cleansed nafs, enter among my(chosen)servants, enter my paradise” (89:27-30)
The kind of nafs, that Allah warns against is called al-nafs al-ammara bil-sui, or briefly al-nafs al-ammara. (12:53)
This is the childish nafs which lingers on in everybody despite the emergence of higher and nobler layers of nafs. For it is a law of spirituality that once given nothing is taken away; instead they are added. Otherwise we would forget what it was like to be a child or evil and could not be able to understand them(in fact there are some defective persons who, when adults, cannot understand children so well as if they havn’t been one themselves). What is required of us is being aware of this childish residue or layer of a self(ego)which although not bad in its entirety, has a very selfish side to it. Other sides like spontaneity, gaiety, fascination are lovely and very useful traits and should better stay on diffused into our higher selves.
Again the selfish side itself is not too bad either. Otherwise Allah would not allow it to persist. Like in other animals this self protects our survival. Except in extraordinary circumstances it is our both right and duty to protect our lives and well-being like, by eating and clothing properly, treating our illnesses and avoiding dangers. The only way the primitive(childish)self does harm is when we follow its selfish demands against our better judgement as adults, like committing adultery or meanly conspiring against a rival who could be a better candidate than us for some position, for example. Our higher selves are closer to Allah and like Allah are capable of being fairer, more objective, more merciful, more understanding etc. We should not allow our primitive selves to overrule the higher and in this respect we should always be invoking the help of Allah, like Joseph(a.s) did:
“I am not absolving my ego, the ego indeed demands misdeeds except what my Lord mercifully prevents” (12:53)
Hence anytime your primitive selfish self(ego)knocks on your door demanding evil things to do like a spoilt child, recognise it for what it is a refuse to succumb.
However, again be aware that your ego is not alone in its desperate schemes for selfish satisfaction. The Satan is its rider. The Satan is himself an overgrown primitive ego distinguished from the simple childish ego in that he is extremely intelligent without being wise in the least. He is like a brilliant crook and criminal who wouldn’t be a crook and criminal in the first place if he was wise on top of being intelligent. So this foolish and evil spirit allies itself with our childish self and tries every moment in time to procure our ruin.
Now let us pause a moment and refer back to the previous wisdom where we had said that every religion contains myths as a matter of necessity. This picture of a childish self and Satan as inhabiting each human being and interacting with each other is a truthful myth, which means that it is a very apt and adequate way of expressing our psychological natures in allegorical dramatic language as our dreams do as well. Consider the traditional depiction of the Devil. It is imagined as a creature half in human, half in animal form, a mischievous human face and torso supplemented by limbs with hooves, goat’s horns, a tail and an animals fur all over. Why? Because, although both intelligent and elegant like a human, he is totally lust-dominated like an animal. These abstract psychological qualities can best be represented by this said traditional image. And this is exactly what a truthful myth is.
Lastly, I hope that you understand now that these myths being totally harmonious with our deeper minds (the dream and hypnotic mind) are more capable of influencing our behaviour than plain, rarefied and desiccated rational explanations and arguments about psychology and morality. At least for the great majority of people. That is why they are and must be for all time to come, never to be discarded or explained away in rational terms. (Incidentally may we remind to those readers who have a compulsion for valuing only what is rational and literal and abhor the symbolic and the mythical, that philosophers of science are agreed that all scientific theories for their part are myths in themselves however, ‘verifiable’ by mathematical results. They are imaginary models for essentially unobservable entities which themselves are fictitious, like ‘heat’, ‘gravity’ and ‘spin’ in ‘electrons’. You can never see heat but motion and change attributed to it. (Many theories have valid alternatives based on different fictions). To put it still another way, spiritual entities are beyond ordinary powers of perception and can only be mythically expressed.
Returning to our subject after this brief digression: How do we recognise an approach by the Devil? We should be able to recognise him, shouldn’t we? The answer is that as in everything else, we must be ever watchful. As you have seen from the beginning of this book, watchfulness and awareness are the keywords in our mystic quest, our spiritual ascent to Allah’s company. If you develop your skills of watchfulness and awareness over your own inner happenings, you automatically and simultaneously gain the skill of detecting other people’s inner happenings or to use the more familiar term, you can ‘read their minds’. All true teachers (Sheikhs) can do it and I told you about the mechanism. To repeat: work at self-insight and self-understanding and simultaneously you will gain insight into and understanding of others. And once you do that you will see people’s helplessness in most of what they do and be able to tolerate them and as important as that, help them. That is exactly what is being a teacher (sheikh) in essence. We recognise the Devil by the unpleasant, unholy disturbance it causes in our thoughts and moods. Allah only gives comfort and holiness.
As for recognising and benefiting from your Divine component, it is that region of your consciousness where you feel light as a feather with a holy kind of happiness and responsibility towards everything. We get occasional glimpses of it in our hearts but they do not last long. A wali (saint) is a person who continuosly dwells in this kind of consciousness while without being unaware of the other less holy regions both in himself and others. From this definition you can see that a saint is a greatly developed and advanced soul sharing many qualities of the angels of Allah, angels who in turn are made of Allah’s Divine light i.e., are immersed in and partake of His Divine qualities, like the rays of the sun in relation to the sun. Usually true sheikhs find potential true sheikhs among their disciples and transmit to them their baraka (blessing) as a result of which the disciple’s spiritual seed of sainthood is stirred to life and sprouts, splits the earth (surpasses the confines of this animal earth body) and shoots up its stem and, leaves and when mature enough blossoms and bears fruit.
This humble writer was visited by a great saint in the world of similies (al alam al-mithal) and the saint hugging him pushed into his backbone from the nape down to the tailbone a sapling of a tree which the humble writer felt embedded and planted in him in the same manner and when it was fully in place the saint asked “Have you received the trust (al amanah)?” to which the humble writer answered “yes sire” And the saint departed as suddenly as he had arrived. From them on the humble writer was blessed with spiritual ascent and some miracles (karamet) all without his will or power being involved (la bihawlin wa la quwattan minhu). However, this is no boasting. It is as natural as growing up to be an adult capable of marrying and producing children. Therefore it is open and possible for everyone who will care to claim it by working at it. (Maulana Al-Haqqanni told him that the saint in question was Abd al Rauf al Yamani and posted in
Spiritual ascent means increasing your level and duration of residence in the sublime and divine region of your consciousness, being filled with more and better insight, understanding, mercy, love, respect…etc. That is why a faith and a book is offered us; we are asked to believe in a God, the only God, who is perfect in every respect, so that our desire for self-perfection is aroused and an endless quest of ever-increasing perfection is set into motion. To help our ascent to the Perfect God whose Holy name and qualities are planted in us we are provided with intermediate stations. The most essential and nearest to God is the Messenger of Allah. We are taught his holy qualities and behaviour and advised to try our best to emulate them. Sometimes we are provided with a saintly teacher (sheikh) which, acting as a halfway station towards the Messenger of Allah, makes it easier for our ascent. When we manage to emulate (and assimilate the perfection of) our sheikh, our eventual introduction to the Prophet’s circle becomes easier and more assured. Again, this humble writer was duly presented to the Messenger of Allah in the world of similes (al alam al mithal) who allowed him to kneel before him and kiss his holy hand he so graciously offered, which hand he found smoother and more scented than jasmine petals.
The way to achieve this ascent entails your constant contemplation of Allah the Holiest of the holy and his Prophet and then His Prophets and saints, from the matchless sahaba to the sheikh you are favoured with. Reading the Qur’an is certainly the best way of this contemplation, I mean reading it with zeal and gusto and taking pains to taste every word and sense of it, rejoicing at its good news, weeping when it touches your deepest yearnings and trembling when its treats rattle. That was exactly how the Messenger of Allah and His Holy Sahaba read the Qur’an. Above all, zealously and meticulously performing your regularly prescribed prayers (salat, namaz) is absolutely essential and it has the added blessing of combining the recitation of the Qur’an with bodily adoration of the Almighty, standing in His Holy presence washed clean, with cast-down eyes and a trembling heart, bending in respect and prostration on your face with enraptured humility. Thrn sitting up and glorifying Him and His Messenger supplicating Him and at the end greeting His angels on both sides. That is why Allah said to Moses(a.s):
“Stand to pray in my contemplation” (20:14)
Yes, contemplation (dhikr), is the soul and heart of the service of Allah (al ibadah). Allah said “ verily contemplation of Allah is the greatest (worship)” (29:45)
Now, I am afraid there is a lot of misunderstanding about this affair of dhikr. It means that most seekers (murids) and sometimes their supposed sheikhs understand and employ dhikr as a reguralised and formalised exercise whereby a definite set of formulas are chanted in private or in unison as a group (halaqah) and end of the matter. It is supposed that by constant practise spiritual awakening and ascent will result. Unfortunately, actual experience fall far short of this hope. One sadly observes that despite years of regular dhikr most murids do not appear to have advanced even a barley grain’s length while a lot assume airs of sainthood as they misunderstand what sainthood is all about. They become self-righteous and arrogant, rude and vindictive, thus displaying the worst of their childish ego’s qualitities instead of any rearlly sublime ones. Malice and jealousy are rampant among such claimants to sainthood, they rush to the sheikh to report maliciously on each other and eagerly hope for each other’s downfall and ruin. They are too ready to start rows and hurl at each other accusations of blasphemy, hypocrisy and “betrayal of the sheikh”.
This shows that their dhikr is only a husk devoid of a kernel. Frankly, real dhikr is a genuine contemplation in heart: The person doing it is hardly able to forget Allah and His Messenger and the Message they represent wherever he may be and whatever he might be doing. It is to put this that Allah said:
“Those who contemplate Allah standing, sitting or lying and thinking deeply about the creation of the heavens and the earth, (say) “O our Lord, Thou hast not created this in vain. Glorified art Thou, protect us from the torment of the fire”. (3:91)
Look at this constant wonder and worry and adoration concerning Allah and His creation as a holy and magnificent obsession and compare it with the parrot-like tedious regular repetition of words whose meanings non-Arabs will not even understand, except the most popular ones like “La Ilaha Illallah”.
The first is real dhikr, which will and must bear spiritual fruit while the second seems hardly able to do much except as a certain form of comforting entertainment. I do not mean regular and prescribed dhikr should be abolished. It has its purposes and benefits but it is a very poor second to real dhikr which has been explained above.
Therefore, O dear seeker, make it a business of yours to cultivate and develop the interest and habit of keeping Allah and all that He loves always in your heart and mind and try to do anything you do with Him in mind. The more you realise this level of contemplation the holier you become inside (I mean cleaner and loftier in thoughts, feelings and inclinations) and the more good works you can produce the more easily and the higher morals and nicer good manners you will be able to display without straining.
This will be the establishment of your sainthood on which more can be built without end until you attain the company of Allah. Amen.
TWELVETH WISDOM
Lastly, know oh dear seeker, may Allah grant us success in His pleasure, avoid falling prey to that greatest of human vanities: PRIDE!
That was the undoing of that apparently brilliant and incandescent Iblis and it has been the downfall of countless many after him. Many walk this path of ours but few attain. In almost half of the cases a resurgence of pride ensures their ruin and rejection while for the rest a failure to release himself from lowly lusts results in fall and ruin. Concerning the latter, Allah said:
“Tell them the story of the man to whom we gave our signs but he ignored them and the Satan stalked him and he lost the way. Had we wished, we could have raised him with our signs but he inclined to the earth (preferred his lower lusts – could not let them go) and followed his vanity.” (7:175-176)
In other words he did not dare to break free of his ‘nafs al ammara’! Nevertheless, pride is the greatest sin of the two and letting what we said about the treacherous effect of nafs al ammara on our ascent suffice, we may concentrate more on pride as the greater and deadlier risk.
Have no doubt that this refers to those Ulema(Islamic scholars)who cerebrally ‘learn’ the Qur’an and the Hadith and other subjects concerning Islam and are certainly impressed to a certain extent. Yet they find that they have poor appetite to apply what they learnt to their personal lives simply because they are too enamoured with what this world and their lusts for it seem to offer. Accordingly they make do with some external display of Islamicity to win respect while in their hearts they are painfully and worriedly divided between allegiance to Allah and to the Satan, their ego’s rider.
Pride comes from being blind to the fact that everything depends on Allah who owes nothing to anybody but grants his blessings on all of us as He sees fit. The opposite of this state of affairs is true for us: We may have achieved great success in any field, but for that we can only thank Allah and we cannot(should not I mean) expect any thanks from anybody, thanks in the form of appreciation, deference, respect, praise, presents and services. Pride is expecting and demanding all these. To get rid of it you must remember that if you worked at your salvation you worked only for yourself and for that nobody owes you anything. It is your affair and your benefit. However, some truly good people will appreciate you and to them you must thank (not them t you). There is a very nice and funny saying in Turkish regarding conceited worshippers.
“If you prayed your namaz it was for your soul and if you made wudhu it was for your pants”.
Therefore o the apple of my eye, be humble. Nobody owes you anything for anything you have achieved.