The Astrolabe of Gnosis
THE ASTROLABE OF GNOSIS - (INSIGHT INTO THE HEAVENS)
(A COMMENTARY ON TAWZIFNAMA OF
FOREWORD
All praises are for Allah the Ultimate in everything, the Lord of all existence and all blessings and greetings are for His beloved Messenger Muhammad out Prophet (Peace and Blessings of Allah be Upon Him) and for his glorious companions and those who follow in their footsteps until the Last Day. Amen. We seek Allah’s pardon and forgiveness for all our acts and thoughts some of which are perfect and worthy enough of Him. Our hope does not lie in the quality of our actions and thoughts but only in His mercy and generosity part of which is the permission He granted to out beloved leader Muhammad (sws) to intercede for us on the Day of Judgement.
Dear brother or sister reader, this humble work is the fruit of many years of education in the hands of the Most Merciful Educator (Al Rabb) who educates each of us individually and most meticulously and thoroughly for the requirements of the life to come. From the moment of birth until we breath our last we are subjected to innumerable numbers and kinds of experiences all of which are centrally orchestrated by the One and Only One intelligence and power- that of the Almighty! There are no coincidences or chances but only pre-destined events all of which are designed to propel us towards our stations in eternity without waste or lapse. However, it is a rule of gnosis that Allah (swt) does not appear to deal with us directly but always veiled behind His endless creation. As far as education is concerned He employs and empowers out parents, teachers and ultimately the prophets while subtly and informally all experiences we are made to live through serve this same purpose and nothing else. We are made for an eternal world and this lower and temporary world is only a preparatory school for that one.
This rule of “working behind a veil through creation” should be understood with all its implications and employed to the full if we ever want to achieve gnosis and thereby salvation.
What is “gnosis”? The word used as much in English comes from the Greek meaning “knowledge.” However, as a religious term it means “real knowledge based on real inner experience and understanding which empowers one to act rightly and virtuously.” In Sufi terminology it is “Ma’rifah” from the root “ ‘arafa,” which again means to know, to recognise. And indeed, from now on we shall employ the Arabic word. Therefore, the term “Gnostic” shall be replaced by “ ‘arif,” which means the one endowed with ma’rifah. And what is an “astrolabe”? It is a classical instrument used in ancient astronomy to measure the altitudes and work out the positions of the heavenly bodies like the moon, stars etc. In Sufi terms it means a dynamic charting of the heavens of the human heart so that the ‘arif is always aware of the thoughts, emotions and hunches parading and interacting in his/her heart and by natural extension, in the hearts of others. That is how the prophets and saints (awlia) can see through situations and ‘read’ murids and are able, as much as Allah (swt) will allow them, to find the right course of action. But the main object of ma’rifah is not seeing through other people’s secrets or manipulating the world to one’s petty advantage. It is keeping track of one’s own inner heavens and detect any signs of change towards good or evil and act accordingly i.e. grab the opportunity for the good or kill the evil before it can unfold. And believe me brother and sister that is a very tall order and one could spend all one’s life pursuing that “profession” and yet not achieve it to the full! That is why the blessed saint Tajuddin Ataullah al- Iskandarani said in his brilliants “Al- Hikam al-Ataiyya”:
“Your busying yourself with the discovery of your defeats (al-‘uyub) is better for you than the discovery of the secrets outside yourself (al- ghuyub). And what else do you wants, the Prophet (sws) said:
“Good tidings to one whose preoccupation with his own defects prevents him from looking for or seeing defects of others.”
All the suffering of humanity in general and we Muslims in particular come from our neglecting the putting in order our own house first and instead, trying to “help” others to put theirs. It is like a toddler trying to teach another how to walk while itself is barely able to walk, or one who never mastered riding a bicycle himself trying to coach another in cycling. And why do we act in such a silly manner? Because each of us, unaware of it, are too proud to even contemplate that it is we who need help as first priority and exaggerating out any achievements confer on ourselves imaginary qualifications of mastery and spend the rest of out lives trying to “save” others.
Let us take a typical average religious-knowledgeable- practising person. Because he learned something from the Book of Allah and the sayings and doings of the Prophet, (sws) (hadith) and has established himself as an outwardly practising Muslim, he takes a deep sigh of relief and self-satisfaction and starts to look for a “junior” to teach and boss over. He does not realise that the real work on himself is beginning only now: He must now explore his inner heavens and become skilful in the use of the spiritual astrolabe to measure, gage and relate his inner vistas and phenomena and steer himself towards good and aware from evil at all times and under all circumstances. In more concrete terms he must develop the skill of “awareness” whereby he will instantly recognise and respond to greed, lust, jealousy, dishonesty etc. emerging in his inner heavens and finds ways and means of putting them away in chains and letting the forces of good a free sway at all times. Yet, what do we see among Muslims? With few exceptions, most of us, no matter how popularly distinguished or titled (like doctor, professor, alim, mufti, sheikh, president etc) are generally unaware of the ugliness we may be host to or project on others and insist furiously or resentfully that we are being misunderstood or victimised! I ask my dear readers to think how many times they remember anybody they know to admit to his mistakes, apologise and make amends and compare this number with the number of times he observed others and himself justifying themselves openly or by implication. Is it one to ten, one to a hundred? What?
It is obvious then that our main problem is the unresolved problem of self-exploration and self-advancement/maturation. Very rare indeed are those who show this realism and justice and start working on themselves seriously. These are rewarded with rises in their rank towards the nearness from Allah in the course of which they gradually share the experiences and insights of all the grades of friends of Allah until they came face to face and bosom to bosom with the Prophet from where they can further follow him to the Incomparable Vision of the Face of Allah at least under a thin veil so to speak. Read the verses (ayat) of the Qur’an if you want:
“Those who strive concerning Us, We shall verily guide them in Our ways.”
“That Day, some faces are looking at their Lord.”
Indeed, vision of the Face of Allah is also possible in this world through the eye of the heart. Read if you want:
Whichever direction you turn, there is the Face of Allah.
If most of us are unable to see the Face of Allah as we could in this world, it is not that Allah is not truthful in the above verse (I take refuge in Him meaning this). It is because we are not doing out homework of exploring and refining our inner world and thereby acquiring spiritual vision to see His Face here and now, as much as is allowed by Him.
Conclusion: In this humble work I shall Insh’Allah attempt to explain and show to you as much as I am gifted and allowed by Allah (swt) how to read the signs of Allah in your soul (nafs) and in the events of the world around you with a view to recognising the Reality and the Truth presented therein and benefiting from it in putting your house in order before everything else. May Allah help us and guide us. Amen.
Once upon a time I was presented with a longish poem in Turkish written by the famous saint of Anatolia, Maulana Ibrahim Haqqi of
Triplet: Hak serleri hayreyler
Zannetme ki gayreylar
Arif ane seyreyler
Refrain couplet: Gorelim Mevla neyber
Neylese guzel eyler.
I.e,.
The Real (Allah) converts evil into good
Do not think that He does otherwise
The arif (gnostic, insightful) watches that
Let’s then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beauty.
I hope and believe this exercise, with the helpful inspiration from my and your Creator who is “nearer to us than the jugular vein” ( ) and at least ten times more merciful than mothers (hadith rendering) will show us how to recognise His signs ourselves and the world around us and be able to keep to the right path both internally and externally. Amen.
1. FIRST THE WOULD-BE ‘ARIF MUST LEARN TO WATCH AND LEARN
“The real converts evils into good
Do not think that He does otherwise
The insightful (‘arif) watches that
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beauty”
The ‘problem of evil’ has always intrigued and frustrated philosophers and theologians. Some said that it is created by the Devil or the Demiurge as Allah in His fondness would not (and could not!) create it. But this poses a worse problem. How can there be a second creator which at least in one respect amounts to the existence of two gods and imputes to God’s impotence against evil even is temporary?
As you may already wearily know, both philosophy and its religious sister theology are plagued with such irresolvable dilemmas and shall continue to be so.
The reason is that superficial observation and superficial logic are intrinsically incapable of solving such dilemmas. In fact, there are no dilemmas to solve in the first place. The so-called dilemma is created by the superficiality itself. Take the following story of Nasruddin Hoja (Molla Nasruddin) the famous legendary comic sage.
“One day the Hoja bought an oke (about 3 lb) of liver and brought it to his wife to cook for dinner. Hoja’s mischievous wife cooked the liver for lunch instead, and shared it merrily with her equally playful neighbour ladies. The Hoja home hungry in the evening and asked to be served with the liver. The wife “explained”: “ Ah my dear husband, out cat stole it and ate it.” Hoja caught the cat and put it on the scales. It was about one oke heavy. He asked, “If this is the cat, where is the liver? If this is the liver, where is the cat?” The lesson: The question was not a dilemma. It was a false one. The reality was that the Hoja’s wife had lied and hence no dilemma arose.
Now, what is evil? Most bluntly put, it is something we don’t like. But there is something called “time” and it is eminently capable of transforming what we don’t like today into what we like tomorrow and vice versa. Or, what we don’t like today may lead to what will delight us tomorrow. Furthermore, there are more than one angles and aspects to everything. From one aspect, an event may look like an unmitigated disaster while from another it may look quite the opposite. Lastly, even if an objective amelioration of an event may not be possible at least in the short term, our acceptance of it as natural and inevitable and settling for a reward and compensation in a higher world may convert it into unexpected blessings, like more insight into human nature or Divine wisdom and a steeling and extension of our psychic capacities and coping powers. It is a quite common experience throughout the ages that provided one is originally of good quality and high calibre, a very great man may emerge as a result of one’s undergoing some painful experiences. This is why, rightly or wrongly, ascetics throughout the ages actively sought all kinds of self-inflicted pain and deprivation to develop their spiritual gifts and attain great levels of inner joy and satisfaction (how successful is another matter.)
With all the above in mind and admitting bravely that after all we are mainly powerful beings in a vast and complex universe and at the mercy of too many things beyond out control the best course of action for us is to take this fact with stoic equanimity and see that what we may not get from the world outside us we can learn how to more than compensate through the skilful management of out inner world. After all, that is why we need religion, a faith in the first place. Make no mistake about it: No advancements in science and technology will ever be able to prevent pain and to make all out experiences pleasurable. Death, separation, victimisation and injustice are all here to stay. Man shall always need religion or faith. The only problem is what kind of religion or faith. Our contention is that the best religion or faith is one that teaches you how to become a mature person capable of feeling happy with what you can reasonably obtain in life conscientiously, and making others happy as much as you can- shunning harm most positively. A religion or faith which deludes you into being unhappy and resentful and causes you to collide with others and causes hurt all around you is just a silly and evil cult, nothing else.
What is more, it is an interesting fact that the same religion can be used by some for good and by others for bad results. Islam is not immune to such contrasts. Simply, some beautify themselves with it and arouse admiration and love in their fellow men while others can only produce ugliness while insisting all along that they are doing their best to live Islam. Beware of this strange fact at all times.
Why and whence this difference of production results despite the similarity of the starting points? It is because of the qualities and intentions of the actors. Because faith and religion are sources of great power, some power-hungry people are attracted to them as a means of fulfilment. Accordingly, they will end up as false prophets, false messiahs, false priests and false devouts hiding behind as much skilful role-playing as they can display. Add to them those undecided souls, who are aplenty, who keep hesitating between a life of this world and that of the next. They suffer from doubts about religion and cannot help lusting after worldly prizes usually try to compensate for this inner torment by resorting to desperate fanaticism in their religion which “helps” them at least in two ways. Firstly, they hide from themselves and others their flawed faith and secondly, they “export£ their unhappiness in religion to other religious or would-be religious people by trying to make them feel the painful and suffocating strictures of religion as they perceive it. Against this there are those wiser and happier souls who perceive in religion beauty and ease of mind and body and because they are even happier as a result, they naturally project happiness around them. They prove to be kind, understanding, helpful, comforting and cheerful and people, whatever their own beliefs, come to like them.
In final analysis, the mechanism of religious disposition in particular and disposition towards life in general is one and only one: The unique human need and capacity of assigning meanings to events. Apparently, animals take their experiences at face value and react to them instinctively in the interests of self-protection. It is only man that needs and finds things like order, good, evil, value, beauty and ugliness in his world and its experiences. On a higher level, they develop a concept of divinity and feelings of holiness. Depending on their moods and beliefs, they give certain things or experiences one meaning while they can give another meaning to the same when their moods/beliefs have changed. And that brings us to the full answer to our questions: Because people are different in character and disposition, whether the two come from genetics or education, they give different meanings to their comparable experiences and as a result can become depressed, despondent and resentful or elated, motivated and thankful. They may be honest or resort to hypocrisy. All are on the cards and that is why humanity must always disagree and fight one way or another. Read if you want the verse:
“Men will never stop differing except what my Lord showed mercy about. For that He has created them.”
Conclusion: Watch all events and your reaction to them carefully and if you have faith and optimism based on that, you will eventually come to realise that every event and experience will produce only good in the long run.
2.
“Leave your affairs to the Real
Surrender and find comfort
Be content with everything He does
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beauty”
Allah who is veiled by the realities of existence and works His will therein as He pleases is fully capable of taking care of you in every respect. That of course does not mean that you cannot and should not do anything yourself, as many superficial thinkers think. It only means that as every other creature, you are given certain amounts of capabilities and opportunities to do your best, yet the overwhelming majority of factors and actors making up this world are beyond yours and anybody else’s control except Allah. The fools do what they can and worry like mad about things beyond their control. Sometimes, this worry is so great that they are paralysed for it and cannot to many things they could otherwise do. On the other hand, the wise take their means, opportunities and abilities realistically and doing their best, refuse to worry too much about the rest of the universe. They rather say, “I must do and I hope I am doing the best I can under the circumstances and I thank Allah for giving me this much power and because I am sure He is very great and good He will see to it that I am looked after one way or another. Hence, I am comfortable. What is more, because He is endlessly great and good, everything He does must be right and good ultimately. There is absolutely nothing to worry or complain about although my pettier side may prompt me to think otherwise.”
3.
“Attach your heart to Him
Understand His providence
Abandon your measures
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beautiful”
Your heart’s attachment must be to Him, which means that in the hierarchy of values filling your heart, Allah should be the incomparable First. He must be your most constantly remembered and most ardently loved and adored inner friend. You must measure everything in your heart with the measure of this love and adoration and loyalty and not otherwise.
You must understand that He has caused events to happen the way they happened with perfectly good reasons and your greatest good in mind. In other words, provided you have faith in and love for Him, nothing whatsoever can go wrong for you even if for awhile events may look strange or threatening. Just like sour fruits ripening and sweetening in time when left on its tree, the bitter events in your life shall eventually produce sweet events if you simply allow them be when nothing seems to work satisfactorily when you resort to your own measures. As we explain in the case of the second chapter, what Allah wants you to do for yourself in each situation is exactly what He allows you to do as indicated by the means and opportunities He puts at your disposal during its enfoldment. Beyond this, it is not your responsibility and there are no more “measures” you can take. Hence, stop pushing the ships you are on board and relax and wait for the powers beyond you and within Allah’s absolute control exercise their influences.
4.
“He is the Merciful Great Creator
He is the Generous Provider
He is the Wise Actor
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beautiful”
Yes, He creates everything and everyone with in-built mercy. Don’t you see, the female animal of any species who gives birth to her young is already endowed with mercy towards her offspring on top of automatic skill to look after it? Even death itself is ultimately merciful as all pains disappear as a result. When one has too much to bear, one faints. In other words, although there is a lot of suffering each of us have to go through life, pleasure is the rule and suffering is the exception and what is more, suffering is self-limiting on the one hand and productive of some good, sometimes very great good in the end.
Allah also provides all creation with their needed sustenance’s with incredible generosity. Trees produce thousands of flowers and hundreds of fruits each, and a lot of them apparently go to waste but no worry. The amounts are simply enormous and the sources inexhaustible.
And He is the Wise Actor which means that all the actions He displays through nature are full of perfect wisdom. More specifically, everything He makes happen in your life serves a very wise purpose and is entirely for your good and nothing else.
5.
“Know the Satisfier of Needs
And pray Him with your supplications
Abandon vain desires
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beautiful”
Don’t you see, you need air, water, food, shelter, security, love and companionship, all of which are provided through your very nature and the nature of man and his environment. You have lungs and chest muscles which effortlessly suck in and pump out air; you have blood circulation which takes all the nutrients you need to all your cells together with water and air. He made you and all men in need of company so that they seek out each other and enjoy endless benefits as a result. For further needs and blessings you only have to call on your Maker to provide them while at the same time you must work for their acquisition within the limits appointed for you.
But often, we men and women invent desires which are both difficult to attain and dangerous to satisfy. For example, if you want to dominate others it does not mean that you need to dominate them. It is an unjust, immoral and satanic lust to want to put others under your control for bad emotional reasons. It is the same with all illegal and illicit lusts without which you can live perfectly well. It is the same with excessive lust after things like wealth, political power etc. The fact is that what is due to you because of your abilities and honest work is bound to come naturally and you do not have to resort to trickery, dishonesty and violence. This type of desire is at the root of most horrendous and continues social ill and sufferings. Is it not?
In fact, it is what saint Buddha taught as the basis of salvation: Abandonment of desire.
6.
“Do not be obsessed with an outcome unduly
If something already happened, do not obstinately reject and resent it
It is from the Real, do not refuse
Let us then see what the Lord does
Whatever He does the result is beautiful”
Often we fix our gage on a desired result and feel determined to attain it. We think that is it a life or death matter. This delusion makes us very impatient, intolerant, desperate and ruthless. Here then is another pitfall where a lot of us are trapped at times and become ugly and dangerous. Rivals react, fighting erupts and plots and counterplots result in the tremendous suffering of others.
Again, something happens and settles beyond our control and against out liking. This causes a wrong reaction in many of us in the form of furious or crushed-feeling objection. These in turn make us very bitter and dangerously vindictive and vengeful. Such emotions lead to desperate acts of violence and usually counter violence on and on. The most basic example of things happening before we could do anything about them in the way we are created. I may be born at a certain time, at a certain place, to certain parents of certain racial and genetic characteristics (black, white, tall, short etc.) Such things or any other which has been settled already cause in some of us unnecessary and useless resentment, anger and despair. That should not be so. Learn to make best of what you have been given in any circumstance and be happy. If that is not the wisest course of action one wonders what then can be. Again, we must not blame people for being what they are and punish them for “crimes” they could not possibly commit- as racists punish racially different minorities among them. All such foolish and evil action is indicative of the perpetrators disbelief of God and blasphemy.
The fact is that all that happens is ultimately from Allah- it is He who permitted them to happen and He can never be wrong in the least. Any unjust benefits arising from the event shall be avenged and any victimisation shall eventually be compensated as well as rewarded.
You may ask: “ But why is Allah allowing unworthy people to win and the honourable to lose?” It is not as simple as that. What Allah is allowing is for bad people to bring out the bad hidden in their hearts so that both they and everybody else see it. By this means, they may have obtained worldly (external) prizes, but have definitely and shamefully been exposed for what they are and that is the more important perspective for an ‘arif. In this sense, as all ‘arifs (gnostics) agree, the behaviour displayed by an evil person is his own punishment. For example, among countless similar historical events there was the murder of sayyidine Hussein the grandson of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (sws). The Omayyad king Yazid won the kingdom of this lowly world by martyring Hussein (a.s). But that kingdom was not only lowly but temporary as well. After a few years he was killed by the Angel of Death and met his Lord who was angry with him.
Since then, Yazid has been synonymous with curse all over the Muslim world throughout centuries while Sayyidine Hussein became even dearer and more admirable. His love is in the heart of every Muslim and his praises are sung on every Muslim’s tongue. In other words, Yazid’s kingdom was short-lives and cursed while Hussein’s has been eternal and heavenly. Likewise, the Pharisee’s “won” against the Christ in the temporary and lowly sense, but the Christ won eternally and heavenly. He is dearly celebrated by both Muslims and Christians as a splendid spirit from Allah- one of His nearest and dearest.
So, even if a worldly justice will not always be forthcoming (and many times it is forthcoming), an eternal justice of the highest order is always assured.