Love Of True Learning
6. LOVE OF TRUE LEARNING
PART ONE - GENERAL BACKGOUND AND OBSERVATIONS
When I was a young man working as a teacher at the high school of my town of birth, namely Limassol in Cyprus, we had a new municipal garden which could be the envy of far bigger and richer towns elsewhere in Europe. It was funded by the local municipalty but was the work of a single amateur gardener, an old man called uncle Salih by us the younger generation. This man had no education beyond primary school but had encyclopaedic knowledge of flowers. He read about them constantly, had excellent colourful catalogues from Holland which is the floristry capital of Europe and connection with Dutch suppliers of flowering plants. His house was like a flowers museum; passers-by stopped and admired his potfuls of flowering plants each flowering in its own season and in various colours.
When the municipalty decided to create a municipal garden from a patch of land measuring a few acres they naturally asked uncle Salih whether he could help them with his expertise and then supervise the gardens for them. That was the fulfilment of uncle Salih’s wildest dreams which was to spread and enjoy the fruits of his vast knowledge and insatiable love for flowers. Single-handedly he designed the gardens, chose the flowering plants to be planted and all the artistic elements going with the project like the shape, size and arrangement of the various flower beds and the footpaths and green patches surrounding them. You see, he had big colour books demonstrating in magnificent photographs various garden designs depending on the size and topography of the planting grounds and the plant species chosen. The result was an inordinately large and beautiful public garden for a small town like Limassol.
Past and present are full of amateur geniuses specialising in various arts and sciences alongside their bread-winning professions and sometimes far excelling their professional counterparts who may sometimes be professors. I wonder whether you have seen the film “The Birdman of Alcatraz”. It is based on a true life story of a murder convict confined to a life term in the notorious high security prison Alcatraz in America. The character was superbly played by actor Burt Lancaster who otherwise mostly played the role of physically active men of passion and action, because before becoming an actor he was an accomplished circus acrobat. In his role of the ‘birdman’ however he was playing a sedentary man supposed to rot in prison but instead of rotting he could not prosper and enjoy himself more. You see, instead of sulking and resigning to his fate as they put it, he came up with a novel idea of putting into practice his life dream, his dream of studying birds. Since he knew himself he was fascinated and enamoured by all sorts of birds, especially the wild birds. He became a model prisoner, gained both confidence and admiration of both fellow prisoners and the prison managers. The latter was ready to help him when he broke them the news that he wanted to have some birds with him to look after and study. Soon he was given a bigger cell, so big that he could create a birdhouse in it full of bird cages in which various species of birds sported their skills and serenaded their tunes. He obtained many books on birds and any kind and number of laboratory furniture and equipment which naturally included various microscopes. Over the years he made many important discoveries in ornithology which means the science of birds and became an internationally famous ornithologist quoted by universities and published by scientific publishers. Eventually he was granted pardon (if I am not remembering wrongly). He came to be known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, one of the greatest ornithologists of all time. Like him uncle Salih was our ‘The Flowerman of Limassol’.
The same phenomenon can be seen in spiritual science. To begin with, most founders of great religions were not people educated and trained as men of religion which are often called priests. They were laymen or amateurs as they put it. Moses was a quasi-prince in the Kingdom of Egypt with divided loyalties; one the one hand he was supposed to work with the Royal regime while clandestinely he was also maintaining his relations and sympathies with his natural family and the Egyptian Jewry who at the time were the enslaved subjects of the Kingdom. He could not play this double role indefinitely; one day he killed an Egyptian who was fighting a fellow Jew and wanted for murder he had to run away for his life. After some sojourn in the wilderness he found refuge in the house of a pious Arab sheikh which we Muslims think was the Prophet Shua’ib (Jews identify him as Arab sheikh Jethro); he married into the sheikh’s family and tended his animals. Apparently having some culture of monotheism and religious myth and legend thanks to his natural family’s clandestine inculcation of the Jewish faith in him he was not a total ignorant in the matter of religious faith but nothing could foretell his incredible bright future in religion. One day while travelling with his nomadic family and their animals in the wilderness he was addressed by God Almighty and from then on the whole human history took a new turn.
The Buddha also was a total outsider of religion in that temple- and priest-infested India of his times; like Moses he was also a prince but like the Birdman of Alcatraz he felt like in a prison and wanted to escape the Royal mentality and instead enrich his life by new discoveries he was interested in. His interest was not in birds but in spiritual, cosmic matters. After his escape from his royal life he wandered and contemplated all over the desolate parts of the land until one day the spiritual realities he was thirsty for broke on him in a magnificent flash. He could now rejoin the society and preach to them and what he preached and the influence he gained on the public soon outshone all that enjoyed by professional priests who became extremely jealous of him. The same with Jesus; without being a priest of the temple he far outshone all of them in his spiritual erudition and skills. He had gained all these by his incredibly great talent, effort and sincerity of heart for all of which God rewarded him by making him a prophet and a messenger of God. To Him and not to the priests God revealed secrets and inspired words and provided guidance as none else before him!
Then came Muhammad. Totally unschooled as well as unsuspecting and without expecting and scheming he was addressed by God and like Moses and Jesus before him was made a prophet and messenger of God. May Allah’s blessings and peace be on all his chosen ones.
We Sufis also can hope for great surprises of Divine Favours first to ‘explode’ and then rain on us despite our apparent lack of spiritual knowledge and spiritual skills. The sign that we are in for such an explosion and such a regimen of spiritual growth is our deep and constant thirst for Allah and His friends. But it is here that one lethal mistake can be made.
Let me explain. We know that we must emulate Allah in His Qualities of Grace (Asma al Jamal) and parallel to that emulate His Messenger’s character and conduct. Some can attempt this correctly, some wrongly.
Let us begin with the wrong attempt so that the value of the right attempt can be more appreciated. In the wrong attempt the aspirant cannot resist to tend more towards Allah’s Qualities of Majesty instead of Grace. Qualities of Majesty are like greatness, domination, imposition, wrath and punishment. A Sufi (or for that matter any religious aspirant in any religion) who finds himself feeling and casting an image full of sense of greatness, will for domination and imposition and so on and so forth just commits spiritual suicide. According to the Qur’anic account this was exactly how Iblis Satan was motivated and we know what became of him. He ended up an arrogant rebel hating and accusing Allah and resenting and subverting Allah’s elect, namely man as first represented by Adam. We find a similar phenomenon in all practicing religious groups; some wrongly-informed aspirants are angry with the group’s spiritual leader (who represents God) and jealous of those more talented and doted upon by the leader. If they cannot beat the rival and win from him the affections of the leader they may break away to begin a career of denigrating the leader’s favourites and if possible destroying the leader’s plans or the whole organisation. Alternatively and in addition they may found their own organisation and thereby attain the position of leadership at one stroke!
Such are founded breakaway religions and sects and orders. This of course assumes that the original leader was a true leader. More frequently the notorious breeding and rebreeding of sects are all engineered by ambitious pretenders whatever the main religion they are based on. As long as seven centuries ago, along with other masters, Sheikh Jalaluddin Rumi observed “Finding a true sheikh in our time is more difficult than finding the philosopher’s stone”!: this was a legendary stone capable of converting base metals into gold. But this is not our subject at the present and is said only in passing.
The observation that total amateurs in any pursuit of art or science can sometimes better even distinguished professionals is valid also in the spiritual field and even more so. After all spiritual science itself is not an academic subject but is a natural if rare exceptional development of one’s innate spiritual abilities which help him understand himself and through this understanding understand others and thereby extend his natural self-love to others until his whole world view becomes one of understand and love all at least in principle. From then on he is like a good parent or well understanding, kind teacher and work towards the ultimate good for each and ever person he may meet whatever that good may be; sometimes it will be a reinforcing rewards sometimes a deterring punishment but never cruelty.
Such spiritual uncle Salihs or Birdmen of Alcatraz will build up through sheer ability, motivation, study and hard work great spiritual gnosis, great gracious character and great kind, saving good works. After Allah’s prophets it is these saints who won their qualifications with great motivation and hard work that can guide and if possible save people from evil. This amateur rise to sainthood need no ‘withdrawal from the world’ as it is often assumed and practiced. In fact it is far better to remain a participating and productive, responsible member of the society, work at a profession for a honest livelihood, raise a family and all the while develop in spirituality. How can one understand oneself and thereby others without going through the formative experiences of adult, citizenly life? That is why Islam rejected both priesthood and monkery. Our greatest saints, in fact all the great companions of the Prophet were both men of God and married and working men of this world; so should we be.
LOVE OF TRUE LEARNING
PART TWO - THE RIGHT WAY- THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE
Not everybody is made for knowledge. To say that one in ten aspirants has enough talent for serious knowledge is an extreme exaggeration. To say one in a hundred is more reasonable. If we mean real great, real deep knowledge we must talk about one in several thousand at least. People who have not talent for great, deep knowledge have not much interest in or taste for it; they simply are inclined to live their days as they come, learn from ordinary experience about ordinary matters of life and thankfully and boredly leave the matters of great and deep learning to those rare souls who are made for it. The best thing the best among them can do is just deferring to those few greatly and deeply learned people and reap the blessings their love and blessings can bring them. It may be hoped that these great and deep knowers will share everything they know in this world and everything they will gain in the next world with their appreciating, admiring friends. That is of course what the Messenger of Allah wants to do: at his pool called ‘al Kauthar’ he will water all his followers in Paradise. This is his sharing with us of all Allah’s gifts to him. May Allah bless and greet our master Muhammad and enter us with him wherever he enters and taste with him whatever he tastes. Amen.
Each sincere and thorough lover of Allah and His Messenger should try to acquire as much knowledge about Allah and His Messenger as he can and then pray and trust that what he could not obtain by his own efforts and in his own time Allah will supply in abundance in His Own Generosity and in His Own Time! Nothing helps human piety and human love for God than correct and deep knowledge: the more correct and deeper the knowledge the more love and obedience is made possible for the servant. Read if you wish:
“Only the knowledgeable can fear Allah enough” (35: 28). Again:
“Those who struggle hard at attaining Us- We will indeed guide them to our ways” (29: 69)
But what is that great and deep knowledge?
Great knowledge means vast knowledge. The more verses of the Qur’an you have learned and can remember when necessary the greater your knowledge. The more hadiths you have learned and can recall when necessary the greater your knowledge. This greatness of knowledge protects you from religious legal and spiritual mistakes. This is so important that every time we find a disturbing remark in a Muslim’s words we can trace the mistake to something he forgot or dit not already know from the Qur’an or the Hadith . Even some great alims or sheikhs make some blunders and lo and behold the reason why they did it can be traced to a gap in their knowledge of the two sacred sources. It is in fact this fact which enables rival commentators, muftis or Sufis to criticise their colleagues and that is a healthy thing and often brings the disputants to a common view. Most of the time though, an agreement is more difficult to arrive at simply because understandings and interpretations can vary. Despite these limitations there can be no doubt that knowledge minimises errors and maximises right guidance.
Now, something about the depth or profundity of knowledge. One may have great or vast knowledge but it may be shallow. As you know, the volume of water in a pool is surface area multiplied by depth. To whatever extent we can commit to memory the verses of the Qur’an and the hadiths of Sunna, without some serious depth to them we cannot have enough water to soak our soul in for great enough enlightenment and advancement. It is one thing to walk in a shallow pool where the water barely covers your feet and quite another to swim in the same pool so full that you can dive metres down to reach the bottom and in the process go through all the thrills of deep water swimming and acrobatics. Allah calls such both broadly and deeply learned servants of is ‘al rasihoon’. It is only these who can obey Allah and implement the Qur’an and the Sunna without hesitation, doubt and equivocation. Their mark is their ability to resist the temptation of interpreting the metaphors of the Qur’an in terms of intellectual or gnostic ideas- a trap and a temptation many Sufis are notoriously prone to- but believe in the truth of those metaphors not through intellectual renderings but an instinctive recognition available only to purified hearts of high spiritual aspiration. They are those who hit the mark and remain on course to Allah. Read if you wish:
“It is He (Allah) who sent down on you (o Muhammad) the Book. Some of its verses are literally and legally meant; they are the matrix of the Book. The rest are metaphors. Those in whose hearts is crookedness pursue those verses with a metaphorical bent in order to stir trouble by trying to interpret them down to their (supposed) bare realities. None knows their ultimate interpretation but Allah. Those who are vast and deep in knowledge (al rasihoon) say: ‘We just believe, all are from our Lord’. Only the maturely intelligent can keep this in mind” (3:7)
Then what can be lovelier to a sincere aspirant to Allah’s Face than more knowledge about Him, more knowledge about His Messenger, both breadth- and depth-wise and none can attain Sufi aims until and unless he either accumulates broad and deep enough knowledge or at least sit at the feet and learns from such a learned master thereby deserving an spiritual gift inheritance from him. Amen.
7. RIGHT COMPANY- THAT OF GOD-LOVERS
“Like with like” is an ancient remark of wisdom. It applies across the board, from material science to the spirituality. In chemistry it becomes “Like dissolves like”. Water and small molecules with dipoles (parts with opposite electrical charges) dissolve in each other. You can mix water and alcohol, water and sulphuric acid, water and salt, water and sugar and to a large extent they form a uniform liquid mixture which we call a solution. But you cannot mix water and oil, oil and salt or sugar and get a solution. The two substances like to hostile men remain separate each sulking in its own corner. If you shake them vigorously enough you may get a uniform looking mixture but it betrays its falseness by its turbidity, non-transparency. Not long after they separate: for example the oil part floats over the water.
People are also the same. Some are compatible with each other some are not. In the latter case what brings and keeps two incompatible persons together is a common benefit which each cannot get without the cooperation of the other. Most businesses, political groups, colleagues suffer from this problem of personal incompatibility but their members stick together out of self-interest on the part of each. They keep together even when they strongly hate each other and each will take any opportunity to pursue the common aim without the other; before then they may have to fake a lot of mutual loving and care and ‘keep up the appearances’ by wearing a skin-deep mask of politeness and helpfulness. But such forced, reluctant, cheerless relationships take their toll on each party. They all remain basically unhappy and often also angry both of which they rarely dare or afford to show.
As far as Islam is concerned the earliest and most serious of example of such a situation was the uneasy relationships between those Muslims in Medina who sincerely followed the Prophet and those who could only pretend and occasionally could not even pretend. This latter group of the Medinese Islamic community have been known as ‘al munafiqoon’ or the hypocrites. The picture however was not and did not remain as simple as that. Many people swung between the two positions to various extents; some swung over a small swinging curve while others swung from east to west. About these Allah says:
“Those who believe and then disbelieve and then again believe and then disbelieve and eventually increase their unbelief- Allah will never forgive them nor will He ever guide them on to the Right Path: Declare to the hypocrites that for them is a painful punishment. Are those who abandon the believers and befriend the unbelievers seeking prestige and glory in their company? (let them know that) all prestige and glory belong to Allah” (4: 137- 139)
We see an almost complete example of this phenomenon in the more recent history of the Islamic world. Some able and ambitious yet unwise people, since a few centuries, began to have their doubts about Islam, began to gradually subscribe to the misinformed and malicious opinions of the increasingly powerful Christian enemies of Islam and lose as a result some or all of their Islamic faith. But because their deep hearts could not sustain such a radical turnabout with any comfort or conviction many made attempts with varying success to return to their ancestral faith and some did it with a vengeance; some others however could not regain their old comforts and convictions in their ancestral faith and re-migrated to unfaith and among all these swingers some swung quite a few times. In the worst cases the swinger decidedly settled with unbelief and a tiny few even went over to the enemy camp by registering as Christians! Now Allah is noting this disgraceful or pathetic swing phenomenon, call it what you will, and giving these swinger-defectors the news that they can expect no forgiveness from Allah. He Almighty is also giving the reason: The swinger-defectors are tempted and attracted by the false prestige and glory attaching to their non-Muslim idols. Their wealth which found its source in the conquest of and cruelty towards the rest of the world’s people and then on hard, devilishly intelligent and very greedy economic enterprises enabled them to live fabulous hedonistic lives in which incredible prosperity, stomach-turning self-indulgence and an invincible capacity for war thanks to incomparably advanced weapons they developed and the money they could spend on spies and treasonable wretches among their prospective victim nations… these made them to like dressed in fabulous robes and wearing sparkling and dazzling jewellery and deploying invincible military capabilities which image the less godly among the Muslims could not resist to idealize and idolize and then burn with a desire for joining that opposite camp one way or another.
And at the expense of repeating ourselves, this collapse of faith and evaporation of identity on the part of many Muslims and their moral and spiritual defection to the enemy camp explains the now incurable-looking vulnerability of theirs vis-à-vis their rich and powerful adversaries in the Western world and is entirely motivated by a misguided desire to share in the false prestige and glory of the West. They should instead realise that all prestige and glory is with Allah and can only spill over from Allah to His sincerely believing servants. Muslims should remain faithful to their faith and laws and traditions so far as they are based on the Qur’an and the Sunna while at the same time modernising in every area of power- and prestige-conferring assets and skills and then stand up to the West on at least equal terms. If we can do this the tables will certainly turn in our favour and the West, having mostly cast off even Christianity and largely lost the spiritual element of mentality, will notice and discover such a charming, attractive and compelling image in us that very many will pour into Islam to partake of the only prestige and glory which is Allah’s.
Putting this matter on hold we may now return to our overall subject- that of keeping the right company. In this we are confining ourselves to our near environment. Each Sufi aspirant, i.e. persons who realize that one’s Islam is full only when it is spiritually rich and deep and is not a mere habit of mechanical repetition of bodily exercises described by the Sunna with little concern for what is going on in the heart- such persons should seek and maintain the company of similarly oriented brothers and sisters while at the same time maintaining their good and dutiful relations with all the rest of the society and the humanity at large. Self-ghettoising will not do; it is against Allah’s and His Messenger’s teachings. Good believers make up the ferment of the society they belong to; their function is converting the rest as much as possible to morally healthy and spiritually refined states of mind both by their skilful, endearing preaching and admiration-inspiring good and graceful conduct. To do this best good Sufis need to befriend and socialise with each other, teach and learn from each other and spread what they so accumulate as far and wide as they can.
There is a valuable secret in this: As we had observed severally in the past, spiritual and material assets differ in a very fundamental sense. Material assets diminish when shared only in a material sense while spiritual assets are multiplied on sharing. Suppose I have a thousand pounds and I share them among a thousand people which include myself. What do I get? I am left with one pound and am therefore incredibly poorer than before. Nor my sharers have become rich by the pound each got from me. But suppose that I am sharing with them a piece of valuable information or advice. I am telling them, for example, if they begin to be kinder and more polite towards each other they will live more peaceful lives and maintain more helpful, mutually comforting and enriching lives. Suddenly and without any effort or at any cost they gained something which transformed their lives and made them much happier and safer than any time before. The Prophet shared the Qur’an with others and almost overnight improved his nation’s qualities and abilities so much that they could inherit and improve upon all the cultural glories of past’s great nations and replace all the great empires of the past as the world’s new superpower, a status which lasted more than a thousand years. Had Muhammad been a mere new king he could only win for and give them shares of material assets; he was a prophet of God and his main gift to them was that most important and effective of all assets- high, noble, constructive and saving pious spirituality. To keep it and gain success with it Allah and His Messenger told us to keep together as loving and helpful and sharing brothers and sisters and as much as and as long as we kept this advice we only won and grew.
Sadly, those glorious days are over and only Allah knows if they will wever come back and if so when and how and in what new context and form. But the advice is still valid: We each should take care not to remain lonely figures and social failures but live surrounded by and surrounding friends, friends as godly and as many as we can get. To get them though we must give. Misers and intentional net-receivers do not make nor can they attract or keep good friends. ‘Give and take’, ‘give and take’… that is the secret; it translates to ‘love and be loved’ almost automatically and overnight. The only thing we can add to give and take can be ‘forgive and be forgiven’. Read if you wish:
“Those who give both in prosperity and poverty and swallow their resentments and forgive people- Allah loves the gracious” (3: 134)
Why is that so? It is because by giving to others what you reasonably can and ignoring and forgiving their offences you leave the Satan without any cause and weapon to stir trouble between you and others. The Satan just stupidly looks on, wrings and then bites his hands and feels paralysed before your inexhaustible and invincible gracefulness.
As we had remarked before “The best and most effective preaching of Islam is embodied in the person of a real good, a real gracious and graceful Muslim”. Mere words, however literary and theatrical are nothing compared to a good, pious, gracious, graceful Muslim; between a new Muslim won by literary and theatrical preaching and another won by the charming and ingratiating example of a good, pious, gracious and graceful Muslim is like between a good painting of a good-looking apple and a real, edible, delicious, fragrant apple.
This is the whole point why we have Sufi orders. In a true, worthy Sufi order the Sheikh is one of those very rare true Muslims who is all sincerity, all wisdom, with oceanic spiritual wealth and most refined spiritual taste and as a result he more guides and improves his murids by his personal example in piety, grace and gracefulness than the words pouring from his mouth although the latter are also important. The very spirit of Sufi orders is keeping good company, thriving in good company, coming to appreciate good company only too much and meet and even breed good company wherever one goes. True Sufis company is the Company of Allah; masters defined a Sufi as ‘one who sits with Allah’ (jalisullah). He sits with Allah simply because Allah sits in his heart at all times and rules him in everything he thinks and does and attends to all hiss real needs as he attends to his Lord’s all commands. Allah is no less intimate and faithful than that; He is The Friend. Read if you wish:
“Indeed my Friend is Allah Who sent down the Book and befriends the good (7: 196).
We also should befriend the good and share with them Allah’s Book in mutual charity. Amen.