On Vigil
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
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The Shaikh (may Allah be well pleased with him) also spoke about His
words (Exalted is He): Keeping vigil by night is more potent in impact.
(73:6)
This refers not only to
giving up sleep in the ordinary sense, but also to giving up the sleep
of involvement with creatures, the lower self [nafs], natural
inclination [tab'], passion [hawa] and willfulness [irada]. For its food
and drink the heart is left with speaking confidentially [munajat] to
Allah (Almighty and Glorious is He), standing [qiyam] and bowing [ruku']
and making prostration [sujud] in His presence.
Surely
you can see that if someone abstains from this world, so as not to be
distracted by it from seeking the Lord of Truth (Almighty and Glorious
is He), he must likewise abstain from the hereafter, so that it will not
distract him from Allah (Almighty and Glorious is He). He must wish
that the hereafter did not exist, because it is so charming, such an
obvious mercy. He must make the heart and the innermost being become a
face, on the surface of which the contents of his heart are visible. He
must want this world to last, because he is worshipping Allah in secret,
doing business with Him in secret.
You are in
isolation from the Lord of Truth (Almighty and Glorious is He). When
will you isolate your heart from creatures and seek the company of the
Lord of Truth, going from door to door until there is no door left, from
town to town, from heaven to heaven until there is no heaven left?
He
[the believer] will bring the Resurrection upon himself. He will stand
before the Lord of Truth (Almighty and Glorious is He), reading the
records of his deeds, the good and the bad which consign him to the Fire
[of Hell]. While he is caught between fear and hope, between falling
into the Fire and crossing over it, Allah (Exalted is He) will overtake
him with His gracious kindness. He will put out the Fire with the water
of His mercy, and the Fire will exclaim: "Pass through, O believer
[mu'min], since your light has extinguished my flames!" The passage–a
journey that should take three thousand years–will be shortened for him
to an instant, and then, when he is near to the palace of the King, he
will recover his senses, his volition, his love for His Master [Mawla]
and his ardent longing for Him. He will say: "I shall not enter except
in the company of the Beloved [Mahbub]."
Do you
not see? [As we know from sayings of the Prophet (Allah bless him and
give him peace)], the miscarried fetus [siqt] will halt at the door of
the Garden [of Paradise], saying: "I shall not enter until my parents
enter. Where is the neighbor? Where is the witness?"
He
will not enter until he is touched by the hand of the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) and he can go in to meet the Beloved.
Then, when he has finally experienced this, he will be sent back into
this world, in order to receive his full quota of the shares allotted by
destiny [aqsam], so that the [divine] foreknowledge ['ilm] shall not be
altered, abrogated and annulled. Your Lord has finished with the work
of creation.
[As the Prophet (Allah bless him and
give him peace) has said:] No soul shall depart from this world until it
has received its allotted share [qism] in full.
You
must therefore be dutifully devoted to Allah (Almighty and Glorious is
He) and have the decency to look to the Lord of Truth for what you need,
instead of to His creatures. The material means [asbab] are a screen.
The
King's doors are locked. If you turn away from them, there will be
opened unto you a door you can recognize. The door of the innermost
being has swung shut [babu's-sirri sara ila sadd], but then it is opened
without your own power and strength.
The believer
[mu'min] must leave his natural inclination [tab'] behind, moving in
the direction of his Lord. As long as he is following this present
course, he is exposed to harmful influences affecting his person and his
property. He is reverting to his sins, to his bad behavior and to
infringing the rules [hudud] of the sacred law [shar'] of his Lord. He
must not seek help through supplication [du'a'], nor must he seek help
from anyone other than his Lord. No, he must remember his sins and
practice self-criticism until, when he has done a thorough job of this,
he can resort to acceptance of the decree of destiny [qadar], to
surrender [taslim] and entrustment [tafwid] as far as his heart is
concerned. Once he is in this state, he will see an open door.
Whoever is dutiful toward Allah, He prepares a way out for him. (65:2)
He puts His servant to the test to see how he will behave:
And We have put them to the test with good things and bad things. (7:168)
The
heart of the son of Adam must continue to travel along the path of good
and evil, honor and humiliation, wealth and poverty, until he finally
acknowledges that all blessings are due to Allah (Almighty and Glorious
is He). This means gratitude [shukr]–and gratitude is an act of
obedience [ta'a] performed without moving the tongue and the limbs of
the body–and patient endurance of misfortune. He must admit his sins and
offenses until, having taken his last step on the good side and his
last step on the bad side, there he is at the King's door. He has taken
the step of gratitude and the step of patience, with divine help
[tawfiq] as the guide. He has seen the King's door, and beyond it he can
see things that no eye ever saw, that no ear ever heard of, and that
never occurred to any human heart. The alternating sequence of good
moves and bad moves is at an end; now comes the turn of conversation,
discourse and sitting in company [with the Lord].
Can
you grasp this, O 'Iraqi, O camel at the mill, O stupid fool? You go
through the motions of ritual prayer [anta fi qiyam wa-qu'ud] without
sincerity. You perform the prayers [tusalli] for the sake of other
people, and while you are fasting [tasumu] your eyes are on their dishes
of food and on the contents of their houses.
O
alien to the human race, O straggler from the ranks of the champions of
truth [siddiqun] and the Lord's own people [rabbaniyyun]! Do you not
realize that I am your goldsmith's furnace, your probe and your
touchstone? Do your utmost. Refuse to let me eat from your plate.
Unsheathe your sword against me. You do not amount to anything. O little
ignoramus, I am twisting your reins. I am giving you good advice and
treating you with compassion. I am afraid that you may die an atheist
[zindiq], a pretender [mura'i], an impostor [dajjal]-doomed to suffer in
your grave the punishment of the hypocrites [munafiqun]. So you must
desist from what you are up to. You must strip yourself naked and then
put on the clothes of dutiful devotion [taqwa]. You will soon be dead.
There is no hostility between me and you. You will have cause to
remember what I am saying to you.
The insight of
the righteous man [salih] is indicative of his spiritual state [hal].
When someone really knows ['arafa] Allah, his tongue falls silent; he is
free from want because of Him, and of Him alone he is in need.
In
my childhood, back in my home town, I used to hear someone saying to
me, "O blessed one [ya mubarak]." I would run away from that voice, but
then in solitude I would hear someone saying to me: "I think well of
you."
If you wish for success [falah] you must
stick close to me. When you see a person running away from me, you must
know that he is a hypocrite.
The believer [mu'min]
is such that, when he closes the eyes in his head, the eyes of his
heart are opened and he sees what is over there; and when he closes the
eyes of his heart, the eyes in his head are opened and he sees the
situation of Allah and His dealings with His creatures.
The words of Allah addressed to Moses (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) include the following:
I have chosen you above all men to receive My mission and My words. (7:144)
"And
I have drawn you close to Me. One day you were shepherding a flock of
sheep when one of them strayed off, so you followed after it until you
caught up with it. By then you were exhausted, as it was exhausted, so
you picked it up and hugged it and you said: 'You have worn yourself out
and you have worn me out.'"
The remedy for
someone who is separated [from the Lord] is detecting the cause of his
separation, turning from it in repentance and confessing it in His
presence.
The sinless ones [ma'sumun], those who
are protected from every aspect, they do not have creative power
[takwin]. Creative power comes in the process of following the path
[fi't-tariq]. There is nothing worth talking about until you cross the
wastelands, the deserts, the two continents and the two oceans –the
continent of creatures and the continent of the self [nafs], the ocean
of the law [hukm] and the ocean of knowledge ['ilm] –as well as the
shore.
For the people [of the Lord] there is
neither night nor day. Their diet is the diet of the sick and their
sleep is the sleep of the drowned. Their speech is only out of
necessity. When someone really knows Allah, his tongue falls silent, but
"when He wills, He resurrects him" (80:22), and then he speaks without
instruments, without tools, without preparation, without time for
thought, without pretext. There is no difference between his tongue and
his finger. Thus there is no wall of separation, no restriction, no door
and no doorman, no permission to be granted or sought, no authorization
and no dismissal, no Satan and no sultan, no inner core [janan] and no
fingertips [banan].
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