Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret. Maulana Sheikh Nazim : LoveOfAllah HomePage :: Lectures :: Topics :: Books :: Years The Love of Allah -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fatiha. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Wa Lillahi l Hamd. Allahumma Salli wa Sallim wa Barik 'Ala Habibika Sayidi Al Awwalin wa Al Akhirin, Sayidina Muhammad (saws). O Prophets (as) Allah's (swt) salams are on all of you. O Awliya', O Asfiya' Allah's (swt) salams are on you. We ask from you support or anything to destroy the sultanate of shaytan. This addressing... and I am a weak servant, I have no power to speak to people. But, it was inspired to my heart because of something that upset me, which people are heedless about it. O people listen & take wisdom & if you do you will benefit. O people, Our wazifa/duty is to follow the steps of the Prophets (as) and specially the steps of the Master of the beginning & end, Sayidina Muhammad (saws). This is our way to success & goodness for mankind in this world & in the Hereafter. Haqq (swt) made everything clear, and.... you O Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, you read the Great Quran, but you have no good consideration /tadabbur and no deep understanding/tafakkur of the words of the Magnificent Quran. Allah (swt) sent the Holy Verses & the addressing to the Prophet (saws), saying to His Beloved, tell them. O people, first of all " Fa Attabi`uni Yuhbibkumu Allahu"(3:30) Clear, clarity is there. Allah (swt) sent the Holy Verses with Truth, to follow His Holy Prophet (saws). "Say, If you love Allah (swt) then follow me, Allah (swt) will love you." (3:30) True? Yes Haqq. Haqq (jwa) says "Ya Ayyuha Alladhina Amanu, Allah (swt) ordered "Qul In Kuntum Tuhibbuna Allaha Fa Attabi`uni." (3:30) This is the teaching of Allah (swt) to His Prophet (sas) for him to teach people The one who taught goodness to people is the Prophet (saws) of Allah. O people! Listen... Listen & take wisdom, If you take wisdom then follow. These words are words of Haqq/Truth."Qul In Kuntum Tuhibbuna Allaha Fa Attabi`uni Yuhbibkumu Allahu." (3:30) Then O believers, listen & take wisdom from what our Lord (jwa) says "Say, If you love Allah (swt) then follow me." (3:30) The Prophet (saws). To follow the Prophet (saws) is the reason for Allah (swt) to love His servant, His servants. "Yuhbibkumu Allahu Wa Yaghfir Lakum Dhunubakum." (3:30) What do we want? What else do we want other than this request? This is the highest thing to ask for, to look for. How we can reach the Love of Allah (swt). The Love of Allah (swt) is the greatest most magnificent thing for the servants. Allah (swt) loves His servant. Once a man came to me, long time ago, maybe since 50 years. A strange looking servant, he seemed to be looking for knowledge. I asked him, "what have you learned?" He said "O Shaykh I was steadfast... and was a student in the University of Sharia in Damascus." "What did you learn?" He said... Without thinking he spoke what came to his heart. He said, "I learned something by heart." I asked him, "what is it? You've been attending all these years, tell me one thing you learned." He said "O Shaykh, I learned that Allah (swt) said, "O My servant Obey Me, I will make you Rabbani/Divine. You say to something, Be & it is." (Hadith Qudsi) For my age & my Arabic is very little, but you are Arabs, you understand. Haqq (swt) said in the Hadith Qudsi, "O My servant, obey Me. O My servant obey Me, I will make you Rabbaniyin/Divine." Is the Hadith correct? Yes. "O My servant, obey Me I make you Rabbani/Divine. You say to something Be! and it is." (Hadith Qudsi). O Muslim scholars, what do you have to say about this? This is correct or it is a weak Hadith? Because people did not learn except to look for weak Hadiths. Is this one also a weak Hadith? This man was looking for knowledge, but he appeared like this, but he came to me and he was from the Budala' of Sham, a young one from the 40 Saints. I asked him "what have you learned?" He said "I learned a Hadith Qudsi." "Which one?" Allah (swt) said "O My servant obey Me I make you Rabbani/Divine. You say to something, be and it is." Where are you O salafis, o wahabis or this & that group! Did Allah (swt) name you salafi, or wahabi or other names? Allah (swt) says "O My servant obey Me, I will make you Rabbani/Divine" (Hadith Qudsi) and the Holy verse says" Wa Lakin Kunu Rabbaniyina" (3:79). Allah (swt) named you & likes that you become Rabbaniyun, nothing else. Nothing else. Did any group use this blessed name or title that Allah (swt) dressed us with it & He (swt) is asking us "Wa Lakin Kunu Rabbaniyina" (3:79) This is the Holy Quran a Holy Verse. Do you have a group named Rabbaniyin? No! You have salafis, you have wahabis, Muslim Brotherhood you have. But how come you did not name with what Allah Haqq (swt) named you? "Wa Lakin Kunu Rabbaniyina" (3:79) This is a Holy Verse. Which group is Rabbani? There is none. Where are you & how you are reading the Holy Quran and you claim to be wahabis, salafis or Muslim Brotherhood? From where did you bring this? And Allah (swt) says that He Loves that you are Rabbaniyin/Divine. "Wa Lakin Kunu Rabbaniyina" (3:79) That young man that came to me he was from the Budala'/Saints of Sham. I asked him what did he learn, and he said to me "O Sayidi Shaykh Allah (swt) said "O My servant, obey Me. I will make you Rabbani/Divine, you say to something, Be and it is!" (Hadith Qudsi) O Muslim people between East & West, where are you? My words are right, because Allah's(swt) curse is on the liars. I can't carry that curse never! My words are true & they are supported by the Great Quran and the words of the Prophet (saws), because the Prophet was Rabbani. From where do they bring these titles, Muslim Brotherhood, salafis, wahabis or all the other names they call themselves. Every group with a title that is not mentioned in The Holy Quran. This is my claim to the Muslims, the Muslims of this period of time & my fight against the honourable scholars & my fight with those who call themselves with this & that name. And not once I heard from them saying "O people we are Rabbani. We are putting all our efforts to be Rabbani." The servant at that time has the attribute to say to something "Be & it is!" This is Rabbani. And you O Muslims, Arabs, and Iranians, you are counting on the missiles. You are proud of your missiles and the rest of the nations from the Muslim world also are proud of their missiles. Not one of them stands and is proud to be a servant to his Lord, Rabbani. And just hoping that my Lord accepts me to be a Rabbani servant. O believers! O believers who are living on the face of the earth maybe you are 2 billions or more. Who from you is claiming or putting all their efforts to be Rabbani? If...O Muslims until you depend on the words of your Lord, and put all your efforts to be Rabbani you will never succeed in this world or in the Hereafter. This is an important matter, an important matter. Subhana Allah Al 'Aliy Al Azim. You! O Palestinians, O Egyptians, Syrians, people of Iraq, people of India, Iranians, Afghani people, where, where are your schools that teach your children to put their efforts to be Rabbani? Rabbani! Woe to you! With what rights you left the Muslim ummah without teaching the Holy Quran, without teaching Haqq (jwa) & His Prophet (saws) and you ran after all the falsehood of the worse of unbelievers & the falsehood of shaytans. I am sorry to say this. And all the Muslim countries they do not have any requests except to establish in their country democracy, which from beginning to end is false. They leave Haqq/Truth & follow falsehood. And who follows falsehood will be destroyed. They will have nothing in this world nor in the Hereafter. O Muslims especially your scholars, teachers or the learned ones, Take heed of these words. These are not words from my side, never! All these words are supported by the Holy Quran and the honourable Hadiths of the Prophet (saws). If you want to be saved in this world & in the Hereafter then follow this way, this is our way, the way of Sirata Al Mustaqima/ The Straight Way. Otherwise you do not have the Straight Way. You will be destroyed here & in the Hereafter also. May Allah (swt) forgive us & send us one who may teach us the True Way without asking anything else. Our request is Ridwan Allah (swt) - Allah's Pleasure. Subhansin Ya Rabb! & we ask for the intercession of the Prophet (saws). O Prophet (saws) of the Lord of the worlds, O Beloved, who was ordered to step on His Throne this was the addressing to the Prophet (saws). The addressing to Prophet Moses (as) was "take off your sandals." But to the Beloved of Allah (swt) "Step on My Throne with your shoes. The Throne will be honoured." He is the possessor of the Maqam Al Mahmoud on the Day of Witnessing. O people! Consider & submit and put all your efforts to understanding these words. They are not my words, never! Otherwise you will eat one another & you will be destroyed. Tawba Ya Rabbi, tawba Ya Rabbi, tawba astaghfirullah! Shukr Ya Rabbi, shukr Ya Rabbi, shukr Al Hamdulillah! The One Who taught The Quran to His Beloved, the Sultan of the worlds. Ya Rasulallah! The one who taught people goodness, the teacher of humanity, what did he teach you? If you are asked on Judgement Day, what will you say? What did My Beloved teach you from goodness? Goodness? Nothing! We invented democracy, parliaments, works of all kinds. We invented such things. In his (saws) time there were none of these things. We invented them. We left his (saws) methods and his way & we invented all these things. And we hope to be successful in this world and on the Day of Judgement to have white faces. Never! What difference between you & others. O people! Listen & take wisdom, and if you do you will benefit. Ask for Ridwan Allah (swt) so Allah (awj) may love you & make you Rabbani and anything you ask for, you will say "Be! And it is." This way is the straight way, the right way, the beautiful way. The way which takes us to Heavens all the way to Hazirat Al Quds, the Divine Presence, to witness our Lord (jwa). O people! Obey & follow. If you do not think & you do not take care, woe to you here &in the Hereafter. Tawba astaghfirullah. Fatiha. 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Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

                THE TANTALIZING TASTE of THE OCEANS OF LOVE

A saying of the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, in which he prayed to God: “Oh Allah, I ask You to grant me the love of You and the love of those whom You love, and grant me, Oh my Lord,the love of those actions which lead me to the love of You”.

Sheikh Nazim:
The Three Levels Of Love To ask our Lord to open up our hearts to His Divine Love is the most important request we can make of Him in our prayers, as nothing can take the place of love. The Holy Prophet, who is called the Beloved of Allah, whom Allah created with the yeast of love, and whom Allah loved so much that He dedicated the creation to him, even this beloved Prophet asked Allah for Divine Love – why? Because who tastes of that love ask for more. Whose heart is like a rock will not ask Allah for this love, but those who have had the slightest taste of that love know that it is the key to all spiritual progress, to mercy, beauty, wisdom, to all favours that Allah may bestow upon His servants. Therefore, the Holy Prophet taught all mankind what is precious in this life. And then his prayer continued: “And grant me the love of those who love you”. The first level, “Love of God”, is the Station of the Prophets, and you can’t step from the bottom of the stairway to the top in on step. Allah Almighty is the Transcendent Being – you can’t even begin to fathom anything about Him Almighty – but it is easy to love those who represent His Love among mankind, for it is much easier for us to begin to understand and love human beings like ourselves. You will find nothing in their hearts but the Love of Allah; therefore, loving them is a means to approach the Divine Love. Lastly, the Holy Prophet asks for the love of those actions which lead to the love of Allah, actions which carry blessings with them, which soften our hearts and weaken our greed and selfishness. These are the actions encouraged by our Lord through the example of His Prophets, actions ordered and recommended in His Holy Books. And, although in the beginning our inner state may not correspond to these saintly actions, by engaging our limbs in what pleases our Lord, He will strengthen our hearts thereby. These are the three levels of love for which the Holy Prophet prayed, and the wisdom reflected in this prayer is proof enough of the veracity of Muhammad, peace be upon him. While Believers must always ask for that love, Satan is ever at war with such a notion, for he knows that once love has entered the heart of one of his slaves, that slave is lost to him, for he will not be able to snare him anymore with this world’s pleasures. He who has tasted that love may not even notice those pleasures, or may regard them as only a drop in an ocean. Once, as Moses, upon whom be peace, was headed toward Mount Sinai, he passed the cave of a hermit. The hermit emerged and called after Moses; “Oh Moses, please ask our Lord to bestow upon me just an atom’s weight of His Divine Love”. Moses agreed to do this, and then continued on his way. Later, when Moses was addressing his Lord, he petitioned on behalf of that hermit. The Lord replied, “I will grant that servant of My Divine Love, but not in the amount he requested. I will only grant him the tiniest fraction of an atom’s weight of that love”. When Moses returned from the mountain, he quickly went to see what was happening to the hermit, to see what effect such a tiny dose of Divine Love might have had on him. When he arrived he was startled to see that where the cave had been a part of the mountain was blown away, and in place of that cave there was a deep chasm in the Earth. “Oh servant of my Lord”, he cried out, “what has happened, where are you?” Then Moses looked down the chasm and saw the hermit sitting down there as if in another world, completely overwhelmed by that love. Why did that hermit ask for a portion of Divine Love? Because he was worshipping but feeling nothing; he felt emptiness in his heart that could only be filled by that love. Without love, worship is tasteless and useless; therefore, we must be sure to build our worship upon a strong foundation of love and to bake love into the bricks of the building of our devotional practice. This is more than an analogy, for even physical buildings are either alive with the love of their builders, or dead from their hard – heartedness. Therefore, old buildings often emanate a good feeling because of the love and goodness of those who built them. This is especially true of old mosques and churches, for their original congregations built them for the sake of their Lord’s love and in an attitude of sincere piety. There is often a very strong feeling of the Divine Presence in old mosques, but have you ever felt such an atmosphere in the new showpiece of sterile architecture mosques? No, it is impossible; you may feel only an inner contraction inside of such concrete hills. They have left the love out of the mortar; the most important ingredient is missing. There is nothing in all creation that the Creator, Allah Almighty, hates. Indeed it is impossible to be hated by Allah and to be in existence: one absolutely precludes the other. All creation appeared through His Divine Love. He loved them and they appeared; therefore, everything in existence carries its share of Divine Love in it. When I say “everything”, I mean everything, from atoms and their parts – the very building blocks of the Universe – up to mankind. Yes, everything, even the smallest particles of matter, carries that Divine Gift. As you know, the electrons of atoms revolve around the nuclei, and at enormous velocity. Someone told me that the famous scientist Albert Einstein once declared: “I have come to understand so much, but what I have never been able to fathom is what power gives electrons the energy to orbit nucleii at such a speed. From where does such power come to them?” We believe, and furthermore, have been granted certainty in our belief, that everything in existence has life, is living. For the sake of everyday reckoning we classify certain things, such as rocks, as inanimate objects, and recognize life only in plants, animals and human beings. But we believe that beyond these outward distinctions everything has life. Therefore, atoms, and their electrons that turn around the nuclei with such speed as to baffle even the renowned Mr. Einstein, are, in reality, alive. They are alive with the Divine Love Power that their Lord has granted them. That’s what makes them spin at the speed of light. Science may make penetrating and wonderful discoveries. Scientists’ knowledge may advance and climb to unimagined heights in the realm of the observable and what may be proven through experiments. But even such a great realm, the realm of observation and experimentation, is finite, has its limits, and only within these limits can it draw authoritative conclusions. Therefore, scientists who recognize their limitations and are not blinded by pride may admit, that some occurrences are not explicable by science. The Divine Name Al Wadud It is for those who have access to a realm of knowledge beyond science to say with certainty, that it is Allah Almighty, the Lord of the Universe, who through His Holy Name “Al-Wadud” (The All-Loving) gives His Divine Love to everything in the Universe. Those electrons, drunken with Divine Love, spin at such velocity around the nuclei. That is how the influence of Divine Love is manifested by them. Science can neither proves nor denies this explanation, as this phenomenon is beyond their realm, and they cannot as much as offer a theory. But our hearts may be content with this explanation, as each and every one of us may try it himself within himself; for we all have the Power of that Divine Love in our hearts ready to be contacted. There is no one word in Western languages that gives the full meaning of “Al-wadud”, and even explanations don’t do it justice, even though the West claims its knowledge to be superior and looks down disdainfully on every religious experience. And this Holy Name, the meaning of which cannot even adequately be expressed in advanced western languages, is the most suitable “Dhikr,” the most suitable of all the Divine Names to repeat and meditate upon for people who see themselves as superior beings and as being above normal standards. “Love”, it is certainly not a concept that western culture is unfamiliar with, and undoubtedly most people lay claim to loving and being loved to knowing the meaning of love, and to it being an important aspect of their lives, indeed the most important. But the love we refer to in connection with the Divine Name “Al-Wadud” is not the physical transitory love that is rapidly becoming the only meaning of love applicable to modern man: the love that one may find in the zoo. If you can’t imagine a love other than what is on the level of animals, then you belong in the zoo. There is a real love, never changing, never dying love, and then there is temporary animal love. Both are in man through the wisdom of the Creator, but the permanent love is the love given to man through the Divine Name “Al-Wadud”. To realize that love is the challenge and fulfillment of human existence – to come in contact with those Love Oceans, for He has given His Divine Love most abundantly to His most honoured representatives in creation, mankind. You may love a young lady for her youth, and when that youth departs you love her no more. That is false love. Sometimes we may have both kinds of love simultaneously, but usually the physical overpowers the spiritual, so that it is never allowed to appear. But to reach the ultimate goal of human life we are in need of permanent love, and it is only the Lord of the Universe who can grant it. Therefore, when we say “Ya-Wadud” we are opening ourselves up to that Divine Love, asking our Lord to awaken that love that knows no limitation that is eternal and extends to all creation. I have been ordered to teach and advise people to call on our Lord, saying” “Ya-Wadud”, as this will enable the sincere to attain real love of their Lord Almighty and to love everything around themselves. We must learn to love everything for the sake of the love the Creator has for all His creation. And we are in utmost need to pray for such love, as although it is the essence of all success in the way of spiritual purification, it has become almost extinct in our times. Therefore, suffering, disturbances, struggle, crisis and chaos are continually on the rise. What passes for human love nowadays is in deed a very far cry from real human love. Mostly, people cling to it for two or three months then throw it away. You are saying: “Oh my goddess” and she is saying, “Oh my god,” but look in again on them two or three months later and see what is left of that “true devotion” and “deep emotion”. That is the greatest cause of wretchedness in our times. For this reason I don’t refer to this century as a civilized one. Rather, the twentieth century is witnessing the destruction of civilization, and every minute violence and misery are increasing. The Oceans Of Divine Love. The Lord – our Lord, your Lord, and their Lord – is One. He created us and planted His Divine Love in the very yeast of our being. You must know that, although that love may be temporarily covered, it is running through our hearts as a river runs to an ocean. Along the course of that river love may manifest only as temporary human love, and that love current may even seem to disappear completely, like a river that flows under a mountain, only to re-emerge on the other side. But there can be no doubt that our Lord has placed in every heart a current that flows irresistible to His Love Oceans in the Divine Presence. Therefore, don’t imagine them to be cut off from Divine Love – it must be with them, whether that is now apparent to you and to themselves, or not. As our heart-current flows toward that ocean, the main difference we notice is that our love is not tied to physical beauty. Everyone loves nature, greenery, rushing waters, youthful forms, beautiful people – but what about the others? The Lord gave of His Love to people in general, not only to the young and beautiful. And the One who implanted His Love in our hearts says: “Oh My servant, as I have given you from My Divine Love, so have I give it to all creation, so spread your love to everyone that you may be in harmony with My Will.” In reality, everything that contains His Love is green and beautiful, but to perceive the beauty in all creation you must transcend outward forms and penetrate to the realm of Spiritual Reality Oceans. First of all, it is important to pass from forms to meanings, from fleeting shapes to eternal spiritual realities, as forms are limited and limiting, whereas spiritual realities are Oceans, Endless Oceans of Contentment. To arrive at those Oceans will bring you inner peace. Therefore, I am trying to love everyone. It is easy to say to a person, “I love you” as long as that person has never harmed you, but according to our Grandsheikh such is not the measure of real love. He used to quote a famous Daghistani Sufi poet who said: “I don’t accept the love that you claim to hold for me to be real until I have tested you. What is my test? If I put you through a meat grinder and you came out the other end as minced meat - but were still alive - and if then I returned you to your original form, would you still love me?” What this poet meant was “If I cause you so much suffering, and harm you as no one has ever harmed you before, will you still love me despite all that I have done? That is true love. But if I am with you for forty years, and because of one hurtful word I may utter towards you in a moment of stress, you leave me and declare me to be your enemy, denying the love of forty years and saying, “ I don’t love you anymore”, that is not the love we are referring to. Therefore, as I have said, there are levels of love along the way, differing in quality according to their nearness to the goal, the Absolute Love Oceans of our Lord. When one has reached that goal he may take any amount of harm from others and still love. He may say: “I love you for the sake of my Lord, not for any other reason. That love will never change or diminish, as no matter what you do your Lord’s love is with you. You may behave like a wild animal, you may wound me, but yet, for you to even exist, my Lord’s love must be with you, and therefore I am loving you, too.” Only the highest and most select of mankind are ever on such a level, and we are trying to reach that point – but it is so difficult. You must know that this is a test for you and an opportunity to gain spiritual ranks. Now you are in a situation where you must be patient with people who may not be upholding the same level of decorum that you are accustomed to. Here is an opportunity for you to advance, as Holy people have advised us: rather than avoiding all ill-mannered and badly educated people, we should mingle with them and establish contact with them, that they may benefit and that you may test yourself and gain thereby. They are servants of the Almighty’s Will, and we are His servants too. Our Lord is their Lord and their Lord is our Lord. We must be patient and we will gain, little by little. Cherry trees first yield bitter fruit, but you must wait – little by little, little by little, the tree starts to yield sweet and tasteful cherries. The Promise of The Holy Masters The Holy Masters have promised me that whoever sits with us and listens with his heart full of love must come to the same level: their hearts must open to Divine Love. The Masters are not going to abandon us, and we are not going to turn from them, as our hearts have been bound with the strongest of bonds; the bond of Divine Love, that strongest of relationships of love that exists between the Creator and His creatures. That relationship is the ultimate goal of existence, and we pray that we may grow stronger always. Those with whom we sit and whose hearts are receptive to Divine Love will attain that love. This is a promise from the Masters, and therefore our meeting indicates that your time is approaching, the time when you will be able to break the bonds that make you slaves to your egos. Soon you will be free to approach your spiritual goals, and that is why everyone here feels himself affected and moved to tears. If the love that was with me were only transitory love you wouldn’t even bother sitting with me for a moment. But the love that is with me is real, permanent and Divine, and I have extended a ray of it to your hearts to awaken permanent love in you. My daughters and sons in attendance here today have never met me before, but our first meeting has been enough to establish real love from my heat to theirs. This is a love they will never forget, a love that is blossoming in their hearts. I ask my Lord for permission to spread His permanent love to the hearts of all people – and the time is approaching when we hope that permission will be granted. Love is eternal, and the transitory nature of all things pertaining to this world is a sign of truth, a sign that shows s by means of contrast. Real spiritual love: love of Allah and love of mankind for the sake of Allah is the only truth, the only thing in this world that is permanently and constantly sweet. Physical separation from someone you love, in accordance with the rule that pertains to the physical, may create a longing that will cause love to increase, may augment the bliss of reunion. But on the spiritual level that love is constant, is never interrupted by distance or by time. Your beloved may be on the moon and you may be in bliss at the thought of reunion, but if love is unrequited, that is not sweet separation but a bitter pill. The extinction of love is pitch darkness. You may regard the sunset as beautiful, but how would you feel if it were setting forever? Love is the water of life. Allah created Adam from clay and water. If it were not for water the clay would hold no shape. Divine Love is what binds our souls together. That is why people become so miserable when they feel unloved. It is a feeling that something essential is missing from one’s life, that life itself is incomplete, and in the face of this ache people set out in search of love with the desperation of a man dying of thirst. Love is an attribute of God Almighty which binds His servants to Him eternally. If Allah were to hate mankind it would be so easy for Him to bring about an abrupt and terrible end to our follies – but He loves us and therefore shows us so much tolerance. If you are a parent, consider your love for your children. If your son grew up to be a criminal, would you not love him still? Would you not maintain that despite his bad actions (which you would perhaps readily condemn) he was still basically at heart a good boy? Would you not find excuses for his bad behavior and have faith that he would turn away again from those bad actions? Ask For Divine Love Love is lovely to the Lord and to His servants. If you do anything with love it should be accepted by your Lord, and He should make it tasteful for you. If you love your work it will be easy for you to do, if not, it will only be a burden. The Lord says: “I am not in need of your worship; I am only seeking the love with which it is offered. “Oh servants of the Lord, Oh believers, you must not overlook this point. Don’t be like slaves rowing in the galley of a ship – if you pray, you must pray with love not by force, as if a slave driver were standing over you with a whip! Allah never appreciates such forced devotions. Now we are trying to perform all the practices but forgetting to ask for Divine Love, so we are becoming like mechanical robots, or like people performing gymnastics. Allah has asked us to engage our bodies in His worship and in service to His creation through charity and good deeds, but what must be the fruit of those actions? If the fruit is not love it is bitter fruit and is rejected. If our worship causes Love of Allah to grow in our hearts, then we must keep to that practice and continue on our way: and if we are keeping the company of a spiritual teacher, and find that through keeping his company love of Allah is awakening in our hearts, then we must follow him closely. The Love of Allah is not easy to attain, for we cannot imagine Him; therefore, He Almighty has made the Prophets apostles of His Love. Allah’s Beloved, the Seal of Prophets, Muhammad, upon whom be peace, was such a pure medium for the transmission of that love that the hearts of his companions were overwhelmed with his love, and were transported to the love of Allah. He was the representative of Allah, who is the Absolute Truth; therefore, the Prophet declared: “Who has seen me has seen the Absolute Truth”. When a delegation of non-Muslims came to visit Medina, they were amazed at the love and respect shown to the Prophet by his companions. When they returned home they said to their leaders: “We have met many emperors, kings and tribal chiefs, but never have we seen one whose subjects or courtiers treat him with such sincere love and devotion. How can this be?” They were not able to comprehend the secret of this love, as their egos caused them to deny Mohammed’s prophet hood. The love of the companions towards the Prophet was such that they used to say to him: “I am ready to sacrifice for you even my mother and father”, which, for the Arabs, is much stronger than saying: “I would sacrifice myself for you”. And in reality many of them underwent nearly unbearable hardships for the sake of their belief in the mission of the Holy Prophet: exile, disinheritance, boycott, torture and death. Who represented the Holy Prophet after his life on Earth? They are those who evoked such love. The Prophet himself described them: “Those who see them are reminded of Allah”. He who thirsts for Divine Love must seek out such people, but in our time they are mostly hidden, and Islam has come to mean for many people only a set of rules of conduct and forms of worship – an empty shell. Who can derive taste from such a thing? Shall mosques be only gymnasiums? And now the “gym teachers” are opposing Sufi Paths, which are the ways of the heart, ways that lead to the Love of God. Our Lord has given us an instrument that measures not your blood pressure but our “love pressure” and our goal is to make it high! Yes, seek to improve with every new day, for the Holy Prophet said: Whoever does not improve with each day is losing ground. “What does this mean? It doesn’t mean that if we pray forty rakats of prayer today, we should pray forty-one tomorrow and forty-two the next day. No, that is not required, what is intended is that you fill your worship with ever more love of your Lord, so that He will observe: “My servant has sent Me more love today than yesterday. “One of our Grandsheikhs summarized perfectly what I am trying to say: “An atom’s weight of love is worth more than seventy years’ worship without love”. Today we speak about love for Allah and His Prophet. Our Grandsheikh was telling this hadith, that one day the Prophet was giving a sermon when one Bedouin came to the door of the mosque and shouted: “Oh Prophet, when is the Last Day coming?” There was no answer, so he called out again and still again. The Prophet was waiting for Allah to provide him with an answer, as only He knows when the Last Day is. Then the Angel Jibril came to him saying: “Ask him what he did in preparation for the Last day”. The man replied: “Muhammed, I love you and I love your Lord, nothing else, only this”. Then Jibril told Muhammed: “Answer him that he will be with you and your Lord like two fingers together. Everyone who loves another must be with him on the Last day.” On hearing this, Abu Bakr asked: “Oh Prophet, is not action a necessary condition, is only love enough?” He answered: “No, Ya Aba Bakr, actions are not a condition, what is important is love. Everyone will be with his beloved friend.”

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Even 'Beyondness' is a point of view.

"That everyone has different experiences and perspectives is not a problem; rather, the problem is that when we interpret an experience outside its own paradigm, context, and stated definitions, that experience becomes lost altogether. It becomes lost because we have redefined the terms according to a totally different paradigm or perspective and thereby made it over into an experience it never was in the first place. When we force an experience into an alien paradigm, that experience becomes subsumed, interpreted away, unrecognizable, confused, or made totally indistinguishable. Thus when we impose alien definitions on the original terms of an experience, that experience becomes lost to the journey, and eventually it becomes lost to the literature as well. To keep this from happening it is necessary to draw clear lines and to make sharp, exacting distinctions. The purpose of doing so is not to criticize other paradigms, but to allow a different paradigm or perspective to stand in its own right, to have its own space in order to contribute what it can to our knowledge of man and his journey to the divine.

 Distinguishing what is true or false, essential or superficial in our experience is not a matter to be taken lightly. We cannot simply define our terms and then sit back and expect perfect agreement across the board. Our spiritual-psychological journey does not work this way. We are not uniform robots with the same experiences, same definitions, same perspectives, or same anything."
Bernadette Roberts.

That seems pretty useful to me in the wake of all the endless discussions and endless terminology of levels and personally percieved definitions of that terminology which have spewed out recently (especially with reference to or in reaction against Benthino's latest thing) ...
Ultimately, on a pragamatic level it means that whatever our own experience is and whatever our own interpretation of that experience is, is real for us personally. One almost might say that whatever works for each individual is cool for them.
 After that it is interesting to listen to the other guy and see where he's at and if it looks interesting or better see if we can find something similar in and through ourselves ..
However to constantly be looking at the other guy and criticising him if it doesn't 'measure up' to our own concepts or experience is to deny the possibility of further openings .. and the beauty of the reality that nobody can ever have the full Truth or the Absolute picture .. that is for The Truth or The Absolute itself .. always always beyond .. always always greater than .. and never never communicable in words ..
No human can deny their humanity and the 'point of view' that this implies while alive in a human body ..

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.


Friday, 15th June 2012

08:26:Hrs;


 Analysis shows there is no-thing .. nothing .. at the sub-atomic level .. and there was no-thing before the universe at a cosmic level .. Self analysis shows there is no self at a personal level ..

and yet .. Here it all is and here we all are .. How does that happen ?

No-thing being every-thing.

Individually .. subjectively this is experienced as no-thing being some-thing. Us as a subject and other as object.

In the ‘Being’ .. we meet .. we recognise that other people are, in one sense, objects .. i.e. bodies .. but they are animated bodies with characters and personalities .. we recognise the life in them and that that life is similar to our own .. essentially the same ..

The sameness .. the ‘being’ is what we love and long to know and to be and to share ..

the differences .. the ‘thingness’ .. is what separates us .. causes misunderstandings and even wars ..

What I am saying is that in a world of ‘things’ we are alienated .. as a subject surrounded by and percieving objects .. Nobody really knows how it is that apparent objects upon analysis turn out to not exist .. and yet they are there .. This is due to a being (as a verb not a noun) which is not understood and cannot be described because it is no thing and yet it is what all things exist in .. maybe the essence of what all things actually are .. therefore it is living .. alive .. Being .. No thing .. being everything .. experienced as some things ..

To find that Being which is no thing and yet the essence of all things we must look into ourselves .. It is the only way to find that Being and when it is found in and as the real self (not the body and not the mind) .. then it is recognised that one’s real self is the same One that is all other selves and the essential nature of all that exists ..

That I believe is the work that the human being really was designed to do .. the work of self-knowledge .. It is also what religions were ultimately meant to guide to .. self knowledge being knowledge of God or the Divine or The Absolute .. the No-thing .. which is continually Being Every-thing ...

When one knows oneself as no-thing being something then one knows that all things are no-thing being everything ..

It is the living Being which unites all things and all apparently separate beings .. wether human beings or animal-beings or plants-beings or (apparently)inanimate-beings.

We are all one in Being. All is One in Being.
Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Someone says .. God is Emptiness Emptiness is God .. ..yeah kinda like that ..
Emptiness is so full of God that it overflows into form ! : )
& form is so empty of reality that it flows back into God ..

Either way everything is pregnant with God both form and emptiness .. which are signs of that ..
...
And of course He / It are so much more than that (always) ..

Abandoning the opposites in Unity & then abandoning Unity in Suchness & then abandoning Suchness in Emptiness .. diving into the void .. to find .... that which is beyond finding .. no finder no finding no found .. only that which is ..

& it’s just here .. now .. naked awareness .. and all that is in consciousness .. forms & self .. self and forms co-appearing (interbeing as Tich nat Hahn says) .. in something which is nothing .. Presence .. nothing hiding itself by being everything ..

and expressing itself here now in these words on this lappie .. out to FB and whoever reads it .. ultimately the same one reading it as wrote it .. everywhere God knowing Himself / Itself .. through us .. as us ..
The “meaning” of life ? Just that .. God knowing Himself through His creation which is none other than He ..
Only one thing which is no thing .. everywhere and everywhen at all times and places without time or place ..
The place of the placeless the space of the spaceless .. in the timeless eternal moment of now ..

“Allah was a hidden treasure and He wanted to be known .. so He produced the creation that He might be known.” (hadith qudsi)

But of course all that is knowing and known is none other than He ..
As Ibn Arabi said ...

“Allah was and there was nothing with Him .. and He is now as He was.”

Only the words God and Allah get in the way .. partly because they represent something which is an unknowable Reality and then they get turned into concepts attached to the word .. and more especially because of all the connotations implied by the connection of those concepts with religions and their misapprehensions and consequent contradictory terrible deeds.

Shame about that because I love God .. (none other than He loving Himself as & through me) ..

a hadith in Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti's collection-
which is a Hadith Qudsi which states ...

I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I be known ...
[That is Allah loved that He be known.]
Therefore, I created creation and made by Myself known to them ...
So through Me they knew Me.

(repeat) ..

So through Me they knew Me.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Duality and non-duality same (but different) ..

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.


It’s about the non-local consciousness as pure non duality .. i.e. that which is beyond words .. no-thing .. nothing .. Emptiness or God .. Brahman .. The Absolute .. whatever one chooses to call it ..



Let’s call it Universal Mind for now .. the brain as reciever .. through that the absolute non-dual consciousness gets filtered into duality ..

Actual Reality is all one thing .. but our filtering brain sees it as two contrasting poles which make up dualistic consciousness .. hence time and space .. past and future .. here and there .. and all other dualities ..

All the methods are in order to ‘trip the switch’ of dualistic perception and get back to a state prior to this .. which is like Universal Mind .. when this is done a third state comes in which the dual is realised as the non-dual .. that all the composites of dual mind are composed of nothing but Universal Mind one might say .. Both poles of any pair of opposites not only have the same source but actually are the same source ..

Therefore the wonderful saying ..

The world is an illusion .. only Brahman is real ..

The world is Brahman.



Which is why I almost feel to ‘correct’ that imperfectly stated thing in a thread which says .. Brahman is the World ..

I see that as different from The world is Brahman .. as in the world is not other than Brahman but Brahman is not defined as being the world



I maybe even still find it hard to see emptiness is form .. but easy to see form is emptiness .. (in other words emptiness is a vast emptiness and there is nothing other than it .. and all form is nothing other than emptiness but emptinesss is not defined by the sum of all form .. and far from that )



In more sufi language .. the world is not other than God .. (because nothing truly exists except God) .. but He is not defined by the world .. as He is its creator and therefore much more than that .. creating unimagined worlds with qualities & beings we cannot possibly imagine ..



So the world is an illusion, Allah alone is Real .. the world is not other than Allah .. would sum that up

and translate as ..

The world is an illusion .. Brahman alone is real .. the world is Brahman, in the sense that the world is not other than Brahman ..



I see the world as an illusion created out of whatever ultimate reality is (call it God or Brahman or maybe even Emptiness) .. and not other than that in essence .. but caused or ‘created’ by or through the filtering mechanism of the mind / the brain / dualistic consciousness .. interpreting universal mind or pure non-dual, non-local consciousness.


Saturday, May 19, 2012

Extempore poem on seeking and what is found.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

It rumbles and it tumbles ..
It whispers and it mumbles ..
It’s doing it all the time ..                      
It’s what makes this whole thing rhyme ..        
Its not yours and its not mine
Though it belongs to us all
It’s really what we are
And even all that is
It hides itself by being everything
and all is what we are ..
I can’t find it by a trip out in the car ..                                         
At the end of the rainbow, it’s the pot of gold ..                                   
Seven for a secret never to be told.
Be still silly mind with all your silly rhymes                     
And know ..
And Be ..

A green field and you and me
It’s what we are and what we’ll be
The whole wide world and all that’s on it
It’s in a Shakespeare sonnet ..
It’s love and more than that
Buddha nature in a cat ..
A smile .. the eyes of a child ..
A violet growing wild ..
A stormy windy sea ..dark clouds gathering ..
Grey clouds scudding ..
White ones breezing along ..
In a poem in a song ..
Spring or summer winter or fall ..
All & nothing .. nothing and all ..
Success .. failure .. imposters and fakes
The genuine article .. whatever it takes ..
Losing everything .. gaining all ..
“No really maam it’s no trouble at all !”
 A selfless action, an unexpected gift ..
Making peace .. healing a rift ..
A beautiful valley .. a summer sky
A vast forest with trees more than high
A majestic mountain .. a humble mouse ..
A wet park bench .. a mansion house ..
Can’t stop it .. can’t judge it .. it cannot be caught ..
No should or shouldn’t , mustn’t or ought ..
A flotilla .. a villa .. a house by the sea ..
An old brown photo, could be you and me ..

A tiny tiny dinghy on an ocean vast and wide ..
A huge ocean liner in a dock full of pride
An annoying phone call with an Indian voice
These things happen, you’ve got no choice ..
It runs by itself and we’re a tiny part ..
The something that is nothing
That’s the seeker’s art ..

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

Tuesday, 24th May 2011
08:39.Hrs;

The States .. and their foreign policy suddenly very much in the news .. a possibility (generally unmentioned) of China putting its first step on the scene .. a clearer picture of how the States have manipulated things from Twin Towers to Iraq to “The Arab Spring” to increase their covert empire and control at least oil supplies to their advantage .. and the strong possibility that it is not really “their” advantage but corporate international business’s advantage somehow using America’s military power and standing on the world stage to their advantage ..
The whole thing may not be such a clear cut done deal but it is obvious that neither is it the picture we are all presented with by our newspapers and television networks.
The nearest thing to something that makes sense in line with SN’s teachings is what (apparently) China has said about the US violating the sovereignty of Pakistan over the (apparent) killing of Bin Laden .. also there is the very warm situation that is occurring in Syria .. and that is in an area which looks much more likely to have knock on effects on the world situation than any of the North African countries.

“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”

Dumbo .. they have a border with China .. duuuh ! .. (energy corridor between Iran and China .. )

If China stands behind Pakistan, then Russia might be said to stand behind China. Looking forward to the upcoming June 15 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Chinese President Hu praised Sino-Russian relations as being “at an unprecedented high point,” with an “obvious strategic ingredient.”

Woh!  

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Prince Charles and Islam.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

I've been away a long time .. going through some changes .. It is hard for me to write anything publicly now .. but, as someone left a message on an earlier entry attempting to express my difficulties with following Islam, .. I thought this wonderful speech from Prince Charles might do instead.


A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales:

Islam and the Environment,
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 9th June 2010


Vice Chancellor, Your Royal Highnesses, Director, Ladies and Gentlemen, 


It is a very great pleasure for me to be here today to help you celebrate the Oxford Centre's twenty-fifth anniversary. Whereas bits of your Patron are dropping off after the past quarter of a century, I find quite a few bits of the Centre still being added! However, I cannot tell you how encouraged I am that in addition to the Prince of Wales Fellowship, the number of fellowships you now offer continues to grow and also that this Summer you will welcome the fifth group of young people on your Young Muslim Leadership programme which is run in association with my charities. This is a vital contribution to the process of boosting the self-esteem of young Muslims – about whom I care deeply. 



It has been a great concern of mine to affirm and encourage those groups and faith communities that are in the minority in this country. Indeed, over the last twenty-five years, I have tried to find as many ways as possible to help integrate them into British society and to build good relationships between our faith communities. I happen to believe this is best achieved by emphasizing unity through diversity. Only in this way can we ensure fairness and build mutual respect in our country. And if we get it right here then perhaps we might be able to offer an example in the wider world.

I am slightly alarmed that it is now seventeen years since I came here to the Sheldonian to deliver a lecture for the Centre that tried to do just this. I called it “Islam and the West” and, from what I can tell, it clearly struck a chord, and not just here in the U.K. I am still reminded of what I said, particularly when I travel in the Islamic world – in fact, because it was printed, believe it or not, it is the only speech I have ever made which continues to produce a small return! 



I wanted to give that lecture to address the dangers of the ignorance and misunderstanding that I felt were growing between the Islamic world and the West in the aftermath of the Cold War. Since then, the situation has both improved and worsened, depending on where you look. Certainly the sorts of advances made by the Oxford Centre have helped to build confidence and understanding, but we all know only too well how some of the things I warned of in that lecture have since come to pass, both here and elsewhere in the world. So it is tremendously important that we continue to work to heal the differences and overcome the misconceptions that still exist. I remain confident that this is possible because there are many values we all share that have the powerful capacity to bind us, rather than what happens when those values are forgotten – or purposefully ignored.



Healing division is also my theme today, but this time it is not the divisions between cultures I want to explore. It is the division that poses a much more fundamental threat to the health and well-being of us all. It is the widening division we are seeing in so many ways between humanity and Nature. 



Many of Nature's vital, life-support systems are now struggling to cope under the strain of global industrialization. How they will manage if millions more people are to achieve Western levels of consumption is highly disturbing to contemplate. The problems are only going to get much worse. And they are very real. Whatever you might have read in the newspapers, particularly about climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen conference last year, we face many related and very serious problems that are a matter of accurate, scientific record. 



The actual facts are that over the last half century, for instance, we have destroyed at least thirty per cent of the world's tropical rainforests and if we continue to chop them down at the present rate, by 2050 we will end up with a very disturbing situation. In fact, in the three years since I started my Rainforest Project to try and help find an innovative solution to tropical deforestation, over 30 million hectares have been lost, and with them this planet has lost about 80,000 species. When you consider that a given area of equatorial trees evaporates eight times as much rainwater as an equivalent patch of ocean, you quickly start to see how their disappearance will affect the productivity of the Earth. They produce billions of tonnes of water every day and without that rainfall the world's food security will become very unstable. 



But there are other facts too. In the last fifty years our industrialized approach to farming has degraded a third of the Earth's top soil. That is a fact. We have also fished the oceans so extensively that if we continue at the same rate for much longer we are likely to see the collapse of global fisheries in forty years from now. Another fact. Then there are the colossal amounts of waste that pollute the Earth – the many dead zones where nothing can live in many major river estuaries and various parts of the oceans, or those immense rafts of plastic that now float about in the Pacific. Would you believe that one of them, off the coast of California, is made up of 100 million tonnes of plastic and it has doubled in size in just the last decade. It is now at least six times the size of the United Kingdom. And we call ourselves civilized!



These are all very real problems and they are facts – all of them, the obvious results of the comprehensive industrialization of life. But what is less obvious is the attitude and general outlook which perpetuate this dangerously destructive approach. It is an approach that acts contrary to the teachings of each and every one of the world's sacred traditions, including Islam. 



What surprises me, I have to say, is that, quite apart from whether or not we value the sacred traditions as much as we should, the blunt economic facts make the predominant approach increasingly irrational. I imagine that few of you are familiar with the interim report of the United Nations study called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Study which came out in 2008. It painted a salutary picture of what we lose in straightforward financial terms by our destruction of natural systems and the absence of their services to the world. In the first place they calculated that we destroy around 50 billion dollars worth of a system that produces these services every year. By mapping the loss of those services over a forty year period, their estimate is that, in financial terms, the global economy incurs an annual loss of between 2 and 4.5 trillion dollars – every single year. 



To put that figure into some sort of perspective, the recent crash in the world's banking system caused a one-off loss of just 2 trillion dollars. I wonder why the bigger annual loss does not attract the same kind of Media frenzy as the banking crisis did? 

This should demonstrate the flaw in the sum that does not need an Oxbridge mathematician to understand – that Nature's finite resources, divided by our ever-more rapacious desire for continuous economic growth, does not work out. We are clearly living beyond our means, already consuming the Earth's capital resources faster than she can replenish them. 



Over the years, I have pointed out again and again that our environmental problems cannot be solved simply by applying yet more and more of our brilliant green technology – important though it is. It is no good just fixing the pump and not the well. 



When I say this, everybody nods sagely, but I get the impression that many are often unwilling to embrace what I am really referring to, perhaps because the missing element sits outside the parameters of the prevailing secular view. It is this “missing element” that I would like to examine today. 



In short, when we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. 



So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen.



In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so. 

I must say, I find this rather baffling. If this is so, why is it that their sense of the sacred has so little bearing on the way science is employed to exploit the natural world in so many damaging ways? 



I suppose it must be to do with who pays the fiddler. Over the last two centuries, science has become ever more firmly yoked to the ambitions of commerce. Because there are such big economic benefits from such a union, society has been persuaded that there is nothing wrong here. And so, a great deal of empirical research is now driven by the imperative that its findings must be employed to maximum, financial effect, whatever the impact this may have on the Earth’s long-term capacity to endure. 



This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo's assertion that there is nothing in Nature but quantity and motion. This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works and how we fit within the scheme of things. As a result, Nature has been completely objectified – “She” has become an “it” – and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme. 



Understanding the world from a mechanical point of view and then employing that knowledge has, of course, always been part of the development of human civilization, but as our technology has become ever more sophisticated and our industrialized methods so much more powerful, so the level of destruction is now potentially all the more widespread and un-containable, especially if you add into this mix the emphasis we have on consumerism. 



It was that great scientist, Goethe, who saw life as the masculine principle striving endlessly to reach the “eternal feminine” – what the Greeks called “Sophia,” or wisdom. It is a striving, he said, fired by the force of love. I am not sure that this is quite the way things happen today. Our striving in the industrialized world is certainly not fired by a love of wisdom. It is far more focussed on the desire for the greatest possible financial profit. 



This ignores the spiritual teachings of traditions like Islam, which recognize that it is not our animal needs that are absolute; it is our spiritual essence, an essence made for the infinite. But with consumerism now such a key element in our economic model, our natural, spiritual desire for the infinite is constantly being reflected towards the finite. Our spiritual perspective has been flattened and made earthbound and we are persuaded to channel all of our natural, never-ending desire for what Islamic poets called “the Beloved” towards nothing but more and more material commodities. Unfortunately we forget that our spiritual desire can never be completely satisfied. It is rightly a never-ending desire. But when that desire is focussed only on the earthly, it becomes potentially disastrous. The hunger for yet more and more things creates an alarming vacuum and, as we are now realizing, this does great harm to the Earth and creates a never ending unhappiness for many, many people.



I hope you can just begin to see my point. The utter dominance of the mechanistic approach of science over everything else, including religion, has “de-souled” the dominant world view, and that includes our perception of Nature. As soul is elbowed out of the picture, our deeper link with the natural world is severed. Our sense of the spiritual relationship between humanity, the Earth and her great diversity of life has become dim. The entire emphasis is all on the mechanical process of increasing growth in the economy, of making every process more “efficient” and achieving as much convenience as possible. None of which could be said to be an ambition of God. And so, unfashionable though it is to suggest it, I am keen to stress here the need to heal this divide within ourselves. How else can we heal the divide between East and West unless we reconcile the East and West within ourselves? Everything in Nature is a paradox and seems to carry within itself the paradox of opposites. Curiously, this maintains the essential balance. Only human beings seem to introduce imbalance. The task is surely to reconnect ourselves with the wisdom found in Nature which is stressed by each of the sacred traditions in their own way.



My understanding of Islam is that it warns that to deny the reality of our inner being leads to an inner darkness which can quickly extend outwards into the world of Nature. If we ignore the calling of the soul, then we destroy Nature. To understand this we have to remember that we are Nature, not inanimate objects like stones; we reflect the universal patterns of Nature. And in this way, we are not a part that can somehow disengage itself and take a purely objective view. 



From what I know of the Qu’ran, again and again it describes the natural world as the handiwork of a unitary benevolent power. It very explicitly describes Nature as possessing an “intelligibility” and that there is no separation between Man and Nature, precisely because there is no separation between the natural world and God. It offers a completely integrated view of the Universe where religion and science, mind and matter are all part of one living, conscious whole. We are, therefore, finite beings contained by an infinitude, and each of us is a microcosm of the whole. This suggests to me that Nature is a knowing partner, never a mindless slave to humanity, and we are Her tenants; God's guests for all too short a time. 



If I may quote the Qu’ran, “Have you considered: if your water were to disappear into the Earth, who then could bring you gushing water?” This is the Divine hospitality that offers us our provisions and our dwelling places, our clothing, tools and transport. The Earth is robust and prolific, but also delicate, subtle, complex and diverse and so our mark must always be gentle – or the water will disappear, as it is doing in places like the Punjab in India. Industrialized farming methods there rely upon the use of high-yielding seeds and chemical fertilizers, both of which need a lot more energy and a lot more water as well. As a consequence the water table has dropped dramatically – I have been there, I have seen it – so far, by three feet a year. Punjabi farmers are now having to dig expensive bore holes over 200 feet deep to get at what remains of the water and, as a result, their debts become ever deeper and the salt rises to the surface contaminating the soil. 



This is not a sustainable way of growing food and maintaining the well-being of communities. It does not respect Divine hospitality. The costs it incurs will have to be borne by those who will inherit what is fast becoming the ruined and frayed fabric of life. So for their sake, we have to acknowledge that the immediate, short-term financial benefits of our predominant, mechanistic approach are too expensive to continue to dominate our way of life. 



This happens when traditional principles and practices are abandoned – and with them, all sense of reverence for the Earth which is an inseparable element in an integrated and spiritually grounded tradition like Islam – just as it was once firmly embedded in the philosophical heritage of Western thought. The Stoics of Ancient Greece, for instance, held that “right knowledge,” as they called it, is gained by living in agreement with Nature, where there is a correspondence or a sympathy between the truth of things, thought and action. They saw it as our duty to achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the Cosmos. 

This incidentally is also the teaching of Judaism. The Book of Genesis says that God placed Mankind in the garden “to tend it and take care of it,” to serve and conserve it for the sake of future generations. “Adamah” in Hebrew means “the one hewn from the Earth,” so Adam is a child of the Earth. In my own tradition of Christianity, the immanence of God is made explicit by the incarnation of Christ. But let us also not forget that throughout the Christian New Testament, Christ often refers to Himself as “the Son of Man” which, in Hebrew, is “Ben Adam.” He, too, is a “son of the Earth,” surely making the same explicit connection between human nature and the whole of Nature. 



Even the apocryphal Gnostic texts are imbued with the same principle. The fragments of one of the oldest, ascribed to Mary Magdalene, instructs us that “Attachment to matter gives rise to passion against Nature. Thus, trouble arises in the whole body; this is why I tell you; be in harmony.” In all cases the message is clear. Our specific purpose is to “earth” Heaven. So, to separate ourselves within an inner darkness, leads to what the Irish poet, WB Yeats, warned of at the start of the Twentieth Century. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he wrote, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.” 



The traditional way of life within Islam is very clear about the “centre” that holds the relationship together. From what I know of its core teachings and commentaries, the important principle we must keep in mind is that there are limits to the abundance of Nature. These are not arbitrary limits, they are the limits imposed by God and, as such, if my understanding of the Qu'ran is correct, Muslims are commanded not to transgress them. 



Such instruction is hard to square if all you do is found your understanding of the world on empirical terms alone. Four hundred years of relying on trying and testing the facts scientifically has established the view that spirituality and religious faith are outdated expressions of superstitious belief. After all, empiricism has proved how the world fits together and it is nothing to do with a “Supreme Being.” There is no empirical evidence for the existence of God so, therefore, Q.E.D, God does not exist. It is a very reasonable, rational argument, and I presume it can be applied to “thought” too. After all, no brain scanner has ever managed to photograph a thought, nor a piece of love, and it never will. So, Q.E.D., that must mean “thought” and “love” do not exist either! 



Clearly there is a point beyond which empiricism cannot make complete sense of the world. It works by establishing facts through testing them by the scientific process. It is one kind of language and a very fine one, but it is a language not able to fathom experiences like faith or the meaning of things – it is not able to articulate matters of the soul. This is why it consistently elbows soul out of the picture. 



But we do have other kinds of “language,” as Islam well knows, and they are much better at dealing with the realm of the soul and matters of meaning. Each is a different aspect of our language, in fact. Each deals with different aspects of the truth and if you put empiricism, philosophy and the spiritual perception of life together, just as the Islamic tradition at its best and richest has always done, then they tend to complement each other rather well. 



Take the difference this made in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, as an example, during the so-called “Golden Age of Islam.” It was a period which gave rise to a spectacular flowering of scientific advancement, but all of it was underpinned by an age-old philosophical understanding of reality and grounded in a profound spirituality, which included a deep reverence for the Natural world. Theirs was an integrated vision of the world, reflecting the timeless truth that all life is rooted in the unity of the Creator. This is the testimony of faith, is it not, embodied in the contemplative implication of the formless essence of the Qur'an's haqîqa? It is the notion of Tawhîd, the oneness of all things within the embrace of the Divine unity. 



Islamic writers express it so well. Ibn Khaldûn, for instance, who taught that “all creatures are subject to a regular and orderly system. Causes are linked to effects where each is connected with the other.” Or the great Shabistâri in Fourteenth Century Persia, who talked of the world being “a mirror from head to foot, in every atom a hundred blazing suns where a world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.” Words that resonate, don't you think, with William Blake's famous lines, “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower.” 



Other Western poets have captured this truth too. William Wordsworth, perhaps one of the greatest of all our Nature poets, describes “a sense sublime of something far more inter-fused… a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of thought and rolls through all things.” I quote the poets because they help us identify this “sense sublime” and inspire reverence for the created world. 



Reverence is not science-based knowledge. It is an experience always mediated by love, sometimes induced by it; and love comes from relationship. If you take away reverence and reduce our spiritual relationship with life, then you open yourself up to the idea that we can be little more than a chance group of isolated, self-obsessed individuals, disconnected from life’s innate presence and un-anchored by any sense of duty to the rest of the world. We are free to act without responsibility. Thus we turn a blind eye to those islands of plastic in the sea, or to the treatment meted out to animals in factory farms. And it is why the so-called “precautionary principle” is so often thrown out of the window. 



This is the principle that would make us think twice if, say, we were to climb into a vehicle that happens to have a ninety per cent chance of crashing. Instead, because the danger is not proven beyond doubt, we think it is safe to embark upon the journey. This is how we proceed in many significant fields – in matters like genetic modification or climate change. We go on denying that there may be side-effects, even if our intuition warns us to be cautious, or even if there is some related evidence. Recently, for instance, the news emerged that, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of honey bee colonies in the United States failed to survive the Winter. More than three million colonies in the U.S. and billions of honeybees worldwide have died. Scientists say they are no nearer to knowing what is causing this catastrophic collapse, but there is plenty of evidence that modern pesticides have played their part. Given that bees, like nearly every other bug, are insects, I would have thought it was rather obvious. And yet we carry on with a narrow-minded, mechanistic approach to industrialized farming with all its focus on high yields at whatever price. So we lace the fields with pesticides that kill insects. It is quite bizarre how we continue to entrust our food security to the very substances that are destroying the harmonic cycle which produces our food. It really is a form of collective hubris and I often wonder if those who practise such well-exercised scepticism in these matters will ever see that “the Emperor is wearing no clothes?”



This, then, is why the wisdom and learning offered by a sacred tradition like Islam matters – and, if I may say so, why those who hold and strive to preserve their sacred traditions in different parts of the world have every reason to become more confident of their ground. The Islamic world is the custodian of one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity. It is both Islam’s noble heritage and a priceless gift to the rest of the world. And yet, so often, that wisdom is now obscured by the dominant drive towards Western materialism – the feeling that to be truly “modern” you have to ape the West. 



To counter that tendency I have done what I can with my School of Traditional Arts to nurture and support traditional and sacred craft skills – not least those of Islam – because they keep alive a perspective that we sorely need, even though short-term fashion deems them to be irrelevant. The geometry and patterning that are taught at the School are the basis of the many crafts that have been all but abandoned in many parts of the world, including the Islamic world. It is a tragedy of monumental proportions that they are being forgotten because they reflect the spiritual mathematics found everywhere in Nature. As Islam teaches very specifically, it is a patterning that reflects the very ground of our being. It is the Divine imagination, so to speak; the ineffable presence that is the sacred breath of life. As the Seventeenth Century mystic, Ibn Âshir, puts it, by the practice of these arts you “see the One who manifests in the form, not the form by itself.” 



For many in the modern world this is hard to understand because the view of God has become so distorted. “God” is seen as being, somehow, outside “His” creation, rather than part of its unfolding – what the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Being the principle that underlines the Cosmos, the Cosmos is the result of God knowing it and of it knowing the uncreated God. Notice the emphasis there on “un”-created. It is of profound importance. The basis of all existence is in this relationship.



I suspect the reason why this is such an unfashionable view is that the deep-seated experience of participation in the living, creative presence of God is offered to us in all traditions not by empiricism, but by revelation. This is a rare and precious gift and only given to those whose supreme humanity and capacity for great humility achieves a mastery over the ego. It comes at the moment when “the knower and the known” become one – the moment when the mind of Man comes into union with the mind of God. 



This, of course, is not deemed possible from an empirical point of view, but revelation is a very different kind of knowing from scientific, evidence-based knowledge, and I cannot stress the point strongly enough; by dismissing such a process and discarding what it offers to humankind, we throw away a very important lifeline for the future. 

I must say, once you do blend the different languages – the empirical and the spiritual together as I am suggesting, and as I have been trying to say for so long – then you do begin to wonder why the sceptics think the desire to work in harmony with Nature is so unscientific. Why is it deemed so worthwhile to abandon our true relationship with the “beingness” of all things; to limit ourselves to the science of manipulation, rather than immerse ourselves in the wider science of understanding? They seem such spurious arguments, because, as Islam clearly understands, it is actually impossible to divorce human beings from Nature’s patterns and processes. The Qur’an is considered to be the “last Revelation” but it clearly acknowledges which book is the first. That book is the great book of creation, of Nature herself, which has been taken too much for granted in our modern world and needs to be restored to its original position.

So, with all this in mind, I would like to set you a challenge, if I may; a challenge that I hope will be conveyed beyond this audience today. It is the challenge to mobilize Islamic scholars, poets and artists, as well as those craftsmen, engineers and scientists who work with and within the Islamic tradition, to identify the general ideas, the teachings and the practical techniques within the tradition which encourage us to work with the grain of Nature rather than against it. I would urge you to consider whether we can learn anything from the Islamic culture's profound understanding of the natural world to help us all in the fearsome challenges we face. Are there, for instance, any that could help preserve our precious marine eco-systems and fisheries? Are there any traditional methods of avoiding damage to all of Nature’s systems that revive the principle of sustainability within Islam? 



To give you an idea of what I mean, let me offer a few examples drawn from the work done by my School of Traditional Arts, where project workers have shown that re-introducing traditional craft skills brings a coherence to peoples' daily lives, perhaps because they fuse the spiritual with the practical. 



Since I founded it, the School has helped restore these skills in places as far afield as Jordan and Nigeria. It also helps to build bridges within communities in this country which have suffered the worst fractures. In Burnley in Lancashire, for instance, project workers have been teaching children from many backgrounds an integrated view of the world using the patterns of Islamic sacred geometry. This has not just inspired the imagination of the children taking part, but their teachers too. They tell me they have discovered a much more integrated approach to education, where maths and art are not alien to one another, but are seen as two sides of the same coin and directly rooted in Nature's patterns and processes. 



In Afghanistan, I have only recently managed to see the work being done under the umbrella of what we have called “the Turquoise Mountain Foundation” – an initiative I launched some four years ago – which is running similar education programmes and craft training courses. It is also helping with the urban regeneration of the old historic quarter of the city by guiding people to start businesses using the craft skills they have learned. 



For example, in the building of schools, people are being shown how to use mud-bricks which are a quarter of the price of the concrete blocks used by other agencies. They are also resistant to earthquakes, whereas concrete is not. And they cope much better with extremes of temperature – mud-brick buildings are cooler in the Summer and warmer in the Winter. What is more, they use local labour and local, natural materials. So these schools are a good example of how traditional wisdom blends with modern needs. After all, you can still use computers and other modern technology in a mud-brick building! And more comfortably, too, given it is more suited to local conditions. 



When I finally did manage to reach Kabul earlier this year – after several years of trying – what I saw was truly remarkable. It proved to me that teaching and employing traditional crafts is an effective way of re-introducing the kinds of techniques that are benign to the natural environment. They are also capable of restoring a cultural balance in peoples' minds. By encouraging a wider celebration of the traditional, ancient culture of Afghanistan, these skills help in a very practical way to counteract the oppressive effects of extremism in all its forms, both religious and secular. This is how traditional wisdom works. It is not a theory or a science written down. Its wisdom is discovered through practice and in action. 



These are schemes that are close to my heart, but the Oxford Centre keeps me informed of many others. Working in Muslim countries, the World Wildlife Fund has found that trying to convey the importance of conservation is much easier if it is transmitted by religious leaders whose reference is Qur'anic teaching. In Zanzibar, they had little success trying to reduce spear-fishing and the use of dragnets, which were destroying the coral reefs. But when the guidance came from the Qur'an, there was a notable change in behaviour. Or in Indonesia and in Malaysia, where former poachers are being deterred in the same way from destroying the last remaining tigers. 



And it is not just such interventions that are important. It is mystifying, for instance, that the modern world completely ignores the time-honoured feats of engineering in the ancient world. The Qanats of Iran, for example, that still provide water for thousands of people in what would otherwise be desert conditions. These underground canals – unbelievably 170,000 miles of them – keep the water from the mountains moving down the tunnels using gravity alone. And the water in every village is then kept fresh by the way the storage towers keep the air flowing freely, moved by the wind. 



In Spain, the irrigation systems constructed 1200 years ago also still work perfectly, as does the way in which the water is managed by the local population – a way of operating devised before the Muslim rule in Spain disintegrated. The same sorts of Islamic management schemes operate in other parts of the world too, like the “hima” zones in Saudi Arabia which set aside land for use as pasture. These are all examples of how prophetic teaching, in this case framed by the guidance of the Qu'ran, maintains a long term view of things and keeps the danger of a self-interested form of short-term economics at bay.



I am sure that if an organization like the Oxford Centre could help to establish a global forum on “Islam and the Environment” many more very practical, traditional approaches like these could become more widely applied. They may range from science and technology to agriculture, healthcare, architecture and education. Think what could be achieved if mothers and fathers, the teachers in madrassas and Imams, all sought to demonstrate to children how to translate Islamic teachings into practical action – how to blend traditional knowledge and awareness of Nature's needs with the best of what we know now.



This is certainly something I feel we have to do in the one final issue I have to mention as I close. Perhaps a few facts and figures might demonstrate why. 

When I was born in 1948, a city like Lagos in Nigeria had a population of just three hundred thousand. Today, just over sixty years later, it is home to twenty million. Thirty-five thousand people live in every square mile of the city, and its population increases by another six hundred thousand every year. 



I choose Lagos as an example. I could have chosen Mumbai, Cairo or Mexico City; wherever you look, the world's population is increasing fast. It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8 billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within fifty years. In the Arab world, sixty per cent of the population is now under the age of thirty. That will mean, in some way or other, 100 million new jobs will have to be created in that region alone over the next ten to fifteen years. 



I am well aware that the very long term prediction is that population may go down. 150 years from now the trends suggest there may be as few as four billion people, maybe even just two billion, but there is no getting away from the fact that in the short term, in the next fifty years, we face monumental problems as the figures rocket. No mega-city can ever hope to catch up with the present expansion in their numbers to provide adequate healthcare, education, transport, food and shelter for so many. Nor can the Earth herself sustain us all, when the demands and pressures on her bounty worldwide are becoming so intense. 



I know it is a complicated issue. The experts suggest that, in theory, the Earth could support 9 billion people, but not if a vast proportion is consuming the world’s resources at present Western levels. So the changes have to be essentially two-fold. It would certainly help if the acceleration slowed down, but it would also help if the world reduced its desire to consume. 



I have been following carefully the findings of my British Asian Trust in India which has been helping to run a women's education project in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra called Satara. They have noticed that a real difference can be made when women are able to become more involved in the running of the community. This is also the experience in Bangladesh. I have long been fascinated by Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It operates micro-credit schemes that offer loans to the poorest communities through a bank which is now ninety per cent owned by the rural poor. Interestingly, where the loans are managed by the women of the community, the birth rate has gone down. The impact of these sorts of schemes, of education and the provision of family planning services, has been widespread. Whereas in the 1980s, the average family in Bangladesh had six children, now the average figure is three. But with mega-cities growing as they are, I fear there is little chance these sorts of schemes can help the plight of many millions of people unless we all face up to the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural. 



It raises some very difficult moral questions, I know, but do we not each one of us carry the same responsibility towards the Earth? It is surely time to ask if we can come to a view that balances the traditional attitude to the sacred nature of life on the one hand with, on the other, those teachings within each of the sacred traditions that urge humankind to keep within the limits of Nature’s benevolence and bounty.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have endured all this with patience and fortitude. You have also given a very good impression of listening to my own personal thoughts on the perspective opened up by Islamic teaching. I have wanted to convey them to you because it always moves me to be reminded that, from the perspective of traditional Islamic teaching, the destruction of the Earth is represented as the destruction of a prayerful being.



Whichever faith tradition we come from, the fact at the heart of the matter is the same. Our inheritance from our creator is at stake. It will be no good at the end of the day as we sit amidst the wreckage, trying to console ourselves that it was all done for the best possible reasons of development and the betterment of Mankind. The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason – and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with Creation. 



The Modernist ideology that has dominated the Western outlook for a century implies that “tradition” is backward looking. What I have tried to explain today is that this is far from true. Tradition is the accumulation of the knowledge and wisdom that we should be offering to the next generation. It is, therefore, visionary – it looks forward. 

Turning to the traditional teachings, like those found in Islam that define our relationship with the natural world, does not mean locking us into some sort of cultural and technological immobility. As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do. 


All of the mounting evidence is telling us that we are, indeed, on the wrong road, so you might think it would be wise to draw on the timeless guidance that comes from our intuitive sense of the origin of all things to which we are rooted. Nature's rhythms, her cycles and her processes, are our guides to this uncreated, originating voice. They are our greatest teachers because they are expressions of Divine Unity. Which is why there is a profound truth in that seemingly simple, old saying of the nomads – that “the best of all Mosques is Nature herself.”

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.

I consider the following a classic Sheikh Nazim sohbet, well worth reading .. even more well worth watching perhaps. (To hear and see the Sheikh, for me at least, makes the message so much easier to understand and drives it home so much deeper. Also literal transcriptions are often hard to understand as the Sheikh has a rather special English (for example his habit of using the present continuous e.g. "Is it paining?" rather than "Does it hurt?").
Please try either, or both.

Feedback in the form of comments, reactions and constructive criticism are most welcome.


SufiLive.com > Transcript Available in: Turkish English French Italian Spanish
Slay Your Dragon and Become a Saint Like Saint George (Khidr )
Mawlana Shaykh Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani Sultanul Awliya Wednesday, Sep 02, 2009 Lefke CY
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Email transcript

Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem
Fatiha!
Destur ya rijaal Allah, meded!
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar! Ya Malika ’l-mulk! Ya Dhul Jalaali wa’l-Ikraam!
Holy ones! Give us from your endless blessings, and O our Lord You created us to give what we are in need here and hereafter. You are so generous. No any limit for Your Generosity.
O our Lord Who created everything from pre-eternal to eternal! Your creation is running (on), O our Lord.
Forgive us. We are weak ones. We are in need every second and less of a second (for) Your support. You are giving life. If not we are dead bodies. O our Lord! You created us. For the honor of this holy month for the honor of the most beloved one, the most glorified one and for the honor of Your most majestic one’s honor, for that one, forgive us and give us strength to make us as You like.
Sometimes it is so easy and sometimes most difficult to do as You like. You can make it easy according to the intentions of Your servants. O our Lord! You are our Sultan. You are Subhaan! Give us from Your endless blessings, for the honor of most beloved one Sayyidina Muhammad (s).
We are asking for his honor - in spite of Wahabi people and Salafi people. You granted to that one that no one can grant what You granted Sayyidina Muhammad (s). In spite of Shaytaan, in spite of devils, Allah may make them under the seventh levels of dark worlds.
O our master, who is following the way, holy way, enlighted way, with true steps, O our master.
We are asking from your holy powers to make ourselves enough strong for following your ways, O beloved ones. Don't leave us to run on dark ways; on Sataanic ways. Whole Glory, whole Majesty, whole Dominions for You O our Lord!
And we are saying A`udhu billahi min as Shaytaani 'r-Rajeem, running to your from Shaytaan and its followers and we are asking from heavens, a spiritual heavenly sword, and we are saying Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem. Who coming under that spiritual sword never going to be down or to be worst one. Always who saying Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem he is up. Who not saying, all of them down. And we are saying to whole listeners, as-salaamu `alaykum.
I am a weak one. And my master, who has been permitted to make me to address whole nations through east and west, O my master! Don't leave me in the hands of Shaytaans and Shaytaanic powers. we must be powerful and we are asking power and we are enough powerful. Not Shaytaan and Shaytaanic groups, (they) are always weak and we are always powerful.
Istaghfirullah, asking forgiveness (sits).
O people! I am a weak one. I am a very weak servant. But when the honor of most honored in Divine Present, for the honor of Sayyidina Muhammad (s), whole salutes from heavens on him, we are enough powerful.
We are not weak ones. We are powerful one as well as most honored ones wings on ourselves here protected and sheltered and enjoyed and enlighted.
O people! ! Come and hear. I am weakest one but when from enlighted worlds through the master of this world, coming a Divinely Support, I may be most as powerful or strongest one on earth. but now I am nothing. I am not asking to make a show for myself. No. Whole show I can do for my master and he may do for Most Glorious One's show and Most Glorious One, he may do show for the Creator of whole creation, hahah.
I am only trying to make a show as an ant making a show, hehe. My ability or capacity less than that ant. But I am trying to make a show. I can't reach up, only I can reach to my master's ocean, to come a little bit closer and asking to show people about holy ones power and honor.
Particularly now you are, O people! In the holiest month, Ramadan. Blessed month. And through this blessed month I am trying to reach something from spirituality. Through spirituality I am asking to reach the level of holy ones, that holy ones they are blessed ones. Blessed ones and O people! If you are not going to reach blessings from heavens through your whole life, what is the benefit of your existence here? What does it mean? It means nothing nothing!
Why? Why you are not asking "Am I in existence to be nothing? To be like a dust?”
It is big blame, O people! if I am not asking that question, “For what I am in existence? What is the main aim of my being in existence? For what I have been granted eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet and a perfect figure.”
Yes, man just created on a perfect figure. No any other created as a man. The creation of man it is perfect. SubhanAllah, the Glory to Allah!
What is bu bizi temsin (representative) eh I mean to say that word to you. Ahsani taqweem. cok guzel bir kalima var. ahsana taqweem that word that I am asking effendim, this building mutasawwar, designer. I am looking that word but all of you never giving your attention. Who designed ourselves? Who Designed? Who is designer of man, and our design is best design, yes? Ahsani taqweem. He, someone designing you through your mom's womb. Who is that one? Why giving two ears, two eyes, one head, two hands, two feet? O big ones! O who claiming that they areNumer One, Number One through nations!
SubhanAllah, Glory to Allah, that I am always thinking that there is “First Lady” but why there is not “First Gentleman”? What is the reason? Who can give the wisdom of that why they are saying First Lady? For example first lady of mamon, US, cumhuriye espide, ne diyordir. Why not saying for His Excellency Obama, “First Gentleman” but for his lady they are saying “First Lady"? Because man's understanding over the understanding of ladies and ladies they are always happy to be first ones, number one. But man never taking care for that.
Yes, both of them coming from the wombs of their moms. Do you think that angels writing on man only “man” and on girl writing “First Lady"? Written through the wombs of moms for their girl babies "Ladies"? No.
Why we are going that way I don't know. Yes, I know sometimes. Sometimes I don’t know. but it is an important point.
“Ya Shaykh come and say to us.”
“Yah. I am not claiming that I am a shaykh, no.”
I am zero shaykh. Ama, but no one accepting to be zero, everyone accepting to be something and everyone asking to try the top point of undurma, (fake) imitated gurursumuz, everyone asking to be something but everyone whom they are asking to be something their titles all of them it is imitated, not real. Real titles in Divinely Present.
But ladies they are happy to be something and according desires of ladies, theire men are asking also to show that "we are also Number One."