. . . Whoever adores Allah through the fears of the fires of hell or in order to gain Paradise, whoever invokes Him in order that his share in the goods of the world be enlarged, or so that people should turn their faces toward him in order that he be glorified, or to avoid the evil which an oppressor afflicts upon him; or further, if he has heard a hadith* of the Prophet according to which he who accomplishes a certain pious work, or recites a certain invocation, will receive from God some recompense - whoever does this, his adoration is tainted, and it will not be acceptable to God except by virtue of His grace and of His generosity. . . . God said, "Whoever hopes to encounter his Lord, let him do pious works and, in the adoration of his Lord, not associate any being with Him." (Koran 18:110) The things which I have mentioned are the "beings" which are associated with God. Now, God is, of all those that are associated in adoration, the One who absolutely transcends all association. That is why He prescribed to all His servants that they adore Him with a perfectly pure faith which implies the desire for no other recompense than His face. . . . *hadith: A saying of the Prophet transmitted outside the Qur'an through a chain of known intermediaries. There are two kinds of hadith: hadith qudsi (sacred sentence), a direct revelation, in which God speaks in the first person by the mouth of the Prophet, and hadith nabawi (prophetic sentence), an indirect revelation in which the Prophet speaks as himself. (Introduction to Sufism, p. 117)
Hadith: A saying of the Prophet transmitted outside the Qur'an through a chain of known intermediaries. There are two kinds of hadith: hadith qudsi (sacred sentence), a direct revelation, in which God speaks in the first person by the mouth of the Prophet, and hadith nabawi (prophetic sentence), an indirect revelation in which the Prophet speaks as himself.
I was swimming in the shariat, obeying what is prescribed as lawful and unlawful in the Qur'an. By the time of Jesus, the followers of Moses had stiffened the sacred law into a rigid orthodoxy. Born into the midst of this calcified religious society, Jesus renewed its lifeblood by emphasizing its core inner teachings of the heart. In a similar way, there is a certain heaviness to the shariat, the sacred law of Islam, insofar as it functions to reign in the ignoble tendencies of the nafs (ego). When I entered the mystic path of Islam, this slightly bitter taste of the shariat became sweeter. So that which, taken by itself, seemed bitter to the nafs, has become sweetened by the honey of mysticism on the Sufi way. Through the Halveti path, I was able to pass through this stage. It is one of the greatest gifts I have received from Allah.
And if you are patient - certainly that (huwa) is better (khayr) for those who are capable of being patient. (Koran 16:126) Commentary: In this verse, Allah consoles his patient servants in their trials by announcing that He Himself is the substitute and the replacement of that which they have lost and which was pleasing to their natural dispositions. In effect, being patient consists in constraining the soul to accept that which is repugnant to it. The soul experiences an aversion for everything which is not in accord with its predisposition in the present instant, even if it knows that it will be beneficial for it later on. . . . Allah has thus announced to those who patiently bear the loss of that which pleases them - health, riches, greatness, security, possessions and children - that "He" [for this is the proper sense of the pronoun huwa rendered above as "that" in conformity with the way the verse is usually understood] is better (khayr) for them than that which they have lost; for they know that "He" [who is the Name of the supreme absolutely unconditioned Essence] is their inseparable reality and their necessary refuge, and that the pleasing things that they have lost were pure illusions. . . . He who has found Allah has lost nothing, and he who has lost Allah has found nothing.
When the sight will be dazed,when the moon will be eclipsed, when the sun and moon will be in conjunction, on that day man will say: "Where to flee?' But there is no refuge. (Koran 75:7-11) Commentary: "When the sight will be dazed"; when it will be stunned and perplexed. This relates to the moment when the theophanies begin, for the being has no previous knowledge of what he is now contemplating, no familiarity with what he is seeing. The "moon" symbolizes the servant in his contingency, and the "eclipse" his disappearance: that is to say, the evidence that his being is borrowed and does not belong to him himself for he "is" only in a metaphorical way. . . . The sun symbolizes the Lord - may He be exalted! - just as the moon symbolizes the servant. Their "conjunction" symbolizes the degree of the "union of the union" (jam' al-jam'), which is the ultimate degree, the greatest deliverance and the supreme felicity; and consists in seeing at the same time the creation subsisting by God, and God manifesting Himself by His creation. . . . The gnostic then asks "Where to flee?" because of the violence of the perplexity provoked in him by the multiplicity of the theophanies: their diversity, their fleeting character, the rapidity with which they disappear, the abundance of the divine descents (tanazzulat) which stun the intellect and plunge it in stupor. . . . "But there is no refuge" - there is no shelter, no way out. The gnostic who would leave this state to find repose is warned that the repose and the Gnosis are only found precisely where he is. The perplexity increases as the divine descents increase, but it is these divine descents which are the source of spiritual knowledge. This is why the foremost of the gnostics, our Prophet - on Him be Grace and Peace! - said "Oh Allah, augment my perplexity with regard to Thee!"
'Abd al-Kader (1807 - 1883There are two kinds of death, the death which is inevitable and common to all beings, and the death which is voluntary and particular to certain ones of them only. It is the second death which is prescribed for us in the words of the Messenger of Allah: "Die before you die." The resurrection is accomplished for him who dies this voluntary death. His affairs return to God and they are but one. He has returned to God and he sees Him through Him. As the Prophet said - on him be Grace and Peace! - according to a tradition reported by Tabarani, "You will not see your Lord before being dead" and that is because, in the contemplation of this dead-resurrected one, all creatures are annihilated, and for him only one thing exists, one Reality only. Whatever will be the lot of the believers in their posthumous states is prefigured in one degree or another in this life for the initiates. The "return" of things - considered in relation to [the diversity of] their forms - to Allah and the end of their becoming, expresses only a change of cognitive status and not at all a modification of the reality. For him who dies and achieves the resurrection, the multiple is one, by reason of its essential unity; and the One is multiple, by reason of the multiplicity in Him of relations and aspects.
"Each time that something comes to your mind regarding Allah - know that He is different from that!" Commentary: If you think and believe that He is what all the schools of Islam profess and believe - He is that, and He is other than that! If you think that He is what diverse communities believe - Muslims, Christians, Jews, Mazdeans, polytheists and others - He is that and He is other than that! And if you think and believe what is professed by the Knowers par excellence - prophets, saints and angels - He is that! He is other than that! None of His creatures worships Him in all His aspects; none is unfaithful to Him in all His aspects. No one knows Him in all His aspects; no one is ignorant of Him in all His aspects. Those who are among the most knowing regarding Him have said: "Glory to Thee. We have no knowledge except what You have taught us." (Koran 2:32)
Everything which is other than Allah is "hidden" in non-being, even if it appears to spiritually veiled beings to be endowed with existence. But the sage does not concern himself with what is non-being and does not make it the aim of his acts.
'Abd al-Kader (1807 - 1883And He is with you wherever you are. . . . (Koran 57:4) Commentary: . . . The companionship expressed by "with" is that of the Being and the non-being, for there is no Being other than Allah. . . . If Allah - May He be exalted! - was not, by His very Essence, which is the Being of all that is, "with" the creatures, we could not attribute being to any of these creatures and they could not be perceived either by the senses, by the imagination, or by the intellect. It is their 'being with' which assures to creatures a relation with Being. Better yet, it is their being itself. This 'being with' embraces all things, whether they are sublime or lowly, great or small. It is through it that they subsist. He is the pure Being by which 'that which is' is. The 'being with' of Allah consists therefore in the fact that He is with us through His essence; that is, through that which we call the divine Self (huwiyya), universally present. . . . Indications of this divine 'being with' are contained in the following verses: And He is witness of all things (Koran 34:47) And Allah, behind them, encompasses them (Koran 85:20) Wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah (Koran 2:116)
Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: This means: "Turn the [divine] face which is particular to you. . . ." This face is the secret (sirr) through which your spirit subsists. . . . It is the source of man's being and the command [formulated in the verse] is in reality concerned with this. God . . . does not consider your exterior form but only your heart - which is the "divine face" proper to each of you, and it is this "divine face" which, in you, "contains" God even though His sky and His earth cannot contain Him. . . . He who turns (toward the sacred Mosque} with his body alone, without also turning this face, has not truly turned. . . . He who looks with his finite eye only sees finite things - bodies, colors or surfaces. He who looks with the eye of his hidden spirit sees the hidden things - spiritual beings, forms of the world of the absolute Imagination, jinns - all of which are still only created beings and therefore veils. But he who looks with his face, that is to say, his secret (sirr), sees the face which God has in each thing; for, in truth, only Allah sees Allah, only Allah knows Allah. . . . As for the "sacred Mosque" . . . , although this term applies literally to the Mosque perceived by the senses, it should be understood as designating the degree which totalizes all the divine Names, that is to say the degree of the divinity which is the "place of the prostration" - of the prostration of the heart, not of the body.
His light spreads out and this operation expresses nothing other than the ordered unfolding of His attributes over the non-being. What is called "the possibles" are those things which show themselves capable of receiving that light and those which are called "the impossibles" are those which are unable to receive the light. It is to just this that the Prophet - upon Him be Grace and Peace! - alluded when He said, "Allah created the creatures in the darkness, then He sprinkled them with His light. Those who were touched by some of this light are on the good way; and those who failed to be touched by it are astray."
Oh, you who believe! Fear Allah, and seek a means of access to Him, and struggle on His way; perhaps you will succeed! (Koran 5:35) Commentary: . . . God commands believers to practice the fear of Him. This corresponds to what is called . . . the "station of repentance" which is the basis of all progress on the Way and the key which permits one to arrive at the "station of realization". . . . After that God says to us: "And seek a means of access to Him" . . . There is absolute unanimity among the People of Allah on the fact that, in the Way toward Gnosis, a "means of access", that is to say, a master, is indispensable. However, at the beginning of the Way he can be satisfied with books which deal with pious behavior and with spiritual combat in its most general sense. "And struggle on His Way": this is an order to do battle after having found a master. It is a matter of a special holy war (jihad), which is carried out under the command of the master and according to the rules which he prescribes. One cannot have confidence in a spiritual combat carried on in the absence of the master, except in very exceptional cases. . . . The dispositions of beings are varied, their temperaments are very different one from another and something which is profitable for one can be harmful for another.
