The Teachings of a Perfect Master: An Islamic Saint for the Third Millennium

Books by Henry Bayman

The Station of No Station (2001)

The Secret of Islam (2003)

The Black Pearl (2005)

Online books

The Meaning of the Four Books

Science, Knowledge, and Sufism

Websites

hbayman.angelfire.com

hbayman.blogspot.com

Published by Anqa Publishing

PO Box 1178

Oxford OX2 8YS, UK

www.ibn-arabi.com

© Henry Bayman, 2012

First published 2012

Henry Bayman has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 905937 44 8

Cover design:

Henry Bayman and Michael Tiernan

Contents

Preface

Prologue

The Impossible Human

Central Asia

Central Anatolia

The Perfect Human Being

My encounter with the Master

His life

Remarks by those who knew him

His views of others

Miraculous feats

His teachings

The Holy Grail and the Fisher King

St. Francis, the ‘Peace Prayer,’ and democracy

Light on astrology

The emancipation of humankind

The Wisdom Base

An Islamic wisdom manual

Methodology

Important notes

The Wisdom Base

Introduction

Ascension

Hidden Knowledge

I   GENERAL

The foundation

Why did God create the universe?

Divine unity

The sun of love

Religion and brotherhood

The best of times, the worst of times

Material and spiritual

The light of reason

Thanksgiving

The school of wisdom

Compassion and Mercy

Compassion without Mercy

Mercy without Compassion

Universality

The universal religion

The Prophet

The Book

The Ka‘ba

The door of hope

The audition

The Peace Prayer

O humankind

Four poles, four elements

The four poles

The four elements

The tomb of the body

Ethics

The First Pillar of Islam

Good and evil

Ethics and knowledge

Attitude to others

What is necessary

Emulate the Names of God

Work ethics

The white stones

Towards one’s spouse

Towards children

Towards parents

Forbidden versus Allowed

The mind and the heart

Kinds of minds

The captain and the engineer

Faith

Courtesy

Admirable conduct

Animal rights

Political secularism (laicism)

No reformation in Islam

Democracy

Terrorism

Knowledge/science, art

Religious/spiritual sciences

Practice makes perfect

Distribute, don’t fail to teach

Teaching methods

Useless knowledge

Intuitive knowledge in animals

Science Fiction

Music, art

Closing the Two Doors

Taking the Permanent Ablution

The Base Self

Levels of selfhood

The pet snake

The beggar of God

The three fears of the self

Never mind Paradise

The two guards

The three organs

Madmen of the belly

The wrath of God versus the wrath of the self

Food for the spirit

The fly that defeated the eagle

The seven orifices

The spirit

The vain peacock

The eight gates

Satan

The Divine Law

Overflow

Mercy versus justice

Some important Verses

Charity

The three hoarders

The road to Paradise

The Alms-tax

Alms-tax as charity

Live longer by charity

A Robin Hood example

Destiny

Total Will, Partial Will

Precaution versus predestination

Death, afterlife, the Apocalypse

Earthly retribution

Death and resurrection

The Mahdi

Doomsday

The Third Adam

The pen is mightier than the sword

The way out

Miscellaneous topics

Politics

A lesson in politics

Being chief

Timing

Economics

To a man whose business was failing

Interest

Christianity

Prayers (supplication)

Women

Leavening of humanity

Superstition

Try it yourself

II THE INWARD PATH: SUFISM

Sufism

Introduction to Sufism

Having two wings

The blind men and the elephant

The chicks and ducklings

Wisdom

Balance

Read my mind

The garbage collectors

Enlightened by beans

The secret of the fragrance

The best thing

Stages in Sufism

A drop in the sea

I’m not the sun, I’m in the sun

The fish in the sea

Miscellaneous

The beginning

The three prerequisites

The three enemies, the three friends

Practice makes perfect

You’re the traveler

God in search of man

God-ish: the language of the Quran

Sainthood

The essence of man

The master

False masters

Those without a master

The requirements for a master

Prayerless masters

The guidance of the master

The flying frog

The responsibilities of the disciple

One performs the Ascension through the master

The graft

The jeweler’s apprentice

Gossip and men of religion

The Paths (Orders)

Spiritual schools

Unity in diversity

Discussions

My yoke is light

God

Love

Work

The shepherd who was enlightened by a thorn

Patience

Worship

Ablution

Prayer

Prayer and Invocation

Invocation

The secret and the sublime

Die before you die

Unveiling

Miraculous deeds and asceticism

Spacefolding

The child of the spirit

How to see the world

Hidden Knowledge

The flight of the gryphon

Subtleties (lata’ if)

The human body maps the universe

The Guarded Tablet

Uniting the heart and the mind

III DESCENT OF THE LIGHT (WHO’S WHO IN ISLAM)

The prophets

Introduction

Adam

Hud

Abraham

Lot

Moses

Solomon

Ezra

Jonah

Luqman

Jesus

The Prophet

His life

Childhood

Arbitrator for the Black Stone

Announcing his prophethood

The challenge

Be truthful

The poor

The blind man

How to recognize a prophet

Declaration of faith is enough

How to see an angel

Don’t fall for the same trick twice

The thanksgiving servant

Health matters

The importance of work

Egalitarianism

Give good names to children

I’ve come to improve, not to kill

The highest knowledge

Compassion

Don’t embarrass people

The first Prayer-call

Miracles

The unforgettable wife

Self-reliance

The morality of the Quran

Love me with all your heart

The meaning of the Ascension

The Prophet in his cosmic aspect

The Prophet’s household

The caliphs

Abu Bakr

Omar

Ali

Early history of Islam

The scholars

The four schools of Islamic law

Abu Hanifa

Ghazali

Bukhari

The saints

The Saintlight

Khidr

Aq Shamsuddin

Ibn ‘Arabi

Bayazid of Bistam

Bahlul the Wise

Muhammad Birgivi of Bursa

Sirri Saqati

Junayd of Baghdad

Shaykh Shibli

Ashraf Rumi

Hajji Bayram Wali

Niyazi Misri

Hajji Bektash Wali

Mansur al-Hallaj

Ahmed Ibn Hanbal

Hassan of Basra

Rabia Adawiya

Hatim al-Ta’i

Muhammad Abdullah al-Tunisi

Ibrahim Adham

Ismail Hakki of Bursa

Kuddusi Baba

Mahmud Hudayi

Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Shams of Tabriz

Nasruddin Hodja

Nur-ul Arabi

Shaykh Sha‘ban Wali

Hafiz of Shiraz

Yunus Emre

Yusuf Bahri

The Chain

General

Abdul Qadir Gilani

Bahauddin Naqshband

Khalid Baghdadi

Ibrahim Hakki of Erzurum

Ali Sebti

Mahmud Samini

Othman Badruddin

Musa Kâzim Efendi

Hajji Ahmet Kaya Efendi (Keko)

Hajji Ahmet Kayhan

Epilogue

Once upon a dream

Appendix: Some important formulas

Index

Preface

This book is about the life, teachings and thought of a Sufi saint, the Grand Master Ahmet Kayhan, who bore the Saintlight for most of the latter part of the twentieth century. I was privileged to enjoy his presence for twenty years.

No one taught Sufism like Master Kayhan did. Nobody taught Islam like him, either. He took these two and fused them together, out of which fusion flowed a vital, rejuvenating spiritual water that was the balm of injuries and a grace to all hearts it touched. It is no exaggeration to say that this is what true Islam and true Sufism are all about.

Two things about this book distinguish it from its predecessors in this field: content and format.

The content is culled from the daily conversations of the Master. I have read many books on Islam and Sufism, but nowhere have I seen many of the expositions in this book, and never with such force. Even brief passages are enough to demonstrate the Master’s originality as well as authenticity.

The way in which the Master delivered these teachings was an integral part of the teaching and cannot be reproduced here. Very gently, he would lay out his explanations in a soft voice, speaking slowly as though he had all the time in the world. This cannot be emulated on the printed page. Instead, I have topically organized the entire range of his teachings spanning two decades. If science is organized knowledge, what is presented here is the science of Sufism, the pinnacle of spiritual sciences. A certain statement he made on one occasion may be completed by something he uttered years before or later. The present format allows the Master’s thought to be perceived at a glance. I have called this the ‘Wisdom Base.’ The sequencing of subjects arose naturally out of my records of his discourses - they seemed to suggest the present order in particular.

Both in terms of form and content, then, this book stands out among its peers. The Master was peerless, incomparable, and of necessity this quality is carried over to the book of which he was, in a very real sense, the ‘author.’

The Master was a virtuoso of Sufi teaching stories. Examples of these are recorded throughout the book. Questions and remarks by those present, and the Master’s responses, are included where called for. An Appendix includes the original Arabic formulas - presented in italicized translations in the text - from the Koran and tradition used by the Master, both in transliteration and translation into English.

What comments I have as editor/translator are confined to textual devices such as brackets and footnotes, thus clearly separating them from the Master’s own words.

I have shunned special terms wherever possible. These are common in Sufic texts, but the interruptions, while scholarly, detract from proper appreciation of the text. Instead, I have substituted translations that can be easily understood. This has obviated the need for a glossary.

All my earlier books have been scholarly in nature. A serious attempt was made in them to back up the text with academic resources. Here, the Master’s words speak for themselves. He had the knack of explaining the most difficult concepts in the simplest terms, so there is nothing daunting here and the main text can be read easily by all but the illiterate.

Non-Muslims will gain a perspective on true Islam and true Sufism as never before. Muslims may discover a deeper dimension to their faith. In the end, I believe that the lives of all who read it will be enriched.

The greatest Sufi masters of old recorded their teachings in books, but many of these are hundreds of years old and do not really address problems of the modern world. It is a great blessing to have found a Sufi master who proclaimed the highest wisdom in a readily comprehensible, contemporary idiom. Nor is this proselytizing, for these discourses are not aimed at conversion - they are ‘in-group’ discussions. We are invited to a front seat in all the Master’s most important discourses, and allowed to judge his teachings for ourselves. This is probably the closest, and only, glimpse we are ever going to get of the highest reaches of contemporary Islam/Sufism. It is a book of labor and love, to be cherished by all who seriously understand its message.

To present a public account of such an illustrious master would have been my duty to humankind in any case. But ever since the horrible events of 9/11, this task has taken on an added urgency. In the wrong hands, the teachings of a religion can be perverted, distorted and rendered out of all recognition. In the teachings of Master Kayhan, and to my knowledge nowhere else, lies the antidote to a dangerous strain of Islam that promises nothing but more strife and pain for the future of humankind. This should not even be termed ‘Islam’ but rather, to call a spade a spade, the abuse of Islam for political ends.

‘Islam,’ observed the historian Herbert J. Muller, ‘had no real political doctrine.’ Lest this be deemed an isolated view, let us hear it categorically from Professor Claude Cahen, doyen of historians of Islam: ‘there was no Islamic political doctrine.’¹ This is the reason why, as Professor Muller again remarks: ‘The spiritual unity of Islam failed to inspire political unity.’² (This includes even Arab unity, which is the first thing one would ordinarily expect.) It also explains why Muslims borrowed the political and bureaucratic structures of the Roman and Persian empires wholesale at their first opportunity. Islam is a religion, not a political ideology. I know there are those who believe that there can be such a thing as ‘political Islam,’ but they are mistaken.

Islam is a world religion and will remain so. It transcends, as it must, any merely local and historical political forms. Like Christianity and Buddhism, it has adherents in many countries irrespective of borders. When the Prophet instructed his followers to proclaim the religion in other lands, he did not tell them to take over the governments of those lands. Such a thought never even crossed the Prophet’s mind. As for the caliphate, it was a transitional device for the first thirty years (as foretold in a Saying of the Prophet), after which it slowly dissipated its power and outlived its usefulness in a few centuries, if not much earlier.

To put it simply: Roma (empire) and Amor (love) don’t mix. State/politics and religion, which is based on love and compassion, don’t mix. It is for this reason that Islam is a civic religion. There was never a church in Islam, so positing a ‘mosque and state’ parallel to the Christian ‘church and state’ would be a gross misrepresentation. The Prophet was the sole authority in the emergent Medinan community. He was forced to wage wars of self-defense. His political successors were four caliphs. These were necessary if Islam was to survive. To generalize from this limited period to all time is, as I have noted elsewhere, to radically misinterpret the office of prophethood - and also of the caliphate. It is like clinging on to the eggshell once the chick has come out. After the Prophet, political authority and spiritual authority were separated, and spiritual authority was left to whoever were the most righteous, the most spiritual, the most humane. It was never formally organized and enshrined in a church.

The content differs from earlier books in at least two important respects. The first is that an English-language account of the Sufis of Central Anatolia has not been forthcoming in recent decades. (The only exception may be Reshad Feild’s earlier writings such as The Last Barrier, now out of print.) Yet their version of Sufism, descending directly from the earlier Sufis of Central Asia, is of the utmost importance.

Second, and even more important, the Master’s discourse redefines Islam for the twenty-first century. In a conversational tone (because taken from his actual conversations), he expounds the purest, highest form of Islam/Sufism, in a way that transcends all Orders and Schools. He always attached greater importance to Islam (the whole) than to Sufism (its part), and spoke of ‘Mohammedanhood’ as the desired goal, which is a synthesis of the first two: it is what existed before they were ‘electrolyzed’ into a couple of apparently distinct components. In his conception, Islam is not just the external (exoteric) teaching of behavior, of ‘going through the motions,’ of rote and mindless repetition. Fused with Sufism, it is shot through and through with spirituality, with love and tenderness and everything that makes a religion worthwhile.

Let me end by expressing my thanks to Stephen Hirtenstein, Michael Tiernan and, last but not least, John White, for having made this book possible.

Henry Bayman

1. Quoted in L. Carl Brown, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 57.

2. Herbert J. Muller, The Loom of History, New York: New American Library (Mentor Books), c.1958, pp. 333, 334. The fact that Muller’s remarks were made about half a century ago highlights another fact: Islam did not have, and was not perceived as having, a political doctrine for almost all of its first fourteen centuries. The many attempts by Muslims in the last fifty years to invent such a doctrine out of thin air may be sincere, but are also misguided.

Prologue

If I could ask don Juan one final question, I would ask, How did he move me so? How did he touch my spirit so that every beat of my heart is filled with the feeling of this path?

Every beat of my heart.

Carlos Castaneda¹

King Arthur! Who can deny the appeal of the legendary king, who has captured the imagination of generations? What would you think if, wandering through the woods one fine day, you came upon Camelot - not its ruins, but thanks to some sort of time tunnel, Camelot itself - where King Arthur lived with his Knights of the Round Table? In the 1960s musical of the same name, Camelot was depicted whimsically as a place where the summers cannot be too hot, the winters too cold, or the days rainy.

And for me, Camelot was Ankara. It was exactly as described above: a long Indian summer followed by a few brief months of winter, not very severe; mild summers, especially in later years; light snowfall from the same weather fronts that were claiming lives elsewhere. It was as if an invisible shield had been placed over the city, protecting it from harsh extremes.

But that was not the reason why Ankara was Camelot. This state of affairs was the consequence and not the cause. For in Ankara there lived a king; an unknown, unsung, yet once and future king. A king not of the physical, but of the spiritual realm.

Do you think it’s possible to live a legend in real life, in three-dimensional, physical existence? Throughout the fifteen years between 1983 and 1998, I lived various parts of at least three legends. I was there, if only partially, on Olympus, in Camelot and on the trail of the Holy Grail. And I was there, not just for myself, but for us all.

But no retelling of a myth can ever substitute for living, actually experiencing, the myth itself. Had I not lived it and seen it with my own eyes, I, too, would have refused to believe it. The colors of the rainbow do not exist in this gray world we inhabit, these boggy badlands, this spiritual desert, this emotional flatland. As its denizens, we cannot conceive of colors other than black and white and shades of gray. Yet they exist nonetheless. Beyond three dimensions there is a fourth, and beyond four dimensions there is a fifth, and so on.

You may feel at times that what is being related is fiction, make-believe. Yet it is not. It all took place in a bustling city on earth, in real time and space, as the second millennium AD drew to a close.

What other true-life stories were experienced in the past, yet went unrecorded because there was no one to recount them for our convenience? In the end, we are left with our inevitable partial knowledge and human ignorance. This does not mean that we are allowed to compensate by assuming all kinds of absurdities. But it does mean that we should be prepared for the unexpected. Someday, somewhere, it may stare you in the face, and you might not be able to recognize it. As Heraclitus said a long time ago: ‘He who does not expect the unexpected cannot detect it.’ It was because Schliemann expected it that he discovered Troy.

Do not take anything for granted. But equally, do not sneer if, one day, you too happen to stumble upon … the Truth.

The Impossible Human

This is the story of the Impossible Man. When I say ‘Impossible,’ I don’t mean it in the sense of ‘impossible to get along with’ or anything of that sort. No. If that were the case, the solution would be trivial, and there would be no need for an account.

The Impossible Man is the person who, by any and all known laws of science, ought not to exist.

Theoretically, his existence should be impossible. And yet he exists …²

Had I not chanced to encounter him, I too would have refused to believe in his existence. Therefore, I have no right to expect you to do so. All I can do is set down the facts, and leave the decision to you.

The Impossible Man, which can also mean the Impossible Woman (the state is not gender-specific), is one who has been blessed beyond belief. For him (or her), nature’s laws get bent, the impossible becomes possible, a solution materializes where there should by rights be none, cavities appear in a solid block.

It should not be surmised that the Impossible Man (or Woman) does these things himself (or herself). No: they are done for him, and he cannot help marveling as they happen. Nor can he help feeling very small and extremely unworthy of the grace that has been sent to his doorstep. All he can do is weep and give thanks - weep at the vastness of the gift when compared to his insignificance, give thanks because he has, without deserving it, received something which not even the greatest efforts can secure. It is God’s gift to him, freely given, without the expectation of anything in return. It is a present, wholly free and wholly undeserved.

Does he suffer? Yes, he does. Does he die? Yes, he does - the Impossible Man is only, and entirely, human. Yet the vicissitudes of life fail to faze him, because he knows that, if his time is not yet up, saving grace will suddenly arrive from the most unexpected quarters. He tries, unsuccessfully, to be worthy of all the aid he is given. But this is a vain hope. For no amount of struggle, no matter how valiant, can ever earn infinite bounty, which is what arrives.

As for you, I can wish upon you nothing more sublime, nothing more to your good, and nothing more wonderful, than that you should become an Impossible Human yourself. May God’s grace be upon you, and may you go with God - or God go with you.

Central Asia

It is like the rolling plains of the Midwest USA. You travel for miles and miles, and there is not the slightest sign of a hill. It is as if someone had taken a gigantic iron and ironed out the wrinkles in the geography. Nor will you meet many people in this part of the world; it is one of the more sparsely populated regions of the planet.

Suddenly, from the center of this vast, flat expanse, rises a structure that is as imposing as it is startling. Startling, because so unexpected. Why should it be there, in the middle of flatland? Nowadays, there is a village that has sprung up around it. To view it in proper perspective, you have to approach it from the north, from a distance of hundreds of miles. South of it, the Tien Shan (the ‘God Mountains’) blend slowly into the Himalayas.

We are in southern Kazakhstan. The village is called Turkestan (earlier known as Yasa). And the imposing structure, shooting so starkly skyward, is the mausoleum where the tomb of Ahmet Yasawi, the Sufi saint, rests. For pilgrims from all over Asia, it is the second Mecca.

Who was Ahmet Yasawi? What manner of man was he? What caused people to remember him, to commit his poems to their hearts and souls, and to revere him for hundreds of years?

The truth is that unless you find a living example of such a person, you will never really know how they were able to inspire such veneration.

This is the story of how I was fortunate enough to find one. It is the story of the Sufis, but it is also much more. It is the story of the meaning of the universe, of the worth of man, and of how the two are interlinked. It is the greatest story ever told, and retold countless times, as it will be till the end of time.

Central Anatolia

It is a medium-sized mosque in a village near Ankara, not too small, not too large, dressed in white. As you approach it, at one point it appears as if its dome were proceeding downwards from its single minaret. Every day, when the time for one of the Five Daily Prayers arrives, a beautiful Prayer-call issues from the loudspeakers, even if there is no one there. These ‘calls without a Caller (muezzin)’ have been made possible by the students of the Master, who have equipped the mosque with a computer system that switches on the sound on schedule.³ As in the Ottoman mosques of old, the intonation (maqam) for each Prayer-time is different. A digital recording and playback system has endowed each summons with a musical quality of great depth and beauty.

Enter the adjoining small mausoleum (turba), and you will find a large wooden casket, two-and-a-half yards beneath which lies the body of my Master, Ahmet Kayhan. Here, as in tombs of saints around the world, you may chance upon displays of adoration and respect that border on worship, yet you will not be able to understand the reason for this. What cause on earth could drive human beings to such extremes of adulation - superstition, illusion, piety? Visit as many saint-tombs as you like, but the living will be unable to justify their behavior to you, nor are they necessarily willing to do so. As for the saints themselves, it is highly doubtful that you will be able to see them rise from their graves and greet you.

This book explains, among other things, why saints are held in such high esteem. In order to understand this, you have to look not at the casket itself, but behind and beyond it. You have to look, not at the silence of the grave, but backward to the time when that saint strolled the earth. For the roots of veneration were sown when the saint was alive, and walked with God; in his loving kindness to those who visited him, in his selfless service to all creatures coming to his door. As the child is father to the man, so the man is father to his post-mortem reputation. Meticulously inspecting the tomb, carefully measuring its dimensions, will teach you nothing in this regard.

The Perfect Human Being

‘If the gurus and yogis of India knew what masters are in Turkey,’ a Sufi sage once said, ‘they would come over here and throw themselves at their feet.’

The Sufi saints are those who have taken Jesus’ call: ‘Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48) to heart. A central concept of the Sufis is the ‘Perfect Human Being’ (al-insan al-kamil), representing the full flowering of all human and cosmic potentialities. Let us try to understand who a Perfect Human Being is by recourse to the famous poem by mystical poet Francis Thompson, which has been called the greatest ode written in the English language.⁴ The following extract contains the gist of it:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him … [But God spoke to me and said:]

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me …

Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me …

Lo, naught contents thee, who content’st not Me …

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou flyest Me!

Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I make much of naught …

And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited –

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?…

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

Truly a great poem. Now, from this I would like to single out the following lines (changing the language slightly):

All things betray thee, who betrayest Me

Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter Me

Nothing contents thee, who do not content Me

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou flyest Me!

Now the Perfect Human Being is a person who possesses the exact opposite of these attributes so ably pinpointed by Francis Thompson. And for that reason, nothing betrays such a person who never betrays God. For one has become a Friend of God, a saint, who is always loyal to God. Because one’s heart has become the abode, the shelter of God, everything shelters one. Because one has pleased God, and because one is content with little, everything contents one. And because one flies to God instead of flying from God, everything rushes to the Perfect Human Being, who is a wonder to contemplate and marvelous to behold.

Of the friends of God, it is said repeatedly in the Quran: ‘No fear is upon them, neither shall they sorrow’ (2:62, 2:262, 2:274, 3:170, etc.). In a Sacred Saying of the Prophet, God says: ‘The heavens and the earth contain Me not, yet the Heart of My faithful servant does.’ And in the Quran it is proclaimed: ‘Contented Soul, return to your Lord, Pleased (with Him) and Pleasing (to Him)’ (89:27-8). Furthermore, it states: ‘Fly/flee to God’ (51:50). In other words, the circumstances advocated by these Sacred Verses and Saying are precisely the reverse of those identified by Francis Thompson as distancing humans from God. And this can only lead to proximity to God, to entering the Company of the Elect who always praise and give thanks to God.

The light of God shines on such a person’s face. S/he has become transmuted, transformed from an ordinary human being into a person who has won Divine approval. Just as St. Francis of Assisi had a special relationship with birds and animals, even lesser creatures will befriend such a person. Here is a true-life story from one of the Sufi saints, related by Abu Ali Farmadi, one of the great Sufi saints of the Naqshbandi Order:

During a trip, we had approached a mountain. Suddenly, a very large snake confronted us. We were all scared and fled. Shaykh Abu Sa‘id was there, too. He dismounted from his horse and approached the snake. I was with the Shaykh. The snake rubbed its head on the ground before him, making movements as if to show respect. The Shaykh addressed the snake: ‘You went to a lot of trouble.’ Then the snake departed and returned to the mountain. Whereupon we asked the Shaykh what this had been all about. He replied: ‘When I was at this mountain [in seclusion], we were in the same place with this snake for several years. When it sensed that we were passing by, it came and renewed its friendship. The beauty of the covenant comes from faith. Towards one of good temper, everything is good-tempered. Abraham was well-tempered, so the fire was well-behaved towards him, too: it didn’t burn him.’⁵

So how does one go about becoming such a person? Well, there’s a whole battery of methods, but one of them is to invoke God’s name constantly. The Arabic word zikr (or dhikr) means both invocation and remembrance, so that we should constantly remember God, and invoking His name is remembering. Verses from the Quran indicate the importance of this: ‘Believers, invoke God often’ (33:41). ‘Hearts find tranquility by invoking God, and only by invoking God do hearts find rest’ (13:21). ‘Whoever turns away from My invocation will have a constricted life’ (20:124). ‘Invoke God with much invocation’ (33:41). ‘Invoke Me so that I will remember you, and give thanks to Me’ (2:152).

Similarly, the Prophet has remarked: ‘One who loves something much invokes it often. And the love of God becomes evident through invocation/remembrance. Hearts become rusty just as iron rusts. Their polish is to recite the Quran and to invoke God frequently.’ One can invoke God even in one’s own language, using such words as ‘Dieu’ (French) or ‘Gott’ (German), for example. (The Master told an artist who asked for an invocation formula, ‘Say God in your own language, say God in English. Say God and stroke the paintbrush [on the canvas].’)

My encounter with the Master

Ever since my youth, I have been in quest of Truth. My interests have led me from paranormal events to yoga, from science to philosophy to mysticism, from East Asian religions to monotheism. It was in 1975 that I first encountered a Sufi master whom I shall call Saladin. I still remember the most important detail of that meeting:

‘Do you want to talk about Sufism, or to be a Sufi?’ Saladin asked.

‘Being seems of greater value than talking,’ I replied.

That was the prelude to a training period of three years, after which, in the spring of 1978, Saladin took me to visit Ahmet Kayhan. He was tall, lean, of arresting appearance, and had had jet-black hair in his youth, which never turned entirely white even in advanced old age. Accomplished Sufi masters have nonverbal ways of communicating their stations to those who visit them, and in a few minutes I became aware that I was in the presence of an extraordinary human being. Little did I realize at the time that this encounter would lead to a lifelong immersion in the Master’s teachings.

In my earlier books, I have described Grandpa Ahmet as ‘the flawless human being.’ He was flawless not physically, but spiritually. Honesty, courage, love, humility, intelligence, and all the other most adorable human qualities were combined in him to an unprecedented degree. Such people, who stand above what we come to expect from the average level of humanity, force us to redefine what it means to be human. But the Master (‘Efendi’) was the ultimate example, second to none, of a superior human being.

After being in his presence under the closest circumstances for fifteen years, all I can say is this: if he was human, we are all subhuman. If we are human, he was superhuman. Since the majority determines the generic, it follows that the latter must have been the case. The fact is that he was a saint, a Friend of God, who combined all the most wonderful human qualities within himself. And he took pains to stress that this was the fruit of superior moral conduct, of following God’s Law to the letter.

Every sentence he uttered was the summary of many books, and I was able to judge them as true because I happened to have read some of those books. What was all the more amazing was that his knowledge was not based on book-knowledge. He learned to read and write during his military duty, and of course he read books after that. But when he pronounced on subjects about which he had not, and could not have, read anything at all, it was quite uncanny how accurate he could be. Call it what you will - intuitive knowledge, inner discernment, or whatever you like.

Let me give just one example. A brother who was into New Age philosophy and whose nickname was ‘the Buddhist’ experimented with psychedelic drugs years ago. Whereupon the Master told him: ‘You picked up the phone, you got the message. Now hang up the phone and come here.’

As soon as I heard about this, I was immediately reminded of Alan Watts’ dictum: ‘When you get the message, you hang up the phone.’⁶ It is the last word on artificially induced altered states of consciousness. According to Watts, psychedelic substances (entheogens) are tools that provide a glimpse into genuine mystical insight, to be discarded and replaced by more methodical meditation techniques once that glimpse is obtained. Watts was speaking from direct experience, as well as incorporating other people’s experiences and the results of scientific research. The Master, on the other hand, never had any experience with psychedelics - he lived in a culture where these were totally unknown and nonexistent, not just physically but even conceptually. Yet his remark to our friend was dead on target, identical with expert opinion.

No book can foretell events that have not yet come to pass, and yet the Master had that knowledge, too. When we look at a wall, ordinary people cannot see beyond it. Yet the Master saw beyond that wall, and beyond the walls beyond it, and his very first pronouncement would be the end result, the conclusion, of an initially indefinite matter that would take months or years to resolve itself in real time.

What I am trying to do, however, is a contradiction in terms. I am trying to describe the indescribable, the truth of which one could pass judgment on only by encountering the Master oneself. But since he is no longer among us this is an impossibility, and so I must refrain from saying more. Instead, in this book I will try to achieve the next best thing, by allowing him to describe the Perfect Human in his own words.

His life

Master Kayhan was born around early 1898 in a village called Aktarla (Mako) in the province of Malatya, Turkey, and died in August 1998 in Ankara. He married his wife, Mother Hajar, in 1937. They had four children and many grandchildren.

The biographical details surrounding his saga are unexciting. They are quite ordinary - like any average human being, he lived, married, had children, worked, had health problems, and so on. No amount of detail in this regard is going to help us unravel his mystery. The mundane details of a sage’s life really do not explain anything. This means we must look elsewhere if we are to understand how a human being becomes a saint.

This can be directly attributed to his encounter with his own Master, Hajji Ahmet Kaya, also called ‘Keko’ - Kurdish for ‘father’ - by those who knew him. Keko was in the grand tradition of the greatest Sufi saints, of the Naqshbandi Order, who traced their roots to Central Asia and from there, all the way to the Prophet.

To human beings, Keko was like a magnet. He attracted many, just as a magnet attracts iron filings. And among these, there was one of such purity and effort that he was capable of becoming a magnet exactly like Keko. Another simile might be inductive resonance. Over a short distance, an alternating current flowing in a coil can induce a similar current in another coil (the basis for wireless power transfer). Among the thousands of human beings who came to visit him, Keko ‘electrified’ one to such an extent that he became a source of electricity himself. That person was Ahmet Kayhan.

Remarks by those who knew him

As many of the persons involved are still alive, I shall refrain from naming names.

There was an Alawi Grandfather⁷ in the city of Sivas. He was 117 years old and blind in both eyes. The Master was walking on a road in winter. The Grandfather told his sons: ‘A light is going there in the riverbed. Bring him to me.’ They went and looked; it was a stranger. They brought him in. The Grandfather pressed the Master to his bosom and exclaimed: ‘You’re my light, you’re the one I’ve been seeking for years!’

It is related of an Italian professor of Turcology that, after seeing the Master, she met a couple of Turkish women who were looking for a teacher. She told them: ‘What are you looking for? There is such a person in Ankara that I’ve seen Moses, Jesus and Muhammad combined in him.’

A friend who is now also dead: ‘He lived in modesty, he died in modesty.’

A doctor:

It was from him that we learned how to love - to love human beings, to love animals. But we couldn’t learn enough. That is what torments us. He told me: ‘We gave you a house, a car, a spouse. What did you bring us?’ I hung my head. He said: ‘These are human. Become attributed with the attributes of God.’

A friend describes an event that occurred during a visit to the Master:

A person came. He entered with his shoes⁸ and crossed his legs. Then he said, ‘I’m the grandson⁹ of Abdul Qadir Gilani [the Grand Saint]. There’s supposed to be someone here who claims he’s his inheritor. Show him to me!’

Grandpa doesn’t say anything, he just rolls a cigarette.

The man held the flame of a lighter under his hand, his palm, and said, ‘See? This is the way that’s done.’ Grandpa says: ‘What’s he saying? Interpret for me.’

Grandpa: ‘My child, come and sit down over here. First of all, [giving him the cigarette he had rolled] light a cigarette. Why do you scold us? You’ve invoked Abdul Qadir Gilani’s name, how can we say anything against you?’

The man took two drags from the cigarette. Suddenly he said: ‘Friends, have I done anything discourteous?’ He kneeled before the Master, ‘Sir, have I done anything rude? I’m the grandson of Abdul Qadir Gilani, but you’re his inheritor.’

Grandpa told us: ‘This man is in dire straits, he’s out of money, let’s all pitch in. He’s invoked the great saint Gilani’s name, let’s give whatever we can.’

Of this (or a comparable) encounter, Efendi said: ‘He spewed and declaimed, this place was all crowded. I said, You’ve tired yourself. Have a cup of tea. He said: Okay. But you didn’t oppose anything I said, you just showed your assent, he said. I said Yes. When he left I told the rest: This man is freaked out, don’t mind him.’

The friend continues:

I and [another friend] took Grandpa to a doctor. When we got there, Grandpa decided against it, he said ‘No’ and was on his way out. The doctor was very angry. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘They call me Crazy So-and-so, I throw a patient on the floor and still I examine him.’

Grandpa said: ‘My child, they call me Grandpa Ahmet, I remove one’s fire just as water extinguishes this cigarette in my hand with a hiss.

The man stopped for a moment, he came out of that state, there was no trace of anger left in him. ‘Grandpa,’ he said, ‘I’d be ashamed to examine you.’

He told me, ‘My last will to you: Build a Heart, don’t break it. Don’t tear down the Ka‘ba [the sacred sanctuary of the Heart]. Serve the Heart you’ve broken until you mend it. If you demolish the Ka‘ba, how can you prostrate towards it?’

His views of others

The Master’s view of human beings transcended ordinary religious lines and divisions. He called Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who was later assassinated by an extremist, ‘a Muslim’ because of his efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. He even called Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of the former Soviet Union, ‘the saint of the age’ because he worked for world peace. It was what a person was and did that counted, rather than categorizations and labels that pigeonhole.

Of the Japanese, he said: ‘Now only the Japanese remain in the world who hold on to religion. No matter what they worship. They’re the only ones who possess a religion.’

Regarding Americans, his comments were as follows:

Science was lacking in the Ottomans, they have it. America has become an enormous empire in 250 years. It vanquished Europe, then only Russia remained to confront it. Now it’s fallen, too. How did America do this? By hard work.

How did America come about? How did they achieve all this in 250 years? Never mind earlier times, Istanbul is a six hundred-year old city during the [Ottoman] Empire. In spite of this, Istanbul is like a village beside their cities. So is Izmir [Smyrna]. What is the secret of this?

Hard work, sir. God says, ‘I love those who work, I’m with the righteous.’ They worked hard physically and spiritually. That’s the crux of the matter.

Americans are outside by the time of the Dawn Prayer, they’re going to work. Hardworking nations are like that. They assume the leadership of all nations. [A friend] went to Izmir five or ten years ago, he saw Americans there, going to work at the time of the Dawn Prayer-call. When the Prayer-call started, they all stopped, bowed their heads and listened. They continued on their ways after the Prayer-call was over. Go home, look at your national ID cards. It says ‘Muslim’ there. Be ashamed of that. Just sit lazily at home and say, ‘We’re Muslims’! If America were to become Muslim, it would be paradise on earth.

What a beautiful name they’ve taken! A, M, K [vocalization of letters in ‘America’]. They’re all [initials of] the Divine Names of God.¹⁰

Miraculous feats

Out of countless examples, I shall relate only a few. This is the subject that attracts the most attention, but it is also the most superficial. It is incorrect to ground the truth of a religion or the veracity of a saint on miraculous events. It is better not to dwell upon them at all. What is much more important is morality, courtesy and meticulously carrying out God’s commandments.

First, consider the following observations of Ptolemy Tompkins regarding ‘the Adult-Unlike-Other-Adults’ - a person radically different from other people.

This person could be either a man or a woman, but let’s say for the moment that he is a man. Things fall into place for this man in a way that they don’t for others. Doors open and shut for him as if they had known just when he was coming. Trains and buses pull up when he needs them to. Even the weather changes to suit his needs - though, due to his extraordinary and inexplicable contentedness, those needs tend to be modest in the extreme. Unlike most people, who struggle and chafe against a world that is all too often at odds with their desires, this individual seems to have struck up a secret agreement with life when no one was looking, as a result of which events just seem to go his way. Wanting next to nothing, he receives everything.¹¹

Now compare this with the following account. If you visit a certain doctor who presently lives in Istanbul, and he is inclined to tell you, you will learn that on one occasion, the Master came to his hospital to visit an acquaintance in the Emergency Ward. This was perhaps the best-guarded section of the hospital, and the doctor was glad to be there to help the Master since he was highly placed in the hospital hierarchy. He expected that he could overcome any obstacles they might encounter. What happened next is a case for the books.

The Master took his hand, and they began to walk. To his mounting amazement, doors swung open before them at just the right time, normally forbidding hospital personnel smiled and made way, the Master - who had never been in that hospital before - proceeded as if he knew exactly where he was going (which, of course, he did), and the doctor realized, with a shock, that it was the Master who was leading him through his own hospital rather than he leading the Master. The Master went straight to the patient as if all those obstacles had never existed, and they began to talk as though nothing extraordinary had happened.¹²

A few more accounts of the same sort follow.

A family member:

Ten or fifteen days before he died … he was lying down in the front part of the house. We, the rest of the family, were in the back. Something important occurred. When he got up, he asked: ‘What happened?’ I said ‘Nothing happened,’ whereupon he told me the event exactly as it took place, as if he had been there. He said, ‘I have an eye behind me, I saw it with that eye.’

He gave his last pension (90 million Liras) to Mother Hajar. She hid this, but lost it. We looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Mother Hajar pressed him - she said, ‘Find this for me.’ ‘Go,’ he said, ‘behind the door to her room, she has an old dress. Look in its pocket.’

But I had already looked there, and Mother Hajar had dismissed the money we found. ‘That’s my daily allowance,’ she’d said, ‘put it back.’ We went back to where he told us and counted it. There were 90 million Liras. But my father had never entered my mother’s room in his life, and its only key always stayed in her pocket.’

A prominent politician:

The first time we went to visit Grandpa was in 1976, together with [a famous journalist and another friend]. He seated me beside him, they were sitting facing us. I had some questions in my mind about Sufism, but couldn’t bring myself to ask them. I especially wanted to ask about the Unity of Being [Ibn ‘Arabi’s famous concept].

A little later, Grandpa took a paper out of his pocket, gave it to me and said simply, ‘Read.’ I looked at it, it was about the Unity of Being. When I finished reading, he asked: ‘Okay?’ ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’ [the journalist] asked. ‘It’s not for you,’ said Grandpa, and put the paper back in his pocket.

On another occasion: ‘One day, my friends exasperated me, and I rushed out to visit him. As soon as I was through the door, he said: Come on in. Why do they vex you like this?’

An acquaintance: ‘One day, Grandpa was performing his Prayer in the back, and we were sitting here talking. A fourteen-year-old girl said: I saw Grandpa and this place in a dream, and came straight over without asking anyone anything.’

In a dream, a family member saw Noah’s Ark. Its captain was Grandpa. It was two stories from the outside, but many floors from within. One floor was the North and South Poles, another floor was America.

A couple who knew the Master for many years:

The wife: ‘We were driving on an intercity highway in the wee hours of the morning. My husband was driving the car. I was in the back seat and in constant vigil so he wouldn’t fall asleep and cause an accident. Suddenly, I saw the Master’s face leaning over the front windshield and waving at us with his hand. I noticed that my husband had begun to nod his head. It was a signal for him to wake up.’

The husband: ‘I was driving when I seem to have drowsed off imperceptibly. Suddenly, in my dream, I saw the Master lean over the front windshield from the top of the car and wave his hand. I immediately woke up.’

In other words, one saw in reality exactly what the other saw in a dream.

The next time they visited the Master, before they could say anything, he remarked: ‘You tire me. Am I supposed to watch out for you all the time?’

On another occasion, after he folded space while riding in a friend’s car - the car appeared to have moved an impossible distance in a split-second - he told him: ‘Don’t be preoccupied with such things. These are for children.’

Paranormal abilities are merely the object of contempt for such people, who regard them as childish. As Tompkins observes, ‘the message that