The Way of Muhammad

Shaykh Abdalqadir As-Sufi

(Originally published in 1975, Diwan Press)

Preface
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Affirmation The Science of the Self The Science of the Sunna The Science of States The Science of Qur'an The Science of Bewilderment The Science of the Moment

This Book is dedicated to the Masters of the Habibiyya-Shadhiliyya Tariqa.

Acknowledgements My thanks are due to: Aisha Abdarrahman at-Tarjumana Bewley whose translations of 'Ibn 'Arabi and Moulay al'Arabi ad-Darqawi are used throughout. Dr. Fritjof Capra for permission to quote him. Hajj Abdalaziz Redpath, Hajj Abdalhaqq Bewley and Aisha Bewley for their assistance in drawing up the charts and structuring the material relevant to them. My wife, Hajja Zulaikha, and Hajja Rabea Redpath for their assistance in preparing the manuscript

Preface
It was with a certain reluctance that I agreed to a new edition of this early work of mine, and this only after some minor editing to remove errors which I can now perceive. The original intention of the work was to show that it was possible to grasp the meaning of Islam in terms of the European existential tradition. Indeed, it is of course the culmination of it. Ironically, the effect of the book was not in the main to open Europeans to Islam, but to restore to those who had gone out of the Deen, especially Arabs, a sense of respect and discovery in relation to Islam. The book is simply a meditation of the five pillars of Islam as viewed by someone who has taken them on and is savouring their meanings. However, now with a lifetime of Islam to contemplate I would want to express the whole matter differently without denying the basic personal truths I tried to indicate in this text. Today the enemies of Islam all explain that the danger of it is that it is not merely a metaphysical construct but is something that affects the whole of life. Yet, after a quarter of millennium of western occupation of Muslim lands, first in colonialism and then by the ethos of technology it can be shown that, tragically, we have abandoned Deen in its totality. The irresistible magnetic power of Islam which is now about to spread its rays over all the world lies in its Shari'at. Properly speaking the Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, abolished the state as the model of societal order. This does not mean he established either anarchy or some kind of mystic individualism, like Buddhism. Where the state was based on canon law and the imposition of order by force, empowered by taxation, the new order established in Madinah was altogether different. The Islamic

community is itself a freely chosen social contract of believers who agree to live within its parameters. The proper translation of Shari'at is a road. The two dimensions of the Shahada confirm worship as belonging to Allah and obedience being due to His Messenger. The next two pillars, Salat and Zakat, in this sense could also be placed beside the double-Shahada. The worship of Allah and the paing of the only permitted tax, Zakat, go together just as the first and second Shahada do. It is in between these two pillars that Islam sheds light on the nature of governance. Since worship must be according to what we have been ordered, it is not possible to proceed in 'Ibada beyond a certain point without previously having appointed an Amir. It is precisely at the point of Ramadan that governance becomes inescapable to order the sighting of the moon, to start the fast and to order the collecting of Zakat, which is not charity but something, in effect, taken by power. Thus the collection and distribution of Zakat imply the existence of the Amir. It is because Allah in his glory has shown to us the means of transacting socially and avoiding corruption that Islam is called Deen alFitr. It is the transaction of original nature, that is, before corrupted by cultural excess. Allah has permitted trade and forbidden usury. Zakat for this reason cannot be paid in paper money for it in itself is forbidden, being a promissory note, and in the majority of cases one against which no material goods can be matched. The messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said: 'The miser withholds from others the wealth that is due them.' Therefore banking is revealed as an unthinkable institution both materially by its usurious nature and morally by its perversion of people's evaluation of life. This touches the nub of the question of the self and what we now call character. The identity is not formed in a psychological non-spatial zone, but rather it is the pattern and web created by the whole series of transactions which form a social nexus. It is in the exchange of goods, in the holding and the distribution of wealth, in the giving up and the taking on of possessions that the self emerges. Therefore, the path to an integrated human identity can only be established on obedience to the commands of Allah and His Messenger. When he left Makkah, the city of his encounter with Allah, glory be to him, to establish the Islamic community, he renamed the neighbouring city of Yathrib, Madinah. Its meaning quite simply is 'the place of the Deen'. When he settled there he established two institutions - the mosque and the market. The mosque and market were identical inasmuch as it was not permitted to establish your corner or part of it for your use. With the foundation of Madinah was established the inevitable abolition of capitalist and socialist society. The inability to create monopoly and the impossibility of an elite to separate themselves, in worship from the people had been assured. Not only papal Rome, but later the Holy Roman Empire and later the European Union of the Treaty of Rome, and equally the Soviet Presidium, the English Parliament, and the American Senate, in the light of Islam were revealed to be tyrannies, the basis of which was not its regal army, but its fiscal subjugation of the masses. The imperial phase of bankism, which sweetly gives itself a political title, 'constitutional democracy', while still dominating the world in a manner more ruthless than any ancient warlord now clearly exposes the truth that systems control does not work, that the

abolition of trade and its reduction to mere distribution does not work, that the denial of genuine autonomy of peoples at a local level does not work. It is for these reasons that the modern man must dig deep into himself to see if, after the almost complete conditioning to which he has been submitted, he is able to act at all. The result of a secular liberal education is something akin, socially, to the general paralysis of the insane. However, there are still those who will not accept the role allotted them by the oligarchy of banking to be helpless and happy members of the faceless consumer mob. After all the progress, after all the modernity, public arenas of modern life are inescapably identical to that of the Roman Coliseum and Aztec Temple. The response of the free-acting people of this age will be to obey the order of Allah, glory be to him, in Qur'an: "Enter Islam in its totality." (Qur'an 2.206). It can also be translated: "Enter Islam all together."

"If you engage upon travel you will arrive and may Allah, praise be to Him, guide you and us!" (The Makkan Revelations) Shaykh al-Akbar

Affirmation
There is only one method by which you can approach the sufic sciences and that is to start, tabula rasa, by putting away the whole world-picture and value structure which has formed you until now and which is completely the result of your social and historical imprinting which you share with millions of others, whatever particular individuality you may imagine you have over and against those millions of others. You have an idea of how things are, and how you are, how things should be and how you should be. Interposed between you and reality is a functioning, fluctuating conceptualisation of existence that, mingled with your personal emotional responses to event and personality, make up what you think is both 'you' and 'your world'. Any idea of 'god' as an explanation of existence or an arena for your life-experience has to be set aside. 'Religion' (from the Latin to bind together) as explanation or arena is equally false. Indeed, to mistake the name for the thing named, the category for the indicated, is to make tasawwuf impossible of access. Non-realities that have now crystallised in people's imagination as having some kind of dynamic actuality like history or class or individuality have to be set aside.

The subject of tasawwuf Sufism is you. The subject of tasawwuf is reality. Let us start from the beginning. One. The whole matter begins and ends with an affirmation of One. But it will be said I am another, there is 'two', 'three', 'multiplicity'. John is not Arthur, nor Margaret, Anne. Precisely. It is because of the experiential multiplicity that the science of Unity exists. This implies, therefore, that as you are, you are not grasping the true nature of existence. It is like a perpetual fever, a constant hallucination. Things are multiple, alien and solid. There is not even continuity, yet we persist in it. I am the same one who was here yesterday after a night of dreamless sleep at least everyone in today's 'dream' confirms this. Otherwise I would be mad. Idiotiki, in Greek, means private. My reality is affirmed socially, so I exist. Unless they are in my dream. Yet when I dream, the objects seem insubstantial, awake they are solid and therefore 'real'. Real means solid. Yet I have physicists in my 'reality' who now tell me that solidity has no reality for them. The object is slipping away from me yet again, and forms are being proved out of existence and I am left holding onto a 'mental reality' in a vanishing world of forms which they tell me is merely dynamic space. The information about my 'real world' has become very odd and contradictory at times even ironic. The person this world has appointed to assuage my inner anxiety, I observe, is in a worse state than I am. It is to this subject that tasawwuf addresses itself. Thus: If you desire to know reality you must know yourself. You are the key, the only key to reality. You are nothing but a mirror of reality. It is enough to reflect. But, your anxiety about what is on the horizon, and in yourself stops you from calm and clear reflection. You desire urgent tranquillising information saying 'it is all proved, everything is really all right, you exist.' Information has for the moment been set aside. Let us, however, examine a possibility. The possibility is that there is someone to trust about the very urgent matter of what life is about. Since we are not to be trusted, it must be some very remarkable sort of person. What would be the qualifications of a man to trust in this matter? There would be only

one thing that would make him an 'expert' and that is that he knew how to live his life, utterly fulfilled, in radiant and expansive serenity that left space around him for his community and space within him for his own inner peace. Just as in the legend of Kurosawa's 'Rashomon', we are in a dilemma. In that story a woman has been raped and killed. Each witness tells what happened, but each one has given a version of the event from their own subjectivity. Each story is in the end a contradiction of the one before it. The lover, the bandit, the wife each has been trapped in a private fantasy that insists on interpreting existence in a way that allows for their 'self-respect' to continue. Finally, a simple woodcutter who is 'outside' the event, with nothing to gain or lose, tells what really happened. But by now the man who sought the truth dares no longer believe anyone, for he has ample evidence that people want their own version of events. When the woodcutter sees the man's dilemma, and what it has done to him he no longer believes in existence as a dynamic functioning reality, it has proved to be a fragmented, subjective, ever-changing lie the woodcutter breaks down and weeps. Humanly it is all he can do. Open himself completely to the man, surrender any idea of separateness, interest, dissembling just give up, unresistant to that moment and its simple truth: his story. Then the man knows that he too has to give in, he has to shed his doubt and his distrust and even his own experience. Somehow life cannot have any continuity again unless there is affirmation of this encounter and its reality. And the two men weep. The moment has been tasted. This is essentially the starting point of the science of tasawwuf. It begins with surrendering any vain concept that you can think or detector-feel your way out of the contradictions and pains of lived existence and the surrender, while actually to the Shaykh, is in truth to the Messenger, the one who is sent just for that, to tell you what reality is like, Muhammad, the Messenger of reality. The necessary qualifications for this acceptance are these same simple and profound ones of his humanity and his deep sanity and his disinterestedness. No, I swear by what you see and by what you do not see, it is the speech of a noble Messenger, it is not the speech of a poet (little do you believe) nor the speech of an occultist (little do you remember). (Qur'an 69.38-42) By the pen and what they inscribe,

thou art not, by the blessing of thy Lord, a man possessed. Certainly you will always be repaid. Certainly you are on a vast self-form. So you shall see and they shall see which of you is the demented. (Qur'an 68.1-6) Mu'adh ibn Jabal said, 'The Messenger of Allah commanded me saying, "Oh, Mu'adh, I command you to fear Allah, to report truthfully, to fulfil the oath, to act loyally, to avoid wrong actions, to care for the neighbour, to have mercy on the orphan, to be soft spoken, to be generous in extending greetings, to do good acts, to limit expectation, to cleave to the Way, to study the Qur'an, to love the life beyond this world, to be anxious in regard to the Reckoning, to act humbly: I forbid you to abuse the learned, to accuse an honest man of lying, to obey the man of wrong actions, to disobey a just man, to put a land in disorder: and I command you to fear Allah at every stone, tree, or village, and that you show regret for every wrong action, secret or public." ' At this point there are clearly things that do not make sense: fear Allah, to love the life beyond this world, to be anxious in regard to the Reckoning, and to show regret for wrong action. Surely we desire to be rid of fear and not simply project it into a god-concept and call it a name? What lies beyond this world? So far we do not know. What Reckoning? Surely this regret sounds like guilt? It is at this point that we must beware of bringing with us the whole value structure that we were prepared to jettison, and applying it just at the point of pretended clarity and lack of pre-conception. If the matter of tasawwuf is sin and repentance and the whole guiltmechanism that modern man has so sensibly been determined to throw off then we are back to square one. We are quite clear at this stage of our enquiry that the guilt/redemption language of Christianity is a hopeless dialectic superimposed on a neurosis and not dismantling it. Let it be, and let us therefore lay aside these disturbing phrases to see what we make of the rest of the injunctions. Apart from these subjective and seemingly 'religious' ones, all the others are social and benign. A man of these qualities is certainly someone to be open to, someone to copy. Let us look more closely at the picture of the man, Muhammad.

His name means the Praiseworthy. Muhammad was forbearing, honest, just and chaste. His hand never touched the hand of a woman over whom he did not have rights, with whom he did not have sexual relations, or who was not lawful for him to marry. He was the most generous of men. Neither a dinar nor a dirham was left him in the evening. If anything remained and there was no one to give it to, night having fallen suddenly, he would not retire to his apartment until he was able to give this excess to whoever needed it. He was never asked for anything but that he gave it to the asker. He would prefer the seeker to himself and his family, and so often his store of grain for the year was used up before the end of the year. He patched his sandals and clothing, did household chores, and ate with his women-folk. He was shy and would not stare into people's faces. He answered the invitation of the slave and the free-born, and he accepted presents even if they consisted merely of a draught of milk or a rabbit's leg, while because of hunger he would at times tie two stones around his stomach. He ate what was at hand, and did not refrain from any permitted food. He did not eat reclining. He attended feasts, visited the sick, attended funerals, and walked among his enemies without a guard. He was the humblest of men, the most silent without being insolent, and the most eloquent without being lengthy. He was always joyful and never awed by the affairs of this world. He rode a horse, a male camel, a mule, an ass, he walked barefoot and bareheaded at different times. He loved perfumes and disliked foul smells. He sat and ate with the poor. He tyrannised nobody and accepted the excuse of the one who begged his pardon. He joked but he only spoke the truth. He laughed but did not burst out laughing. He did not eat better food or wear better clothes than his servants. The conduct of this perfect ruler was untaught. He could neither read nor write, he grew up with shepherds in an ignorant desert land, and was an orphan without father or mother. He refused to curse his enemy saying, 'I was sent to forgive not to curse.' When asked to wish evil on anyone he blessed them instead. Anas ibn Malik, his servant, said: 'He never said to me about anything of which he disapproved, Why did you do it? Moreover his wives would not rebuke me without his saying, Let it be. It was meant to happen.' If there was a bed he slept on it, if not he reclined on the earth. He was always the first to extend a greeting. In a handshake he was never the first to release his hand. He preferred his guest over himself and would offer the cushion on which he reclined until it was accepted. He called his companions by their kunya (surnames) so as to show honour to them, and the children so as to soften their hearts. One did not argue in his presence. He only spoke the truth. He was the most smiling and laughing of men in the presence of his

companions, admiring what they said and mingling with them. He never found fault with his food. If he was pleased with it he ate it and if he disliked it he left it. If he disliked it he did not make it hateful to someone else. He did not eat very hot food, and he ate what was in front of him on the plate, within his reach, eating with three fingers. He wiped the dish clean with his fingers saying, 'The last morsel is very blessed'. He did not wash his hands until he had licked them clean of food. He quaffed milk but sipped water. Sayyedina 'Ali, his closest Companion, said: 'Of all men he was the most generous, the most open hearted, the most truthful, the most fulfilling of promise, the gentlest of temper, and the noblest towards his family. Whoever saw him unexpectedly was awed by him, and whoever was his intimate loved him.' He himself said: 'I am al-Qautham,' meaning, 'I am the complete, perfect man.' It is to this man that we address ourselves in the acquiring of the knowledge of tasawwuf, the science of the self. In submitting to the Shaykh we submit to the man who has himself mastered these aspects of his behaviour that were not in accord with his 'vastness of selfform' which is the Messenger's. We are making no mistakes and we are remaining within the zone of existential recognition. The Messenger is not being worshipped, deified, or made into a symbol. He is being accepted as a witness of how-things-are, as being a completely open person in flowing harmonic accord with existence so that he knows it inwardly and outwardly. A man came to him who was over-awed by his presence and became reverential towards him. He said to him, 'Be at rest. I am not a king. I am only the son of a woman of the Quraysh, who eats dried meat.' His answer to his name was 'At your service.' The Shaykh is simply the man who has fully surrendered his self-form and filled himself up with the clear radiance of this perfect behaviour. The Messenger has said, 'I was sent to complete the noble qualities of character.' It is essential that this starting point is established. We cannot see clearly, we don't know what is happening, we are looking for a witness of the event of existence we may trust. Madmen, poets, occultists we have by our reason rejected: the witness must be disinterested, and he must manifest the highest social and human qualities. It is not enough that he be some kind of a superior being with superior powers, yogic control over the body and the mind, what is essential is that he is completely at peace and that with that peace he can function in the social setting that is man's ordinary quotidian reality. In the Messenger of Reality, Muhammad, peace be upon him, we find a man with all these qualities. He has left behind a book called the Qur'an, and as yet we have not examined or satisfied ourselves as to the meaning and validity of the book for the moment we are persisting in a more direct existential search for what we seek. We are staying with the man. He has confirmed our own recognition that we are in no way well enough to recognise reality but somehow we must trust the validity of this affirmation of his serenity and human-ness. He has said, 'Man is asleep, and when he dies he wakes up.' This confirms our initial experience of being somnambulistic, unawake to the true taste of life, but it has in it no consolation, and could be a mere Roman cynicism. However there is another Tradition of his which tells us, 'Die before you die!'

This infers that there is a science of waking up, therefore, while still in the world of bodies. But the Messenger died fourteen hundred years ago, and the book he left looks at first glance suspiciously like the others, and we had got to a point where only a direct experience was going to convince us. It is here that the essential teaching element of tasawwuf declares itself. Transmission. Our concern is the alteration of the self, the conquest of the self, the peace treaty with our rebel forces and we have understood that our self-form is oddly unresponsive to reason, and worse than that, has a particularly dangerous quality of self-destruction. Life can, in extremis, be an organised suicide or an endless sleep-in. Structured information then can only become the foil of this self-destroying, selfdeceiving entity the self. The very knowledge of what is wrong seems to betray our hopes for it, and instead of releasing us it traps us and paralyses us more, and the very awfulness of our self-hood which we think we see at last, brings us grinding to a disastrous self-aware frozen halt. What then is the method of the Messenger of Peace, or as he prefers to call himself, the Messenger of Submission? He simply is there and he asks people to follow him, keep him company, and to do as he does. That is all, or seems all but in fact this is everything. He has said that, 'If a man lives with a people he becomes one of them,' and also, 'A man follows the life-pattern of his friend, so let each of you look to who he takes as a companion.' We already know in our barbaric state that if a man is locked up with the insane he most probably will himself fragment in his self-experience, and if he keeps the company of junkies he will sooner or later succumb to their habit; more recognisably, a man becomes a soldier on entering the army. He gets 'beaten into shape', the self-form is restructured and solidified into something considered manly, heroic and brutal. A man who keeps the company of women, and avoids men's company, even if he is sexually expressed as a man, will take on a subtle feminising of self-form and behaviour. Or to narrow the field of this phenomenon even more, if you sit in a room with someone in a rage you will pick up from that person the subtle form of their condition. You will either become 'defensive' or you in turn will attack their anger. If you sit with a depressive you will in turn be depressed or you will feel obliged in some subtle manner to put up a resistance to their swamping all-enveloping low-energy, you will have to become either depressed or by contrast resistantly high. In other words, there is a constant traffic in the energy-forms of the self, and they do battle as much socially as they do inwardly. If the behaviour is controlled from outside, at a certain point there will still come an eruption from within when the outward situation allows it.

Now from the embattled position of the self as it is, we cannot but be well aware that it is of its nature to continue the struggle, to sabotage the end of hostilities, for it thrives on struggle and seems to gain life by its own continued self-destruction. This means that the self is going to be constantly seeking the very company that will keep it constantly trapped in a cycle of pain. If you desire to be punished you will not rest till you find the executioner. You may work your way through a whole series in the desperate desire to prove that you 'want out of it', but see what a cruel fate has always provided you with a destructive partner. In other words for the embattled self, the other is fairly certain to turn out to be the enemy, and hell will, after all, seem to be other people. Returning now to our point of departure, we have agreed that, knowing as we do that the self is in an endless loop of repeated battles, we must be done with the game of suffering and rediscover that deep basic sanity which we desire and which we cannot but recognise in this perfectly balanced and radiant figure of Muhammad, peace be upon him. We wish to recover, if you like, our Muhammad-nature. And the means is transmission. It is enough to sit with someone for transmission to take place. Instead of seeking again the partner of battle and further pain, we now turn to the Shaykh, who is completely at peace, utterly turned away from all the tremors within us and utterly withholding of either approval or disapproval, the two drugs on which our continued self-survival depends. 'The shaykh is contagious,' said a follower of Shaykh al-Kamil. If you sit in the sun you get sunburned, that is enough. For the moment we do not know why, we have no science yet to indicate why and how this should be so, for it certainly does not accord with the solid mechanistic psychology we are with such difficulty trying to leave behind, because it is a psychology based on the very dialectic that traps us. The Shaykh is simply the living exemplar he is not a Messenger, for the Message has been delivered but you could say that he is the Message. He is a Qur'an and a furqan. He is a gathering-together of forms, a unifier, and he is a separator, a discriminator, one who makes choices and selects and rejects without struggle. The mind must be cleared of the whole superstitious, authority-projection idea of the guru that is so prevalent in our society. He is not, and this must be established, a super-guide, a powerful figure, an authority. He is not going to tell you how to live your life, what house to buy and what job to take, although he may well know these things. He in no way takes on the burden of your problems, precisely because from the point of view of his deep sanity these problems do not exist. He is merely a mirror in which you may, if you are patient enough, see yourself at last. He is an openness, and an emptiness. He is fully surrendered to his creature-state, to advancing age, and to changing seasons, and to the sameness of days. And for this reason he is utterly turned away from us; he greets us and feeds us and counsels us, but he is not caught up, there is no yes to our no, and no refusal of our yes. In some exasperating or frightening way he does not see us. We could kill him. He really does not care! So what then is happening inside this man? From our sick point of view it certainly seems to be a super-defence system that we can envy. He is unassailable, we are vulnerable. He wins, we lose.

We still see things this way. So we decide to imitate him. We go to the master swordsman to learn how to kill, and do not realise that he is teaching us not to need it. What does he do? What is the means to this omnipotent end? It is, unsurprisingly, disconcerting. Firstly the Shaykh either does not sleep at all or minimally, perhaps two or three hours at most. Putting that aside as the fruit of years of hard work, we cannot avoid recognising that this awakeness of which the Messenger of Submission spoke was not some inner consciousness alone, but consciousness itself. The whole of his existence is spent in one thing he is in a constant state of awareness, of collectedness, or, if you like recollectedness, for he is there, he does exist before our eyes and he is recollecting back into himself the plenum. His reality is that he is in constant and unceasing communication with reality itself. He has subjugated the self, its struggle is over, and yet there is still a someone there a man who eats and sleeps a little, talks, sits. Yet if his self-form exists it somehow takes in everything, it excludes nothing, it is all-embracing. We treat him as a Master and show the utmost respect to him, everyone bows before him and he sees all this and he does not care. People denounce him and criticise him and accuse him of fraudulence and he does not care. He is a Master yet at the same time he is that by the most extreme token of opposites he is a slave. He is not our slave, or anyone's slave, or any thing's slave. He is the slave of It, of this very reality we want to know and experience. He has subjugated his 'I' and he has enthroned the 'He', what the Arabs call the pronoun of absence. Constantly he addresses reality, his reality, as 'He'. He is a presence addressing an absence, and yet we experience him inwardly as an absence expressing a Presence. He is the perfection of slavery. He is bound, utterly constrained, without choice, helpless, obedient. He does what he has been commanded to do. He bows and he prostrates before this Reality, he calls on its name morning and night, he asks and he asks but never for this or that, never for forms. He asks for this no-thing, this effulgent nothingness that has produced the myriad forms, he asks It for It and gets whatever 'It' he supplicates for, so we always see him satisfied and content. He may be ill and in pain, he may be penniless, but he is content, he is well-pleased, for it seems that this flow of 'It' never ceases through all these apparently negative events. Stranger still we notice that despite poverty and illness there is in fact a disconcerting and inexplicable flow of goods and money in to this centre of submission, the Shaykh. We observe also that everything that comes in to him, goes out from him. He is merely a vortex of energy, and the money is distributed and the people are fed and clothed, and he goes on bowing and prostrating and praising this Reality with its endless generosity and compassion and provision, so that we cannot look at him without being reminded of It! Again it is dangerous to interpose those old preconceptions of an ethic that says we must struggle and work and compete to be a healthy society, and we recall that the working, competing, struggling society has spent itself in a quite terrible frenzy of competition and

struggle that has all but destroyed the bio-sphere in which we work to live. For the moment let us enquire openly into what this system of address is that the Shaykh employs and what are its effects. The Shaykh calls himself Nur-i-Muhammad, the Light of Muhammad, that is, he is a luminous form of that perfection of man, he is the summit of what the human creature is in its potentiality when fully realised. The thing to be grasped is that the Shaykh is in dialogue with Reality, he speaks to It and It speaks to him. This is again to be accepted either as a fantasy or sanity. We recognise that he functions socially in the world and that he does embody those noble virtues or good qualities that so appealed to us and so intrigued us when we discovered that a man could possess them and live in the world. We also observe that his dialogue rarely involves direct asking for a specific but is mainly about praising the endless energy of the Reality and the generosity and compassion and fullness of its nature he is busy exalting Reality and honouring it and even glorifying it. Along with this we note that he seems constantly to be involved in a kind of fine tuning, a honing away on this smooth surface of his inner reality of any roughness or blemish. He is with each new day refining and asking to be refined, he is polishing and asking to be polished. So by this token he is utterly open to his own activity, he himself is constantly under review, constantly being renewed, in this dynamic communication he has with his own reality the static that seems to gather around the wave impulse that is his existence is being cleared and stilled by this rhythmic act of renewal and prostration. This is just like the Messenger of Submission, Muhammad, peace be upon him, who when he undertook any matter, entrusted it to the Reality, and renounced his own strength and power and asked for guidance in these words: 'Oh Allah, show me the truth as truth, and I will follow it. Show me what is denied as the denied and make me shun it. Protect me in case the truth should become doubtful to me, and I then follow my inclination without guidance from You. Make it be that my inclination is in obedience to You, and may You be pleased with my harmonising with You. Guide me correctly in regard to whatever I am in doubt about as to its truth, although that doubt is by your permission. Truly You guide whoever You want onto the true Way.' If this is read carefully, a quite astonishingly fine balance may be observed in the way in which he addresses It as both other-than-he, and at the same time recognises that his whole self-form in its separateness is Its property. His doubt and the adjusting of his doubt are from one source that is not the 'I' that asks. The 'I' that asks is helpless. The 'You' that is addressed is total. With the man of Muhammad, peace be upon him, nothing is outside the process. There is no observer, there is no spectator, there is no alien creature in an alien world in an alien universe. That would be fantasy to imagine one was outside the process. We are in the process, we are the process if I was not here, I would have nothing to worry about. It is

this persistent lie of self-hood that is the very matter of conflict and suffering. I look out at the forms and get frightened and confused, I become alienated. I try to make the setting of my exile benign. I choose this mountain or the edge of that ocean because I like it and hope that it will harmonise with my inner troubled self. I choose this person and not that person because I feel between us there is some commonality. But soon I become irritated with that person, their sameness seems an empty mockery of my individuality and I long for someone different, the mountain storm echoes my own turbulence and I long for a landscape that is the opposite of my inner imagined self. All this stems from my seeing myself as outside the process and either hopelessly trying to fit myself in and harmonise or trying not to be overwhelmed by the utterly irreconcilable otherness of the creation and the creatures. The man, Muhammad, affirms unity. He says One not two. So he does not say it, but It says it through him and by him, so that he says, 'I am only a slave of the Reality, yet I am the Messenger of the Reality.' In other words I merely tell you what the reality is like. But it is not from me, for there is no me, there is only a locus of communication. There is a radio-station on the waveband but the air itself is nothing but oscillating signals, the waveband and the signal are one reality. So his gathering together of what is, his Qur'an, is not by him but by It and from It and we are forced to continue the message is from It to It, for other than It outside It, in It, there is not anything. This is not complicated. Two things are being said at once. If you say One you cannot say the other. If you say both you approach a new way of understanding existence. The Message from It is this: In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Say: He, Allah, is One, Allah is endless time, He did not bring anything into being and nothing brought Him into being, and no one form is like Him. (Qur'an: 112) This is reality. This is what existence is like. And it is named. It is named so that we may indicate what cannot be given a name, it is the name of what is not this and not that. Allah.

Allah it is named with a personal name for a personal name does not define, it merely indicates. John does not define John, it merely indicates that he is there. Allah does not define Allah, it is our indication that He is present although he is no-place. There is no god. By the same token, there is no me to reject god, for that would make me godlike that is a power, positing this and that. Earth is a power but water sweeps over it and destroys it. Water is a power but air turns it into vapour. Air is a power but fire consumes it and Fire is a power but earth obliterates it. And so on. In the world of forms there is no god. This is not absolutely over that. Allah is not, in this declaration of the Messenger, presented as the ground of being or as the infra-structure, nor is It presented as being identical with the totality of forms. What we are presented with is an uncompromising affirmation of Unity. One reality, of which the forms are but appearances. The forms are certainly taken seriously and there is a whole science of how to be among forms, how to view them and treat them, including your own. But in affirming the One reality the forms are negated. No god. Only Allah. This is how the greatest Master Shaykh 'Ibn 'Arabi puts it: We draw conclusions about Him through ourselves. We do not describe Him with any quality but that we possess that quality, with the exception of a special essential autonomy. Since we know Him by ourselves and from ourselves, we attribute to Him all that we attribute to ourselves. For that reason, Divine communications came down on the tongues of our interpreters, and so He described Himself to us through ourselves. When we witness, He witnesses Himself. We are doubtless numerous as individuals and types, yet we are based on one reality which unites us. So we certainly know that there are distinctions between individuals. If there were not, there would be no multiplicity in the One. Likewise we are described in all aspects by what He describes Himself. There must be a distinction and it is none other than our need (iftiqar) of Him in existence. Our existence depends on Him by our possibility. He is independent of that which makes us dependent on Him. Because of this one can apply pre-endless-time and no-time to

Him which negates the firstness which suggests the opening of existence from nonexistence. Although He is the First, firstness is not ascribed to Him, and for this reason He is called the Last. Had His firstness been the firstness of the existence of determination, it would not be valid for Him to be the Last to the determined, because there is no Last to the possible for possibilities are endless. Rather, He is the Last because the whole affair returns to Him after its attribution to us. So He is the Last in the source-form of His firstness and the First in the source-form of His lastness. He goes on to say: So the Universe is its own veil over itself and it cannot perceive the Reality since it perceives itself. It is continuously under a veil which is not removed since it knows that it is distinct from its Creator by its need of Him. It has no portion in the essential necessity which belongs to the existence of Allah, so it can never perceive Him. In this respect, Allah is always unknown by the knowledge of direct tasting and witnessing because the time-forms have no hold on that. Already we seem flung up against an impossibly forbidding barrier. It seems then that the Existent is an unknowable nothing, yet bafflingly a fecund nothing out of which endlessly pour myriad forms. And here is the Shaykh saying that we cannot know Him by direct tasting, by direct seeing. What then is the point of it we were not seeking a closed system of perfect metaphysical design, we started on the quest because we sought to let our hearts experience the radiant peace of perfection. The Shaykh al-Akbar also has said: Some of us implied ignorance of the matter in their knowledge and said 'The incapacity to achieve perception is perception.' Among us are those who know, and who do not utter the like of this: and it is the highest of words. Knowledge does not give him incapacity to know as the first said, but rather, knowledge gives him the silence which incapacity gives. This is the highest mark of the one who has knowledge of Allah. And so back we have come to our first perception of the Shaykh who in his transmission of the Nur-i-Muhammad, presents us with someone who is utterly helpless. Sayyedina 'Umar, the second Khalif of the Messenger, said: 'Would that I were the dust upon the road.' The Perfect Woman, the Messenger's wife, A'isha, said: 'Would that I were a leaf upon that tree.' The Messenger called himself the Slave of Allah. Shaykh ibn al-Habib, who used to sign himself the slave of the slaves, says in his Diwan:

By slavery I mean being stripped of every power and strength and capacity and even the act of getting things for yourself. Now this is such a completely alien idea that it fulfils our worst suspicions about asceticism and fatalism and all the other labels of our education, it all ends up with disease-ridden squalor and beggars swarming idle in city gutters. The work ethic looms up and struggle takes on its heroic aspect and the militant flags of work and progress and social contract again surge through us with the old adrenaline kick of dialectical rage. We have to be patient and leave this utterly extraordinary point of view aside for the moment, remembering that its confrontation is the whole matter of what has been called the Hikmat, the Wisdom, the Way from the beginning of man's story. We have seen that the basis that sustains the whole Wisdom method of the Perfected is the affirmation, the uncompromising affirmation of Oneness. The Unity of existence is the key to the whole set of sufic sciences. Unity of existence is therefore the foundation of the Wisdom of the Wise, and their wisdom is in turn the reality of their slave-hood before the splendour of the Universal Reality. The Messenger said, indicating the Way 'The life-transaction is behaviour.' And it is this science of the self that we must first discover on our journey. We will by the very nature of this unitive approach, come right back to our starting point, Unity, or as it is called in the technical language of Sufism, Tawhid. In the meantime, as the Shaykh al-Akbar put it: The Universe continues to be in the present tense.

The Science of the Self

If you reflect there are signs in the nafs because the whole macrocosm of existence is contained in it. By purification the nafs expands by the power of the Reality. Now do not say: 'How?' or 'Where?' or 'What?' It expands by the bestowal of the Trust upon it by Allah and god-hood has no limitation. The great men have proved unable to bear this Trust yet still man has to take it on, and this is the highest task.

-- from the Diwan of the Perfect Shaykh In the Makkan Revelations of the Shaykh al-Akbar he tells of al-Junayd, the Imam of the Masters, may Allah be pleased with him, being asked, 'What did you obtain of what was granted?' And his reply: 'My sitting beneath this stair for thirty years.' Then he quotes Shaykh Abu Yazid, may Allah be pleased with him, as saying: 'You took your knowledge from something dead, and we took our knowledge from the Living who does not die.' We have already committed ourselves to a path of learning which rejects information as a knowledge-process. In the sciences we wish to acquire nothing less than direct experience can be accepted as valid. Language does not alter your condition and it is the condition of anxiety and conflict that has to be healed. What we have to establish first of all is the nature of the work that has to be undertaken, and it must not be confused with the structuralist education we have been forced to abandon. This is how the Shaykh al-Akbar, again in 'The Makkan Revelations', defines the matter: So let the possessor of himma be in spiritual retreat with Allah. His gift and His grace appear to such a man from a knowledge of which every language-bound person in the world is ignorant. Moreover, not one speculative thinker or logician can possess this state. It is beyond the perception of reason. Knowledges are on three levels: 1. The knowledge of reason ('aql): it is every knowledge which you acquire by necessity or as a result of speculation in a proof with the condition of the discovery of that proof and its form structured in the world of thought. Thought gathers and selects from that form of knowledge. For this reason, they say in speculation that this is valid and that is in-valid. 2. The second knowledge is the knowledge of states (ahwal), and there is no way to it except by direct tasting. A man of reason cannot limit it nor can he base proof on it, like the knowledge of the sweetness of honey, and the bitterness of aloes and the pleasure of intercourse and passion and ecstasy and yearning. There is no form of this type in the knowledges. So these are knowledges which it is impossible for anyone to know without being characterised by them and experiencing them. 3. The third knowledge is the knowledge of the secrets (asrar), and it is the knowledge which is above the condition of reason. It is a knowledge which the Perfect Dynamic of Existence blows into the heart. No knowledge is nobler than this encompassing knowledge which contains all known things. Know therefore that the Path of Allah, may He be exalted, is that which the elite of the trusting ones have travelled upon seeking their liberation and not the masses who occupy themselves with other than that for which they were created.

There are four paths: search, causes, behaviour-pattern, and realities. There are three rights preserved for them which call them to these paths: the right of Allah, the right of themselves, the right of creation. The rights which Allah, may He be exalted, has over them is that they glorify Him and do not associate any thing with Him. The right creation has over them is that there is a Road for creatures to go on, restraining them from harm and limiting them on the one hand, and on the other bringing them a good existence by the very act of what is allowed. There is no way to the harmony of the goal except by the tongue of the Road (Shari'a). The right due to themselves is that they do not travel except on a path that has happiness and liberation in it. The four paths mentioned by the Master are the four truths by which we make the approach to our own understanding. But before the practices can be embarked on it has to be established that all this is based on our certainty of the Shaykh's approach and a complete surrender of any kind of opinion or idea or speculation that one might have about the validity or non-validity of the work. This surrender demands that even beyond the bounds of reason one has to be completely acquiescent before the Shaykh's instruction and injunction. It is something very difficult for so-called educated people to accept. This confusion comes from two things: firstly, they are used to the idea that the teacher is as fallible if not more fallible than they themselves are, and if this were true of the Shaykh it would be quite fitting to contradict him and defy him in certain cases. Secondly, the seeker has still held onto some idea or concept of 'freedom' or 'independence' that sets him outside the life-situation. As the Shaykh's sole intention is to set him on the path of his own possibilities and to awaken in him contentment with the totality that surrounds him, these conflicts that call up our defiance have no reality for the Shaykh, and merely indicate the temperature, as it were, of the recovering patient. In other words, this surrender is based on the Shaykh being himself a completely radiant and surrendered slave of Reality. Worse than dissension over behaviour is dispute with words. There is no debate among the people of the Path. Different Masters may use different methods but there is no argument. Assuming that the Master follows the Shari'a, there can be no questioning him that is the only outward criterion for a seeker as he selects his teacher. As the Shaykh al-Kamil said: 'Even if a man comes to you flying through the air, if he does not follow the Shari'a leave him.'

Search is that energy-impulse that rises up in a person and puts them on the path of awakening and reality out of the sleep of their previous existence and its fantasies which they mistook for being awake. At first it expresses itself as a restlessness and a dissatisfaction with this world and the reward-structure of material existence and the rewardoffering of so-called inter-personal relationships. When the illusory relationships begin to be rejected as lies, and the so-called 'real' world takes on a kind of unreality, two things can happen either the person will retreat out of the unsympathetic life-situation and make their own reality-rules and rewards they might even decide to leave the body quite effectively, cut off all communication through the central nervous system and station themselves out of reach of the totalitarian enemy world system, using their body as a kind of colony or space-station to which they send and from which they receive occasional signals this condition is variously described as madness or schizophrenia (split self) but which for the moment could merely be looked upon as an extreme and uncompromising defence-system based on the illusion that the enemy was without, when in fact the madman who thinks he is deluding you has merely deluded himself, for the enemy was within. The second possibility is a kind of collapse from within, a car crash of existence in which the driver, unlike the subject in the first picture, manages to survive, but the whole machine of his life to date cannot be road-worthy again. He has to abandon all the inner mind pictures and he is stopped from continuing with the reality game that he has been so long blackmailed into taking seriously. The aims and goals of the society have been revealed to him as worthless, the neon-lit world has been exposed to the splendour of sunlight and all he can do is turn off the false lights and turn to the natural energy source that has been manifested. From the society's point of view he could be labelled many things, politically he is an anarchist, behaviourally he is an introvert in crisis, a neurotic, socially he may be a drop-out or a misfit. The important thing is that he is in motion where before there was a static and rigid structure, with its collapse has come energy, movement quest. The great example of this condition in tasawwuf is the case of the Imam al-Ghazzali, called the Proof of Islam, and one of the great Masters of the Way. Abu Hamid, as al-Ghazzali is called among the Sufis, died at Tus in 1111 A.D. Already established as a great teacher at Bagdhad University under the patronage of the Sultan and with a firmly established reputation as a philosopher, he was suddenly assailed by overwhelming doubts about the reality of all that he knew or thought he knew, and about the very substance of lived existence. He asked himself: Do you not see that while asleep you assume your dreams to be unquestionably real? Once awake, you recognise them for what they are fantasies without substance. Who then can assure you of the reliability of an existence which when awake you derive from the senses and from reason? In relation to your present state they may be real, but it is also possible that you may enter another state of existence which will bear the same relation to your present state as this does to your condition when asleep. In that new zone you will recognise that the conclusions of reason are mere fantasies.

This possible condition is perhaps what the Sufis call 'hal', that is to say, according to them, a state in which, absorbed in themselves, and in the suspension of senseperception and thought-forms, they are able to see. Perhaps also death is that state, according to the Prince of Messengers who said: 'Men are asleep and when they die they awaken.' Our present life in relation to that future is perhaps merely a dream, and man, once dead, will see things in direct opposition to what is now before his eyes: he will then understand the words of Qur'an, 'Today We have removed the veil from your eyes and your sight is keen.' (50.22) Such thoughts as these threatened to shake my reason and I sought to find an escape from them. But how? The anguish increased until the whole fabric of his domestic life, his intellectual pursuits and reputation and his formal acts of devotion became devoid of meaning: Finally, I saw that the only condition of release was to give up honour and riches and to sever the ties and attachments of the life I knew. One day I would decide to leave Bagdhad and give up everything: the next day I changed my mind. This tension continued over a period of six months during the year 1096 A.D. The climax came when he got up before his students to give a discourse and found that he had been struck dumb. The silence imposed from deep within him by existence shattered what was left of his coherent life-pattern. He could not eat and he could not drink, and the doctors expected him to die. Suddenly the way opened to him and what had seemed impossible became easy for him. He publicly announced that he was going on Hajj to Makka while secretly he planned a departure to Syria. His decision to give up this most honoured academic post caused a tremendous stir that reverberated right across the Muslim community beyond Iraq. People blamed the Khalif, others the Madrassah where he taught, but nothing now could halt his progress. With a clear and integrated purpose he settled all his affairs, leaving his wives and family provided for, so that he could set out for the desert with his begging bowl and seek the company of the Sufi zawiyyas where he hoped to begin his new life. There then followed ten years of sufic practice at the end of which he felt ready to return to the world he had left behind and at last begin to teach by transmission what he had gained: I learned from a sure source that the Sufis are the true pioneers on the path to Allah, that there is nothing more beautiful than their lives, nor more praiseworthy than their rules of conduct, nor purer than their behaviour. The intelligence of thinkers, the wisdom of philosophers, the knowledge of the most accomplished intellectuals would in vain combine their efforts in order to modify or improve their sciences and their behaviour it would be impossible. With the Sufis repose and movement, exterior or interior, are illumined with light. So search, which at first manifests as agitation, disorder and movement, is eventually restructured under the impulse of the sufic practices just as the iron-filings are patterned according to the power of the magnet that attracted them. Search is that faculty which the Master Jalalud-Din Rumi, may Allah be pleased with him, called congeneity. It is not just the energy impulse of the magnetic field, it is the actual susceptibility that the iron has to

be attracted, or the straw has towards the amber. So that we may say that search is itself the revealing of the nature of the subject. The appearance of the amber lets us see the straw for what it is, an attracted substance. Not every element can be magnetised, and not every person is drawn to the search. Qur'an says: 'Allah guides to his path who He wills,' (2.213) and 'Allah leads astray who He wills.' (6.39). So the search, once it has begun, can then be given a different name, for it is the same energy form, only it has then taken direction. Once under the guidance of a Shaykh that impulse is called himma, meaning yearning, or appetite for knowledge of reality. Himma is a key term in our sciences. It is the faculty we must awaken, and the energy to be most desired. It is desire itself and yet it is necessary that it be desired. Himma brings himma. The need for himma in the seeker runs through the Diwan of the Perfect Shaykh as a major theme: And, Oh my companion, himma is the possession to have, then if you desire the goal of all the gnostics you can set out for it. Elsewhere he indicates that it is the means to unification in experience: To the people, His dhikr does in place of what is other-than-Him. If you possess himma there is no opposite to Allah. Or again, it is seen as the faculty which in its perfection is the dynamic of the Shaykh's transmission. Describing how to recognise a true Master he begins: His signs are: a Light which shines outwardly, and a Secret which appears inwardly through his himma. In his 'Lesser Song' he puts it as one of the three essentials the adept needs for unification of his reality: Whoever has got dhikr, fikr, and himma will in each moment transcend otherness. He will attain gnosis beyond his desire and fast realise the secrets of existence. He will see that the purity of the Road is separation, which, properly speaking, is the source of Reality. In 'The Buraq of the Tariq' he counsels: Awaken your himma with yearning and longing, and do not be content with less than the Ever-continuing.

So from this we can see that himma is the highest energy impulse of the human creature, it is that motion within a man or woman which rouses them from the whole runningdown process of the organism, which lifts them up and moves them with an energy beyond any other energy they possess to strive not for any formal achievement but for reconnection with reality itself. It is life energy, it moves counter to the dying arc of the cellular existence, and it lies outside the self-interest of the social impulse. It is the failure of the academic to understand this energy, for it is not a principle but a force, that has led to the mis-understanding about so-called asceticism. The fasting, the lack of possessions and the poverty of dress of advanced seekers has been seen as an expression of masochism and self-punishment, which in itself is another of those highly subjective projections that is called objective thinking to veil the built-in value judgment against what they themselves fear. There are two situations which may arise and each would outwardly present the same silhouette while inwardly they would express a different reality. As with every aspect of the self-patterns of the Path, the basic situation is exemplified by the Messenger, peace be upon him. It is told that he was walking in Madina with his Companions when a man called out to him, 'I am miskeen,' which is a Qur'anic term denoting not only poverty but a poverty devoid of struggle to survive. The Messenger answered him, saying, 'Poverty is all my glory.' They proceeded on their way when another man made the same exclamation. This time the Messenger frowned and said, 'Poverty is next to covering-up!' That is, next to covering up the true nature of existence which is all-sustaining and all-providing. He then turned to his Companions and noted that they were confused by the two apparently contradictory statements. The first man, he explained, had the condition of miskeen inwardly and outwardly, while the second was 'rich in his poverty,' for he inwardly indulged in it. The man who gives things up or submits to what seem harsh disciplines is devoid of any experience or motive of self-punishment if the source of his actions is his himma, for it is in the nature of himma to make any action pleasing to the seeker if it leads him to the sought. Devoid of himma, the actions could then be seen as part of a neurotic pattern. The outcome of the one man's actions will be an opening into the serenity and wisdom that is the fruit of himma, while the same actions will lead in the other instance to either crisis or collapse. The Persian Master al-Hujwiri identifies himma with the act of transmission in the same way as the Shaykh al-Kamil in his Diwan, and introduces at the same time a principle of the Way that follows inevitably from the reality-picture which the Wisdom begins to unfold. In Farghana at a village called Ashlatak there was an old man who was one of the Four of the earth. His name was Bab 'Umar all the dervishes in that country give the title of Bab to their great Shaykhs and he had an old wife called Fatima. I went from Uskand to see him. When I entered his presence he said: 'Why have you come?' I replied: 'In order that I might see the Shaykh in person and that he might look on me with kindness, (i.e. transmission).' He said: 'I have been seeing you continually since such and such a day, and I wish to see you as long as you are not removed from my sight.' I computed the day and year: it was the very day that I took the Path. The Shaykh said: 'To traverse distance is child's play. From now on visit by means of himma. It is not worthwhile to visit any person (in this context)

and there is no virtue in bodily presence.' Then he bade Fatima bring something to eat. She brought a dish of new grapes, although it was not the season for them, and some fresh ripe dates which cannot possibly be procured in Farghana. The reality of this experience, where transmission takes place without 'bodily presence' is referred to in the opening of 'The Greater Song' of the Shaykh al-Kamil: If you wish to ascend as lovers ascend, turn to Layla with sincerity in love and dismiss all who deny Her love. Travel to the lovers in every land. If your sincerity in love is real, then by it you will see the lovers without journeying. So now we can see that himma is the dynamic of love itself, though what love may be we are not yet in a position to say. Shaykh al-Kalabadhi said: The seeker is in reality the Sought, and the Sought the Seeker. So Allah says, 'He loves them and they love Him,' (5.54), and again, 'Allah was well-pleased with them and they were well-pleased with Allah,' (5.119). If Allah seeks a man it is not possible for that man not to seek Allah: so Allah has made the Seeker the Sought and the Sought the Seeker. Here is opening up the unitary nature of the dynamic life-energy. He extends it further in showing that on the Path there are people who far from having to struggle are taken up and opened to knowledge, in a reverse picture of himma-action the himma comes to them and illuminates them. In this pattern the Sought is a man of the Path and the Seeker is Reality itself: Nevertheless, in the language of the Sufis, the seeker is the man whose toiling preceded his revelations, while the sought is he whose revelation preceded his toiling. The seeker is described in Allah's words: 'But those who fight strenuously for Us, we will surely guide them into Our Way.' (29.69). Such a man is sought by Allah, who turns his heart and implants in it a himma to stir him to work for Him, and to turn to Him and to seek Him: then He accords him the revelation of the spiritual states. So it was with Harithath (a Companion of the Messenger), who said: 'I turned myself from this world and thirsted in the day-time, and watched at night,' then he said, 'and it was as though I saw the Throne of my Lord coming out!' With these words he indicated that the revelation of the Unseen came to him after he had turned away from this world. The 'sought' man, on the other hand, is drawn out forcibly by Reality and accorded the revelation of the states that through the power

of vision he may be stirred to work for Allah and turn to Him and bear the burdens laid on him by Reality. So it was with Pharaoh's magicians: after they had received the revelation it was easy for them to endure the threat of Pharaoh, for they said: 'We will never prefer you to what has come to us of manifest signs decide then what you are able to decide.' (20.72). (It should here just be explained that in the Qur'anic revelation, the encounter with Sayyedina Musa, the Messenger of Reality, and Pharaoh is an encounter of two realityviews. The Pharaoh was not a mere ruler but a heirophant of great knowledge which gave him yogic power over forms so that he was able to manipulate existence formally. Musa's science was unitary and to do with inner experience of reality, and so was 'powerless' while Pharaoh had powers. Musa was able to transmit knowledge and demonstrate its validity to the Pharaoh's adepts, but the power of Pharaoh blocked his inner ability to recognise that the source of his own powers came from existence itself, of which he was an infinitesimal part. It is important to bear in mind that his wife was however a perfected Master, according to the Messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him, and that he himself, as he was engulfed by the Red Sea, affirmed the truth of Musa's doctrine. His body was preserved, and is, whole, mummified until the world's end, as an affirmation of the power he had over forms, and thus in the end his own self-preservation still had to be gifted by existence and could not be assured by him.) So right at the beginning of the Path we encounter something that is to be the constant theme of all our learning. If reality is One then everything leads back eventually to the One, and in this world of forms everything leads to its opposite, for there is no dialectic except in description, and no conflict except in imagination. Thus himma which is a yearning must be yearned for, and the One yearned for is the initiator, or the yearning impulse, and the Path is nothing but that energy desire. So, it follows that the goal itself, the existent, the Moment, has to be right here, right now in this present tense we and creation continue to be in and that is one of the meanings of the Qur'anic ayat, 'Truly Allah is on a straight Path.' (12.56). The whole matter is a divine event, so that alJunayd's answer to the question of what he had gained was nothing other than the life he had lived, his 'sitting beneath the stair for thirty years' in inner contemplation; he had gained the conscious utterly awake awareness of his own life this was the inestimable achievement of the Master. Causes, or veils, or hindrances, or the whole self-structure whose illusory nature stands between you and the clear-sighted seeing of reality as-it-is, without any fantasy selfcentre if we are to free ourselves from the prison of our own self-experience we must be free of its traps and its methods in encasing us in this false situation. The nafs the term which stands for the experiencing self is variously described and defined in sufic terminology, and this shifting perspective is deliberate and not a sign of differing theory. Both this is true and that is true of it it is in itself a non-reality and it may be experienced in different ways and approached in different ways and dismantled in different ways. The word derives from NFS 'to injure by casting an evil eye upon anyone'. So its very core meaning is that of an energy-form destructively engaged in conflict with another and harming it through its own inner activity. When used

adverbially it means: 'willingly', 'of my own accord', 'at my own pleasure'. Here it is seen as a simple act of self-interest and satisfaction. From it comes the word 'to shine' and unsurprisingly in the light of what we have just examined, it can also indicate 'one who yearns or aspires after' so that with these three aspects of the word we have already got the basic doctrine of the nafs as outlined by Imam al-Ghazzali derived from Qur'anic terminology. 1. AN-NAFS AL-AMARA: the insinuating nafs. It is wholly evil. It is overpowered by passions and obeys their dictates gladly. All energies here are bent on gratification. It cannot discriminate a higher nafs. The lower nafs has become the ideal. They delight in influencing others to like action, and are proud of their own actions. They are not open to encounter and can only be changed by Reality. 'Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing and over their eyes is a covering and there is a great chastisement for them.' (Qur'an 2.7) 2. AN-NAFS AL-LAWWAMA: the reproachful nafs. It is indecisive in choice between good and evil constantly subjected to inner struggle as a result. Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes another capable of both. It is able to discriminate between the two nafs, higher and lower, but it is utterly unable to overcome the impulses of the lower nafs when they burst forth, having knowledge without will. Change comes through keeping company with one who has passed this stage, and through shared spiritual practice which gives strength to abandon bad action and alter the nafs. 'No! I swear by the reproachful self!' (Qur'an 75.2) 3. AN-NAFS AL-MUTMA'INNA: the nafs at peace. The nafs has become fixed, good, illuminated consciousness. It has received An-Nur, Light, thus it acts according to it it is reasonable, it is devoid of evil, and good flourishes around it. The discrimination between the two nafs goes, for the lower one has gone and the true nafs is the master. Man has achieved perfect freedom. 'Oh self at peace, return to your Lord, well-pleased, well-pleasing! Enter you among My slaves! Enter you My Garden!' (Qur'an 89.27-30) The above description of the nafs in different conditions displays the only basic possibilities within which each individual fantasy history is played out. The nafs at its most reduced and therefore at its most active is in this pattern clearly identifiable with the infant, only the infantile behaviour is ensconced in an adult situation and so it has the aspect of being monstrous. That is, the observer finds that the behaviour of such a person is like that of a small child at the same time the observer is appalled at the power and effectiveness and scale of the destructive action which, taken out of the nursery, becomes acted out in the larger playpen of 'history'. For most people it is almost impossible to believe from the position of their own repression that the actor-out is doing it and so they stubbornly refuse to confront the mad event they get caught up in, despite themselves.

This nafs, nevertheless, cannot possibly function unless it has the setting of the pseudoadult nafs to play against, for its destructive activity is directed against the self-image which is most clearly mirrored in the authority figure, be it a parent or pseudo-parent. On a global scale this nafs is easily identifiable Napoleon, Churchill, Hitler and so on. They are the very marrow of what has come to be known as history, which is nothing but the violent foreground event created to draw attention away from the deeper background unreality of the nafs' personal battle which in itself is another fantasy. So the politics of a situation from this point of view is a fantasy structure disguising an inner nafs' conflict that is being acted out in the zone of event the existential vitality of which obscures the nafs' actual dilemma which is the fantasy structure that has to be dismantled if 'history' is to stop. The nafs in its cunning creates the brilliant diversion of event so that in extremity it will always resort to violence to distract others from recognizing the true inner violence that it expresses or, to hold clearly to the reality of things, the illusory inner violence. So we are presented with a picture of existence where the arena of activity, the arena of events, is nothing less than an illusion cloaked by an illusion taking place in an imaginary setting and happening to imagined beings. Shaykh al-Akbar says: So He, may He be praised! obeys Himself when He wishes with His creation, and He is just to Himself in respect to what He appointed to Himself from the necessity of His right and it is nothing more than empty phantoms on their empty thrones. In the echo lies the secret of what we allude to to whoever is guided. There is no doubt that this idea of the illusory nature of event let alone of phenomena is emotionally very disturbing to people who have been educated in the effective conditioning of present day society. At this stage it is dangerous to fall for the kind of superficial 'realism' of the academic who at worst will blusteringly introduce a commonsense down-to-earth empiricism the table is there and I am here and that's an end to it. We are not trying here to negotiate existence to neurotic subjects who are ensconced in their world view and committed to the resultant madness that is our contemporary situation. The context of our study of the nafs is that we take our picture from men who have transcended these fantasy experiences which lead to war and crime and insanity and have thus gained a total view of man's possibilities both creatively and destructively for our common-sense fellow has not only been unable to grasp the sublime possibilities of the human creature, but he has utterly failed to contain the insane and suicidal tendencies of his fellow men, allowed genocide to be the mark of his century on a social level, and crime and madness its private condition. A true science of the nafs must be able to deal with the bad aspects of the nafs and by bad I do not mean what is parentally censured, but what is destructive to the subjects themselves. It must then be able to understand the means to transform the self so that it can replace all the negative energies, bit by bit, with positive creative energies. It is the former of these that we have called Causes and the latter, Behaviour-patterns. It is understandable that people are afraid of words like 'wrong' and 'right', 'good' and 'bad', for they do lead to words like 'blame' and the whole punishment syndrome swings

into action. It is at this point that a crucial principle of the Noble Way must be grasped. It has already been quoted from the Diwan of the Perfect Shaykh: the purity of the Road is separation, which, properly speaking, is the source of Reality. No one knows better than the Sufis that the zone of experiential existence is one of duality. Tawhid nowhere denies it, as the Shaykh al-Kamil insists. If we did not experience duality there would be no need for a science of Unity. It is the mark of the pseudo-sufi that he refuses to adhere to the practices of separation and the Road while pretending to union and the Path. There has been no Sufi who did not approach existence, awed and humbled, a slave approaching his master. There can be no talk of lover and Beloved until the slave has become obedient, not through tyranny, but through the submission of the creature to his creatureness, and until the slave's submission opens him up to his true nature as Khalif of reality. If a man says he does not need to bow and prostrate and fast and ritually wash, he is setting himself above the Masters and so while outwardly he may be engaged in all the tasks of sufic practice, inwardly he is deeply engrossed in the 'monstrous' infantile battle with the parents. The pseudo-sufis are all of this monstrous nature, paternal, dominant and outwardly benign their followers inevitably are haunted sons desperately trying to overcome the dominant father by an act of ritual magic, for that is what they use 'practices' to do since practices are for one purpose only, to bring you to the ground, humbled, lowered, broken, and ultimately surrendered and accepting, finally open and receptive to the endless riches of the creation, to the endless bounty of the Truth it is hardly surprising that their ventures end in schism and collapse. There is no Master of the Way who has not accepted his obligations as a human being to bow and prostrate and fast, so much so that he is of all men the most submitted and the most diligent in performing what is demanded of him. Shaykh al-Akbar, which means the Greatest Master, at the very opening of his definitive treatise on the Path, 'The Makkan Revelations', is categoric in affirming that there can be no possible transmission unless it comes from a follower of the Messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him. He describes most vividly the Messenger's last pilgrimage to Makka and his calling the people around him to confirm that he had conveyed to them the total teaching of how to live on this planet in harmony with the whole creation and with direct inner knowledge of reality: Then he said: 'Has it reached you? They said: 'It has, oh Messenger of Allah!' He said, may Allah give him peace: 'Oh Allah I testify.' And to the Messenger's testimony the Master adds his own like a humble and ordinary slave: I believe in all that has been brought to him, peace be upon him, from that which I know and do not know of what He gave him.

Following our Shaykh, who in turn is a follower and inheritor of the wisdom of the Shaykh al-Akbar, we proceed to set in motion the practices of the Noble Way hoping for a guidance that will give us discrimination in this dual world and yet somehow although we are aware of the open contradiction will also give us Union. What then is the foundation of discrimination? Given that we have affirmed the Messenger as a reliable witness of existence, in accepting our Shaykh we copy him in the first practice of the Way.

WUDU
Shaykh Shibli, the disciple of al-Junayd, and a Shaykh of our Shaykh, said, 'Wudu is separation. Salat is joining.' The meaning and effect of wudu underpin the whole structure of practices that you will undergo, so it is essential to grasp the profundity of this rite. The ritual prostrations (salat) are not valid unless they are either preceded by the wudu or the previous wudu is still valid. The wudu is a formalised washing of the hands, mouth, nostrils, face, right arm, left arm, head and neck, ears, right foot and then left foot, accompanied by the appropriate supplication. The act is outwardly a cleansing and inwardly a purification. The manner of doing wudu is swiftness and thoroughness, being sure that the water touches every part of the members being washed. The Shaykh alKamil used to say, 'Perform wudu like a majdhub (holy madman) and salat like a dying man.' The effectiveness of the wudu is broken by urination, excretion, passing wind anally, and the sexual act in the last event ritual purity can only be renewed by ghusl, which is the full act of purification involving the whole body being washed. The act of wudu is followed by a declaration of Shahada, the affirmation of the Unity and the authority of the Messenger. The experience of the washing is its own explanation, for the person feels the shock impact of pure water, forcing the nafs from whatever fantasy has been haunting it to the direct reality of water and body, to the impact of the moment. It brings you to your senses, it snaps the nafs away from the false dream state of that dazedness which hints at an illusory unity while in fact the nafs is simply detaching from the body which is its own totality. And this brings us to our first encounter with a situation that will be met with at every stage of the Way, although it has been obliquely referred to in the story of the two poor men in Madinah meeting the Prophet. Every condition of balance and harmony and every state and station of knowledge is accompanied by a shadow-form that is contrary to the science of wisdom and could be designated as a neurotic situation. For example, and most obviously, the thorough execution of wudu for the five ritual prostrations is the sign of the Mumin (one who trusts reality) according to the Messenger saying: 'Keep to the straight Path, do not make calculations, know that your best action is salat and that only a Mumin observes wudu carefully.' (Thauban reported it, and Malik transmitted it.) At the same time it is possible to discover a man involved in performing wudu relentlessly so that while outwardly you cannot fault him you are inwardly aware that there is something disturbing in his performance of the rites, something that can be recognised as of an obsessional nature.

Uqba ibn 'Amir reported the Messenger as saying, 'If any submitted one performs wudu well, then makes two raka's (sets of prostrations), engaging in their performance both inwardly and outwardly, he will be guaranteed the Garden.' Muslim transmitted it. Here the Messenger specifies that without the action being inwardly invested with awareness it is of no avail. The implication of this dual situation is that it is possible to see someone apparently ennobled by all the science of the wisdom-behaviour who is inwardly in a state of conflict and ignorance. This to the people of the Way is the vital dividing line between wisdom, which is the Messenger's Way, and either religion if you see it as mere adherence to forms, or hypocrisy if you see it as an inner denial of meaningful forms. Abu Huraira reported the Messenger as saying, 'When a submitted one or a trusting one washes his face in the course of wudu every wrong action he contemplated with his eyes will come out from his face along with the water or with the last drop of water. When he washes his hands every wrong action they did will come out from his hands with the water or with the last drop of water. And when he washes his feet every wrong action towards which his feet have walked will come out with the water, or with the last drop of water, with the result that he will come out pure from offences.' Muslim transmitted it. It is clear from this that what we are dealing with is a process of effective purification that is suited to man. Every creature has its grooming pattern. The cat's grooming is formal and an essential part of its life. The sign of an animal in captivity losing its life pattern and becoming ill is when it ceases to groom itself. This act of wudu is in quite the same way necessary to man. It is in the nature of the human creature that he imagines his actions adhere to him as idea-forms which he 'carries about with him' until this imaginary load makes life intolerable for him and he breaks under it. The man who has cast aside any recognition of an Unseen reality, and who has rejected any belief in a unified benign energy governing the total existence of the cosmos is, unsurprisingly, far from being liberated from this unfortunate tendency to hold to the idea-form of his actions and to feel burdened by his own illusory selfhood, which to him is nothing other than this accretion of mistakes and misfortunes on the one hand, and triumphs and pleasures on the other. Wudu by its acting upon the surface of the organism at the same time as upon the experiencing centre repeatedly makes a break in consciousness between action and the nafs. Actions have no reality. This is the shock impact of this first ritual action of the Way. The wudu in its turn, according to the Hadith, is useless unless accompanied by this vital inner awareness. That is why in the execution of the wudu, it is essential that there be vocalisation of the Supreme Name, for the act of calling on the Reality during the act is a guide to unifying the outward and the inward aspects of the event. When someone begins the practice of wudu, they will find that there are two basic tendencies of malpractice, one is to be careless and undefined in the separate acts of each state of the washing, and the other is to go through the whole process in slow motion, caressingly as if anointing oneself. Either of these extremes must be scrupulously avoided until the mean is discovered, filling the act with both vigour and dignity and remaining somehow anonymous, so that your doing of it resembles that of the person next to you. There is no individuality in any of the basic practices.

We now come to what underpins the practice of wudu, and makes us aware of the profound importance and effect of the basic practice without which the higher practices would not only be invalidated but their performance would result in serious and damaging effect on the nafs. Invocation without wudu is certainly guaranteed to bring about a destructive crisis in the higher nafs, and in the behaviour rhythm and harmony of the person who attempts this. This is the dangerous and quite malicious practice of the pseudo-sufis whose goal is, of course, manipulation and not liberation. Therefore, from their point of view, the gaining of discrimination is something that has to be precluded from their scheme. Beneath the wudu which forms the base of the practices, is the ghusl. It is simply an extension of the wudu, only it involves washing the whole body in running or poured water, thus providing a total ritual purification. This is necessary at the beginning of the Path for the affirmation of the Unity and the acceptance of the Messenger, and it is the final act done to one before burial when the body is washed before being returned to the earth from where it came the other occasion when it is necessary is following the sexual act. This time the act of separation is again one of being bodily clean and also making a break between the energy of intercourse and the energy of prostration, the leisure of love and the detachment of spiritual practice. There is no built-in moral censure in this, on the contrary it is the act of ghusl which validates and affirms the sexual act and seals it and completes it. It is as much a completion of the act of love as it is a preparation for valid salat. That is why the act of ghusl should not be delayed but should follow as immediately as possible the termination of the love-making. Lowest in the chain of ritual washings is the washing of the anus and the sexual organs after defecation and urination this is completed by washing away any urine stain that should have adhered to the garments. Here we have the basic discrimination that defines sane adult behaviour. The basic indiscrimination is the infant's inability to know shit from food. The whole guilt structure when dismantled in the modern therapeutic manner reveals this basic guilt, transmitted by the already guilty parents to the anxious child who is confused as to what is what. In the adult who has been raised in this society that has not formalised this discrimination it is significant that they end up treating food like shit and wastage of food becomes a social habit to them, in the same way that eating every scrap and not wasting food is part of the wisdom teaching. Here we have then the basic practice on which the total discrimination of behaviour and choices is founded. The Messenger said: 'The key to the Garden is salat, and the key to salat is wudu.' Jabir reported it, Ahmad transmitted it. The Shaykh al-Kamil said: 'The validity of your salat is based on your having performed your wudu. The validity of the wudu is based on the ghusl which preceded it at its time, and the validity of the ghusl in turn depends on having washed the anus and the penis in the lavatory. Thus your whole inner reality is based on the natural act of washing the anus and the penis.' The wudu is a sealing of the body in preparation for the act of salat. That is why passing wind anally, emission, excretion and menstruation break the wudu. Its effect is, on the one hand to bring into the consciousness of the person an acceptance of themselves as being these open, flowing organisms, of intake and giving out with the obligations of wudu and

ghusl, there is no hiding the process, no guilt, no fantasy these events are natural and they have their natural means of purification: its effect is to make a sharp distinction between these energetic activities which are all concerned with production and reproduction, and the higher nafs which demands a complete separation from them, without a repression either of their activity or of our awareness of that activity. The final culmination of these rites is the washing of the dead. We wash our own dead, the men the men, and the women the women. Thus while alive we have the benefit and privilege of preparing others for the grave. In these rites the body is emptied of waste matter, the mouth closed, and then the whole corpse is washed and camphored in a final sealing, so that the body dries rather than rots, and is draped in white cloths then laid to rest in the earth. Incense is burned to awaken the higher self of the mourners, as scent is worn by the person who has done his wudu and is ready for the act of salat which follows. 'Wudu is separation, salat is joining.' Pseudo-sufic teaching, false spirituality, bases itself on the Unity and so instructs its followers that they do not have to follow any particular path since they are all one. It is a doctrine founded on ignorance which bears little scrutiny. It is based on the preservation of the central experiencing nafs and indeed on exalting it and making it powerful and effective in the world of action and events. Why should I bow in that way, or pray in this way surely I am constantly at prayer, surely the Qur'an tells me that wherever I turn there is the face of Allah? This is basically the superficial argument of the pseudo-sufi with his fear of surrender. The Qur'an has said that wherever you turn there is the face of Allah. It also instructs us to take up a particular direction for the act of prostration, thus unifying all the worship of man around a central point, the Ka'ba in Makka, so that an endless wheel of living glorification of Reality endlessly turns around the empty four-walled Ancient House built by Sayyedina Ibrahim for that purpose. Reality addresses the Messenger in the Qur'an saying: We have seen you turning your face about in the heavens: now we will surely turn you to a direction that shall satisfy you. Turn your face towards the pure Mosque and wherever you are turn your faces towards it. Those who have been given the Book know it is the truth from their Lord. Allah is not heedless of the things they do. Yet if you should bring to those that have been given the Book every sign, they will not follow your direction. You are not a follower of their direction, neither are they followers of one another's direction. If you follow their caprices after the knowledge that has come to you, then you will surely be among the evildoers whom We have given the Book, and they recognise it as they recognise their sons, even though there is a party of them who conceal the truth and that deliberately. The truth comes from your Lord, then be not among the doubters. Every man has his direction to which he turns: so be you forward in good works. Wherever you may be, Allah will bring you all together: surely Allah is powerful over everything.

From whatever place you issue, turn your face towards the Holy Mosque: it is the truth from your Lord. Allah is not heedless of the things you do. From whatever place you issue, turn your face to the Holy Mosque: and wherever you may be turn your faces towards it, that the people may not have any argument against you, excepting the evildoers of them: and fear not them, but fear Me: And that I may perfect My blessing upon you, and that haply so you may be guided, as also We have sent among you, of yourselves, a Messenger, to recite Our signs to you and to purify you and to teach you the Book and the Wisdom, and to teach you that you knew not. So remember Me and I will remember you: and be thankful to Me: and do not be ungrateful towards Me. (Qur'an 2.144-152) This passage of Qur'an is of importance to the whole validity of the Way. There is a Way, there is a journey, there is a traveller. We are in the world of forms, and to deny the spiritual forms is to exclude Allah from creation and relegate Him by a false esotericism to the formless. The Qur'an cuts through the distorted reasoning of the ignorant by pointing out the unreality of their refusal of a 'qibla': 'Every man has his direction to which he turns.' So, they do not reject direction, what they are in fact rejecting is that one adopted by the guidance of the spiritual science. It is transmission and the Messenger that they quite rightly from their point of view deny, for their teaching is improvised and their transmission without a source. This passage also affirms that the taking of direction, that is, the acceptance of a discriminatory science, is what opens the human being up to that living dialogue with Reality that was the Messenger's secret. 'Remember Me and I will remember you,' is the inevitable result of this discriminatory process Union is the fruit of separation. The taking of a qibla, contrary to the teachings of the pseudo-sufis, is what makes it possible to grasp the relation between form and no-form, between the limited body-self reality of the slave and the unlimited no-body-self reality of the Lord. It is said that the initial formula of the Shaykh al-Akbar when he faced qibla to begin the salat was, 'I have become kafir, and fastened the belt Allahu akbar.' This means that he had ceased to be a true Muslim, or one who submits to a Reality which can be associated with no form, and become one who covers up how things are, that is, a kafir. He had fastened the belt, or zunnar, of the Christian meaning that he had fixed himself in one direction rather than another and that he had engaged in 'locating' reality, the great Christian confusion about the nature of existence. The 'Allahu akbar', being the opening of the salat itself, indicated that nevertheless he submitted as a slave to the injunctions of his Messenger and affirmed that Allah was akbar greater than any event or comparison or concept.

Shaykh Ibrahim Gazur-i-ilahi in his 'Irshadat' says: The qiblas are four. The qibla of Ka'ba, one's Pir, the heart, the Truth. One has to turn from the first to the second, from the second to the third, and from the third to the fourth in succession. If, in the prescribed salat these stages are attained, so much the better you have drunk out of Muhammad's cup, peace be upon him. Citing the famous ayat of Qur'an: 'Wherever you turn there is the face of Allah,' (2.115) he goes on to tell of a majdhub who used to prostrate before everything he saw and declared: 'Oh Allah, I seek your protection from shirk (associating any form with Allah) in all things.' This of course would be the position of the pseudo-sufi if he held to his own argument, but this state demands real ecstasy. Masud Beg, seeing this, observed to the majdhub's son that his father was asking protection in the very act of shirk. That is to say, every time he bowed down he gave reality a 'direction'. The son replied: 'Do not call him mushrik, he sees everything without the thing-ness.' QBL, the root, means 'to admit', 'to accept' the existence of forms. Before examining the details of the ritual act of prostration, let us examine its meaning as a practice, as the crucial practice of the Way. SALAT What is the salat? We have established the meaning of its whereness, its direction, now we must be quite clear as to what it is and what it does to us. The act of salat as we have said, is prostration. The root word SLA means 'to hurt in the small of the back' and 'to have the centre of the back bent in, as a mare before foaling'. The central movement of the salat is when the head touches the ground, and this is called sajda, from SJD, meaning 'to be humble', and 'adoration'. So the whole thing is an act of humility, and an act of address. The slave presents himself, he offers himself. It is an opening of the self to the sublime reality. Its successive movements, standing, bowing, head on the ground twice, sitting all deny the nafs and offer up the humbled nafs to the reality. The standing is the stage where the self is still assertive, the bowing is the greeting, and the prostration itself with the head on the ground is the direct act of submission one of which is worth a million verbal exclamations of acceptance of the reality. It is the head that has to be laid on the ground. It is the arrogant thought-bound mind that holds the self prisoner in its dazzling structures, that has to be offered up. In the end the final position is neither the proud nafs nor the nafs in abnegation but poised between the two, in ease and in balance the slave sits upright and turns his head to the left and right in a salutation of peace. That is the outward picture inwardly there is a pattern also. Inwardly the beginning is the vital moment, as outwardly it is the end. The opening of the salat is when the slave raises both hands to behind the ears and then lowers them, as if putting the world behind

him the hands, splayed open, are lowered slowly as if passing through water. With this opening goes a verbal declaration: 'Allahu akbar.' This is called takbir. Imam Junayd, may Allah be pleased with him, said, 'Everything in nature has a high point and then a falling away, and the high point of the salat is the opening takbir.' The adept must grasp the significance of this before he can embark fruitfully on the act of salat. Imam Junayd here draws attention to the collectedness that is necessary to perform the act. Before performing the takbir, it is therefore an obligation to make a formal act of niyya, or intention, which in its outward form means simply saying to oneself, 'I now intend to pray the salat of sunset,' or whichever it may be. What it means inwardly is that the whole attention has to be gathered in to the experiencing nafs, the whole awareness has to be focused on the point where the head will fall in sajda, and the heart fixed on Allah. Look at what is necessary and what has already been ascertained before one can make valid salat. The preliminary conditions are: 1. Outward purification from filth and inward purification from appetites (wudu). 2. One's outward garments should be clean and one's inner garments undefiled. 3. The place where one purifies oneself should be outwardly free from contamination and inwardly free from wrong actions. 4. Turning towards qibla, the outward qibla being the Ka'ba and the inward qibla being the Throne of Allah by which is meant the mystery of Divine contemplation. 5. Standing outwardly in the state of power (qudrat) and inwardly in the garden of proximity to Allah (qurbat). 6. Sincere intention to approach Allah. 7. Saying 'Allahu akbar' in the station of awe and annihilation, and standing in the abode of Union and reciting the Qur'an distinctly and with awareness, and bowing the head with humility, and prostrating one's nafs with abasement, and reciting the shahada with concentration, and saluting with annihilation of one's attributes. This is the description of Shaykh al-Hujwiri, and it is a vivid example of the unification of inward experiencing and outward reality that is the very business of tasawwuf. It is the clarity of this unification that permits the Sufi to see through the fragmentation of other men, how their deeds and, in this age especially, their words are invalidated by the absence of an inner state which would give them reality, how their hearts are separate

from their destinies, which is why they do not know where they have been or where they are going. Unification of the nafs has its beginning and ending on the prayer mat of prostration. It is the great practice in the Unseen it is the practice of the angels and the jinn who affirm the Reality, and they are included in the final salutation, for the adept still makes the salutation even if he or she is alone. It is unification because it is an opening up completely to the moment. It is the most fitting thing to do. It is the best thing to do at the time. For the five obligatory prostrations take place at fixed times that move throughout the year according to the rising and setting of the sun. So that while it is inward unification, inevitably it is also an act of unification from the cosmic point of view. Ignorance is not knowing where you are, knowledge is being aware that you are where you should be. It is in the nature of the Universe that at the dawn, mid-day, midafternoon, after sunset, and at the first darkness, the human creature should be prostrate before the majesty and beauty and unity of Reality. This is harmony, cosmically and inwardly in the microcosm of the heart here is the beginning of the science of unification, here is the opening of the heart to the discovery of its true nature. Here is the first experience of the slave as being someone in dialogue with the Reality. It is movement, it is an activity of the most profound and shattering impact on the nafs. It is recorded that when the Messenger made his prostrations, there came from deep within his chest the sound of what seemed like a boiling cauldron. When his most beloved Companion, Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, was about to do salat his hair stood up on his head and he used to say: 'The hour has come to fulfil a trust which the heavens and the earth were unable to bear.' The Master Sahl at-Tustari, although palsied in his old age, used to recover the use of his limbs whenever the hour of prayer arrived and after having performed his prostrations was unable to move from his place. Shaykh al-Hujwiri also recounts: 'Abu'l Khayr Aqta' had a gangrene in his foot. The physicians declared that his foot must be amputated, but he would not allow this to be done. His disciples said, 'Cut if off while he is doing salat, for at that time he has no consciousness.' The physicians acted on this advice. When Abu'l Khayr finished his prayers he found that his foot had been amputated. The wali, Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, used to perform four hundred raka's (units of prostration) within a day and night. On being asked why he took so much trouble in the light of the high degree which he enjoyed, he replied: 'Pain and pleasure indicate your feelings, but those whose attributes are annihilated feel no effect either of pleasure or of pain. Beware lest you call remissness maturity, and desire of the world search for Allah.' Here we note another example of a condition which outwardly looks like the selfinfliction of pain called asceticism when it is inwardly a reality of being beyond the pleasure/pain dichotomy because the nafs has fallen away and there is no one to experience this discomfort. The Imam of the shaykhs said:

'Do not let your purpose in the prayer be to perform it. For you have not performed it unless you take pleasure and joy in the union with Him to whom there is no means of approach save through Himself.' Ibn 'Ata said: 'Do not let your purpose in the prayer be to perform it without awe and reverence for Him who sees you perform it.' Maulana Rumi says that if we really knew how to pray we would begin standing in this world and bow into the next. So it must be clear that the alchemy of prostration is not merely an opening psychologically, as it were, in terms of an attitude of mind being changed by the act of putting one's head on the ground. It cannot be reduced to a mere technique it cannot be annexed by people as a means to inner tranquillity without the inner recognition it brings of what reality is like. Now we must look at the whole pattern of ideas that have been up until this point laid aside, but which must be grasped if we are to have any understanding of what the sufic Way is. One Master said that the persons about to pray should see themselves standing on the Sirat, with their Shaykh before them at Ka'ba, the Garden on their right and the Fire on their left, and over them Azrael, the Angel of Death. The Sirat is the Narrow Bridge over which the dead person has to pass in the after-death state there is a Tradition where the Messenger tells of it as being finer than the edge between the two sides of the finest swordblade. What are we to make of this sort of statement? It would be easy to reassure the modern man that it was merely a symbolic language, some pseudo-sufis pretend that it is for simple folk but not for clever people like them who know that an All-Merciful Lord will not punish anyone. Others suggest that it is merely something with a hidden meaning which again somehow annuls the power and uncompromising challenge of the otherworld picture. Firstly let us see what the greatest of the Masters has to say. We now come to the completion of the passage we examined earlier: Then he said: 'Has it reached you?' They said: 'It has, Oh Messenger of Allah.' He said, may Allah give him peace, 'Oh Allah, I testify.' I believe in all that has been brought to him, peace be upon him, from that which I know and do not know of what He gave him. It is determined that there is an appointed time with Allah. When it comes it is not postponed. I believe in that with an iman (trust) that is without hesitation or doubt, as I have believed. I am established as a slave. The grave is true and the raising of bodies from the grave is true, and the review of the people by Allah, may He be exalted, is true, the scattering of pages is true. The Sirat is true. The Garden is true and the Fire is true. A group in the Garden and a group in the Fire is true. The torment that day on one group is true and that another group will not be grieved by the greatest anxiety. The intercession by the Sent Ones

and the Trusting and the bringing out by the Most Merciful of the Merciful from the Fire is true. The group of people with serious wrong actions among the Trustworthy entering the Fire and leaving it with intercession and indebtedness is true. The confirmation of the Trusting and the people of Unity in the Garden is true. Everything which the Books and Messengers brought from Allah, known or unknown, is true. So the seeker can either lay aside the book and label this as old fashioned religion, binding him along with the others in a form of mental and social slavery which open the way to exploitation and injustice, or he can reject the prejudicial reaction, set aside the labelling of terms that will to him immediately imply that this is a belief system does he not, indeed, talk of belief? It is time now to approach the business of the Unseen. It is time to clarify this essential aspect of existence that is both visible and invisible, place and no-place. Again it is essential to re-iterate the basic step that is taken on the Path Shahada witnessing affirming the Unity and the Messengership of the one who is sent by Reality, Muhammad, peace be upon him. The acceptance of the reliable witness is the extent of one's vision to begin with we cannot see the Unseen but we can distinguish the profound humanity and serenity of the Messenger and, in the living situation, his Masters to whom he has transmitted the knowledge and science of existence. So, when we discover that both the Messenger and his Masters through the ages express themselves in terms of a present phenomenal existence and a hidden and permanent existence, we are forced to examine how they come to this. By their description it is made quite clear that these things are matters of revelation. They are talking about what they have seen and experienced. The significant thing about these vast cosmic visions of an unseen reality, unseen that is to the outward eye, is that the vivid and precise description is always accompanied by a recognition that they have no total knowledge of the Unseen, and that their vision is only a tiny fragment of an inconceivably vast and dynamic display of fulgurating forms that endlessly unfold with the radiant and structured perfection of the aurora borealis. The greatest work of the sufic sciences is the Shaykh al-Akbar's 'Makkan Revelations'. At the opening of this tremendous book which is incomparable among the works of the Masters, he tells how he achieved the Station of knowledge from which he wrote all that is contained in the Revelations. The actual encounter in the Unseen which is the key to the book comes later and takes place at the Ka'ba, and we will examine that when we come to the knowledge of the Ka'ba. Here is the Master's description: Blessings be upon the secret of the knower and his subtle point, the quest of the knower and the object of his desire, the Veracious Master who set out at night to his Lord, the Night Visitor who passed the seven paths to Him, in order that he who made the Night Journey might record what was entrusted to him of signs and realities. He is the most incredible of created beings that I witnessed during my writing of this work in the world, or the realities and mirror-forms in the Presence of Majesty. It was a revelation of the heart in an Unseen Presence. I was him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, a Master in that world, preserved from goals, sustaining the vision, confirmed in victory. All the Chosen Messengers were in front

of him, and his community, which is the best community, was clinging to him, and the angels of subjugation surrounded the Throne of his station, and the angels of the birth of actions were lined up in front of him. The Siddiq was on his most precious right, and the Faruq was on his most pure left. The Seal had dispersed before him to tell him of the tale of idols. 'Ali, may Allah bless him and give him peace, was blessing the Seal with his tongue. Dhu'n-Nurayn was wrapped in the cloak of his shame, occupied in his concern. The Highest Master, the sweetest fresh spring, the most revealed and most glorious Light, turned and saw me behind the Seal, because of a partnership between me and it in decree. The Master said to it: 'This is your like, and your son, and your boon companion. Raise up the mimbar of tamarisk for him before me.' Then he pointed to me and said: 'Muhammad, attend to it and give praise to He who sent me and give praise to me. If there is in you a single hair from me it cannot bear separation from me. It is the ruler in your identity. Thus it will not return to the meeting. It is not from the world of misery: there was nothing from me after my sending out in any way except good fortune, and he is among those who give praise of thanks in the heavenly gathering.' So the Seal built the mimbar in that most awesome assembly and on the side of the mimbar was written in the most resplendent light: 'This is the purest Muhammadan Maqam. Whoever ascends it has inherited it and the Truth has sent him as a guardian to the sanctuary of the Shari'a and has delegated him.' The whole work is filled with these moments of radiant and moving vision and it is from these experiences that he unfolds with a crystalline clarity his cosmology and his tasawwuf. The plain reason why he is virtually unknown in the West is that the so-called Orientalists stubbornly insisted that he adhere to their very limited, and from a global point of view, parochial, understanding of how a man might express himself. Once they defined him as a philosopher it was simple enough to dismiss him as muddled and incoherent. The arrogance of the German and English academics who dismissed him deserves somewhere a study on its own, and the most ironic aspect of the affair is that these men had no other genuine qualification to write on 'Ibn 'Arabi than their capacity to read the Arabic language! Those who settled for accepting him as a mystic an intolerable term in Islam then had to put aside his science of the self as getting in the way of the simple vision and ended up 'preferring' the clear personal testimonies of experience to the towering structure of 'Ibn 'Arabi's scientific knowledge of the world of form and no-form. Before attempting to see the world of experiential reality as a place in which all these barriers of space and solidity have become fuzzy and fluid, let us examine one more witnessing by the great Moroccan Master, Shaykh Darqawi, which happened two hundred years ago in Fez: By Allah, my brothers, I did not believe that a learned man could deny the vision of the Messenger, peace be upon him, in the waking state, until the day I met some learned men in the Qarawiyyin Mosque and had a conversation with them on this matter. They said to me: 'However is it possible to see the Messenger when one is

awake, since he has been dead for over 1,200 years? It is only possible to see him in a dream, since he himself said: 'He who sees me, that is to say in a dream, sees me in reality, for Shaytan cannot take my form.' I answered: 'Of necessity, he can be seen in the waking state only by one whose mind or let us say, whose thoughts have transported him from this world of bodies into the world of Spirits: there he will see the Messenger without the slightest doubt, there he will see all his friends.' They were silent and said not a word when I added: 'Indeed, he can be seen in the world of Spirit.' But after a while they said to me: 'Explain how this is so?' I answered: 'Tell me yourselves where the world of Spirits is in relation to the world of bodies.' They did not know what to reply. And then I said: 'There where the world of bodies is, there also is the world of Spirits: there where the world of corruption is, there also is the world of purity: there where the world of the kingdom is, there also is the world of kingship: in the very place where the lower worlds are, there are to be found the higher worlds and the totality of worlds. It has been said that there exist ten thousand worlds, each one like this world, as recounted in the 'Hilyat al-Awliya' (by Abu Nu'ayam-al-Isbahani) all these are contained in man without his being conscious of it. Only he whom Allah purifies by absorbing his qualities into His own, his attributes into His own, is conscious of this. Now Allah purifies many of His slaves and does not cease from purifying them until their end.' The venerable Master and Wali, Sayyid Ibn al-Banna, may Allah be pleased with him, says in his 'Inquiries': Understand, for you are a copy of existence for Allah, so that nothing of existence is lacking in you. The Throne and the Footstool, are they not in you? The higher world and also the lower world? The Cosmos is but the man on a big scale. And you you are the Cosmos in miniature. And the Venerable Master, the Wali al-Mursi, may Allah be pleased with him, said: 'Oh you who go astray in the understanding of your own secret, Look you will find in yourself the whole of existence. You are the infinite, seen as the Way and seen as the Truth,

Oh synthesis of the Divine Secret in its Totality.' So here on the one hand we have a Master talking about meeting with all the Messengers, and initiations that take place opening him to a knowledge he has not gained from any 'outer' source and yet apparently did not know up until that initiation, and on the other hand another Master who says that the creature is compounded of all the forms in the Universe. The kafir, that is, the one who covers up reality, would describe the situation thus: a human being performs actions in the world and is either gratified and finds pleasure or else punished and finds pain. If the situation becomes extreme, the mental operation relating to the pain and pleasure takes on a primary importance in that the pleasure fantasy and the pain anxiety slip their moorings as it were and become detached from event and float free, creating a crisis in the person's experience between their tumultuous inner reality and the down-to-earth 'factual' reality of events. This crisis can become so great that only the structuring of these fantasies in an imagined 'heaven and hell' dichotomy can hold together the inner fragmentation. Thus the two realms, or imagined realms, invented by the mind to contain the excess material of the fantasy-producing mind. They have a source in the root fear and the root gratification which is understandably infantile in origin. This picture unfortunately is based on the reality of the subjective experience, and somehow on the primacy of the solid over and against the non-spatial. It makes no differentiation between the imagined or let us say fantasised form in mind and the perception of an existing form by mind. In the sufic picture, the whole closed world system is blown wide apart. It does not declare that the positive, as it were, of that negative is true that is, it is not a simplistic affirmation that the 'inner' experience of fear is hell after all and synonymous with it. On the contrary it affirms the clinical neurotic picture that builds up into an intolerable punishing hell, or the lotus-like fantasy world of gratification that pulls away from event all this is nothing more than illusion. The illusion is based on the false assumption that there is some kind of essential reality to the self, that it is solid and actual and that it is responsible for its actions and that it is going to pay for what it has done. The guilt and its opposite energy, the gratification, are a modality based on the conviction that actions cohere to an experiencing central form as crystals cluster around a basic salt formation. The Messenger said that people would be judged not according to their acts but according to their intentions. He also said that people would not be saved from the Fire by their works. So this whole picture that connects the human creature to the heaven/hell condition is a fantasy. This is not what is put forward as how things are. Neurosis is to separate yourself from the total process which is Divinity itself. To posit for yourself a separate reality dooms you to positing your own fantasy heaven and your own fantasy hell. People who deny Divine Reality collapse in inner anguish and experience and fear the hell of the present and an intolerable future equally they have ecstatic states in their heads which they call heavenly but which are private delusions that they can offer us no access to, unlike the wali who can make available for his disciple the experience of bliss. Reality is not to the gnostic a one-dimensional but a multi-tiered existence. The forms are

endless, just as in the phenomenal world so in the Unseen there are many heavens and many hells. The two basic images of the Garden and the Fire as the two polar realities of the Unseen are easy of access to the awake mind. On the one hand there is the whole energy process of fire which is one of intensity, enormously powerful energy in transmutation, changing and altering everything which enters into it, breaking it down and recreating it as in the alchemical picture. From it is born a star, a metal, into it finally by a kind of ultimate persuasion of activity, the other element is unified until it becomes fire itself despite its original density and separateness. It is intolerable, it is the ultimate in heat and unendurableness, it is the present moment as utter anguish, time at its most terrible. The Garden is space, greenness, time opened out into ease. Water runs, there is shade, forms emerge, unfold, plants blossom, bear fruit. Birds sing in the air the elements are benign, peaceful. It is a place for living creatures and beauty as the other is a place for disintegration and power. The teaching of tasawwuf is that these worlds are part of the reality of the universe, they are real in a way that your pain or pleasure is not real. If you fear the Fire of the Unseen you will avoid the illusory accretions that cause the neurotic fear in experience, but equally you must desire the Garden or you will yearn in fantasy and split from the ordinary world of lived existence. Without the fear and hope that open you to knowledge of Unity, you are doomed quite inevitably to the anxiety/gratification dialectic that adheres to the illusory self-form, you will live intimidated and at the mercy of your sick fears and hopes. We come back inevitably to the picture we had earlier in relation to the ascetic which showed how every step of the Way was accompanied by an equivalent in neurosis and ultimately in madness. For this all happens in the world of natural order, forms, where everything is double. We find throughout our journey that the science of Unity exists to be applied to the world and our experience just because they are dual when Reality itself is One. It could be suggested that this was a mechanism to cause a transfer from the urgent existential situation into a condition where the anxiety was, as it were, deferred out and away from the immediate crisis and thus rendered harmless. This could only result in a more fragmented inner experience and would certainly result in making the inner experience of the person labyrinthine and more acute in its tension. What has to be recognised is that this is how the Masters of the Way see and experience reality. They are utterly fearless in this world, they are free in all their actions. To experience fear and hope of Allah is to be devoid of fear of the issue or expectation of the issue. This is the hallmark of Wisdom. It follows that the man who says, 'I do good things not because I desire the Garden,' or 'I abstain from the forbidden not because I fear the Fire, but I do these things for myself,' is in reality bound to illusion and the persistence of the self-form as some dense and lasting thing since this is not the case, he has clung to the realm of gratification and congratulation and serenity will elude him. These hidden realities were created for him and are an inexorable part of his Universe, so let him abhor the one and long for the

other, for in these two lie the approach that is pleasing to his Lord. His intentions will take him to the Garden or the Fire, and so let him desire a clear heart so that he can the more know his own intentions, and let him fear and hope in accordance with his recognition of his inability to know the Seal of his destiny that is in the Balance. In doing so, he turns away from the giving of reality to actions, and he turns towards the reality of his own heart, which in turn opens up to him all the myriad forms of the visible Unification, and the matter of our sciences. In the chapter relating to Stations we will examine further aspects of fear and hope, and then finally we can look at the very stuff of this so deceptively constructed world of forms. We had left the adept poised on his prayer mat we must continue now out beyond the individual act of salat to see it cosmically as a rite performed five times a day at prescribed times. The close view is of a man or a line of men oriented in one direction bowing and prostrating. The distant view reveals not a line of men, but seen globally, a circle of devotion centring on the point of the Ka'ba. So that what we have is a series of concentric circles moving towards the Makkan focus of adoration. There is another dimension that must be considered to make this a moving and living picture and that is time. Qur'an specifies that salat is fixed at appointed times, the times being taken very simply from the sun's position in the sky. There are five necessary sets of prostration, the first being at dawn when the first thread of white light appears on the horizon and lasting until the sun's disc is about to be visible the second is at noon immediately following the meridian the third is mid-afternoon the fourth, the sunset, after the descent of the sun's disc and the last, the night prayer, when the light leaves the sky. Thus, in the global picture, it follows that what you have is an endless rippling movement of circle upon circle, in to the centre point of the Ka'ba, that virtually never ceases, as the sun is constantly rising and setting across the world. At the centre is the Ancient House, of which the Qur'an says: The first House established for the people was at Makka, a pure place, and a guidance to all beings. (Qur'an 3.96) So the focus of this worship and opening to the Universal Reality is a place that has been celebrated from the beginning of man's story as a place of meeting between the slave and the Lord. The whole dynamic of energy emanating from the Ancient House is so overwhelming that to align oneself with it, anywhere, is to be in harmony with the Unity of existence, and the patterning of the world as a unique and total creation. This is why the Messenger always sat facing the Ancient House, and slept facing the Ancient House, and did salat facing the Ancient House. Salat, seen from this global point of view, from this cosmic point of view, reveals itself to be the primary and essential rite of any science of gnosis of the Reality which is everywhere present and nowhere graspable by intellect or sensory experience. The first act that the seeker performs is to open himself to this situation where he, in harmony not only with his fellow creatures, but with the whole organic creation, submits himself to the process of which he is already an inexorable part. This is submission, this is peace. The man who has accepted his place as an infinitesimal

particle of a vast dynamic multi-dimensional Universe, and who has submitted to his complete helplessness and weakness in a world spinning in a sea of endless planets, has also opened himself to the process of awakening his own inner reality which can swallow up this tremendous Cosmos of stars. A Persian Master puts it: I went out by the edge of the ocean And saw a wonderful sight, The boat within the sea, and the sea within the boat. This is the secret of salat, and the secret of the act of submission of being a slave of a mighty reality, the secret of peace. Such a man is called Muslim one who surrenders his self. The practice is called Islam. The root form is the same SLM 'surrender', 'peace', 'to be safe and sound'. As well as the rhythmic pattern of five daily sets of prostration, there are also times when special sets are performed. These are on the 'Id days which mark the end of the Fast of Ramadan and the completion of the rites of Hajj, these two times being taken precisely according to the position of the moon. The other time is in the case of eclipse. Here we have an opportunity of seeing the extraordinary depths and implications of this ritual act and how it opened the Messenger to both the cosmic reality of things and the unseen dimension of these same events. The picture we have is of a man so in tune, so in harmony with the creation that he blows with the wind and eclipses with the sun. He tastes and submits to the whole creational event just as the willow tree yields to the changing elements and is itself both tree and wind that blows through it: 'Abd ar-Rahman bin Samura, who was one of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said: 'During the lifetime of Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, I was at arrow practice in Madinah when the sun eclipsed. I shot the arrows and said: "By Allah, I must see how the Messenger of Allah acts in a solar eclipse." So I came to him, and he was standing in prayer, raising his hands, and saying "Glory to Allah, Praise belongs to Allah, there is no divinity but Allah, Allah is greater!" until the sun cleared. When the eclipse was over he recited two suras and prayed two raka's.' 'Ata' bin Rabah reported on the authority of A'isha, the wife of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, who said: 'Whenever the wind was stormy, the Messenger of Allah used to say: "Oh Allah, I ask you for what is good in it, and the good which it contains, and the good of that for which it was sent. I seek refuge with You from what is evil in it, what evil it contains, and the evil of that for which it was sent." And when there was thunder and lightning in the sky, his colour underwent a change, and he went out and in, backwards and forwards, and when the rain came he felt relieved, and I noticed it on his face. A'isha asked him about it and he said:

"It may be as the people of 'Ad said: when they saw a cloud formation coming to their valley, they said, 'It is a cloud which would give us rain." (Qur'an 46.24) Anas bin Malik reported: 'It rained upon us when we were with the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and he removed his cloak so that the rain fell on it and we asked, "Messenger of Allah, why do you do this?" He said: "Because it has just come from the Exalted Lord."' Once the knowledge of salat has been acquired in all its outward detail and practised with its profound and meaningful inner mathematical structure for the number of prostrations at different times of the day, and the degrees of extra non-obligatory ones, make up the real basis of the spiritual science then the seeker has got hold of the first part of something which in its totality is the tremendous gift of the Messenger to mankind. Along with his delivering the Message of al-Qur'an, he left behind him the Hikma the Wisdom. It is this that forms the body of one's inner reality, it is this that gives flesh and blood to the inner impulse towards gnosis. Even though there could be a limited inner experience without this science, with it you have the possibility of that wholeness that returned to the human race when the Messenger opened people once again as had all the Messengers before him, of whom he indicated there had existed 124,000 since the beginning of man's story opened them to the true nature of their humanity, to the real measure of man, to perfection and Unity. You must not be surprised to find that this tremendous science of human behaviour on which the full doctrine of gnosis rests is effectively unknown to people in the West partly because word of it filtered through the same inadequate channel by which knowledge of Islam came to the academic world, that is, through people utterly unequipped to examine the anthropology and metaphysics of Islam, being nothing more than accomplished linguists and partly because there was and is a quite conscious attempt on behalf of the Christian and Jewish academics to misrepresent the true nature of Islam but finally because the Muslims themselves in these long centuries have felt increasingly uncomfortable with a science that challenged their own wealth. This science, the Sunna, or Practice, of the Messenger, is properly speaking the whole of the science of man. It rests on the principle that man is the slave of his Lord, and at the same time is the Khalif of his Lord that is to say, the one who stands for Him or represents Him. We have taken hold of the science of the nafs, for truly the whole science of the nafs and all you need to know about it is contained in the two purifications, wudu and salat, and adherence to these practices will make clear the working of the nafs in every situation. We must now try to get a first glimpse of what the nature of the Sunna is, and then approach the meaning of this Khalifdom, which is, of course, the Secret we desire.

The Science of the Sunna

The word Sunna, meaning the Practice, derives from the root SNN, meaning 'to form'. It is nothing less than the form of man, that is, man as a living social organism, man in his wholeness. Any mechanistic or legal idea from your Judaic or Christian background must be removed before you can open to this reality which is utterly organic, physical and metaphysical, a spontaneous human creature in harmony with his creation being the end

result, and not an inhibited and outwardly controlled animal. The error of the Jews was not that they failed to obey the Law, but that they turned what was a scientific Law about man that is, if you do this, that happens into a legalistic structure exterior to and imposed on man. The error of the Jews made it inevitable that when the existential reality of lawfulness, in its organic sense, the Messiah, appeared, they could not recognise him. So involved were they with the theory, they failed to identify the practice in a living and perfect exemplar. The error of the Christians was its counterpart so determined were they to enshrine the metaphysical aspect of man's nature, so terrified were they of losing the secret of man's glory, that they felt obliged to enshrine it in a Mystery, in symbol and ritual, letting its protectors be an elite whose raison d'etre was to guard the Secret, until in the end these men did not feel obliged to respond to the social obligations of the teaching, so that they became immoral and corrupt in the name of the perfect Teacher. These two attitudes are what may be understood as 'religion', they are the forms that bind together (religio) a people in an exploitation that must inevitably lead to tyranny. Islam is based on the reality and primacy of this Sunna, this self-form of man, that indicates that there is a behaviour pattern for the human species wherever it may exist on earth. It is significant that one of the stumbling blocks to people approaching the experience of Islam is that they feel that it is indigenous to a desert culture, or that it is the desert culture, and therefore does not transfer to other societies. Most ironically, the pseudo-sufis always refer to 'we in the West', as if for cultural reasons we were in some special situation that somehow made us different, and by implication, superior to other peoples. As if the complexity of our social modes and the glutted density of our nounpacked post-scientific vocabulary somehow made us superior or more inaccessible to some 'ancient wisdom'. The Hikmat, the Wisdom, is not culture and does not become culture. Culture is simply the illusory reality you bestow on the dynamic forms of your society's transitory activity and achievement and the shadows of the mental forms you become hypnotised by culture changes and decays and renews. Islam merely selects and simplifies the cultural situation sweeping away the worst excrescences of fantasy, such as the burning of widows on their husband's pyres in the decadent phase of Hindu spiritual culture and purifying the nobler practices such as the ancient rites of Hajj. The proof of the Sunna as a profound and effective anthropological patterning for man is seen every year at the Hajj where people from the most disparate cultures come together socially and spiritually unified by their adherence in recognisable degree to the vast Sunna of Muhammad, peace be upon him. The proof of the ignorance of our epoch and the barbarism that is enveloping our society can be found in the modern Muslim state's urgent desire to shelve the whole patterning of the Sunna and reduce Islam to a kind of Party with membership, dependent only on the five ritual prayers and not on the complete inner and outer transformation that takes place as a man begins to absorb the Sunna, and thus open himself to his humanity and to his Khalifdom. It is all the more tragic in the light of the situation of the so-called intellectuals in Western society. Despite the top-heavy structuralist nightmare that collapses on itself, some anthropologists have begun to recognise that there must be what they call a 'canon' of knowledge, that they realise man once had access to and which we have all but lost. It is of course the sufic point of view that we are the canon, for if it were

not in us, how could we know it when we saw it outside us. A'isha, the wife of the Messenger, and a Perfect Woman according to the Messenger Perfect that is in this total metaphysical understanding of what a human creature is was asked what her husband was like and she replied: 'He was Qur'an walking!' In other words, he was the Book. He was his Book. The two names of the Book, al-Qur'an and al-Furqan, mean the gatheringtogether and the discrimination. So the complete man is a gathering-together of that whole canon of knowledge that tells man his place in the Universe of stars and also opens him inwardly to Union with the reality of the Cosmos, and at the same time he is a separation, a discrimination in the dual world of nature, of night and day, hot and cold, true and false. This is why in the original and complete science of anthropology, the study of man, it is enough that you study yourself that you understand the total cosmic situation of the species. You are the whole man, but not as you are. Muhammad is the measure of man. He is al-Qautham, the completely perfect man, or as the Sufis call him, al-Insanu'l-Kamil. This is the Station of the one who has achieved the goal, who knows himself. Now in earlier treatises on Sufism it was taken for granted that people accepted the Sunna, but the situation today is such that the Sunna has become a dangerous and quite terrifying possibility, so that the Muslims, whose heritage it is, are at pains to assure you that you don't need to do this and you don't need to do that a situation which the Messenger himself foretold as preceding the last phase of the human condition: Al-Miqdam bin Ma'Dikarib said that he heard the Messenger say, peace be upon him: 'I have indeed brought the Qur'an and something like it along with it, yet the time is coming when a man replete on his couch will say: Keep to this Qur'an what you find in it to be permissible treat as permissible, and what you find in it to be prohibited treat as prohibited. But what Allah's Messenger has prohibited is like what Allah has prohibited.' It is Sufism that insists on the total picture of a man both outwardly and inwardly in a state of transformation. Once the Muslim denies the inner realities of the states and Stations we will examine shortly, he then does not have to have his own motives examined. Once he has denied the inner reality, he has denied his own and yours, then it is a step to his dismantling the Sunna-pattern that gives flesh and blood to that inner reality. In a short time he is using the language of duality and then he tells you that it does not matter that you have a beard, that you sit on the ground and sleep on the level surface of the floor, and eat with three fingers from one plate, and greet the stranger and feed the guest, and so it goes on until in the end why should you bow and why should you prostrate and why should you fast, and where is the Garden and where is the Fire, and what is an angel, and what is a Messenger, and what reality has any of the whole business when you live a bourgeois life utterly enclosed in the insane rituals of consumerism and reputation-tokens? It is in the beginning of this process that the sufic tradition insists on the complete social reality of an Islam which never ceases to extol poverty, simplicity, and measure, in behaviour and possessions, and which calls for kindness and good words between men, respect for women, and affection for the young and the old. It is Sufism, as guardian of the Islam of the Companions, that demands a radiant city as the setting for the man of knowledge to experience his gnosis. The Sufi's place is in the community look at them from the beginning:

Hasan of Basra, may Allah be pleased with him, said: 'I saw seventy comrades who fought at Badr: all of them had woollen garments: and the greatest Siddiq (Khalif Abu Bakr) wore a garment of wool in his detachment from the world.' Al-Hallaj, the carder: Attar, the scent-merchant: Moulay Abd al-Qadir, whose real glory only began when he came out from retirement to live in Baghdad: these and the whole line of Shaykhs testify to the fact that Sufis lived in the world, worked in the marketplace and the farmyard, because they were the guardians and are the guardians of this picture of man whose complete silhouette and whose luminosity is from the same source, Muhammad, peace be upon him. Sufi, however, is a word Muslim is a word faqir is a word. The essential perspective to hold to is that the inner reality and the outer condition must be One. Whatever came to be known as Sufi was nothing but the condition of the followers of the followers, and before them of the followers, and before them of the Companions of the Messenger himself. What concerns us is a social quality of being whose interiority is gnosis and whose exterior is detachment from the world. The image of man is the image of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and he said: 'My Companions are like the stars. So whichever of them you follow you will be guided.' This Hadith is from 'Umar ibn alKhattab, Razin transmitted it. Bukhari and Muslim both transmit a Hadith from Jabir saying on the day of alHudaibiyya our numbers were one thousand four hundred, and the Messenger said to us: 'Today you are the best people on the earth.' There are many Hadith which affirm the fact that the best people, the best community that has ever been on the earth, was the community in Madinah at the time of the Messenger. And it is here that we are obliged to take on something about the nature of Islam, and clarify for ourselves something that is essential to an understanding of Islam and the reality of the sufic phenomenon. The social achievement of the Messenger, and for the Sufis a social achievement is a total human reality which implies that people were able to realise their inward capacity as well as their human capacities with others, was to create a complete and far-reaching revolution in life-pattern. In an amazingly short time, starting with a small band of people, he built up a highly educated group of people who had all been instructed by him, irradiated by his presence, purified by his practices and guided by his revelations. Completely non-violent, they were a savagely persecuted minority who stubbornly persisted in their practices despite the humiliations and tortures they were subjected to, and their impact began to resonate throughout the whole community. All they were doing, it must be remembered, was rhythmically bowing and prostrating and glorifying the Creator of the Universe and praising Him for the wonder of existence. Socially, they called for an end to the girl-child murder that was an accepted cultural practice, and an end to blood feuds. What was being introduced by the Messenger was his Hikmat, his Wisdom, which he later defined through the use of two terms, jahiliyya and hilm.

Jahiliyya the Messenger saw as the energy force of the unbridled nafs, utterly flamboyant and expressed, ruthless in its infantile determination to experience gratification whether of appetite or violence. This was the natural flow of destructive energy that came from the nafs which saw itself as separate from existence and in conflict with reality. To this basic energy the Messenger taught the acquiring of the truly human faculty, hilm. Hilm can be defined as a state of calm serenity which is not overthrown by anger from within or violence threatening from without. Hilm implies that the nafs has been tamed and is under the subject's control while jahl defines a nafs that is in such urgent flux that the subject is too identified with his action to be able to avoid conflict. When those who cover up had placed in their hearts arrogance, the arrogance of jahiliyya, then Allah sent down His serenity upon His Messenger and upon the trusting-ones and imposed on them the word of self-restraint, for they were worthy of it and suited to it. And Allah is aware of all things. (Qur'an 48.26) In the Qur'an, the Messengers Nuh, Hud, and Sayyedina Musa all denounce jahl as being the enemy of reality, and the impulse of violence in man which imposes on him a primary excuse for denying the Unity in the name of his dualistic conflict. Jahl is, therefore, the very stuff of history, of event, of conflict, and by that token, of unreality and covering-up. The awakening of the Messenger's Companions to the tremendous power of hilm within themselves as a social dynamic was, inevitably, a challenge to the existing community of his day, as it remains to the power structures of the world fourteen hundred years after the establishment of his community in the Illuminated City, as he renamed Yathrib when he called it Al-Madinah al-Munawarra. That small group of people who gathered around the Messenger in Makka, with an electric force shook the whole foundation of the tribal society which had survived for so long virtually unaffected by its wars and feuds. What brute force was unable to do, and what cunning and treachery failed to achieve, was to halt the flowering of Wisdom in an apparently ordinary world-oriented society, until within a few years they had become an illuminated and radiant group of people, men, women and children, who taught peace and practised hospitality and generosity as no social group had ever done before or after them in the world's history. Of his closest Companion, Sayyedina 'Ali, Amir al-Mu'mineen, he said, peace be upon him: 'I am the house of Wisdom and 'Ali is its door.' Of his Companion Abu Dharr he said: 'The sky has not covered and the earth has not carried anyone more truthful than Abu Dharr. He is like 'Isa, son of Mary.' Yet along with the Hadith that praise the Companions of the Messenger are disturbing ones that indicate the trouble that was to come. A trouble utterly inevitable in the light of what the Messenger had brought among people, for the Deen, or transaction, that he called them to not only was one that overthrew the old values and powers, but it was one which had such a dynamic that by its energy they stood to gain a much greater fame and glory than they had known before. So tremendous were the rewards that came to the victorious Muslim forces that they soon found that the obligations of Islam were a hindrance to tasting the fruits of their victory and the old values of jahl which had never completely vanished appeared again with renewed force.

The Messenger was well aware that the light that came from his presence among them was a great restraint on the natural greed and lust for power that man is prone to, and that is why he urged men to respect the Companions and the next generation, the Followers. It must be remembered that Islam is a science that is passed on by existential transmission and not by books and texts. Once the people who embodied hilm were removed from authority and from a place of influence it was all too easy to set up the dynasties of luxury and imperialism which were what Muslim history so rapidly became. He himself, peace be upon him, had this to say about the future generations and Islam: Abu Burda told on his father's authority that he, meaning the Messenger, raised his head to the sky, which was a common practice of his, and said: 'The stars are a means of safety for the sky, and when the stars depart what the sky has been threatened with will come to it. I am a means of safety for my Companions, and when I depart what my Companions have been threatened with will come to them. My Companions are a means of safety for my people, and when my Companions depart what my people have been threatened with will come to them.' Muslim transmitted it. 'Imran bin Husain reported Allah's Messenger as saying: 'The best of my people are my generation, then their immediate followers, and then their immediate followers. After them there will be people who give testimony without being asked, who will be treacherous and not to be trusted, who will make vows which they do not fulfill, among whom plumpness will appear.' 'Abdallah bin Mughaffal reported Allah's Messenger as saying: 'Fear Allah regarding my Companions. Fear Allah regarding my Companions and do not make them a target after I am gone. He who loves them does so for love of me, and he who hates them does so from hatred of me. He who injures them has injured me and he who injures me has injured Allah, and he who injures Allah will soon be punished by Him.' Zaid bin Arqam reported Allah's Messenger as saying of Sayyedina 'Ali, Fatima, Hassan and Husain, may Allah be pleased with them: 'I am war to him who makes war on them, and peace to him who makes peace with them.' Tirmidhi transmitted it. Yet within only twenty-nine years the Gate of Wisdom, the Amir of the Trusting Ones, was stabbed in the back in the mosque in prostration before Allah by a so-called Muslim. Soon after him the Messenger's two grandsons were murdered. Sayyedina Hassan was poisoned and Sayyedina Husain was slaughtered on the field of Kerbala and beheaded in the most horrible massacre that ever blighted the Muslim community. These deaths were known to the Messenger in his lifetime and the Hadiths tell of his weeping for them while they were still children. Abu Dharr, the most noble Companion, was humiliated and beaten and finally sent to an exile's death, also just as the Messenger had told him he would end his days. It is a tragic and sobering picture, and it is useless to start to apportion blame these centuries later, as it is to mourn for them. They died martyrs to

Reality and they went from the worst to the best. What is important is that we are prepared to look at the complete picture of these events or as complete a picture as we can piece together. Thousands of the Ansar were slaughtered by so-called Muslims, although the Messenger said of them: 'You are the most beloved people to me.' Again, from the Hadith it is clear that he foresaw their end. Indeed, the most moving aspect of the whole story is the Messenger's recognition of what lay ahead and his acceptance of what was to be. As a Messenger he could not appoint a successor, for there is no succession in Messengership. Islam is not a state concept, it is an organic life-pattern for men in society: once roles are imposed and structures are solidified you return inevitably to the rigid imposition of authority and the dialectical conflicts of history. During the lifetime of the Messenger, the Munafiqun or the Hypocrites, were a constant threat to the spiritual revolution of Islam. The word derives from the root NFQ which means 'to enter a hole from which there are several ways out'. The inner condition of the munafiq is marked by a split between his outer behaviour and speech and his inner way of experiencing reality. Its nature is such that the munafiq wavers between one possibility of Islam and another, between betrayal and attraction. Nifaq is, itself, the dynamic to split reality, to separate inner and outer it is nothing less than a sickness, and Qur'an indicates that it is the basic sickness of the human mind, 'marad'. Let us look at the astonishing description of these people in the Qur'an and it will be immediately apparent to us that the munafiq is not just one of those who turned against Islam in the early days of the Madinan community, but that the munafiq is the person who on the threshold of awakening to the true nature of reality takes flight from the unitary nature of existence and makes war in order to distract attention by foreground violence, from the vast detached majesty of peace that is the Cosmic Reality. This marad, this basic illness of the human species, is nothing other than the splitting of the inner and the outer experiencing self, the separation of the subject-mind from the object-body. Fragmentation, once started, continues until the mind itself breaks up and one part of it opposes another and the conflict becomes internalised. 'I did not mean to do it.' 'I was not myself,' is the process that starts with, 'They are other than I,' and 'I am other than the Universe!' Qur'an has made clear that if you kill one man wrongfully you kill the whole of mankind. Here in its entirety is the Surat al-Munafiqun, The Form of the Hypocrites, in the Glorious Qur'an: In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. When the hypocrites come unto thee (Oh Muhammad) they say: 'We bear witness that you are indeed Allah's Messenger.' And Allah knows that you are indeed His Messenger, and Allah bears witness that the hypocrites are all liars. They make their trusting a covering so that they may turn from the Way of Allah. Truly evil is that which they have been doing. That is because they trusted then covered-up, therefore their hearts are sealed so that they understand not.

And when thou seest them their outward forms please thee: and if they speak thou listeneth to what they say. They are like propped up blocks of wood. They deem every shout to be against them. They are the enemy, so beware of them! Allah confound them. How perverted they are. And when it is said to them: 'Come! The Messenger of Allah will ask forgiveness for you!' they avert their faces and thou seest them turning away, disdainful. Whether thou ask forgiveness for them or ask not forgiveness for them, Allah will not forgive them. Lo! Allah guides not the people who go against the Way [i.e. people who come out from the human transaction, from the root FSQ, meaning 'to emerge from the husk of the datestone'.] They it is who say: 'Spend not on behalf of those with Allah's Messenger that they may disperse,' when Allah's are the treasures of the heavens and the earth: but the hypocrites do not understand. They say: 'Surely if we return to Madinah the mightier will soon drive out the weaker,' when might belongs to Allah and to His Messenger and to the TrustingOnes, but the hypocrites do not know. Oh you who have Trust! Let not your wealth nor your children distract you from remembrance of Allah. Those who do so, they are the losers. And spend of that wherewith we have provided you before death comes to one of you and he says: 'My Lord! If only Thou wouldst reprieve me for a little while, then I would give sadaqa and be among the Salihin.' But Allah does not reprieve any self when its term comes, and Allah is aware of what you do. (Qur'an 63) The first thing we discover in the Surat is that the munafiq is a Muslim. He has affirmed the authority of Muhammad, peace be upon him. What follows is the essential affirmation of the oneness of reality by which Qur'an acknowledges that Allah the Truth knows who the munafiqin are, but that their affirmation itself is a lie. Thus a discrimination is made between them and the Trusting-Ones, so that the 'Muhammad rasulullah' of the latter is not the same as the 'Muhammad rasulullah' of the former. The next ayat (sign) says that they trusted then covered over reality. At this point they are 'split' in a false way from existence, they are 'cut off' from their own inner nature. The

clinical picture builds up: they are pleasing of aspect, therefore they are outwardly sculpted according to the Deen, they are coherent. But then we are told: they are like propped up blocks of wood. This is the key instead of having that suppleness and transparency of the Trusting-One who is aware of the real nature of the Unseen, they are solidified, opaque, become objects, alienated. They deem every shout to be against them. They are at war with existence, with the other, because of themselves they cannot get at their own hearts having made this act of splitting inwardly. For the Truth is the other way around. They are the enemy their own enemy, and the enemy of the basically sane Muslim. They reject forgiveness with pride because they desire conflict, and therefore their reality is conflict, that is, they are by definition unforgiven by reality. They take as their reality the myth of event and see themselves as the activators of existence. They call on people not to spend their wealth on others, i.e. the Muslims, and they define existence as being a struggle in which the stronger will triumph. This, then, is the nature of human illness, this is neurosis. This is the fantasy structure of life as seen through the eyes of those who have covered up the reality of life on a planet which is a garden and where everyone may be provided for in every way. Qur'an goes on to affirm that real strength lies in being in harmony with Reality, and therefore the proof of this is that the Messenger, as the perfect exemplar of humanity, is assisted and made strong through his submission. The things that trap man into the neurotic process of nifaq are nothing other than his wealth and his children. It is these that create for him the illusion of a separate kingdom of selfdom if he fails to see them along with the whole cosmic situation as a gift of the Creator to His slave. It is this closeup view of the personal existence as 'belonging' to one that makes for forgetfulness of how-things-are. Such are the people who, when they come to the end of their life-span, try to bargain with existence, and when they do they know that the correct transaction is to give gifts to the needy and to keep the company of the noble pure ones who have knowledge of Reality, that is the Shaykhs and the awliya the Saliheen. But the transaction is not magical and there is no escaping the organic destiny of one's life pattern. It is here that the legalistic image of a day of judgment is shattered in the light of a quite vivid cosmic reality, which is that the creature is himself a record of his life. The cells of the body are the record of the life. Qur'an puts it vividly: 'They-are-demonstrated Form': 'Till when they reach it, their ears and their eyes and their skins testify against them as to what they used to do. And they say unto their skins: 'Why testify ye against us?' They say: 'Allah hath given us speech Who giveth speech to all things, and Who created you at first, and unto Whom you are returned.' Ye did not hide yourselves lest your ears and your eyes and your skins should testify against you but ye deemed that Allah knew not much of what ye did!

That your thought, which ye did think about your Lord hath ruined you: and ye find yourselves among the lost. (Qur'an 41.20-23) It is so clear, the picture. We are our own record. We are our own Book. Our cells do testify against us or for us, depending on how we have treated the body-form that has been loaned to us. Then the Qur'an touches on the particular nature of the ordinary separateness of phenomenal existence from the total Divine Reality. We cannot hide ourselves from ourselves, we are convinced that we have covered up the record even though we are the record. That is, we think that the Reality does not see what we ourselves are aware of in our split inwardness. It is the thought the illusion of otherness that has 'ruined' the lost human creature. That thought is lostness itself. Separation is necessary outwardly, as we have said, according to the science of Wisdom, but joining is necessary inwardly by the same token. In Surat Ya-Sin: Lo! We it is who bring the dead to life. We record that which they send before, and their footprints. And all things we have kept in a clear register. (Qur'an 36.12) We think because others cannot read us that we cannot be read. The form is nothing other than the meaning. Our form is our record. The cell is the story. As the Shaykh al-Kamil says in his Song 'Withdrawal into the Perception of the Essence': Truly, created beings are meanings set up in images. All who grasp this are among the people of discrimination. Let us now return to our picture of the split Madinah community and the conflicts that tore asunder the first Muslims. Here is the perspective that the Messenger gave of the situation: Abu 'Ubaida and Mu'adh bin Jabal both reported the Messenger, peace be upon him, as saying: 'This matter began as prophecy and a mercy, then it will become a Khalifate and a mercy, then a tyrannical kingdom, then how much haughtiness, pride and corruption there will be on the earth!' This was transmitted by Baihaqi in 'Shu'ab al'Iman'. Abd-Allah bin Ma'sud told that the Messenger, peace be upon him, said: 'The mill of Islam will go round till the year 35 or 36 or 37, then if they perish they will have followed the Path of those who perished before them, but if their Deen is maintained for them it will be maintained for them for seventy years.' He asked if that meant seventy years more or altogether and the Messenger replied that it meant seventy years altogether. This was transmitted by Abu Dawud.

Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah have mercy on him, said that when Allah's Messenger was asked who should be appointed Commander after he had gone, he replied: 'If you appoint Abu Bakr as Commander you will find him trustworthy, with little desire for worldly goods but eager for the next world: if you appoint 'Umar as Commander you will find him trustworthy and strong, fearing for Allah's sake and no-one's blame. If you appoint 'Ali as Commander but I cannot see you doing so you will find him a guide who is rightly guided and who will lead you on the Straight Way.' Ahmad transmitted this. The bitterness and the distortions that arose from the great initial schism still resonate today among the Muslim community, what is left of it as a functioning reality but that reality is blurred because of the successful and false crystallisation that both Shi'a and Sunnis achieved in equating Islam with a Muslim State. There is no such thing as an Islamic State in the world today. As I have indicated, the two terms are mutually irreconcilable. If it is Islam, it is not a state, rather it is a community functioning organically according to the Book and the Wisdom, that means Amir and Fuqahah but not a canon Law with a judiciary and a power elite. Police, prisons although prisoners may be taken in war, that is a temporary situation banks and standing armies are nothing to do with Islam. They are the stuff of Statism. In Islam, every man is a policeman, the bank of Zakat is emptied annually, every man is a soldier ready and trained to fight in self-defence when necessary. The long history of the Muslim conquest despite the many energies that it brought along in its wake, must not be equated with Islam. Islam is the Book and the Wisdom, and the teaching of it is not by the intake of structured information, it is by the transmission of the behaviour-form from a man who is himself already to an acceptable degree a self-form of the Wisdom. This man the rajulullah the man of Allah is Islam, is the transmission, is the copy of the Muhammadan original self-form. It is not that the Sunni were wrong, or that the Shi'a were right. For these formations took place over a period of time and did not become defined on the minute, as it were. The dramatisation and mourning for the death of Sayyedina Husain, may Allah have mercy on him, was an innovation, and a solidifying of the nafs through ritualised mourning, and a culture token of the Shi'a counter-society in conflict with the Sunnis. He was a martyr, so properly speaking we can only rejoice for him, that he is assured the fullest life in the Garden. And so it goes on this and that, until the animosity is revived. It is not necessary to be part of that schismatic thinking at this stage of the business of Islam. On the contrary, we have an opportunity now to detach ourselves and look at the picture as wholly as we can, sifting the evidence without prejudice, fitting together the pieces, the better to understand these extraordinary men, and their moving story. The reason, however, that this has been brought up is not, as I have said, to start the schismatic energy flowing, but to get to this point where we can see why there is such a thing as Sufism at all! It was this picture of the formation of a new style of expansionist and imperialist State founded on the basic tenets of Islam reduced to a law-pattern and introducing a punitive legal system along with it that led to the need for the Followers and the Followers of the Followers to redefine what the original picture was. The great

Companions had all gone, martyred in battle or murdered by the monarchic Islam of the Umayyads and the Abbasids. This form of man as a completely renewed being, inwardly awake, turned away from the world and worldly obsession, radiant through an awareness of the Unseen Reality, filled with awe of Allah, and sweetness for his brothers, and generosity above all, with generosity this form was in imminent danger of being lost forever. Generosity and tolerance the two things the Messenger most extolled and embodied, had already been swept aside as weaknesses and somehow somebody had to recover them before it was too late. It is easy to understand why the Traditionists finally made their collections in despair lest the whole picture of the Sunna got lost. The Qur'an had been gathered and written down as a Book for the same reason there was the terrible risk that the slaughter would engulf the Muslim as a human record. Yet the books do not create the man. Transmission is from man to man. Even with the Hadiths, while it was a tremendous and scholarly achievement of enormous dimensions calling for both patience and integrity, the living and essential way was and still is one of personal transmission. Still today, for example, at the Qarawwiyin in Fez, the Master of Hadith will instruct you in the exact Hadith and its Isnad or chain, back person by person, to the Messenger himself. You may not transmit them in turn until he is satisfied that you have fulfilled the learning task and yourself been purified to such a stage that you too have absorbed them as he has done. That picture of transmission is the basis of a man's Islam and his inner awakening. Thus the uncle of Imam Junayd, may Allah be pleased with him, Sari as-Saqati, once asked him as he left the house to what assembly he was going. He replied: 'To the majlis of Harith al-Muhasibi.' His uncle said: 'Good. Accept his learning and his discipline but beware of his speculative reasoning.' Al-Junayd recounts: ' and as I left I heard Sari say: May Allah make you a traditionist who is a Sufi and not a Sufi who is a traditionist. Indeed, I studied the Shari'a according to the schools of such masters of Hadith as 'Abu 'Ubayd and Abu Thawr, and later I was taught by Harith al-Muhasabi and Sari ibn Mughallas. That has been the reason for my success, because our knowledge must be controlled by going back to the Qur'an and the Sunna. Whoever has not learned the Qur'an by heart and has not formally studied the Hadith, and has not learned Shari'a before embarking on Sufism, is a man who has no right to lead.' So right at the beginning of Islam, immediately following the Messenger's death, we see the establishment of a State and along with it the deliberate persecution of the Messenger's Companions and Followers, and worst of all, his own family and grandchildren. With the closest family isolated from the State structure on the one hand, and the coalescing of the ruler's courts with the civic and spiritual courts, the inevitable annexing of the learned men took place. Despite the many Hadiths warning against socalled learned men who served rulers, it became the inevitable result of the State structure: The Messenger said, peace be upon him: 'As long as the learned men associate not with the rulers, they are the deputies of the Messengers of Allah over His servants,

but when they associate with rulers they betray the Messengers. Beware of them and avoid them.' Of course, just as there were men who succumbed to the flatteries of the Sultans and Khalifs, there were many who stuck steadfastly to their Islam and defied their rulers or were martyred by them and died rather than surrender what they knew to be the Way. What a state-religion had to do was banish the whole concept of Sunna except as an outward aesthetic a social aesthetic if you like, a deep style. The profound and vital nature of the Sunna was however something else. It was that every action and every thought solidified the experiencing reality of a man and separated him, gave him the illusion of a kind of permanence, removed his awareness that he passed fleetingly through the world, and that things had no lasting value, only the heart's intentions had a reality because they contained the life dynamic of his existence. All the rest was illusion. Man carried nothing with him. He was his own record of his life and after death he had to answer for what he had done in the zone of action called the world. Aisha reported the Messenger, peace be upon him, as saying: 'The world is the dwelling of him who has no dwelling, and the property of him who has no property.' This has been transmitted by Ahmad and by Baihaqi. Ibn Ma'sud told that the Messenger slept on a reed mat and got up with the mark of it on his body, so Ibn Ma'sud said, 'Messenger of Allah, I wish you would order us to spread something out for you.' He replied: 'What have I to do with the world? In relation to the world, I am just like a rider who shades himself under a tree, then goes off and leaves it.' This has been transmitted by Ahmad, Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah. The Messenger said, peace be upon him: 'Every building is a misfortune for its owner except what cannot, except what cannot ' Anas reported it and Abu Dawud transmitted it. 'The son of Adam has a right only to the following: a house in which he lives; a garment with which he covers his private parts; dry bread and water.' This is from 'Uthman and transmitted by Tirmidhi. Abdallah bin Mughaffal told that a man came to the Messenger and said, 'I love you.' When he had told him to consider what he was saying, and when the man had declared three times, 'I swear by Allah that I love you,' he replied: 'If you are speaking the truth, prepare a complete armoury for poverty, for poverty certainly comes quicker to those who love me than a flood does to its destination.' Tirmidhi transmitted this. The Messenger said, peace be upon him: 'If you were to trust in Allah genuinely, He would give you provision as He does for the birds which go out hungry in the morning and come back full in the evening.' This was narrated by 'Umar ibn alKhattab and transmitted by both Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah.

Abu Dharr, may Allah be pleased with him, said: 'I came to the Messenger when he was sitting in the shade of the Ka'ba and when he saw me he said: "By the Lord of the Ka'ba, they are the ones who suffer the greatest loss." I asked, "Who are they, you for whom I would give my father and mother as ransom?" He replied: Those who have the most property except those who say, 'Take this and this and this,' before them and behind them, on their right and on their left: but they are few!' This was transmitted by Bukhari and Muslim. Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, said in a transmission by Baihaqi, that the Messenger said: 'A time is soon coming to mankind when nothing of Islam but its name will remain and only the written form of the Qur'an will remain. Their mosques will be in fine condition but will be devoid of guidance, their learned men will be the worst people under heaven, corruption coming forth from them and returning among them.' There is no avoiding the uncomfortable fact uncomfortable for those who wish to use Islam to buoy up a secular State that the Messenger came with a message that was a guidance as to how they should prepare for the next world. He came with 'the good news and the warning' in the Qur'an and both these concerned a man's cosmic place in the two worlds. This is not to say that Islam is the Way of avoiding the human situation, of going off into the hills, although the Messenger makes it quite clear that at the end of the planet Earth's history, the man of the Way will have no option but to leave the barbaric society of the time in order to survive. Indeed, so intense will be the inner agitation of the last days that it will be essential for the Muslim to adopt the most reflective and meditative quietism Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, as saying: 'There will be periods of turbulence in which the one who sits will be better than the one who stands, the one who stands better than the one who walks, and the one who walks better than the one who runs. He who contemplates them will be drawn by them, so he who finds a refuge or shelter should go to it.' Abu Sa'id reported Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, as saying: 'A Muslim's best property will soon be his sheep which he will take to the tops of the mountains and the places where the rain falls, fleeing with his Deen [i.e. the Way, the transaction] from civil strife.' Bukhari transmitted this. Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, as saying: 'When time is contracted, knowledge will be withdrawn, civil war will appear, meanness will be cast into people's hearts, and harj will be prevalent.' He was asked the meaning of harj and said it meant rioting. The first Community of Madinah al-Munawarra, the Illuminated City, were men who lived in the world but were not servants of the world, they worked in the city, and on the battlefield they defended themselves. They lived lives of luminous activity, giving and sharing and guiding to Wisdom as no community has ever done since the human race

began. Yet among them were those who loathed generosity and praise of the Creator, who scorned lack of reputation and desired return to the Jahiliyya. In the end these men achieved their desire. After the Khalifates of Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman, may Allah be merciful to them, each of whom did his best to maintain the life-pattern of the Sunna in Madinah, came the tragic and final attempt of Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, to recover the full social nexus of the Messenger's Sunna, but by that time, in precise fulfilment of the Messenger's prophecy, the Khalifate came to an end, he was martyred, and a kingdom was established. Ibn 'Abbas said: 'There is no one except the Messenger whose knowledge is not sometimes followed and sometimes rejected.' The Companions advised their people, 'Commit to memory as we have committed.' The first Khalif, Abu Bakr, and the Companions disliked the idea of even submitting the Qur'an to paper. Transmission, the direct existential exchange of energy-wisdom, was the Way of Islam. Abu Bakr said, 'How should we do what the Messengers did not do?' The rationalisation was that the Companions had all but been slaughtered and the risk was that there would be no-one to transmit the Message. Yet this is the very anxiety situation that real Islam had come to dispel. The matter was not and could not be in the hands of 'Uthman and the others. It was in the hands of Reality itself. The act of putting it in writing was the first step in the betrayal of the Wisdom-process. It was inevitably followed by the quite unnecessary step of codifying the Hadiths of the Messenger on which the Sunna is built. Now we have all the documents and cannot find the man. We have the books from Allah and we have lost the rijalallah the men of Allah. He has become the vanishing man the imperilled creature of our polluted planet the man of inner luminosity who outwardly is a fountain of generosity and peace and encouragement to others and guidance and strength, the man whose whole behaviour and energy is unified and in harmony with the Divine transaction of existence, the Seen and the Unseen. When Imam Malik compiled the Muwatta one of the first collections of Hadith to be written down Ahmad Ibn Hanbal criticised him and said, 'He has originated an innovation (from the Wisdom-practice) by doing what the Companions did not do.' The first books all appeared after the year 120 Hijra after the death of all the Companions and most of the Followers, including Hasan al-Basra, who was the Shaykh of knowledge following the death of Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with them both. Once the process had begun, the Muslim community began to develop a Rabbinical tradition, and it was a matter of time before the thing snowballed into abstract 'theology' and scholasticism appeared and argument and refutation all of which are merely exaltation of the nafs so that by the 4th century Hijra, the game element of corrupted teaching had begun. Imam al-Ghazzali, may Allah be pleased with him, says in his great work which is nothing but a vast and scholarly attempt to have done with scholarship and return to Wisdom: 'The Science of Certainty 'Ilm al-Yakin (that is, knowing by inner experience) began to disappear and the science of the heart, research into the qualities of the nafs, and the study of the stratagems of Shaytan became rare and unknown.' He goes on to say that the acts of the Companions were concealed from men and also their learning, so that the Muslims could not get a clear picture of what in fact this vast matter of Islam was about! He goes on, 'At the same time the science of the Other World became forgotten and the difference between knowledge and argument no longer known except to a select few. Thus did the Deen wane during those early centuries: but how

about its condition at the present time? [600 A.H.] Things have come to a point where anyone who would dare show his disapproval of the present state of affairs would run the risk of being called insane.' It is against this changing and increasingly difficult situation that the appearance of what is called Sufism took place. It must also be understood without any doubt that it follows from all that has been said that naming oneself as Sufi or as belonging to an Order is in itself irrelevant what the reality of the sufic phenomenon is cannot be compromised by evolving and proposing a special 'role' for the sufic brotherhoods. The reason and end of all the practices and all the dhikr and study is the creation of the rijalallah the men of Allah following the original picture of the Messenger, as he was described in a Hadith quoted by Imam al-Ghazzali: In the course of a khutba [Friday address to the people in the Mosque], the Messenger of Allah said: 'Blessed is he whose concern for his own faults keeps him from meddling with the faults of others, lives on money which he obtained without wrong action, associates with the learned and the wise, and shuns the people of evil and wrong action. Blessed is he who humbles himself, whose nature has been refined and whose heart has been altered, and who avoids inflicting harm upon men. Blessed is he who acts in accordance with his knowledge, who gives away the surplus of his substance and who witholds whatever is superfluous when he speaks, who lives within the Shari'a and does not overstep its bounds by introducing innovations.' The Messenger has said: 'The Deen is behaviour.' The word Deen derives from 'to be indebted' and 'to judge', so that its meaning is the transaction, the debt between you and your Creator, the judgment how things are, what must be done and so the Way itself. Thus, the transaction is behaviour. There is no compromise. The rajulullah is who he is because of the perfection, harmony, and selflessness of his behaviour. It was inevitable that in the culture-forming, fantasy-involved state structures that became known as the Muslim world, such a man would be at different times and in different degrees either endangered and martyred or, and this rarely, honoured and listened to as a guide. Thus there is no history of Sufism, or development of a movement within Islam called Sufism, all that is of the fantasy pattern, just as much as the pottery and the archways and the minarets are so much fantasy and have nothing to do with Islam. It suited the Christian world to admire Islamic art and talk of Islamic culture, but these are simply inventions by Christian intellectuals of a situation that had nevertheless been created by so-called Muslim societies. Islam, however, is not and cannot be equated with any Muslim society. It is a non-reality that is its own reality. No-one owns it and no-one can put it in a book it is the Way, and the Way must be embodied. It is the Wisdom and the Wisdom is dynamic, a practice, it cannot be encapsulated in formulae or in information retrieval units. The Messenger brought Islam and left it with his people. Where you encounter a true Muslim, you encounter Islam. That's it. No more. The Qur'an itself had to come through the Messenger a Book did not fall out of the sky. It could not be apprehended unless it came through the form of the man and later we shall see how the revelation

came, and recognise the way in which the whole Book was integrated into the lived experience and reality of the desert Messenger. The transmission that went from the Messenger to Sayyedina 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, was passed on to Hassan of Basra, who is therefore the first of the Shaykhs. He said: 'Islam is going into the books and the Muslims into the graves.' In Al-Ghazzali's great work, he recounts this of Shaykh Hassan: A man said to Hassan: 'Oh Abu Sa'id, how do you fare?' He said: 'Well.' The man then said: 'How is your state?' So Hassan smiled and said: 'You ask me about my state? What do you say about people who have sailed in a ship till they reached midocean and then their ship foundered until each of them clung to a plank of the wreckage in what state are they?' The man replied: 'In a state of great extremity.' Hassan said: ' then my state is one of greater extremity than theirs.' Hassan of Basra transmitted his knowledge to Shaykh Habib al-Ajami. Al-Hujwiri recounts this of the Master: It is well known among the sufis that when Hassan of Basra fled from Hajjaj, he entered the cell of Habib [fleeing, remember, from 'Muslims']. The soldiers came and said to Habib: 'Have you seen Hassan anywhere?' Habib said: 'Yes.' 'Where is he?' 'He is in my cell.' They went into the cell but saw no-one there. Thinking that Habib was making fun of them, they abused him and called him a liar. He swore that he had spoken the truth. They returned twice and thrice but found no-one and at last departed. Hassan immediately came out and said to Habib: 'I know it was owing to your baraka that Allah did not reveal me to these evil men, but why did you tell them I was there?' Habib replied: 'Oh Master, it was not on account of my baraka that they failed to see you, but through the blessedness of my speaking the truth. Had I told a lie, we both would have been shamed.' What we now have to ask and discover was this fundamental difference that made self-styled Muslim hunt down Muslim? How did State-Islam define itself in such a way that it was not challenged by, nor able to recognise, the nature of the lovers of Allah? State-Islam is, strictly speaking, the Christian heresy of the Church in the protestant sense of a priesthood of believers. It is sustained by an elite of scholars and priests now called 'ulama and Imams in accordance with the Jewish Rabbinical heresy. Heresy in this instance being simply a designation of that deviant energy that turns Islam into 'religion', binding-together into a State. The State-Fantasy is in turn dependent on one thing and one thing alone. Not the police and not the army and not the bank Statism depends on the prevention of the people from seeing the nature of their rulers. Authority has become outer and ceased to be inner, knowledge is informational and an instrument of manipulation, not illuminative and an instrument of liberation. This is the basis of Statism, whether it be called Islamic or any other name. Islam the Islam of the Messenger the Sufism of the Sufis for we are beginning to see that the two are

identical in all terms of reference is based on one premise and one premise alone. Life is a journey towards death, and after death there is the grave, and after the grave the form is restored and its 'meaning' becomes its reality the life-form which is recorded in the cellular record unfolds and the true form is revealed, and according to the nature of the 'inner' form the self goes on to another form-state where it experiences the gardenserenity of Wisdom or the fire-anguish of imagining one is separate from the totality that is the Divine situation. In the whole journey through the worlds of form, the passage through the world of 'solid' phenomena is but the briefest, and not even the first of the great journey. It is the zone of action and ALL that matters is what you achieve in terms of an existence demanding mercy and generosity and humility and above all, gratitude that is to say, centring not on the false-self, but on the existence-form which is allsustaining and all-giving. The Islam that the desert Messenger brought cannot exist unless you are open to the nature of life as being multi-dimensional and to the nature of phenomena as being basically unreal. There is no avoiding this issue, and it must be understood that what is being said is not some simple doctrine by which it is proposed that this is not here all this stuff we are surrounded by of course it is here but this 'is-ness' is a seeming, this solidity is a veiling. To the people of the Path the senses are not openings onto reality, they are veils from reality. Anyone who thinks that sensory and thought-experience have some kind of total structural factuality are living in a world of basic insanity and deep hallucination which could be shattered by a few easy demonstrations without even recourse to the zone of extra-sensory perception or the subatomic world of vanishing forms. Yet it is precisely on this lie about existence that the State-Fantasy is built, for it is nothing more than a fantasy on a fantasy, the construction of a super-form, the State, built on the foundation of the solid forms of 'money' and 'capital' and military 'power'. Once committed to this first insanity of Statism, there is properly speaking, only one enemy the one who will, as in the legend, be the child who points out the nudity of the Emperor. Such is the true Muslim, the rajulullah. Call him anything you like but beware lest you become hoodwinked into denouncing him along with his name. If the name Sufi is anathema, drop it but recognise the reality. Muslim is a word, not a reality. Look at the man! Who does he honour the salih? The pure radiant self who is turned towards Allah? Or the people of jahil the Ambassadors, the Ministers, the Presidents? Does he admire the Kings who drive to the Mosque in their bullet-proof cars with machinegun-armed outriders, or the poor and contented man behind the pillar doing dhikr and guiding to peace and wisdom? That even today there are such men there are saliheen and there are many sincere Muslims who honour and admire them and turn regretfully away from the spectacle of State-Islam is an overwhelming miracle, and the Hajj is the proof of it. Among the thousands of pilgrims they stand out the Muslims, shining, radiant, and filled with awe of Allah. Nevertheless, we must look carefully at the picture the world gives us at this

time and to help us grasp this view of the true Muslim we must examine briefly four terms that are used in Qur'an to give us our spatial sense in the science of Islam. This spatiality is a dual picture of interpenetrating terms, for the physical reality has superimposed on it a hidden form, or rather the hidden reality has imposed upon it the developed and solidified world-picture. It is very simple. Samawati 'Ard. Here is the double picture of the phenomenal reality. Samawati is the plural of SMA, a root meaning 'to be lofty' or 'on high'. The word for 'name' derives from the same cluster, so that the existence of the phenomenal heaven, the up which gives us down, the high which gives us low, is the basic duality of the whole structural existence without it there is no universe, no time/space and no need for naming. It is the 'higher' which calls for names, and the lower is the following negative. It is the spiritual picture of discrimination. 'Ard is the polar opposite the Earth, and therefore land, country. Our other duality is: Dunya Akhira. Dunya is the world as structured fantasy family and wealth, reputation, money the culture illusion, the State illusion. It derives from a root meaning 'to be near or low' like fruit hanging low and near at hand. The meaning then folds subtly into its deeper meaning 'easier', 'worse', 'viler', as it were, 'more ready to hand'. Dunya, a crucial Qur'anic term, indicates not the beauty of the mountains and the ocean all that is 'ard, earth, the unreality which is nonetheless reality itself. Dunya is pure illusion, is the accretion and crystallising that the false-self absorbs and annexes around it as its realitygiving setting, justifying the anguish and the struggle and the crimes. It is important to taste the subtlety of this matter that is existence for the argument of the enemy of Islam is that this is a false asceticism and you are invited to partake of dunya in the name of the Messenger. Yet here is the picture as seen by the Shaykh al-Kamil: 'Dunya is good! Dunya is wonderful!' In other words, the problem is not that we desire something we should flee from, but that this fantasy-palace can be lived in, as long as you do not imagine it is permanent. The good things of the dunya are there for you but you must know that while they are the gift of a generous Lord, they are NOT existence itself, they are merely aids to the journey. If the journey is not taken and the aids become the end, then the palace becomes a prison and man is trapped. That seeming nearness is in fact distance. This is the secret of Shaytan, for Shaytan the devil derives from ShTN, meaning 'to be distant'. In other words, Shaytan when he takes form in 'things' makes dunya seem near in order to make Haqq the Reality seem

distant while the truth according to the Truth is that, 'He is nearer than the jugular vein.' (50.16) He is that nearness that is the presence of the things themselves. Thus the forms manifest the Reality in all its tremendous immediacy He is Presence, dunya is essentially an absence. Knowing how to behave in the 'ard/world surrounded by dunya is like knowing not to panic in the shifting landscape of a dream while asleep and that is a science that must be learned and the science is Islam, the Islam of our desert Messenger, peace be upon him. Akhira has no root but indicates 'the last', 'the latter', 'what comes next', 'what is put off until later'. It is this life that opposes dunya, the immediacy or seeming immediacy is followed by another state, a deferred state which later comes showing the true nature of the forms. This seeming distance of akhira is part of our veiling, the immediacy of the akhira is the gift of knowledge, the knowledge that is the property of the Trusting-Ones in Islam. As dunya is recognised, by experience not conceptually, to be of its nature a shadow-show, an effect of consciousness-as-it-starts, then of course the nafs in awakening to the Unseen and the multi-dimensional nature of existence begins to open up, and consciousness-as-it-ends begins to emerge. To the sleeper in the cave of his body/world, dunya is present and akhira is later or not at all to the awakened, akhira is immediate and all-surrounding, and dunya a vanishing dream. To return to our political man immersed in his State-fantasy we are faced with a fascinating situation. The truth of the matter is not that he is dealing with a 'real world' and you are some crank with an illusion about how things are and therefore should be merely rendered socially ineffective so as not to confuse others the truth is that the political man dare not allow his fantasy structure to be seen in the light of the rajulullah. He can argue dialectically all day, but his world crumbles when he is in the PRESENCE of the man of Allah. For his world is not there, it is dunya, and when he reaches for it there is nothing, and the sheer inner radiance of the rajulullah floods over him and that Light reveals the illusory power-structure to be sheer fantasy, and his achievements mere dreams. The political animal has no inner reality, he is still experientially trapped in his animality, and his animal-nafs will be all that can manifest in any confrontation with the saliheen. The political animal thrives on conflict and violence to distract from the realities of existence faced with the rajulullah he finally comes face to face not with his fantasies and not with his action-dramas, but with himself. He sees his own paltry form in the mirror, in the clear mirror of the polished and reflective self of the Salih. Most men on being shown a mirror express astonishment, as the saying goes, many flee in terror, a few recognise the reflection. Man is frightened only of himself, he is terrified by his 'thingness' he knows in his own being that Reality is One, and therefore he cannot be 'two'. That fact is the unbearable fact of existence, that illusion of otherness. Faced with the rajulullah, the man of personality/event is horrified because he cannot 'see' him as other and finds himself looking into the mirror at his own reflection, at that which he most fears. The rijalullah cannot be distracted by the false battle and violence in the foreground, they see beyond the shadow-show to the luminous reality. The political man in that situation would see his own nafs reflected in the mirror, but the Salih would see only Reality in all the nafs-mirrors. Thus the man's seeing himself together with the Salih's refusal to see his nafs for it has no real existence would produce intolerable

anguish the result of which could only be either surrender to the truth of how-things-are and thus surrender to the Wisdom of the Shaykh, or else to turn on the offending mirror and smash it. This is the battle against Islam, this is the persecution of the awliya the friends of Allah. 'Abu Bakr 'recognised' the Messenger immediately without hesitation for all he did was recognise his own nafs as mirrored in the Messenger for 'Abu Bakr was Muslim, and the Messenger was the 'first of the Muslims'. Abu Lahab rejected him because he was busily engaged in rejecting himself and bringing about his own destruction. Statism makes safe the outer structure and the society collapses from within. Islam makes safe the inner experiencing of reality and the people are not in danger from any source, for they are in harmony with a compassionate reality. Statism means to divide the body politic up one man a policeman, another a lawyer, another a helpless citizenworker, inevitably it makes one man a policeman and another a criminal and civil war is the outcome of Statism as the Messenger warned again and again: Usama bin Zaid told that the Messenger looked down on one of the fortresses of Madinah and asked: 'Do you see what I see?' When his hearers replied that they did not, he said: 'I see civil wars occurring among your houses like falling rain.' This is transmitted by both Bukhari and Muslim. Islam means to unify the body politic in harmony, so that every man is a soldier, every man is the bank through sadaqa and zakat, that is, acts of personal generosity and obligatory self-taxation every man is a judge, he is his own policeman. It means to Unify and Surrender to the true nature of existence. We are now ready to look more closely into the mirror of the nafs, clearly established in a science which does not oppose the Sufis to Muslims to faqirs to anything but avoiding the names, keeping one's eyes fixed on the actual nature of things, on the behaviour of the human creature, on the courtesy and the humanity and the humility of the man not on his label. This is the Way that opens up to the person who bows and prostrates with their whole being, body and consciousness this is the process and the practice that begins the alchemy of the nafs. One shaykh was asked who his first Master was and he replied: 'A dog.' He told that he had seen a dog desperately thirsty come upon a clear pool of water. When the dog advanced it saw itself clearly reflected in the pool and retreated in fear taking the image to be that of another dog. Again and again he advanced snarling only to retreat in terror at the ferocious image that menaced him, until finally, driven mad with thirst, the dog dived into the pool and the reflected image vanished. We are now about to approach the science of States.

The Science of States

Before we can approach the matter of the ahwal, the States, it is vital that we have some idea of this illusory experiencing centre that is the nafs, an idea that is, which is not based on claiming for it a kind of crystalline reality, but rather on seeing it as a moving and

dynamic, fluctuating energy source we have used the image of a radio station giving out varying waves from a focal, identifiable point. The locus is identifiable but only as long as signals go out from it. When death comes the station goes 'off the air' yet the waveband remains, the life situation. If the States are imagined to be something happening to someone then the true perspective is lost. That, from the experiential point of view, there is a radio station and there is a programme, signals are coming and going, is never the question, otherwise it would not matter what happened to us. What is important is that we begin to think about these matters with a more fluid and less definitive imagery, the 'fuzzy mathematics' of the biologist trying to describe dynamic organisms rather than the fixed and rigid arithmetic that measures solid forms. The key to an understanding of our movement-reality and the dismantling of the solidstate 'I' rests in the next obligatory practices of Islam. They go together both in the structure of the year and in their meaning. They are the sawm, the fast of Ramadan: and zakat, the obligatory taxing of that part of one's wealth which has been saved for one year. The first is an act of separation from the world-reality, for one's immediate environment is the extension of one's body experience. People become 'attached' to their possessions, and this experience is nothing less than an extension of their attachment to the world-as-food. The Maulana Rumi, may Allah be pleased with him, said, 'The whole world is the breast.' This is the meaning of Ramadan and Zakat. It is the inner experience of the fast that awakens the Salik, the Wayfarer, to this moving, fluid nature of the self. Let us first get a picture of what the Sunna of food is, and how the Messenger saw it as experience and Wisdom-source. Abu Huraira told that when they were struck by hunger Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, gave them each a date. Tirmidhi transmitted it. Abu Darda' reports the Messenger, peace be upon him as saying: 'Provision searches for a man in the same way as his appointed period.' Abu Nu'aim transmitted it. Abu Huraira also reported the Messenger, on whom be peace, as saying: 'Two people's food is enough for three and three people's food is enough for four.' This is transmitted both by Bukhari and Muslim. A'isha said that the Messenger, peace be upon him, fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. Tirmidhi and Nasa'i have transmitted this. Abu Dharr, may Allah be pleased with him, said that the Messenger said to him: 'When you fast three days in the month, Abu Dharr, fast on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteen.' Tirmidhi and Nasa'i have transmitted this. Abdallah bin 'Amr bin al-As told of the Messenger, peace be upon him, saying to him: 'Have I not been informed, Abdallah, that you fast during the day and get up at night for prayer?' When he replied that was so, he said: 'Do not do it. Fast and break your fast. Get up for prayer and sleep, for you have a duty to your body, your

eye, your wife, and your guests. He who observes a perpetual fast never fasts. Fasting three days every month is equivalent to a perpetual fast. Fast three days every month and recite the Qur'an every month.' When he replied that he was able to do more than that, he told Abdallah, 'Observe the most excellent fast, the fast of David, fasting every second day, and recite the Qur'an once every seven nights, but do not do more than that.' Bukhari and Muslim both transmitted it. Abu Huraira said that the Messenger of Allah told him, 'Many a one who fasts gets nothing from his fasting but thirst and many a one who prays during the night gets nothing from his night prayers but sleeplessness.' Tirmidhi transmitted it. Al-Miqdam bin Ma'Dikarab recounted hearing the Messenger say: 'A human being has not filled any vessel which is worse than a belly. Enough for the son of Adam are some mouthfuls which keep his back straight, but if there is no escape he should fill it a third with food, a third with drink, and leave a third empty.' Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah transmitted it. 'If you were to trust in Allah genuinely, He would give you provision as He does for the birds which go out hungry in the morning and come back full in the evening.' 'Umar ibn Al'Khattab reported the Messenger as saying this and it is transmitted by Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah. A'isha told that Allah's Messenger, peace be upon him, wanted to buy a young slave, so he threw some dates in front of him, but when the youth ate greedily he said: 'Voracious eating is ominous!' and ordered him to be sent back. Baihaqi transmitted it. Abdallah bin 'Amr reported Allah's Messenger as saying: 'Fasting and the Qur'an intercede for a man. Fasting says, Oh my Lord, I have kept him away from his food and his passions by day, so accept my intercession for him. The Qur'an says, I have kept him away from sleep by night, so accept my intercession for him. Then their intercession is accepted.' Baihaqi transmitted it. Ibn 'Abbas said that when the month of Ramadan began Allah's Messenger set every prisoner free and gave to every beggar. Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger as saying: 'Ramadan, a blessed month, has come to you during which Allah has made it obligatory for you to fast. In it the gates of the Garden are opened, the gates of the Fire are locked, and the rebellious shaytans are chained. In it Allah has a night which is better than a thousand months. He who is deprived of its good has indeed suffered deprivation.' Ahmad and Nasa'i transmitted it. It is clear that fasting plays an important part in the human science. Also it has a structure. There is the obligatory Ramadan fast which is annual and dated by a lunar calendar so that it swings through the years with a lunar orbit. The opening of the fast is

dependent on sighting the new moon of the holy month just as the dawn prostrations must co-incide with the white thread of light on the horizon. The fasting month itself has an inner structure. The Messenger said that it was a month whose beginning was mercy, whose middle was forgiveness, and whose end was freedom from the Fire. Its climax comes with the Night of Power Laylat al-Qadr, during which the Messenger received the Qur'anic revelation. That night is hidden, and the seeker must watch for it, knowing that it is one of the last uneven-dated nights of the fast. There is never any doubt when it comes which night it has been. There is no more open night in the year for direct experience, or rather, for awakening. The fast is from dawn to sunset and is broken immediately the sun has gone down. The fast is total and is also an abstention during the same hours from sexual intercourse. It is also understood that fasting implies a control of one's temper and one's tongue. The eye should fast with the other members, and the ear should refrain from listening to what is not pleasing. The total impact of the month's fast is quite shattering and its effects on the solidity fantasy of the nafs is extreme. What it does, of course, is affect the whole basis of the separate-self illusion by breaking the established adult feeding pattern which in turn opens up the memory of the infantile feed. The resonance of any imbalance and fear that was contained in that held basic memory structure is released and sounded as it were like a gong whose reverberation had been smothered and is now allowed to shudder to silence. It is an opening therefore to the whole substructure of the nafs, whose otherness has emerged in the infantile phase where feeding both implies a unity of self and environment on the one hand, and, when the feed is removed, delayed, or given with anxiety, on the other implies separateness, isolation and fear. To the person setting out on the Path, Ramadan inevitably proves the most difficult time of their new life, and if they see it through, for the same reasons, the most rewarding. The voluntary fasts which are mentioned in the Hadiths above follow the same pattern, certain days and dates of the months being the most in harmony cosmically with the act of fasting. The highest fast is the one which most drastically breaks the feed-order, the fast of David, which both liberates the self from the dependency picture of imagining that the food comes from 'outside' and opens the awakening mind to the reality of the Unity through the Qur'an. The fast opens one to the Divine Compassion and the Attributes Ar-Razzaq, the Provider, and Al-Wahhab, the Generous. We should not avoid seeing into what the nature of the fasting experience is. There is no use expecting it to be the basis of some 'higher' experience, when the wisdom of the fast lies in the very act of separation which is simply not eating. The human being experiences an inner emptiness which first expresses itself as hunger or thirst: when it is satisfied, the experiencing self in its dynamic form-making energy goes on to place this emptiness out into the emotional sphere. The person then becomes greedy for the 'other'. The other is eaten up. First the milk, then the mother. Once the nafs moves out into the whole world picture, the appetite moves outwards from food and emotional encounter to every stratum of experience. Conquest and war are nothing but the continued devouring of the unsatisfied child. The Messenger, peace be upon him, has said that the mother gives the child milk, and something along with the milk which is Wisdom. There should be no symbolising, or abstracting of this crucial statement. It is the heart of the wisdom

picture. Milk/Wisdom. Compassion is the nature of the life-experience. The reality is that we are fed but the true feed contains 'something along with it' an energy that, if it is healthy, gives the child a sense of its safety in the Divine process, and if it is poisoned, will transmit the mother's fears and anger into the child. So that the woman is the first teacher of the child, and it is the child who has been well nourished in that complete sense who more readily feels 'full': while the child who has not received that sense of well-being will panic and seek in the food itself for the compassion that 'goes along with' the food, but in its case was missing. So a person's expectation of the world of dunya of those grapes hanging so near and yet always out of reach no matter how the form may change in the appetite-picture it could be for reputation, popularity, punishment, power, land, wealth, anything would never be anything else than a futile expectation of the missed infantile wisdom-transaction. This is a pattern with no blame for this is nothing else than the Seal of the destiny. Nor can we ever know what we imbibed in the first child-feast until the whole picture of the life is complete. There may be a memory of great love in that first transmission and it may be covered over and its uncovering is the Path, or one of the vital dimensions of the Path, for the wisdom-transaction is one that involves the whole transmutation of the nafs which exists by virtue of our experience of the body as a separate phenomenal form. We cannot pretend to a mental unity when we are entrenched in the solid body. Here the whole pattern of Halal food, permitted food, takes on a profound meaning. The cells themselves must be pure as the outline-form must be made pure by the wudu. Shaykh al-Akbar, quoting the Qur'anic ayat: 'And amongst them is one who walks on his belly,' (24.45), says: 'He refers to those Saliheen who scrupulously examine their food, for by means of pure food which produces strength for the practice of dhikr, the heart is illuminated and becomes the abode of these forms of Divine Wisdom.' It must not be forgotten that every vessel has a capacity and that capacity is determined cellularly by the destiny of parentage and time and place of birth both from a planetary and cosmic point of view. That event which conditions these factors is no different and is part of the same Divine process which is the life, of which the first part is the feeding-wisdom experience, and of which the last is the fasting-wisdom experience. Just as we once came out from the womb, so we must now come out from the world-breast and experience the Unseen, in order that, by the grace of Allah, we will then come out from the company of the Messengers and awliya in the Gardens of the Unseen worlds, until we are finally desirous of Unity itself, then we are complete and the great feast of forms is over. There is a Hadith-qudsi where Allah-ta-ala speaks through the Messenger in the first person in which He says: 'Fasting is mine.' Fasting is the opening onto the Reality, it is the melting away of the solid, the dispersal of the cloud-body and the appearance of the sun-spirit. You diminish He magnifies. It is a process that reduces one, in a quite real way, cellularly and experientially until the fasting person becomes conscious of their existence as fluid and wavelike rather than fixed and delineated. Whatever the illusory self has defined itself as and crystallised itself as, the fast of Islam immediately shatters that form and opening up begins. The obligatory fast, lasting as it does for a whole month, and that month being the month cosmically intended for fasting, resonates deeply into the pseudo-solidity of the nafs and

awakens the basic response that the nafs has to the feed-experience, and with that the whole self-pattern is opened up for the faster to see. 'Every day we are on a new creation take provision from it,' said the Messenger in a well-known Hadith, and this is the experience of the person on a fast. He is aware that any constancy of self he imagined he had was merely a surface illusion buoyed up by habit pattern and behaviour structure designed to give an illusion of solidity. He begins to know himself as a shuddering, evanescent, melting, moving reality, layers fall from him, and he is aware therefore that what remains of him, while already more fragile, still has no absolute reality. As the veils lift the Light becomes clearer. The seeker begins to awaken. It is in this condition that the murid recognises that he is constantly passing from one State to another. It is then that the practice begins to reveal its effect with startling results. Before a man had taken the Path he would take every experience as it came: he might occasionally discern a 'pattern', but depending on how things were, the kind of close-up impact of event, of which violence as we have seen is the most extreme demanding a close-up reaction which forbids detachment or makes it well-nigh impossible would stop him seeing life as anything but a myriad of different possibilities and actualities chaotically following one on another. Once that man takes the Path he begins the practice of unifying existence. He affirms the One. He bows before the One. He praises the One. He addresses the One. He sees One. He hears One. He eventually knows One. He learns not to fear now this and now that. He looks for his provision, for his needs to come from One source, and whatever the agent, he cuts through the deception of forms and recognises always in every case One Reality at work. So, with his nafs, he learns not to say I am this and I am that, but rather, I am neither this nor that, but what comes over me is the nafs' rejection of what comes from the Compassionate Lord. Contentment with one's lot becomes not a painful business but a sweet business, and the ability to see the Unity at work eases the pains that were once intolerable. In this view there is nothing to hold onto, no illusory safety the safety lies in the recognition that the need is not for safety from the world, but from Him, and only He can save you from Him. If you flee from the One you can only flee to the One. This is the basis of fear and hope. Imam alGhazzali, commenting on the revelation of Allah-ta-ala to the Messenger Dawud, peace be upon him, 'Fear Me as you fear the harmful lion,' says: And there is no device for inducing fear of the harmful lion except knowledge of the lion and knowledge of falling into its claws, and there is no need of any device beside that. So whoever knows Allah knows that He does what He will and He does not care and rules as He desires and is not afraid. As His saying has explained it: 'These are in the Garden and I do not care and these are in the Fire and I do not care.' After a profound exposition of this theme, he sums up in one of the most powerful passages in his great work: As for the person who falls into the claws of the lion, if his knowledge were perfect, he would not be afraid of the lion, since the lion is coerced. If hunger dominates it, it will maul, and if heedlessness dominates it, it will ignore and leave alone. So he would be afraid only of the Creator of the lion and His Attributes. Am I not going to

say that fear of the lion is a parable of fear of Allah? No. When the veil is lifted, it will be known that fear of the lion is the very fear of Allah, because the One who kills by means of the lion is Allah. Now the way to opening the self to this inescapable and terrifying fact, the oneness of existence, is the simplest thing in the world. What makes it seem difficult is not that the act itself is difficult, but that we run in fear from the very nature of a situation which by its nature forbids our escape. Madness is the radical ruse of the ordinary person on the run from how things are. Madness all its brilliantly constructed escape routes leads to a hopeless act of impasse. Man cannot separate himself from reality, his own reality lies deep within him, therefore he cannot separate from his own being any more than he can jump out of his skin, yet this is precisely what the madman tries to do get out of the body to somewhere safe like the moon, abandon the central nervous system, refuse to react as if there was anyone 'at home' inside the body. Courteously the slave addresses the Lord. You, the 'I' open yourself to the totality of the One to the Universal. The 'I' speaks the little Universe speaks to the Big Universal. 'I' speak to 'Him'. 'I' am present, 'He' is absent the third person singular is, as the Shaykh al-Akbar points out, the pronoun of absence, and a formal dialogue begins. I He. This is the beginning of the real journey, whose phases are: I He: I You: I. There are three stages of knowledge in the Qur'anic language. 'Ilm al-yakin.' 'Ayn al-yakin.' 'Haqq al-yakin.' Knowledge of certainty. Source of certainty. Truth of certainty. Or as the Rajah of Mahmudabad, may Allah have mercy on him, said: 'First you are told there is a fire in the forest. Second you see with your own eyes there is a fire in the forest. Third you become the fire in the forest.' Thus, in the end, 'I' have become an absent he, and only the 'I' remains of Allah-ta-ala. This is the meaning of the great saying of the Sufis the Sufi is uncreated. From the depths of the awesome forests of the Tawhid, the reality is that there never was any 'other' to become absorbed or annihilated or unified. The Reality is One. Mansur Al-Hallaj ends his great song of Unity, the 'Tawasin' saying: Allah is Allah. Creation is creation. And it does not matter. This is not an affirmation of duality or some kind of total separation of the Divinity from His realm, rather it is the essential starting point, and therefore also the end point, of the man of knowledge. As Shaykh Moulay al-Arabi ad-Darqawi, a Shaykh of our Shaykh, said: 'The slave is the slave and the Lord is the Lord.' As we will later see, this is the only thing we are able to say while affirming the two great statements of the Messenger 'Allah was and there was nothing with Him,' i.e. before the Universe: and, 'He is now as He was before.' Thus the goal of the seeker of Reality is nothing less than his own

undoing, the wiping out of this illusory central experiencing self, for in order that 'He' the absent One should remain as the only Presence, the 'I' must be annihilated. We now come to the Way in all its fullness, for we have glimpsed for the first time what the goal might be. We have seen that the true nature of the nafs as it is experienced is not that of a solid object accreting qualities and faults in a more and more solid lump, but rather we have seen that the non-existent nafs is experienced by us as being solid-state, and that the acts of salat and fasting and zakat shudder and move this seeming solidity until we recognise that the nafs is in constant movement, constant flux, it is cloud-form and not mountain. The goal is that the mountain should be blown away with all the ease with which the wind disperses the cloud, as in the superb Form from Qur'an which describes the Last Day of the world macrocosm and microcosm being utterly identical in our picture of oneness They will ask you of the mountains say: 'My Lord will break them into scattered dust, and leave it as an empty plain.' The means by which we set in motion the mountain solidity of forms in experience in order to open ourselves to the transparent cloud-nature of stuff is the great science that the Prophets transmit to their people. It is called in the language of the desert Messenger, dhikr'Allah. Now when we examine the root of the word, we as usual uncover its true existential impact. The meaning of this word which is the science of tasawwuf is in its root: DhKR 'to be kicked in the groin'. There it is. It is as everything in Qur'anic language self-explanatory. The Divine Reality is Presence. You are not far from Him, He is not hiding from you, and there is no complex secret esoteric tantra that has to be practised. If you want to know, if you really want Oneness, if you really want to be taken out of your neurotic mind-games and made aware of the immediate and vibrant Presence of the Lord of the Universe what you need is a kick in the balls. It is offensive? Then what offends you is your sickness, the marad that separates you from the tremendous and overwhelming immediacy of reality in all its present-tense awareness. It is that shock that instant focussing of the nafs on the actuality of existence, that halts the form-making mind and therefore opens in one instant the whole being to the total-mind, to the nonmind, to the Presence itself. From this root the formal meanings follow in obvious succession, but all deeply connected in meaning to their root: Dhikr 'to remember', 'to make mention of', 'to fill the mind with', 'a making plain', 'a shock-warning', 'a plain statement' (of how things are), 'to be called to attention', 'the means of knowing', 'to remind one's self' therefore, 'to be reminded'. Now, the affirmation la ilaha ila'llah Muhammadun rasulallah is dhikr. Salat is dhikr. Fasting and zakat are dhikr. However, we are being forced by our pursuit of the meaning of existence to go beyond these time-points, to join them up, to string the pearls, to open our experience to a continuity that takes us from one prostration-time to another, from one Ramadan to the next.

The repository of dhikr is, of course, the Qur'an, and it is the mine of all the dhikr we practise. We also find that in the science of dhikr different situations have different dhikr. Qur'an says of itself: And we sent down of the Qur'an that which is a healing and a mercy to the Trusting-Ones. (Qur'an 17.82) In the language of the Shaykh al-Akbar: 'The Qur'an is laden with quality. Qualities are states its quality is the sourceform of its essence, and the essence does not require other-than-it because it is it, by itself. So its quality is like that because of its source-form, neither other than it nor extra to it, so understand! Allah speaks the Truth and guides to the Path.' It is clear that a deep understanding of what Qur'an is as a phenomenon is essential to a knowledge of the Way and indeed, of knowledge itself. The Qur'an must be examined and seen not just as some odd text that somehow came to be recited and eventually written down. It is only with the advent of this Book that we are able to examine the nature of revelation as a historic event, since it occurred only fifteen hundred years ago and the whole matter was closely recorded and is also explained within the text itself. What the Master is here saying is that whatever the Qur'an may be it isn't just a Book, but a dynamic thing 'laden with quality'. The Book is a collection of these life-textured realities and these energy patterns are equivalents, that is to say not indicators, but the same as States. Thus the Qur'an is a source-book of all the 'States' that the human being may experience. So the dhikr is a key which opens the patterning of the nafs, uncovering layer upon layer of experiential solidification and allowing the Light of the self to come through in its original source-form condition. Let us now explore this quite simple but tremendous picture that is the basis of Ibn 'Arabi's picture of the self. First we must see what dhikr is, then move on to a clearer idea of what hal is and finally return to our starting point, moving from the nafs to the Qur'an as the key to the creation situation. The electrifying, mind-stopping reality that is put forward as the nature of existence by the Shaykh al-Akbar, is one in which every form is consciously participating in the glory and beauty of the Divine Reality at every instant and/or non-instant, and these forms are only variegated versions of their source-forms in the Unseen, and these source-forms are only Light from aspects of the Essence coming out from the original Reality which is itself beyond all ascription, grasp, or definition. In the 'Makkan Revelations' he says: He said, may He be exalted: 'There is nothing but that it proclaims His praise.' (17.44). 'Thing' is indefinite, and only the living intellect, knowing of His praise, gives praise. It is related of the Mu'adhdhin that, of wet and dry, to the extent that his voice carries, everything testifies for him. Thus we have heard the rocks doing

dhikr'Allah with the sight of the eye and our ears heard from them with the tongue of articulation. They spoke to us with the speech of the gnostics of the glory of Allah which not every man perceives. So each sort from the creation of Allah is one of the communities which Allah formed on a worship particular to them. So He inspired them with it from within themselves. So their 'messenger' is from their essences. There are outstanding ones from Allah where a particular inner awareness on which they have been formed gives certain creatures a knowledge which the adept technician cannot grasp. They even know what is of use to them in what they receive of insects and edibles and how to avoid what is harmful to them. All that is from their natural disposition. It is the same with inanimates and plants. Allah has taken our eyes and ears from what they have of articulation. The hour will not come until man speaks and his people take it for his deed, making wise men seem ignorant He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had complete unveiling, so he saw what we do not see. He spoke, peace be upon him, of the command upon which the People of Allah act, so they found his word to be true: 'Had it not been for increase in your speech and disorder in your hearts, you would have seen what I see and you would have heard what I hear.' So he was given the rank of perfection of slavedom, so he was a pure slave. He did not stand by his sovereign essence over anyone. That is what mastery necessitated and it is a constant proof of his honour. A'isha said: 'The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, used to do dhikr constantly, at all times.' We have an ample legacy from him, and it is a matter particular to the inward part of man. Here, the communication and awareness of the lower organisms is connected to the act of speech and the nature of Wisdom. The Wisdom-transmission is 'particular to the inward part of man' and its means is dhikr. Speech in its pure and original state is nothing but dhikr, and the accretions of speech that come with abandoning the Wisdom-practice are means of tyranny and domination and chaos, social and private. The babble of the ignorant man and the insane man are of the same nature. For speech to be basically sane, it must stem from the 'speech' of the revelation, which in its turn is the fruit of silence. Quintessential speech is not pure dhikr but rather the state from which wisdom-speech comes and all these patternings are the ayats of the Qur'an. From this viewpoint, 'there is nothing but that it proclaims His praise.' Elsewhere the Shaykh Ibn 'Ata-illah said about dhikr: Dhikr is a fire which does not stay or remain so if it enters a house saying: 'Me and nothing other than me' which is from the meanings of la ilaha illa'llah, and there is firewood in the house, it burns it up and it becomes fire. If there is darkness in the house, it becomes Light, its Light. If there is Light in the house, it becomes Light upon Light.

Dhikr drives away from the body extra elements produced by excess in eating and from the consumption of Haram food: as for what is derived from Halal food, it does not touch it, so the harmful elements are burned up and the good elements remain. Dhikr is heard by every part as if it were blowing on a trumpet, and when dhikr first falls into the head, the sound of the trumpet and glasses are found there. Dhikr is a sultan when it descends into a place it descends with its trumpets and glasses because dhikr is opposed to all that is other-than-the-Reality, so when it does descend it occupies itself with negating what is contrary, as we found with the union of water and fire. After these sounds, different sounds are heard: like the murmur of water, the sound of the wind, the sound of fire when it is kindled, the sound of riding beasts, the thunder of horses, and the sound of the leaves of the trees when the wind blows on them. This is because man is a combination of every noble and low substance of dust, water, fire, air, and earth and heaven and what is between them. These sounds are from every source and element of these substances. Whoever has heard these sounds in dhikr has praised Allah and glorified Him with every tongue. This is the result of the dhikr of the tongue with the force of absorption. Perhaps the slave will reach the state where, when he is silent from the dhikr, the heart will move in his breast like the movement of the child in the womb, demanding dhikr. They said: 'Indeed, the heart is like 'Isa the son of Maryam, peace be upon them, and dhikr is its milk. When it grows and becomes strong, a yearning for the Truth arises from it with a voice, and inevitable swooning then blows on it a craving for dhikr and the One invoked. The dhikr of the heart is like the sound of the bee, neither a confused high sound, nor a very low hidden sound. Then the One invoked takes possession of the heart and the dhikr is obliterated and vanishes, and the one who invokes turns neither to the heart nor to the dhikr. If during this, a glance at the dhikr or the heart appears to him, that is a distracting veil. This state is fana which is that man is annihilated in respect to his nafs and that he feels nothing from his outward limbs, nor things outside of him, nor spells inside of him. If, during that, it occurs to him that he is annihilated in respect to himself altogether, then that is a blemish and troubledness. Perfection is that he be annihilated to himself and to annihilation, and the annihilation of annihilation is the goal of annihilation, and annihilation is the foremost part of the Path, since it is going towards Allah, may He be exalted, and then guidance follows. By guidance, I mean the guidance of Allah, as he said, blessings and peace be upon him: 'I am going to my Lord and He will guide me.' This absorption is rarely established and rarely continues. If it does continue it becomes a fixed habit and a lasting condition by which he ascends to the celestial world. Then the purest real existence emerges and the inscription of the invisible world (malakut) is stamped on him, and the purity of the Divinity (lahut) appears to him. The first of what is represented to him from that world is the angels' essences and the spirits of the prophets and awliya in a beautiful form which flows on him through some of the realities. That is the beginning until his degree is elevated from forms and he encounters the Truth in everything with clarity.

This is the fruit of the core of dhikr, and its beginning is the dhikr of the tongue, then the dhikr of the heart is stimulated, then the dhikr becomes nature, and then the One invoked takes possession and the dhikr is obliterated, and this is the secret of his word, peace be upon him: 'Whoever wishes to graze in the Gardens of Paradise, let him invoke Allah much,' and the secret of his word: 'Hidden dhikr is seventy times preferable to dhikr which is heard by listeners.' The signs of dhikr moving to the Secret is the absence of the one who invokes both from the dhikr and the One invoked, and the dhikr of the Secret is being madly thirsty and drowning in it. Among its signs is that when you leave off the dhikr it does not leave you, and the flight of dhikr in you is to awaken you from absence to presence. Among its signs is that dhikr tightens your head and limbs, as if they were bound with bonds and chains. Among its signs is that its fires do not abate, and its Lights do not depart, rather its Lights are always seen rising and descending, and the fires around you are untroubled, being aflame and brightly burning. When dhikr reaches the Secret, the dhikr is the silence of the one who invokes, as if needles had been thrust through his tongue invoking with Light flowing from it. The Shaykh al-Kamil in one of the most renowned songs in his Diwan, 'Fana-Fi'llah', says: Oh seeker of annihilation in Allah say all the time: Allah! Allah! And withdraw into Him from other-than-Him and with your heart see Allah! In his song, 'The Commentary on the Wird' he says: If you wish to hasten to an understanding of the Reality then with himma persevere in repeating the Mighty Name. Always mirror the letters of the Name in your heart and repeat it unconsciously at every moment. Do not turn to otherness for it is indeed a barrier. Even when it is praiseworthy it is still more suitable to darkness. To the People, His dhikr does in place of what is other-than-Him. If you possess himma there is no opposite to Allah.

Fear Him in dhikr and be annihilated to other-than-Him: and there is no other except for the illusion of multiplicity. Multiplicity is only Oneness multiplied in accordance with the Names and the traces of Divine Power. In 'The Greater Song', the Shaykh al-Kamil says of the one starting out on the journey: He should busy himself with dhikr of Allah, may His Majesty be glorified, for in that lies the remedy for every fault and ill. In 'The Minor Song' he says: To anyone who withdraws into the Lights of the dhikr of the Truth, Creation is nothing but particles of dust in space. Here is 'The Virtues of the Mighty Name': Free yourself from others and you will attain His proximity and you will ascend to the ranks of the People of every assembly. Fill your every breath with dhikr'Allah for each breath has to be accounted for on the Day of Gathering and Promise. Exalt all phenomena because it is formed from the Light of the Prophet Muhammad. Regard it as Lights from the Names of our Lord and withdraw from being unresponsive and speaking from opinion. Love with the love of Allah and hate with His hate. This is the Road, so be aware of it, my friend! Be an isthmus between the two oceans the Reality and the Road and you will attain the rank of Recognition in every assembly. In every mosque, guide the slaves of Allah by Allah openly, by showing the beauty of the Paths of Allah. And if you wish to go swiftly into the Presence of our Lord, then have a good opinion of Allah's creation and speak well of Him. Persevere in the Sublime and Mighty Name with a good heart, sincerity and concentration.

Recognise the beauty of the Essence in every Manifestation. Were it not for it the existence of the Existent would not have been established. All the attributes of the nafs are annihilated by His Invocation, and all that remains is tranquillity of heart, sweeter than honey. Every inner state along with the Stations arises from invocation of the Mighty Name with gravity. So from it comes the Opening for every Wayfarer and from it comes the Overflowing for every Murshid. From it is the state of intoxication and fana, and from it, too, the states of sobriety and ecstasy. Power is only given to the one who has isolated himself with Him, and who, through much praise, is adorned with what pleases Him. Thus he will continue to ascend in the deserts of His Essence until he is utterly annihilated in an annihilation that has nothing in it but loss. If he returns to the traces of existence, He brings a Robe of Honour which proclaims His Wilaya (being a Wali) and glory. So be a slave and servant to the One whose description this is, and fulfil the contract of Allah, and He will give you what He has promised. The greatest of Allah's creation in this matter are His Messengers and the most perfect of them in it is the Prophet Muhammad. So his outward form is a Light and his inner form is a Secret. His perfections are beyond numbering. May the blessings of Allah be upon him and his family and Companions, and give us limitless Lutf (Divine Favour). In this qasida the Shaykh describes the whole transformation process that is set in motion by the act of dhikr. This shimmering form-making machine, this kaleidoscope that makes endless patterns from a few varied set experience-pieces, the nafs once it is submitted to the fire and lights of dhikr is fragment by fragment annihilated, until all that remains is tranquillity of heart sweeter than honey. The nafs-states having been annihilated by the fire of dhikr leave the seeker opened up to his qualities, his higher nafs-states in that middle condition of conflict and development that Al-Ghazzali defined then that is

illuminated until the climax of Light comes which annihilates the whole nafs as an experiencing locus both mentally and biologically. So what are these states what is the dhikr activity working upon, what is it that goes through this tremendous upheaval of energy caused by the invocation? Let us go directly to the Shaykh al-Akbar for a definition. In a poem on the knowledge of phenomenal being he declares: The knowledges of phenomenal being move a great deal, knowledge of the Face does not move. We affirm and negate all of them, we separate and find them state by state. My God! How can other-than-You know You when Your like is from tabarak and ta'ala? My God! How can other-than-You know You? Can other be a mithal to You? Whoever seeks the Path without a guide, my God! He seeks the impossible. My God! How can hearts desire You and they do not hope for intimacy and union? My God! How can other-than-You have gnosis of You? No, and again, no. My God! How can eyes see you when You are neither lights nor darknesses? My God! I do not see myself as other-than-You! How can I see the impossible or be astray? My God! You are You! And I let the gift be sought from Your I-ness. By a poverty established with me from my existence, which was produced from Your richness, so it is a state. He informed me that He might manifest me to Him, and He did not see me as other-than-Him, so I was a mirage. Whoever seeks the mirage, wants water. He sees the source of life for him as cold water.

I am phenomenal being, and there is nothing like me! Who am I, like Him, before mithal (likeness)? That is one of the most wondrous things, so look! Perhaps you will see its like changing state. There is not in phenomenal being other than individual existence which is above being equalled or obtained. He adds in prose: Know, may Allah support you, that all that is in the earth moves from state to state. So the world of time moves in every thing, and the world of breaths moves in every breath, and the world of tajalli moves in every tajalli. The reason for that is His word, may He be exalted, 'Every day He is upon some labour', (55.29) and He supports it by His word: 'We shall surely attend to you at leisure, you weight and you weight.' (55.31) Every man finds in himself types of passing thoughts in his heart, in his movements, and stillnesses. So no-one moves who is in the celestial and terrestial worlds but that it is from a Divine turning by a particular tajalli to that source-form. So his foundation is from that tajalli according to what his reality accords him. Here, the Shaykh indicates three degrees of existence. The forms that are devoid of organic life, the organic forms which have the 'breath' of life, and the human creatures who have unveiling of forms from the Unseen. The Shaykh says that these selfexperiences that pass over the experiencing centre of the nafs are not outward intrusions, are not random, are not unpredictably chaotic, but all inevitable in their patterning from the basic source-form of the self in the Unseen, of which the life-story is merely the phenomenal chapter there having preceded it a chapter in the world of Spirits before birth and coming-into-solidity, and a chapter after it, the after-death state in the grave, and then another, the rising and the meaning-form of the life manifesting in the non-solid World of the Unseen, and so on as the journey to Allah continues. Thus the self as a solid reality is an untenable idea, a mirage, and its restless movement is caused by the thirst and longing that the true self experiences in its illusory trapped situation of having a 'history'. It is this thirst that in the crucible of dhikr as described above becomes a sublime drowning as the illusion falls away. In this important passage the Shaykh goes on to talk about those who 'do not know what they are moved from nor moved to,' which is the case of the majority of human beings, and he presents this as a basically ignorant situation. He is not suggesting that one knows the future in any occultistic manner, but something much subtler and more profound he is suggesting that real knowledge begins by a recognition of this moving time-flux creature as being an utterly structured and inevitable series of life-patternings all stemming from its original self-form dynamic in the Unseen before it is manifested. He sees knowledge as beginning when we grasp that this timesetting is not separable from the time-set individual, the event and the person and the

zone of the experience all being one reality with all the intricate intertwining of individual forms into a pattern such as that revealed in a Persian carpet, but with all the ravishing, sweeping movement and apparent freedom that is in the miracle of organic nature at the microscopic level. He goes on to speak of one of the people of the Path who erred in saying: 'When you see a man staying in one state for forty days, know that he is a strange man.' He is here indicating that the man had abandoned the true perspective of 'state' and mistaken it for an inner condition like 'depression' or confusion or excitement or anger. He goes on: Do realities allow that someone could remain in one state for two breaths or two 'times'? He is moving with breaths from the thing to its like It is like saying, 'So and so is still walking today, and did not sit.' There is no doubt that walking is many different movements. Each movement is not the same as the other, rather it is its like. Your knowledge moves by its moving and it is said: 'His state has not changed!' How many states have changed on him! Thus any picture of the self-form as being of a kind of 'nature' or pattern that can be defined as having some kind of durability or permanence in time is utterly illusory. And just as the walking-image indicates that there is obviously something constant over a brief period that suggests such a solid specificity of self-form, it is in itself illusory, in flux, made up of tiny separate dynamic utterly open moments that each has in it the possibility of alteration, recreation, and end. Again he re-iterates the basic proposition: Things with Allah are witnessed and known source-forms, states are based on these forms which they have. The picture then is of one person having different states, and a form is made for him in each state he has. A certain experience habit suggests to us a certain illusory continuity on which we erect the myth of historicity of self, but this is not the case, merely the mistaken viewpoint. So the creature is veiled in the condition of an 'existence' which is nothing but a clothing of state upon state, as the moving film is built up of individualframe shots run together to create an imaginary 'situation'. So states vary in the imagination on which ordinary human experience is based, despite the inescapable fact that this so-called reality is utterly fictional. They vary in the imagination, but they do not vary in knowledge and knowledge is achieved by the act of dhikr unveiling the states and opening up the whole experience-illusion. Then the human being 'sees with His eye and hears with His ear. His becomes the hand with which he grasps and the foot with which he walks,' as in the famous Hadith that indicates the true state of knowledge that comes upon the Mumin after advancing through the practices of dhikr. The Shaykh alAkbar's final clue to this matter is succinct: As for the secret of state, it is duration, and it does not have first or last. It is the source-form of the existence of every existent. So I have informed you of some of what the rijal of enigmas know of secrets. I have been silent on much. Its door is wide. The knowledge of dreams, the Interspace and Divine Ascriptions relate to this.

Thus the fluctuating endless states express themselves throughout the whole organism, cellularly, electro-magnetically, in synaptic brain-signalling, in energy-flow, in endocrinal release, digestive function, blood rhythm, and all these various patternings are but the flowering of one original self-form or rather source-form of which this solid-body human creature is the time-bound manifestation outwardly and whose reality is with Allah from before-endless-time. Thus my 'movement' is all movement, and my spaceoccupying is all space-occupying, and the Universe and I are not two but containercontained, and this itself is nothing for He is as He was before the creation of the Universe. 'Everything perishes except the Face of Allah!' as He Himself triumphantly declares in the Qur'an. (55.26-27). When the Shaykh al-Akbar declares that only the Sufis under-stand the true nature of the nafs, he means by this that no-one else possesses a total picture of the life-situation except the people of unveiling, for this whole dimension of self-experience is hidden from any but them. Some people are only able to perceive the crudest machine-structure in man, and can only recognise the mind as some odd ghost inhabiting a delicate house of tissue and nerve-endings. It is an odd ghost, for, according to their picture, it is enough that the delicate fibre-furniture be damaged for the occupant somehow, mysteriously, to be affected. This dualistic frame on which the pathetic crumbling structure of our hastily put-together modern psychology is erected, leaves us with a picture of something called 'behaviour' which ends up being classified into 'types' and the crude mechanistic picture soon bogs down in a welter of sub-types. It is inevitable that in our time the accepted cure for mal-function of this non-existent ghost in its bizarre house (electrocute the house and thus wipe out the house-keeper) should be an equally crude and massively administered chemical drug treatment. Although some modern therapists have recognised a quite profound and clinically identifiable picture of much greater subtlety which opens to the streaming, sub-electric energy-fields of the body, they in turn become so hypnotised by their own discovery that they again try to contain man within a bio-energy definition reducing the human being by that token simply to the sum of his energies. Utterly closed to the nature of an Unseen reality, because still essentially trapped in this basic duality which they quite rightly observe to exist in the world of forms, they relentlessly avoid the metaphysical question which in other sciences insists on attention. Now that we have uncovered the chromosomic level of patterning, and glimpsed the beauty of formmanifestation and recognised also our profound ignorance of these processes at the very point that certain key designs open themselves to us, we are forced to a threshold of activity which is, if you like, the 'edge of the Unseen', or more correctly, in the language of the Master Jalalud'din Rumi, the Non-spatial, the realm of mind itself, which so delicately and purely refrains from 'being' the brain, and yet so lovingly and seductively is its shadow-reality. I now do not refer to 'your' mind or 'my' mind, for in this picture I would have to italicise out of existence thus 'your mind' and 'my mind'. Before proceeding further, it must be made clear that this has nothing to do with any Jungian or gestalt picture of archetypes. Two pieces of labelling have managed to keep the Orientalists away from any serious coming to grips with the metaphysics of Islam the use of the term 'archetypes' and 'neo-platonic'. That these men were, one and all (if there had been an exception he would have had to be a Sufi himself), unequipped to

examine these issues, can be easily verified by an examination of their unscholarly refusal to accept the Sufis on their own terms as if one were to approach quantum physics with a basic refusal to abandon the Newtonian classical picture of how things were. This approach, as we have insisted from the beginning, is not just a matter of epistemology, but of self-transformation, and without submitting to the transformationpractice of Islam there is no valid knowledge available in any way that allows one to penetrate these matters apart from the sporadic and separate possible insights of the individual as he experiences reality. The Wisdom-view is dependent on recognising that there is no out-there to examine and understand. Reality is One. The so-called knowledge of the technological society is informational and split from the knower. Despite all the ludicrous attempts at gluing together the separate and isolated 'disciplines' of psychology and biology and linguistics and physics and chemistry, the sciences continue to split into micro, and bio, intra, and supra, and what emerges becomes more and more a knowledge which for the needs of the life-process is recognisably useless. Bernard Shaw used to lament the millions of mice and monkeys slaughtered in the name of that pursuit of useless knowledge had he lived today he would have further been able to lament the destruction of the bio-sphere in which whole vanishing species lived, rivers and oceans and lands and skies all gorged of their energies in an age that is unable to grasp the underlying Unity that links all these, because basically unable to grasp the Unity of each person's self-experience, which remains the essential clue to grasping the Unity which is the very nature of existence itself. Here is a paraphrasing of the position of a modern geneticist, Richard Goldschmidt: The time has come to reshape all genetic theory anyhow. The classical theory of the gene as an actually existing unit, lying on the chromosome like a bead in a string of beads, is no longer tenable. We cannot focus on genes and loci, or even chromosomes, as we always have. Something bigger controls the whole system. That is why I speak of systemic mutations. The collapse of the post-Darwinian picture of evolution revealed not only the incredible double-think that many biologists were indulging in, and the extraordinary degree of subjectivity involved in their so-called scientific or verifiable picture of whatever the process they seemed to imagine they were describing, it also revealed that underlying their biological trees and simple-to-complex unfoldings, and gradual-change mutations, there was an assumed Power at work which they, at the same time as assuming it, denied. There could be no Power outside the 'things' which they saw as closed systems which complexified themselves according to vastly sophisticated and complex laws and patterns which they could neither codify nor decode. They slithered from the use of a term 'Nature' which they invested with Divine Intellect and Plan only to disrobe it on their next calculation in place of the plan-itself, in their case, natural selection, which in turn was deified after being reified. An absorbing sleight of hand, but hardly effective as serious epistemology. It was enough that bit by bit the actual field work of biology and the neighbouring sub-science of palaeontology and micro-biology revealed a picture that left

Let us go back to our superficial Orientalists desperately doing their labelling of Islamic Masters with the tags of the collapsing dualistic Christian world-view. If the sufic description of reality was neo-platonic then that meant it had been borrowed from a previous culture and stuck on in a syncretist move to provide Islam with something it did not in the first place possess, thus demonstrating that Islam was a pseudo-religion and not to be taken with any intellectual seriousness. Unfortunately their confusion is double. Islam does not claim to be a religion, rather it claims religion to be the decadence of a previously existing and now degraded form of Islam. Secondly, they refuse to grasp that what Islam describes in its totality from within the structure of the Qur'anic revelation is something that the earlier 'Islams' of the Messengers before the Seal of the Messengers, Muhammad, peace be upon him, already knew about. It is assumed by Muslim scholars that the platonic knowledge was an inherited reality-picture from the remnant of their unitary science which survived as a thread among the broken threads of pantheonic theism. If you are dependent on labels, certainly from a sufic point of view, it would be more useful to label Plato neo-Islamic than to label the Sufis as neo-platonic. The matter of archetypes is even more dangerous for a person desirous of grasping the Wisdom-picture. The accepted post-Jungian picture of archetypes reduces these to a subjective, yet mysteriously shared set of symbol pictures that exist on a mental 'plane' which reveal apparently incomprehensible conflicts and crises in the actual history of the subject. Thus a real and solid world is loaded with a set of coded meanings which take on their reality when applied to the historic present and used to illuminate it. Always in this picture our phenomenal and solid existence is given primacy over the explanatory code systems. It is very far from the original Goethean picture of Ur-forms from which it was borrowed, only to be inverted with this primacy of situational existence over and against a floating repository of basic forms. We remain in a dual system of mind pictures displaying themselves in a solid reality. It is a concept that offers no proof of its validity and certainly the Jungian clinical record convinced one of nothing but the fact that the people who unleashed that empire of archetypal forms during analysis had undoubtedly been analysed by Jung. The sufic picture of existence is sustained, and has been systematically over a period of fourteen hundred years, by direct experience, by dhawq, tasting, which illuminates the seeker with his or her own knowledge of how-it-is. This awesome knowledge of how-it-is cannot be reduced to a therapeutic technique or submitted to crude mechanistic tests to ascertain its validity. It is outside the realm of science, or if you like, it is its own science. Certainly it is systematised, verifiable, and not a faith-system. Doubt and certainty are the two energies whose polar forces drive the seeker on to his discoveries. The sufic term that has been so mistranslated is 'ayn ath-thabita, which we may call the source-forms, the word 'ayn meaning not just 'source' in the sense of 'origin', but with the physicality and actuality of a spring of water. We will return to it when we come to the point that is being forced upon us where we ask about the nature of this 'stuff' of the Universe, the 'how', 'what', and 'why' of forms. What we have so far established is a picture of reality as being utterly alive, in flux, with particular forms subtly shedding pulse after pulse through this unceasing movement of

states in a locus which is nothing other than the states, and yet these states when unveiled open up to a hidden source-form in the world of non-space-time, inseparable from this. The key term: HAL, which we call 'state' derives from a root meaning 'to be changed' and 'to pass by' or 'go between'. By extension it relates to the adverb meaning 'round about' and to the nouns 'a power', 'a plan', 'a year'. Also 'a turning off'. Thus state/situation is the basic condition of all forms, according to the sufic science, and it is the action-process which the nafs experiences on the Path, whose culminating and ultimate condition is to be 'turned off', obliterated in the face of the Essence of the multitudinous forms. The sufic science further claims that the Qur'an is a revelation from the source of Reality, indicating not only the science of how to live among the multiple forms but also how to surrender (Islam) to the One, which in its fullness means the giving up of the nafs which is the intolerable 'other' that prevents unitary experience. It is not a matter of little mind (myself) being swallowed up in the Big Mind after all, as some of the inadequate systems formed on the archeology of previous Islams suggest (like Zen), but rather of the total being emerging from separate pulsing and form-dynamic into a complete obliteration. The cells have to 'stop', for they are not separable from the 'mind'. That we continue to 'see' the form is based on our illusory sense-veiling on which the world and 'history' is based. To the people of fana 'everything perishes except His Face.' (55.26). The Shaykh al-Akbar says: When Allah, glory be to Him, closed the door of prophecy, and the message to creation, he left to them the door of understanding from Allah in what He revealed to His Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in His mighty Book. 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, may Allah be pleased with him, said: 'Revelation was cut off after the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. What remains is in our hands. Allah provisions the slave with understanding in this Qur'an.' Our companions, the people of unveiling, agreed on the soundness of a transmission from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that he said of the ayats of the Qur'an: 'There is no ayat but that it has a manifest part, a hidden part, a limit, and an ascent.' Before we can proceed further on our journey, we must examine what the Qur'an is, and what is the meaning of 'revelation'. It is the Book of Changes, abrogating all those Books which went before, keeping some 'forms' from the ancient books and changing others and replacing those abrogated with better, in accordance with the overflowing generosity of the Form-giver, may He be exalted.

The Science of Qur'an

The Generous Qur'an, the Book of Islam, was revealed to the Messenger Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him, over a period of twenty-three years from the time of the first revelation which came when the Messenger was forty years old.

In the month of Ramadan it is read through in its entirety and on the Night of Power it is read 'shabina' in one night. It is indicated within its text by many names, among them being: The Book, The Discrimination, The Judgment, The Mercy, The Spirit, The Explanation, The Light, The Truth, The Argument, The Warning, The Wisdom, The Clarification. In these ayats, Reality addresses the Messenger saying: With truth have We sent it down, and with truth has it descended. And We have sent you as nothing else than a bringer of good news and a warning. And a Qur'an that we have divided, that you may recite it to all mankind at intervals, and we have revealed it, revelation by revelation. (Qur'an 17.105-6) Before examining what its themes are we first must come to terms with this designation of the Book as a 'revelation', for if we are honest this has no specific meaning as a psychological term and is outside our experience unless one admits into it the category of the premonitory dream. Part of modern people's difficulty in approaching Islam realistically lies in their prejudice about the nature of a 'prophet'. The word in Arabic derives from a root NB'A, meaning 'to be exalted': 'to announce': 'to make one acquainted with': so the picture is quite clear. The Nabeyi is the Announcer who brings the news, who makes one acquainted with how-it-is, the reality-process. The word for revelation is specific. Its root is: NZL, meaning: 'to descend': 'that which is prepared for a guest': 'an entertainment': 'a gift': 'an abode'. It is also the noun of 'unity' and thus literally means 'one descent'. The preparation of something for the guest is perhaps its most weighty meaning in the root's effloration from the basic cluster. The Qur'an is, if you like, the gift of the host to his guests, the creatures, whose brief stay is in the abode of Earth. And again, it is itself an abode of Wisdom. It is an 'entertainment' that lifts the heart and diverts it from this world with the beauties and rewards of the Unseen. Its means of manifesting was that it 'came down'. Now, in the Wisdom-picture there are only the four directions and there is no fifth. That is, there is only right/left: in front/behind. This 'above' from which Qur'an 'came down' can only be the 'within' whose opposite is not 'without'. What does this mean? We have already seen how the SAMAWATI which we name the 'heavens' indicates essentially not another dimension to existence, but rather that non-spatial zone which is no-place. The heavens are a reality of the Unseen, not cosmically, but since reality consists only of the four elements, this no-place is also the 'up' of the phenomenal heaven.

When the bedouin woman was brought to the Messenger as a kafir he asked her, 'Where is Allah?' Now the answer that he inhabits place is, correctly, unthinkable to a Muslim, yet when she unhesitatingly pointed skywards, the Messenger commanded that she be freed at once. Samawati, we recall, is what gives us the names. It is the basic dyad: samawati/'ard. These are One Reality, and so the Qur'an in coming down properly speaking, came out. What happened? How did it 'get in' in the first place? Firstly let us examine the straight narrative: Wahb bin Kaisan told me that 'Ubayd said to him: 'Every year during the month of Ramadan, the Messenger would pray in seclusion and give food to the poor that came to him. And when he completed the month and returned from his retreat, first of all he would, before entering his house, go to the Ka'ba and walk round it seven times or as often as it pleased Allah: then he would go back to his house until, in the year when Allah sent him, in the month of Ramadan in which Allah willed concerning him what He willed, the Messenger set out for Hira, the Mountain of Light, and there Allah honoured him with his task. '"He came to me," said the Messenger, "while I was asleep, with a coverlet of brocade whereon was some writing, and said, 'Read!' I said, 'What shall I read?' He pressed me with it so tightly that I thought it was death: then He let me go and said, 'Read!' I said, 'What shall I read?' He pressed me with it the third time so that I thought it was death and said, 'Read!' I said, 'What shall I read?' and this only to deliver myself from Him, lest He should do the same to me again. '"He said: 'Read: In the Name of the Lord, who createth, Createth man from a clot. Read: and thy Lord is the Most Generous. Who teacheth by the Pen, Teacheth man that which he knew not.' (96.1-5) '"So I read it and He departed from me. And I awoke from my sleep and it was as though these words were engraved on my heart. Now none of Allah's creatures was more hateful to me than an ecstatic poet or a man possessed: I could not even look at them. I thought, 'Woe is me, poet or possessed never shall the Quraysh say this of me! I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest.'

'"When I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Oh Muhammad! Thou art the Messenger of Allah, and I am Jibril!' '"I raised my head towards heaven to see, and there was Jibril in the form of a man with feet astride the horizon saying, 'Oh Muhammad, you are the Messenger of Allah and I am Jibril.' I stood gazing at him moving neither forward nor backward: then I began to turn my face away from him, but toward whatever region of the sky I looked, I saw him as before. And I continued standing there until Khadija sent her servants in search of me and they gained the high ground above Makka and returned to her while I was standing in the same place."' The narrative continues with the Messenger confiding his fear of insanity to his wife. She argues that he cannot be since his qualities are those of sanity itself, trustworthiness, kindness, balance. Khadija's whole way of dealing with this disturbing event not only speaks vividly of her fine intellect and love for the Messenger, but shows that she and her family were people already acquainted with the Wisdom-tradition of their people. Crucial to any understanding of the manifestation of what we now call Islam is a grasp of the fact that there continued from the time of Ibrahim, peace be upon him, a living spiritual thread of unitary doctrine this science, the Hanifa as it was called, had a continuing thread of followers who passed on and practised the Ibrahimic (brahminical) Tawhid (yoga). Hanifa derives from HNF, 'to incline'. It means therefore not only 'to incline toward the Truth', but 'to be responsive', to open oneself and yield to the Truth. The essential mark of the Hanif and later, for it was no different, the Muslim, was that he was supple and yielding and not rigid and unbending. They were known as the people of the Huda, the people of Right Guidance. This word Huda derives from HDA, meaning 'to lead in the right way', 'to follow a right course', 'a victim of sacrifice', 'an offering', 'to be a direction', 'one who directs'. Thus they were the Wisdom-tradition, for it is the role of the initiates of Wisdom that they must not only practise it, but establish it. The very first declaration of who Qur'an is for in the opening main Form 'Al-Baqara' puts it thus: In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Alif. Lam. Mim. This Book in which there is no doubt, a guidance to those who ward off: who believe in the Unseen, and establish salat, and spend of what We have bestowed on them. And who trust in what is revealed to you (Muhammad) and what was revealed before you, and are certain of

the Akhira. These depend on Huda from their Lord. These are the successful. (Qur'an 2.1-5) The man of Wisdom offers himself up to Reality, opens himself, as did Isma'il, the son of Ibrahim, peace be upon them both. They risk destruction even of their life-experience in an act that is an abandonment of the self-illusion only to find that Reality has opened itself to them, that Huda comes to them. Here is the secret of the transaction we have begun to examine in the so-called 'prophetic experience', the complete flowing openness of the Chosen One, Muhammad chosen by inevitable destiny, for he has so utterly abnegated his own self-choice that chosenness floods in to fill the gap of his surrendered self-form. This is how-it-is. Khadija, aware of the implications of his vision, knew exactly what to do. She hurried across Makka to the house of her cousin Waraqa bin Naufal bin Asad bin Abdu'l-'Uzza bin Qusayy, who had become a Christian but had come through the tradition of the Hanifa. When she told him what had happened, he affirmed the authenticity of the event and went to the Messenger and made him retell the story. He also confirmed physically what he had ascertained by his secret knowledge, for he asked the Messenger to bare his back. There he found what he has looking for the Seal of Messengership on his back, the outward genetic proof in the cells of his being inwardly the one to 'receive' the Message of Reality. Waraqa confirmed: 'There has come to you the greatest Namus who came to Sayyedina Musa (Moses). You will be called a liar, they will humiliate you, and they will cast you out and they will fight with you. Surely, you are the Messenger of this people.' And he kissed him on his forehead and left. Khadija was determined to complete her proofs of authenticity to convince her husband that he was neither poet nor possessed. When the angelic manifestation happened in their own house, she prepared a test. She instructed her husband to move towards her, continually asking if the Vision remained. She moved him to sit on her lap, and then when she exposed herself the Vision vanished. If the vision had remained during any sexual act it would have followed that it was from the jinn who use the heat/energies of fire, and not angelic which use air/energy. This is why ghusl separates the sexual act and salat. The water rite follows the fire/act to purify the self for the other act of union which is dependent on the air element, breath. The people of the Quraysh were determined in their rejection of the new Messenger, and the three main charges they brought against him were three which the text of the Book itself analysed and demonstrated to be false. These three possibilities were: 1) that he was a poet.

2) that he was a magician. 3) that he was mad, or possessed by jinn. While the charge that he was possessed swept through Makka, a man of Azd Shanu'a who had a great reputation at casting out jinn came to the Messenger. His name was Dimad. Dimad, when he heard of the Messenger, thought that it would be a blessing for him if he could heal this man. He went to the Chosen One and said: 'I practise the science of casting out jinn, Muhammad, would you like me to do so?' The Messenger replied: 'Praise belongs to Allah whom we praise and from whom we seek help. No-one can lead astray one whom Allah guides, and no-one can guide one whom Allah leads astray. I affirm that there is no Divinity except Allah, alone, without association, and I affirm that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger. Go ahead!' Dimad was unable to continue and said: 'Repeat what you have just said.' After the Messenger had said the words three times, Dimad said: 'I have heard what the kahins say, what the sorcerers say and what the poets say, but I have never heard anything like these words of yours which have reached a depth in me like that of the sea. If you give me your hand I will swear allegiance to you by accepting Islam.' This is in a tradition from Ibn 'Abbas and is transmitted by Muslim. The Hadith give a clear picture of whatever the outward aspects of the times of revelation were: A'isha told that Harith bin Hisham asked Allah's Messenger, 'How does the experience come to you, Messenger of Allah?' to which he replied: 'It comes to me at times like the clanging of a bell, and that is the type which is most severe for me. It then leaves me, I having retained of it what the angel said. At times the angel appears to me in human form and speaks to me and I retain what he says.' A'isha said she had seen the event happen on a very cold day and his forehead poured sweat when it left him. This is transmitted in both Bukhari and Muslim. Ubada bin as-Samit said that when the revelation descended on the Prophet he was distressed on account of it and his face altered to a dark hue. A version says that he lowered his head and his Companions lowered their heads, then when it was removed from him he raised his head. Muslim transmitted it. With two of the most tremendous revelations in the Qur'an, the 'Ya Sin' Form and the 'Hud' Form, the impact was so shattering on the Messenger that some of his hair turned white when the descent took place. It is quite clear from these accounts that one could take these descriptions as evidence that he was indeed 'a man possessed'. This raises something that we have already touched on, which is that it is in the nature of the spiritual Path that its stages are marked by stages similar to the identity-fragmentation that we call madness. Let us re-iterate it, for there has to be a re-focussing of our self-form understanding if we are to grasp the truth of these matters. The goal of the Path is the annihilation of the experiencing self, the centre or locus from which the endless flowing states manifest in such a manner as to suggest the self's reality

and historicity. The goal is to loosen these form-shadows and allow the Light which is the source-form of the locus in the Unseen to manifest. Thus the result is properly speaking 'the destruction of the personality'. Madness is a fragmentation of experience rendering the solid world unreal and the inner existence over-real, or vice-versa, so that inner experience is either terrible and intolerable or glorious and elated, on the one hand, or barren and desolate on the other. Insanity is based on a basic split between the 'centre' and the outer world of behaviour, event, people and objects. Either the mad person will 'get out' and leave the body you may prick it and it will give no sign of being 'inhabited' they will station themselves in a safe place, the moon, high up; or else, they will 'go in' shut all the doors of the senses, become still, no signals going out or being taken in. Both madnesses imply, by this condition, a break in behaviour with the accepted behaviour of the community. An essential part of this break is the refusal to adhere to the commonly shared 'naming' process, and either an arcane language will be introduced or unstructured changes will be made with random shifting of nouns so that 'this' is called 'that'. The Wisdom-path is to dismantle the self systematically not as a ruse to protect and isolate the non-existent 'core', but to open oneself to the Secret of Totality. The peeling of the onionlayers, in the image of Peer Gynt, is an act of glorious release and opening to the Reality, for not only is there no core but there was no onion. Nothing has been gained, but nothing has been lost. At the different stages of the Way, the shedding of the 'skins' may have the appearance of the madman in his getting out or coming in. The difference is only one. The madman is himself 'shedding the skins' he is conducting an operation of selfdestruction based on the false and doomed premise that there is a 'he' to dismantle his 'heness'. Thus he splits reality, he breaks his own heart, for 'there are not two hearts within the breast' as Qur'an says. (33.4). The Prophet takes his Path under direct guidance from the Unseen Master, the Angel, while those who follow in his footsteps take theirs from a Shaykh, a visible Master. He undoes them. This is the meaning of the sufic saying which is quoted by the Shaykh al-Kamil in his Diwan: He who does not take the Shaykh as his Master will have Shaytan as his Master. According to the sufic picture of the nature of the nafs, the Messengers and prophets do not struggle in the same way that the awliya, the Perfected Ones, do. They are the 'perfect exemplars', they are the original man-form in all its perfection. This is why they do not die of disease from within but have to be killed from without the form being perfect, it would not of its nature end, but the destiny being mortal, the form has to be brought to an end in accordance with nature, outside and inside from another perspective of course being identical. Nevertheless, this perfection contains within it all the stages of the Way and all the Stations of the awliya. The goal of the journey of the awliya lies over the mountains of madness and they have to be traversed. The beginning of the Messenger's time of revelation was that period for him, only he tasted every state with the inner perfection of his 'vast self-form' which encompassed it and grounded it in the deep sanity of his prophetic condition.

While the mad person behaves in a self-obsessed way, the Messenger was the embodiment of the generous, socially balanced and active human being. This was the baffling and unarguable condition of the man they wanted to brand as a lunatic. He said of himself: 'If justice is not to be found with me, then where will you find it?' He said: 'I am the first of the sons of Adam, and I say this without boasting.' He was simply there to show himself to his age as the exemplar, and offer his life-pattern as the Sunna for existence throughout the whole world from that day to the end of time for people of every culture and climate. He was the culmination of the human situation, the Seal of the Perfection of Prophethood. When studying the aspect of revelation, one must not lose sight of the human fineness and delicacy and courage of the desert Messenger. He would not, for example, ever touch a woman who was not his wife or of his household. When he took the act of homage and acceptance of Islam at 'Aqaba from the women, he had a jug of water placed between himself and the women and he plunged his hand into it, and then they did, thus the transmission took place through contact yet through a purifying element. It distressed the Messenger when Sidi Abu Bakr brought his white-haired and venerable father to him. Immediately the Messenger expressed his concern that he had not been able to go to the old man. The Siddiq insisted that it would not have been fitting, so then the Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, knelt beside the old man, stroked his chest, smiled and asked him to make the Affirmation. It is this man, of endless fineness to appreciate the living moment, who is the man laying claim to prophethood, and over whom pass these shuddering and powerful states out of which the Qur'anic message comes. There was never any doubt what was part of the Message and what was simply a revelation, even though the revelation came directly through the Angel, it had to come through this 'filter' which annihilated him during its transmission before it became part of the great Book. Here is another contemporary record of how the Arabs tried to come to grips with this unique event that took place among them and which was to overturn their whole society and affect the destiny of every one of them: When the Fair was due, a number of the Quraysh came to Walid bin al-Mughira, who was a man of some standing, and he addressed them in these words: 'The time of the Fair has come round again and representatives of the Arabs will come to you and they will have heard about this man of yours, so let us agree on one opinion without dispute so that none will give the lie to the other.' They replied, 'You give us your opinion about him.' He said, 'No, you speak and I will listen.' They said, 'He is a kahin.' Walid said, 'By God, he is not a soothsayer. He does not mutter or speak in rhymed prose.' 'Then he is possessed,' they said. 'No, he is not that,' he said, 'we have seen the possessed and here is no choking, spasmodic movements and whispering.' 'Then he is a poet,' they said. 'No, he is no poet, for we know poetry in all its forms and meters.' 'Then he is a sorcerer.' 'No, we have seen sorcerers and their sorcery, and here is no spitting and no knots.' 'Then what are we to say, Oh Abu 'Abdu Shams?' they asked. He replied: 'By God, his speech is sweet, his root is a palm-tree whose branches are fruitful and everything you have said would be seen to be false. The nearest thing to the truth is your saying that he is a sorcerer,

who has brought a message by which he separates a man from his father, or from his brother, or from his wife, or from his family.' The first revelation which we have documented in detail was sent down on what the Qur'an calls the Night of Power. It is of such importance that there is a Power Form in the Qur'an describing it. It is the general view that on that night the whole of the Qur'an was sent down, to emerge fragment by fragment in living situations throughout the life of the Messenger, but Allah knows best. Here is the Power Form: In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Behold, we revealed it on the Night of Power. Ah! What will convey to you what the Night of Power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. The angels and the Spirit descend therein, by the permission of their Lord, with all decrees. Peace it is, until the rising of the dawn. (Qur'an 97) It is this Night of Power that forms the climax of the Ramadan fast and in which the Qur'an is recited from beginning to end, and when the Mumin watches the whole night until dawn. From that night onwards the revelation came, sometimes an ayat at a time, sometimes a long passage or whole Sura depending on the situation, for the rest of the Messenger's lifetime, the final revelation coming on 'Arafat during his last Hajj when he taught them the final and purified form of the ancient rites of Hajj. Each time a revelation came it emerged out of a particular life-situation and it came as an illumination of that moment opening up the truth of that situation and guiding the Messenger's actions as well as continually unfolding the 'good news and the warning' which are one of the re-iterated themes of the Book. Piece by piece alongside the specific guidance it gave to lifesituations came an unfolding pattern of man's history from the beginning of his time on earth and showing the meaning of the various meta-cycles he had lived through. Five themes are orchestrated throughout the Book and they can be summarised thus: 1. Particular guidance to the Messenger telling him what to do in specific situations, teaching him, consoling him, correcting him. 2. The story of mankind's global destiny since the beginning, and the role of the earlier prophets and their Books in this cyclic story of man's being given guidance, and its being corrupted and lost, and a new guidance being sent down, culminating in the final cycle of the Messenger's rule.

3. The new Shari'a or Road that Allah lays down for the whole of mankind, abrogating earlier Roads that were sent for particular nations and races by earlier prophets. 4. The nature of Reality. Tawhid, the declaration of the Unity that is the essential message of all the prophets reaffirmed. 5. The good news and the warning', (41.4), the direct existential confrontation with each human being who reads it: 'Where then are you going?' (81.26). The Book warns that this life is a zone of action and that man is responsible to his Creator and will have to answer, in the next phase of existence when he has dropped the phenomenal body, for what he did on earth. There is complete continuity of experience between the lifestate, the so-called death-state, and the next-life-state. This is the event world, and that is the meaning-world. Within these basic themes the Qur'an expresses itself in two particular manners which it defines with great precision, saying: He it is who sent down to you (Muhammad) the Book in which are clear-signs they are the Mother of the Book and others are likeness-signs. But those in whose hearts is doubt follow what is the likeness desiring dissension by desiring its interpretation. None knows its interpretation except Allah. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say: 'We trust in it: it is all from our Lord.' Yet none remembers but men possessed of minds. (Qur'an 3.7) The scholars who have tried to create a rabbinical tradition of commentary of Qur'an in Islam have, understandably limited the meaning of this ayat to infer simply that the Book rests on the factual 'law' ayats. Ironically it is the 'law' in all its tremendous simplicity that

they have made subtle, ambiguous and top-heavy until a completely rabbinical invention called Qur'anic Law has emerged to buoy up the pseudo-Islamic State they have erected in their own image and in defiance of the community-form outlined in the Sunna of the Messenger. The 'clear-signs' refer to all the great declarations about Divine Unity that stem from the Book's repeated commands to examine creation itself for all the clear-signs within it, and to examine the nafs and observe there these same confirmatory signs of Unity. It is precisely this declaration of Tawhid that is the 'Mother' of the Book. The Book 'comes out of' this, the organic life-laws come out of this, and not the other way round. The clear-signs are those that call to justice and compassion and generosity and peace-making, to feeding the hungry and protecting the orphan. The likeness-signs are not simply, as the 'rabbis' would make out, those ayats which relate to secret things like the journey of Dhu'l Qarnayn or the Sleepers in the Cave, but rather they are those which relate basically to the central teaching in the Book. The behaviour-teaching on which all the Wisdom-practice is based lies in the clear-sign passages which insist on a recognition of Unity in the self and creation and which call to correct and compassionate behaviour i.e. both a following of the Shari'a the Road and a clinging to acts of compassion in the Way of Allah. The Divine-teaching is based on the likeness-signs. Now it is significant that in this ayat Allah-ta-ala uses the physical term for likeness in preference to the imagistic term. 'Mutashabihat' derives from the root ShBH 'a likeness', 'mutually resembling one another'. It is the word used in Qur'an to indicate the 'likeness' placed on the Cross when Sayyedina 'Isa was taken away from his followers. In the Cow Form of the Qur'an, it is the word used to indicate the similarity of one cow to another. So there is no doubt here! The Divine-teaching is based on these likeness-signs. Real learning about reality lies within these likeness-signs. In fact, properly speaking, this is the only way in which the Reality-situation can be conveyed to human beings, and it has been the Way of all the Prophets and all the Books. The word that is elsewhere used to refer to this teachingmethod in the Qur'an is MITHAL. MThL is the root, meaning: 'to be like', 'a comparison', 'a punishment to be taken as an example', 'appear before the eye', 'represent', 'to mean something', 'a pattern or image'. There is no other way that the nature of existence can be conveyed to the human mind except by mithal this is a mithal of that. It is an image, a form, of the other. It is not 'the same' and it is not a definition. You cannot pin down any aspect of this dynamic and self-renewing-process except fleetingly, on the wing one can see the connections if you hold the connection and try to reify it, then the matter will elude you. This mithal opens its nature to you by the quality of your reflection. You cannot capture it nor physicalise it nor use it objectively. You must surrender to the mithal and let the illumination come as He wills. It is one of His means of access to you and of your means of access to Him. Thus this ayat warns against discoursing and interpreting where reflecting and remaining open in humility and watchfulness are required. The people of Wisdom 'remember' and the knowledge that comes is the fruit of dhikr. In the language of the Sufis: the clear-sign Wisdom demands fikr (thinking); the likeness-sign Wisdom demands dhikr (shock-awakening). In Qur'anic language, this gives us both the Furqan (the discrimination) and the Qur'an (the gathering-together).

The Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, said in a famous Hadith: 'I have been given all the words.' With this Wisdom-saying he places himself alongside the Original Man, Sayyedina Adam, peace be upon him, who, according to Qur'an, was given all the names. This naming capacity was the distinguishing mark of the human creature. Qur'an itself, as we have already pointed out, consists of large form-units, short sign-units, words, letters and silences. The silences are an essential part of the reading, otherwise there would be ambiguity. One of the secrets of the Qur'an is the set of letters that are used throughout the Book marking the opening of certain Suras. They are not some kind of early scribe's cataloguing as some rather desperate Christian commentators have tried to suggest in their attempts to invalidate the authority of the Book. There are many Hadith that refer to these letters, and two Suras actually bear the letters as their names, 'Ya-Sin' and 'Ta-Ha'. It is inevitable that we should now come to this point where we have to examine the nature of language itself when we find that the whole source of the Wisdom-way is and always has been through revealed Books. The nature of a revealed Book is not merely that it should come through the revelation process we have just examined, but also that the language should be prepared for the revelation and pure enough to express the revelation thus a Book comes where and when the language can 'bear' it. What we have observed is that the meanings spill out beyond the word and into single letters. Thus it is clear that before we can understand with profundity the nature of the human situation and the value of the Book, we must understand not only the words but the letters themselves. If we do not know what letters are, and therefore what language is, we are not going to grasp something central to the whole understanding of what a human being is, and the Wisdom-way will be closed to us. What we are about to examine, and it is a profound matter, must be understood to be one of the many fruits of the Qur'anic revelation. We are not dealing with something foisted onto Islam by wayward scholars borrowing either from India or Greece. As we have already pointed out, however, it was understandable that Muslim scholars would be moved and fascinated to see the earlier 'archeologies' of their own knowledge in the ruined Wisdom-teaching of earlier Islams, whether Pythagorean or Brahminic. Al-Biruni, when he went to India, had no need to borrow from the decayed Shiva-ite cults he saw, but he was intrigued to perceive elements of the sufic Wisdom he already knew so profoundly. The knowledge we are now going to examine in barest outline is one that has been and is common coin among the people of the Path since the time of the Messenger, peace be upon him. It is in the nature of this learning, and we must re-iterate this here, that it will continually spiral back to its departure point. So while we are now embarking on a journey into the realm of letters it will inevitably encroach on our next subject of study, the nature of 'stuff' itself. We are now beginning to grasp a different picture of existence from the dualistic frame we had worked with in our ignorant 'educational' orientation. Now we are moving into a world where we recognise that everything is dynamic and in motion, patternings are transecting other patternings and giving the illusion of solidities and permanences, these illusions take on a 'reality' which the cosmic picture constantly denies. In place of the body/mind duality, we are confronted with an organic and multi-

element reality of experiential flux. We are in a world where everything is moving, melting, altering, vanishing. Yet what moves and changes is structured and restructured according to the most delicate and vibrant order. We are beginning to recognise the Act of the One in manifesting His Universe of endless forms. As always, we begin with the affirmation of a Unity which is both indivisible and independent of forms. Not a 'ground' underlying, or a power standing over and beyond, but a Reality without whereness which is total. As the Shaykh al-Akbar puts it: Know, may Allah support us and you, that when existence was absolute without limitation, it contained the Obligator, and He is the Reality, may He be exalted, and the obligated, and they are the world and the letters altogether. We now must open ourselves to the picture of reality that is experienced by 'the people of unveiling'. Here we are no longer trapped in the limiting zone of sensory experience checked by the inadequate tools of logic, but in a world that, as we will eventually recognise, is like the world described but not known by the astro-physicist on the one hand, and the nuclear physicist on the other, only the instrument that replaces the 'measuring' telescope and the destructive reactor, is the experiencing inner-sight of the heart. According to the Shaykh al-Akbar, there are 261 Heavens which revolve around the letters and which are contained in His Heaven the Malakut. The station of the letters is derived from Elements from which the letters are composed. All the letters he calls 'dotted', as all letters come from the 'dot'. The 'dot' we may take to be the manifestation of phenomena. And phenomenal being is itself manifested from letters. Now, there are 29 letters in the Arabic alphabet, that is, in the language created specifically for the Wisdom-revelation or 'abode'. Two letters have a particular significance which we will look at later. These two are also very related. These are Hamza and 'Alif. 'Alif in certain computations is seen not as a letter at all, but as the gate of letters, the source of letters, the original letter. Hamza as we know from the language itself usually is dependent on the 'alif for its appearance. This gives us 28 letters when we omit one of these, and 27 if we omit both. The 27 gives us 9 x 3, the significance of which we will shortly examine. The 29 gives us the lunar month. The 29 x 9 gives us the 261 of the Heavens. Firstly we must establish the value of 9 in the sufic computation of reality. It is essential to bear in mind that we are now seeing reality as unitary, with heavens intersecting heavens, the Unseen intersecting the Seen, and with any distinction which is made the reality is not split but merely looked at from one point of view. When another 'rank' or 'reality' is invoked, the previous one vanishes, for these separatenesses are in description only and not in truth. For example, if referring to the Divine Attributes, you talk of Him as being the One who Creates and then the One who Destroys, you are not saying He is now one and then the other. We may examine Him as the Creator of matter but at the same time He is destroying it not 'later'. His Mercy and His Wrath are not

separate, they are not different, yet they are not the same. We may only approach from one side at a time, at least in the zone of thinking. In the experience of 'tasting' however we must join them. In the realm of the slave, if we say one is a Muslim and one is a kafir we make a valid distinction, but if we talk of the Judgment and the Weighing we can conceive of mercy for the kafir and punishment for the Muslim, for we are approaching their situation in relation to another Divine Name or aspect. From one point of view we are the actors and responsible, from another point of view He is the Actor and He does what He wills. There is no negation but if you adhere to one you lose the other. We will now go to the second step from the basic affirmation of Unity. We will sketch here the most simple necessary framework of our cosmology, utterly derived from the Qur'an and the Hadith. Creation is composed of three ranks. The creation of forms is in descent from 1 through to 2 through to 3, that 'descent' being, of course, in description but not in reality. 1. JABRUT: The Divine Names (Almightiness) 2. MALAKUT: The World of Source-forms (Dominion) 3. MULK: The world of Apparent forms (Kingdom) Each of these three ranks consists of three ranks. Each has an apparent reality and a hidden reality. It, itself, is an Interspace. This term Barzakh is a key term which we will have constant recourse to, and it is essential to our view that every phenomenal zone of existence, whether seen or unseen, is in itself merely an interspace between two other zones. This means that the Seen World is an Interspace in itself, but so also is the World of Source-Forms in the Unseen and the Jabrut where Lordship comes out to Creation from the Essence. In our first picture we see the three ranks in their 'descent' into forms. Taking into account that these ranks intersect each other, let us place the ruling rank of the Jabrut in the centre for it shares a face on one side with the Mulk and on the other with the Malakut. Here we take three aspects: Apparent: Interspace: Hidden. Thus the Hidden of the Mulk is the Apparent of the Jabrut, and the Hidden of the Jabrut is the Apparent of the Malakut. This count gives us 7 conditions within the 3 ranks. Therefore the 9 ranks are in fact 7 conditions. So we can approach by the 7 or the 9, it is the same. This 9 Reality is common to the Lord and the slave, for it is the Creation, the zone of forms, seen and unseen. Thus from the 9 this gives us 18.

Since the human presence, like the Divine Presence, or rather its source, is composed of these three ranks, we multiply this 7: Therefore: 7 x 3 = 21 If from the Divine aspect we subtract 3 ______ This gives us: 18. The same from the human aspect. This gives us 18 Stations of the Kingdom. Change perspective and we recognise the Divine interplay between the Reality and the Creation. There are 9 Heavens for casting out that is, the fulgurating displaying and giving of form-energy from the Truth, and 9 Heavens for reception in the form-world. The meeting place is the Kingdom. This 'meeting point' of the Kingdom is the point of revelation where, from Casting-out, the Truth sent down Jibril with the Message, and where the Creation, in receiving, took it through the Messenger. The Truth has created 9 Heavens. There are the seven of the skies, that is the 'sky' of each of the 7 visible planets ( the other two planets of our galaxy are only considered to exert an influence under certain very particular conditions, for this gives us a 9), and to this we add 1 for the Kursi that is, the Universe of Stars, and another 1 for the 'Arsh the starless heaven 'beyond' the stars or, as in our new language, 'intersecting' it. The likeness of the Universe to the 'Arsh is that of a small ring flung onto a vast desert. The Heavens, the Kursi, and the 'Arsh make the basic 9. The next crucial step in our abandonment of the false mind/matter duality is in the recognition of the basic nature of phenomenal existence, which is founded on 4. Phenomenal existence is based on the primal four conditions of hot / cold / wet / dry, and to this is added no fifth. It is untenable that there be more than four bases. The Shaykh alAkbar states: So 4 are the bases of number. 3, which is in the 4 added to 4 gives 7. 2 which is in them, plus these 7 is 9, and the 1 which is in the 4 plus these 9 is 10. After this the arrangement is as you wish. You do not find a number which give you other than these 4, just as you do not find a complete number other than 6, because in it are 1/2, 1/6 , and 1/3 . So hot and dry were mixed and it was fire. Hot and wet were mixed and it was air (i.e. heat and moisture). Cold and wet were mixed and it was water. Cold and dry were mixed and it was earth. So look at the formation of the air from heat and moisture, it was the breath which is the sensory life and it is the mover of everything by its breath. It moved water, earth, and fire, and by its movement things move because it is life. These 4 are the pillars engendered by the first matrices.

Then learn that these first matrices accord their realities to compounds solely without mixture. So the heating from heat is not from other than it. It is the same with drying up and shrivelling from dryness. When you see fire has dried up the place from water, do not imagine that heat dried it up, because fire is compounded of heat and dryness as we said. So by the heat which is in it, water is heated, and by the dryness drying up occurred. It is thus with pliability which is only from moisture: and becoming cold which is only from coldness. Heat makes warm: coldness makes cold: moisture makes pliable: and dryness dries up. Thus the matrices are incompatible, and are only joined in a form, but the extent which their realities accorded, and 1 is never found from them in a form. However 2 are found, either like heat and dryness as we said, in their compound, or heat existed alone. There is only it, from it, in its isolation. Realities are in two sections: realities found isolated in the intellect like life, knowledge, articulation, and sense, and realities which are found by the existence of compounding, like the sky, the world, man and stone. If you say: 'What is the cause which joins these incompatible sources so that from their mixture appears that which appears? I reply that here is a wondrous secret and a great complexity. Its unveiling would be a wrong action since the intellect cannot reason it. But unveiling sees it So realities grant that these matrices do not have existence in their essence at all before the existence of complex forms from them. Well aware that this description of things seems to be in contradiction to the scientific picture, he asserts that it is ignorance to lay at his door a charge of giving an 'unscientific' view of reality. He accepts the scientific picture, but questions its ability to unfold the nature of how things are, since it starts off with a basic division between knowledge and the knower and the known. To the people of the Path, while the knowers are several and 'know' differently knowledge itself is One and thus all they are experiencing is a private unveiling of a tiny part of One Reality, and this knowledge must come out from the knower and not his thoughts. He says: So the Reality, may He be exalted, is the One from whom we take our knowledges, with the retreat of the heart from thought, and with the inclination to accept opening-experience ( i.e. that you are not a separate knower at all). It is He who gives us the matter at its source without summation or confusion. So we know the realities for what they are based on it is the same whether they were isolated or occurred with the time-structure of the formations, or Divine Realities. Again he is indicating that you can say it this way or that way, we either see things as within the phenomenal world or we see them as the Divine unfoldings, the description in each instance is not the thing. There is no scientific fact, there are only the limited viewpictures. These are our doing. He is concerned with unveiling, which comes from Reality to the slave. He quotes the ayat of the Qur'an which says of the Messenger: 'We have not taught him poetry, it is not seemly for him.' (36.69).

He comments: Poetry is the place of summation, symbols, and riddles. This teaching, he insists, comes through the Qur'anic revelation and through his own Station of being Wali, it is through his direct-experience of Reality, and therefore superior to, and other than, the human knowledges. To return to our picture of the Cosmos: all the letters have appeared from the 'alif. It is their Heaven in spirit and in sense. There is a Heaven from which Earth exists: a Heaven from which Water exists: a Heaven from which Air exists: and a Heaven from which Fire exists. This gives 5 existent Heavens in this picture. Each of these Heavens revolves around certain letters and sometimes even parts of letters. In specifying a particular difference in the hot/wet from the other compounds, the Master makes a very illuminating comment. Its Heaven is not, apparently, like that of the other combinations, but is another encircling Heaven. Had it been the same, he observes, that Heaven would have come to an end and its power would have vanished as it appears in incidental life. For the hot/wet is vanishing or moving, and its reality ends even though it does not vanish. For this reason the Creator, may He be exalted, related to us that 'the Last Abode is Life,' (40.39), and 'everything proclaims His praise.' (17.44). He continues: So the Heaven of life in pre-endless-time began pre-endless-time life in its extension. It does not have a Heaven so its cycle comes to an end. Life in pre-endless-time in itself belongs to the Living, and so ending is not true for it. So post-endless-time life is caused by pre-endless-time life and it does not accept end. Don't you see, that when the life of the spirits is essentially theirs, that death is not valid for them? When life was in physical bodies by accident, death and annihilation was based on it. So the life of the apparent body comes from the traces of the life of the spirit even as the light of the sun which is on the earth comes from the sun. When the sun passes, its light follows it, and the earth becomes dark. Thus when the spirit goes from the body to its Heaven from which it came, the life diffused from it in the living body follows it, and the body remains in the form of the inanimate to our eye. So it is said: 'So-and-so has died,' but in reality you say that he has returned to his source. 'Out of it We created you, and We shall restore you to it, and bring You forth a second time.' (20.55) The Spirit likewise returns to its source until the Day of Rising, and the Gathering will be a manifestation of the spirit to the body by means of love. So its parts will be united and its members organised in a subtle life again. The setting in motion of the members to formation is acquired by the turning of the spirit. So when its formation is established and the formation of dust is set up, the spirit manifests itself to it by the gentle Israfilian call in the encircled horn. So a life goes into its limbs and it becomes a shaped individual as on the first time. 'Then he blows into it again, so

that they stand looking while the Earth is illuminated by the Light of their Lord.' (39.68-69) 'As He created you, you return.' (7.29) 'Say: "He will quicken them, who originated them the first time."' (36.79) 'Either happy or wretched.' (11.05). It is clear from this picture that the existence of the letters and the meaning of their activity has to do with the whole creation process. It is another regrettable result of the study of Muslim writers having filtered through the Orientalists that this study of letters which lies at the base of Sufism has been so long ignored, or worse, dismissed as some kind of superstitious magic. The reduction of the science of letters to an arcane esotericism has completely barred the way to any serious study of Islamic Cosmology. The modern Muslims, on their part, brought up and educated in a colonial situation with a Christian bourgeois ethos surrounding them, had little chance of appreciating it either, so busy were they grovelling before the idols of technology with which they are still, many of them, so deeply awed. It is no use examining this picture of a world where the forms 'come out' of the letters unless it is clearly understood that this is a serious and precise description of the life-process and does not mean that the Shaykh with his towering intellect is naively suggesting that the beginning of things is some kind of cosmic children's party with a lot of alphabet letters falling out of the sky. It is we who must make the effort to grasp the meaning and Wisdom of the secrets of existence which he lays before us, bearing in mind his continual warnings which I can but re-iterate: We travel on a different path in the understanding of these words, and that is that we free our hearts from meditative speculation and we sit with the Truth by dhikr on the carpet of courtesy, watching, with presence and preparation for the acceptance of what He wills to us from Him, may He be exalted, until the Truth, may He be exalted, takes possession of our instruction by unveiling and realisation by what you heard Him say: 'Fear Allah, Allah teaches you.' (2.282). He says: 'If you fear Allah, He will assign you a furqan,' (8.29), and 'Lord, increase me in knowledge,' (20.114), and 'We taught him knowledge from Our Presence.' (18.65). Fortunately, the intellectual situation is much more open to the Wisdom-teaching than it was in the first arrogant days when scientific methodology seemed adequate to deal with any problem. In his Inaugural Address to the College de France, the biologist Jacques Monod said: 'It is language which created humans, rather than humans language.' When one examines the interconnecting systems of psycho-linguistics and structural linguistics and so on, we find that it is not the vision that is lacking as much as the willingness to shed an epistemology which they inherited from the scientists and which they are terrified to leave behind. The story is the same wherever research has taken men to the limits of logic and language and measurement and where the microcosmic structure planes out into the macrocosmic or vice-versa, or where the forms themselves emerge out of the fecund Nothing they imagine they observe. Many of the findings of the biologists and physicists are taking them to a point where they are being challenged to recognise not the invalidity of their findings but the underlying psychosis of their approach. Indeed, much of what they have to say is germane to our study that they are trapped in a blind-alley is of their own doing, and also their own business. Here are George and Muriel Beadle, for example, coming from the realm of molecular biology:

The deciphering of the DNA code has revealed our possession of a language much older than hieroglyphics, a language as old as life itself, a language that is the most living of all. Commenting on the findings of Crick and Yanofsky in their analysis of what they call 'the four-letter language embodied in molecules of nucleic acid', Roman Jakobson, the linguist, observes: We actually learn that all the detailed and specific genetic information is contained in molecular coded messages, namely in their linear sequences of 'code words' or 'codons'. Each word comprises three coding sub-units termed 'nucleotide bases' or 'letters' of the code 'alphabet'. This alphabet consists of four differing letters 'used to spell out the genetic message'. The 'dictionary' of the genetic code encompasses 64 distinct words which, in regard to their components, are defined as 'triplets', for each of them forms a sequence of three letters. 61 of these triplets carry an individual meaning, while three are apparently used merely to signal the end of the genetic message. Again a biologist addressing the College de France, this time Jacob, who says: To the old notion of the gene, an integral structure that one used to compare to the bead on a rosary, has succeeded that of a series of four elements repeated in permutations. Heredity is determined by a chemical message inscribed along the chromosomes. The surprising thing is that genetic specificity is written, not in ideograms as in Chinese, but in an alphabet as in French, or rather, in Morse. The meaning of the message comes from the combination of signs into words, and from the arrangement of words into sentences a posteriori, this solution appears the only logical one. How otherwise could such a scarcity of means secure a similar diversity of architectural forms? It is a sad condition of the blindness of these 'observers' of the life-process do not ask how they got 'outside' existence that they are so trapped by the role they have assigned themselves they are forced to conclude that the discrete components are in themselves devoid of meaning. Here again is that subjective projection of their own existential situation onto the so-called object-of-observation. The Shaykh al-Akbar insists that if anyone makes a model he will in the end only be making a model of himself. To deny meaning to the 'letter' is to deny meaning to the 'sentence' which is life. Yet what we see, if we have the courage to look clearly, at every stage of the Way, is meaning. The sentence is structured. There is, in the mechanistic language of the scientist, 'architecture'. It is absurd to hear re-iterated at this stage of man's existence the old arguments about watches and watchmakers, but astonishingly they still go on. We are not dealing with a machine-world. We are dealing with a Reality which, first of all, is dealing with us. Secondly, it is not a mechanistic, inside-outside, mind/body duality. Thirdly, at every stage it is structured and the unfolding of the organic form-patterns comes from 'within' to outside, when it is a matter of life-forms, and from outside to the centre when it reaches the crystalline level. Form is something that is both connected to and separate

from the discrete components, as we have observed in ourselves, or should have if we have maintained our courage to look at both ourselves and the horizon as Qur'an commands. Dependent on a rich complex of impulses from without in the environment of place/event and from within the inner environment of self/energies, the human face, the 'form' of man himself changes and alters with such rapidity we can actually see it happen at times. Both in the immediate change of 'state' and in the long-term build-up of altered 'states' we observe the form of man change across the discrete or apparently discrete matter of his biological structure. We are dealing with a world which is nothing but 'meanings'. Meaning MA'NA is a key word in sufic study. Here is its root: 'Meaning'; 'mindimage'; 'considered as having a word applied to denote it'; 'being intended by a word'; 'what the word indicates.' In the Diwan of the Shaykh al-Kamil he says: Oh you who desire the presence of being an eyewitness, you must rise above the spirit and the forms and cling to the original Void and be as if you were not, oh annihilated! Truly, you will see existence by a secret whose meanings have spread in every age. None of the images of action and entity multiply the Actor in any way. So whoever rises above every vanishing thing will be shown existence without duality. In his song, 'Withdrawal into the Perception of the Essence', Allah speaks: The Attributes of My Essence were hidden, and they were manifested in the existence-traces. Truly, created beings are meanings set up in images. All who grasp this are among the people of discrimination.

In the root definition of ma'na we come back to the pivotal balance between letters and the appearance of forms. It is what is intended by the word. At the core of this we have the sufic teaching about the Name itself from which all the names come. On this teaching Shaykh al-Kalabadhi says: Some of the Masters maintain that the Names of Allah are neither Allah nor otherthan-Allah: this is parallel to their doctrine concerning the Attributes. Others hold the view that the names of Allah are Allah. Both of these are two ways of saying the same thing, only one makes a distinction in description. The teaching of Harith al-Muhasibi is the most pure, which teaches that Allah's speech consists of the letters and the sounds and that these are Attributes of Allah uncreated in His Essence. We note the scientists use the word 'dictionary' to denote the source-book of the coding to the people of the Path such a projective image is inadequate. When Qur'an, the Book of the Books that we have, which is in turn merely the manifest version of the Hidden Book, states that everything is written in a manifest Book, we recognise that the record is the Reality itself in its unfolding. When it says that 'everyone has their Book,' we recognise not only the record of the destiny which is written in the cells, but the record of the cells which was written in the destiny before it took place. Roman Jakobson, a linguist who is profoundly aware of the metaphysical implications of his science, states: How should one interpret all these salient homologies between the genetic code which 'appears to be essentially the same in all organisms' (J.D. Watson: 'Molecular Biology of the Genes') and the architectonic model underlying the verbal codes of all human languages, and, nota bene, shared by no semiotic systems other than natural language or its substitutes. The questions of these isomorphic features become particularly instructive when we realise that they find no analogue in any system of animal communication. We must emphasise that there is no suggestion that the scientists are proving anything, but one can valuably assimilate their observations when they are made with such clarity of vision but from our point of view it is the scientist who has to come to terms with the basic problems underlying his position of fantasy-objectivity and dualistic language with all its pitfalls of teleology and so on which only have meaning while the whole thing remains 'a problem' that they arrogantly imagine they are 'solving'. Our picture of language of the letters is that they are the very creation process the appearance of the phenomenal forms. The letters which appear at the very beginning of the form-situation (when the four basic conditions hot, cold, wet, dry, mix and the four basic elements emerge air, earth, fire, water, which give us the creation) are surrounded by Heavens, by angelic activity, by orbit, therefore movement and activity.

Within the creation the letters unfold their messages of form until man himself emerges in the 'solid' world. When Sayyedina Adam manifests, he is given, in the Qur'anic expression, 'all the names.' It is this that marks him out as man, the Khalif of Allah in His creation. For, once there are forms once there is a creation then Allah is Hidden because He is Manifest everywhere. Once He is Hidden, He leaves His Khalif for the Khalif is the one who stands in during the absence of the King. The language of Adam, and the languages of the adamic peoples, are nothing other than the 'knowing' of the creational original letters. Just as language is built into the cells at the molecular level, so it comes out from man in his molecular totality. That is why when we examine the Arabic language, which is, remember, the oldest of the semitic group, we find that in its root condition, everything connects to a specific existential or phenomenal reality, as we have seen throughout this work. Part of the blindness of the modern Muslims to their own spiritual heritage has been their deep lack of understanding of the Arabic language. They have reduced the language which was created for the Wisdom-transaction to nothing more than a mercantile exchange transaction. A modern Arabic dictionary reveals a complete break in the language from its roots, an abstracting from the root-specificity and a disastrous annexation of the mercantile coding of the bourgeois society which has so successfully conquered them by its supremacy of values over the Wisdom-Way which always yields to the force of greed and power and ambition. It is not that the Christian bourgeois society is superior to the Wisdom-transaction simply that men have abandoned it and corrupted it enough to allow the other its supremacy. This creation-picture of reality as a Book which unfolds its meanings and story is emerging in a profounder light than the original idea that we entertained of it being merely some primitive myth. Qur'an says: Nought of disaster befalls in the earth or in yourselves but it is in a Book before We bring it into being Lo! that is easy for Allah. (Qur'an 57.22) Our last task will be to look at the time-picture and the time/space reality in which we find ourselves in the light of this Wisdom-teaching. For we have already arrived at a position where we are forced to recognise the illusory nature of time. We cannot understand the meaning of the forms coming-into existence, the encoding of the organism, unless we grasp the constancy of the creation-situation. Look again at the description that the Shaykh al-Akbar gives of the human being's life, death and continuation (pages 171-2) and you are opening to a totally new vision of how-it-is. In this picture of existence, the Qur'an is not merely the Book of Changes, but it is the Source-Book of Forms, al-Mutashabih, The Conformable-in-all-its-parts, for that is the nature of the great cosmic reality of the Universe. By extension, it is not merely the Book of Forms, it is itself compounded of the stuff of existence, it is dynamic, active and effective as well as containing the discrimination-practice about such existential matters as marriage, divorce and weaning and war, and the unitary teaching about the Truth, it is itself a living and activating energy-process which, once read or recited, takes on an

alchemical power which transmutes the situation into which it manifests its letters and sounds into the air and into the hearts of the listeners in the Seen and the Unseen realities. 'The letters,' says the Shaykh al-Akbar, 'are the Imams of preservation.' It is they which 'uphold' the space/time reality of the organism, it is their underlying, hidden reality at the genetic level that sustains the being in its existence of duration/state. It is they which act in the bringing into existence from the Names the myriad forms of creation. The Master explains further: Know, may Allah give us and you success, that the letters are one of the communities, speaking and obligated. There are Messengers in them from themselves, and they have names in respect to them. Only the people of unveiling from our Path know this. They have divisions in practice They have a Shari'a which they worship by, and they have both subtleties and densities. The Interspace between the letters and the Names, the source of all letters, is the 'Alif, whose numerical value is 1. Of it he says: The 'Alif is not from the letters with whoever smells a scent of the realities, but the common folk call it a letter. So when the Realised say that it is a letter, they say that by way of metaphor in expression. The dot of the circle encompassment, the simple and complex of the worlds, are neither in it nor out of it. Another letter that moves about in its significance, and thus makes for a difference in calculation depending on its specific role in that particular picture, is Hamza. He explains its particular function thus: The Hamza intersects time and unites whatever it is near to, from separation. It is time (dahr) and its power is great. It is beyond being contained in the striking of a mithal. The appended charts will give you a first outline of the letters and their Heavens, their inter-relatedness, and their elemental nature. Chart 1 : The Four Matrices of hot / dry / cold / wet. Chart 2 : The Movement of the Heavens which create the four matrices which give the four elements. Chart 3 : The Creation as a 7 / 9 unfolding: manifesting the elements. Chart 4 : The Creation showing the zones of the letters. Chart 5 : The Heavens of the Four Elements.

This is followed by individual charts of each of the 29 letters of the alphabet. After the letters come the vowels, and the vowels of the letters are 6. They enter into the letters after their shaping. So then: There is another growth called a word, as the bringing-together in a person makes man. Thus the world of words and phrases grows from the world of letters. So the letters belong to the words in affection like water, earth, fire and air belong to the setting up of the growth of bodies. With the zone of word-to-phrase, or word-to-sign, if we stick to the Qur'anic language we enter a further complexification of the different patterns of existence. Realities arise due to this organisation of letter units. These realities which are from organisation exist by its existence and vanish with its non-existence. So the reality of 'animal' only exists with the authorship of vocable intelligible realities in their essence, and they are body, nutrition and sense. When body, nutrition and sense are combined then the reality of 'animal' appears. It is not the body alone, nor the nutrition alone, nor the sense alone. If the reality of feeling falls away while body and nutrition remain, then you say 'plant', a reality which is not the first one. The Shaykh al-Akbar outlines three vital aspects that make up existence. He calls these: the Wealthy Independent Essence the Sufficiency: a poor essence that is dependent upon the former: a third essence that is the connecting essence by which the second is dependent. He links these three aspects of Lord: slave: source-form: to the very nature of language itself. So we then define language as being contained also in three realities, the same three essence: occurrence: connection. This gives us: Noun / Essence Verb / Occurrence Preposition / Connection. This third connecting term we will examine in full in the next stage of our search. It is enough for the moment to observe the unifying principle of the teaching as it follows the structuring of language and relates it to the complexification of existence itself. A further aspect of language comes when we go from the separate words to the phrases, the signs. Here phrases are seen to be on four divisions which are the matrices, like coldness, heat, dryness, and wetness in the elements. These are: 1) Clear phrases: nouns, intransitives like ocean, key, scissors.

2) Understood phrases: which have an accepted designation of type: like man and woman. 3) Homonyms: phrases of one form with differences of meaning, like 'ayn eye/source: mushtari seller/buyer: insan man/pupil of the eye. 4) Synonyms: words with different forms which indicate one meaning: lion asad, hizabr, ghadanfar: sword sayf, husam, sarim: wine khamr, rahiq, sahba', khandaris. So we now find ourselves with language which is here to tell us about the reality of our existence. The Qur'an, when we examine it, instructs us in two means of approach to the Reality. At first glance they are utterly contradictory. One tells us that no form or concept may describe or circumscribe the Reality, that is beyond association. On the other hand, we find the Book full of phrases which seem in blatant contradiction to this we read of His hand, and that He settled on the Throne, and so on. We now have to extend this picture we have of existence in its intricate inter-relatedness, the cosmic reality in all its vastness and complexity crowned by this self-aware creation, Man, and recognise him as both Khalif of the Divine Reality and slave. We have to examine how the exalted Lord and the slave are 'connected', and the nature of the connection, given that we can connect nothing to Him. We have reached a point where we must ask questions about the nature of knowledge, and the nature of the creational realities, in order to understand the meaning of the Tawhid, the Unity itself.

The Science of Bewilderment

We have slowly been dismantling the dualistic machine-idea of existence which we were taught, and begun to replace it with a living and moving picture of a reality which descends in cascading expansion from a Hidden Source, which had its essence in a powerful Unseen Waterfall that is hidden from us by its tremendous spray, until it becomes the visible river of flowing and vital forms that further spread out into the vast ocean of multiplicity called the phenomenal world. Before we could grasp how the Book of Forms, the Qur'an, manifested, we had to look first at a description of creation as this unfolding out of the Divine Reality we then saw that it was the Book of the Book of Existence itself. In the light of this knowledge, we must again look at that description of the descent from the sublime and Unknowable Essence to the myriad forms. This time we will complexify the descent further so that every stage of this unfolding is clear. Remember that the 'descent' is not spatial and the

hierarchy is in description but not in reality, for we can never abandon the position of affirmation of Unity which, although we may leave it, we are bound to return to it. This descent is called, in the language of the Sufis, TANAZZULAT. Here it is: 1. AHADIYYAT. Here Reality is unlimited and total in the phrase of the great Sufi Abd al-Karim Jili, there is 'no manifestation, no name, no quality, no relation, no adjunct or anything else.' It is the great Darkness to which the Messenger referred when he was asked, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, 'Where was Allah before the creation of the world?': Now this language which implies whereness and time in relation to Allah we will examine at the next stage of our journey, but for the moment let it be emphasised that while the Messenger, in accordance with the Book and the Wisdom he had received, did express himself in this way, it was by description only and not through any idea that Allah had 'whereness', as when he spoke with the ignorant Bedouin woman. His answer to the question of whereness was, 'He was in the great 'Ama,' meaning a dark mist. In other words, before the manifestation of His Names and the event of His Lordship as Creator, He is hidden and Inaccessible. It was of this reality that the Messenger warned when he forbade contemplation of the Essence. It is inaccessible to thought or expression. Its name to the Sufis is GHAYB AL-GHAYB the Hidden of the Hidden. It is to this sublime reality that the Messenger also referred when he said, 'Allah was and there was nothing with Him.' This is the 'AYNI-MUTLAQ the Absolute Source. It is 'AYN ALKAFUR the Fountain of Camphor, for whatever enters camphor becomes camphor. From this stage there is descent to the next stage of the Divine Ranks: 2. WAHDAT. Here what was hidden comes out. Here the Reality knows itself, its potentialities and its totality. Here there are four aspects which are not yet differentiated: Existence, Light, Knowledge, and Self-manifesting. Here, He is Himself. This is still in the Essence, for we must re-affirm that there is no break or split in these stages. Here are all the Names of Divinity and of the Universe, but they are for and to the Essence, and have not yet moved into specificity. This is called the TAJALLI-AWWAL the first self-manifestation. It is also called the Haqiqata'l Muhammadiyya, or the Reality of Muhammad. To this refers the Hadith: 'The first thing which Allah created was the Light of the Messenger.' Also: 'I am from the Light of Allah and the whole world is from my light.' This stage is also called, therefore, An-Nuri-Muhammadiyya. This must not be misunderstood. Here is not the essence of the Messenger, for as we shall see, the dhat or essence of the creatures manifests at a lower stage. Rather, it is the secret of form itself. From here there is descent to the next stage: 3. WAHIDIYYAT. This is the third and last of the Divine Ranks. Here the Names separate and display themselves. The Peacock opens its tail. Here, every aspect of the Creator, the Actor, is particularised, and its inter-relationship with every other is specified. In Wahdat everything is 'there' but implicit, now in Wahidiyyat, everything is

there and explicit. Together these last two stages are one, they are a veil, with one side facing to the hidden and the other facing out to the phenomenal world. So these two together form the BARZAKH-I-KUBRA the Great Interspace. Again, before descent to the world of forms in the Universe, let us affirm the identical nature of the Divine Ranks Reality is never now this and now that. His knowledge is not implicit and then explicit. He is never without consciousness of Himself, nor without Light, nor without the Names. The Attributes are identical with the Essence. 'He is now as He was before.' The cosmic ranks are two: 1. The 'Ayn ath-thabitah, the permanent source-forms of all the individual things, descend from their permanence in the Divine Names into the Unseen. 2. The 'Ayn ath-thabitah become the things in the world of sensible experience. Here they come into the world of solidity/duration. This is the Universe. But we affirm again our first condition. 'And He is as He was before,' before, that is, the creation of the Universe. This descent is by its nature a movement, an energy-process, and this will be the last aspect of the Reality which we will examine. For the moment let us stay with the pattern that the movement shows. Here is another description that helps clarify the picture of how existence comes into being, and let us be open now to the implications of what is being presented, which is inevitably that there is a triplicity of Reality in the Universe. That the things come into being and go out of existence. That they are permanent and endless. That they do not and never have had any existence. These matters must be approached step by step, and it must be said again, that if we hold to one picture we lose the others, and that if we hold to the other we lose the former. Yet all are true. The descent through the Divine Ranks in this new picture is seen as an emanation from the Essence to the Source-forms. This is the realm of the possible things they are not yet actualised. Here the potter has conceived the idea of the pot-form but has not yet made it. This image is still to do with our form-bound situation and not to do with a Reality which is utterly beyond dependence on forms. There is no watch/watchmaker duality. This emanation is called AL-FAYD AL-AQDAS, or the Most Pure-emanation. That is to say, from Reality uncontaminated with form comes the form-idea. This is also called TAJALLI DHATIY, Manifestation of the Essence. This is the descent into the Names when the forms appear to Allah but not to the world. Once the form becomes the source-form in the Unseen, it then takes on existence and so manifests in the visible world. This is: AL-FAYD AL-MUQADDAS, the Pure-emanation. This is also called TAJALLI-WUJUDIY, the self-manifestation of the existent.

In the Qur'an the Divinity expresses Itself by different pronouns. He and We. 'He' indicates the Essence, beyond all association of form. 'Say: He Allah is One.' (112.1). 'We' is used in the realm of Kingship, it is the 'We' of Royal Command. The Command is the bringing of things into existence from the Names. This is Rububiyyat, Lordship, the rule of the Creator over His creation. In the 'Seals of Wisdom', the Shaykh al-Akbar says: Abu'l-Qasim ibn Qasi said in his book, 'The Removal of the Sandals', 'Each Divine Name is qualified by all the Divine Names, and described by their description.' It is so. Each Name indicates the Essence according to the meaning which is set forth for it and which demonstrates it. In respect to its indication of the Essence, it possesses all the Names: and in respect to the meaning which is singular to it, it distinguishes itself from others, such as the Lord, the Creator, the Fashioner-of-forms, and so on. So the Name is the same as the named in respect to the Essence, and the Name is other than the named in respect to the meaning which is particular to it. Elsewhere he says: Know that the One called Allah is one by essence and by all His Names, and every existent thing is only attached to Allah by his own Lord (Name) exclusively, for it is impossible that it possess the whole. As for Divine Unity Ahadiyya, none is in it at all, for one cannot designate any aspect of it, and it does not admit of distinction. So His Unity integrates all of Him by potentiality. The happy one is the one 'who was pleasing to his Lord.' There is no-one who is not pleasing to his Lord because it is by him that rububiyya, Lordship, subsists. So He is pleased with Him, so he is happy. For this reason Sahl at-Tustari said, 'Lordship has a secret, and this secret is you.' He was addressing every source-form. 'Had it been manifested, Lordship would have been invalidated.' He used the word 'law' which is the participle of impossibility, for it is never manifested, so Lordship is never invalidated, FOR THERE IS NO EXISTENCE TO A SOURCE-FORM, except by its Lord. The source is always existent, so sovereignty is never invalidated. And: Every existent thing is pleasing to its Lord (Name), that does not necessitate that each existent thing which is pleasing to its Lord is also pleasing to the Lord of another, because Lordship is only obtained from each one of the Names, not from the one of Unity. So what is specific to it from the whole is only what is attributed to it. So He is its Lord. None is attached to Him in respect to His Unity. For this reason the people of Allah are forbidden manifestation of His Unity (Ahadiyya). If you look at Him by Him, He is the one who is looking at Himself. He continues to be Himself looking at Himself by Himself. If you look at Him by yourself, Unity vanishes because of you. If you look at Him both through Him and through you, Unity also vanishes because the pronoun of the second person implies that there is something

else besides that which is regarded. So there must be some relationship which necessitates the duality of the Regarder and the regarded, and so Unity vanishes, even though there only exists the One who sees Himself by Himself. It is known that in this description He is the Regarder and the Regarded. And: So distinction occurred among the slaves, and distinction occurred among the Lords. Had distinction not occurred, One Divine Name would have been interpreted in all its aspects by what another Name is interpreted by: the elucidation of the Exalter is not that of the Abaser, and so on, except from the aspect of Unity. It is as we said of every Name, that it indicates the Essence and also its reality in respect to what it is. So the One named is but One and therefore the Exalter IS the Abaser in respect to the Named. It is not the Abaser in respect to itself and its reality. Do not look at the Real and free Him from creation. Do not look at creation and garb it in other-than-the-Real. Disconnect Him and connect Him and you will stand in the goal of sincerity. Stay in gatheredness if you wish, stay in separation if you wish. You will win all even if all set out to carry the day. You are not annihilated and you do not have going-on. And the forms are not annihilated and do not have going-on. Revelation will not be given to you in respect to another, and you will not give it. We will shortly examine the two terms Connection and Disconnection for the moment it is enough to recognise that they are two utterly contradictory methods of approach. What we must note now is our recognition that the Divine Names are no other than the named. The realities which the Names require to embody their Lordship are nothing but the Universe itself. To affirm this unified situation, the Shaykh uses a very daring phrase, but do not lose sight of what he has outlined in the poem above. Thus Divinity [uluhiyya god-ness] requires the object to which it is god-ed [ma'luh], as Lordship requires its own object Lorded [marbub]. Otherwise the

Divine Names have no real existence of their own. What is absolutely free from any need of the Universe is solely the Reality as Essence. The Lordship has no such property. So the Reality is ultimately possessed of two aspects: on the one hand what is required by the Lordship, and on the other the complete independence of the Essence from the world which it rightly claims. BUT IN REALITY THE LORDSHIP IS THE ESSENCE ITSELF. Let us go back from these two aspects to our previous picture which delineated in particular this connecting element, between the two. Let us go back to the triplicity of the Truth, the World, and the connecting term, the Source-forms. It is essential that we have a clear grasp of the nature of this 'connection'. The 'ayn ath-thabitah are not qualified by existence and yet they are not qualified by nonexistence, neither can they be said to be in-time nor in endless-time. Yet these sourceforms have been with the Endless-time since endless-time. So here is something which is neither existent nor non-existent that is, nevertheless, the root of the world, that from which the world comes into being. It is the form of all the world-forms. It appears as the endless-time in the endless-time, and it appears as in-time in the in-time. If you say it is the world, you are right, declares the Master and if you say it is Reality, the Endlesstime, you are also right. But you are equally right if you say that it is neither the world nor the Truth, but it is something different from both. Each of these statements is true. It is other-than-Allah and it is not other-than-Allah. Let us recall the varying perspectives we have gone through in our examination of the Divine emanation into solid world forms. We have seen that the individual letters brought the forms into being, but from the letters WORDS WERE INTENDED, from the emergent words groupings arose which gave phrases, and we could not but recognise that from the words, from the beginning, phrases were intended. In our Qur'anic picture we saw that from the ayats, the signs, came Suras or forms. Thus from the beginning of the unfolding it was forms that were intended. We have also seen how by complexification, form-combination, something new enters into the experience picture. A reality sweeps over the form in all its discreet architectural patterning. It cannot be separated from it and yet is not it, for it remains discreet, separate, letters in joined and inter-related tension. We have seen how when any aspect of the complexity is dropped away, it leaves another 'reality' in its place. Another ma'na, or meaning. The scientist rejects the source-forms for they are not accessible to him by his methodology, and the esotericists reject the particularised description of the creation-situation when it is broken down into its discreet components, whether they are nucleic acids or particles. To the Sufi there are two approaches to existence he may look at the world and see the forms, or he may turn to the Reality itself and the forms will fall away. In the great Hadith on creation's secret, the Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, said: Allah hides himself behind 70,000 veils of light and darkness. If He took away these veils, the fulgurating Lights of His Face would at once destroy the sight of any creature who dared to look at it.

The Shaykh al-Akbar comments that the veils of darkness are the natural bodies and the veils of Light are subtle spirits, for the Universe is composed of the gross and the subtle. He goes on: So the Universe is its own veil of itself, and it cannot perceive the Reality since it perceives itself. It is continuously in a veil which is not removed since it knows that it is distinct from its Creator by its need for Him. It has no part in the essential necessity which belongs to the existence of Allah, so it can never perceive Him. In this respect Allah is always unknown by the knowledge of tasting and direct-seeing, because the in-time has no access to that. So here we come up against another baffling negation. We had set out determined to follow a path that would give us experience of Reality, precisely that direct-tasting which we now discover the Greatest Master denies is possible. Are we merely left with some negative intellectual position, and if so what is the point of the journey? It is at this point that the connecting term, the 'ayn ath-thabitah takes on its vital and unavoidable significance. The 'ayn ath-thabitah we directly experience in the phenomenal realm by an inbuilt faculty we have to structure and the discreet information-picture we construct when we scan our world. Out of the separate cellular units we 'construct' a man, a cat, a horse. Out of our 'readings' of the behaviour and energy-waves from the cat, we interpret its 'angerstate' and that it is going to spring. We make sense of existence. We pattern the patterns. This is ordinary experience. It is based on a direct and continual recognition of the 'outward' aspect of the 'ayn ath-thabitah as they manifest. The Shaykh al-Akbar uses the mithal of a mirror to express the nature of what the sourceform is, this non-existent possibility/form in the Divine Name which displays itself as an event/form. We have indicated that we are not what we seem just as there is the phenomenal manifesting reality of the source-form which may be recognised in its subtle aspect by someone else, so there is the true reality of that hidden form in the Unseen, and that form is from the Names, and the Names are from the Essence. Now I may see something of the hidden reality of the man who comes towards me, but I will never be able to see his source-form in its Divine Nature. I cannot know that of any creature except one. Myself. I, among the creatures, and only I have access to my own immutable source-form. I am capable of knowing myself. And that is the limit of what may be known. Here is how the Shaykh expresses it, again in a passage from 'The Seals of Wisdom': As for the favours, gifts, and overflowings from the Essence, they only come from Divine Tajalli (self-manifestation). Tajalli only comes from the Essence by means of the forms of the predisposition of the one whom tajalli is made. It never occurs otherwise. So the one who receives the tajalli will see his form only, in the mirror of

the Truth, and he will not see the Truth for it is not possible to see Him. At the same time he knows that he sees only his own form in it. It is like the mirror in the visible world in-as-much as you see forms in it or your own form, you do not see the mirror. At the same time, you know that you see the forms or your form only by virtue of the mirror. So Allah manifests that as a mithal appropriate to His essential tajalli, so that the one receiving the tajalli knows that he does not see Him. There is no mithal nearer and more appropriate to vision and tajalli than this. So try yourself when you see the form in the mirror to see the body of the mirror as well you will never see it. It is true, some people who recognise this mithal of the form of the mirror say that the reflected form is between the vision of the seer and the mirror. That is as far as the mind can go, and the matter is as we have said. If you wish to taste this, then experience the limit beyond which there is no higher limit in respect to the creature. Do not exhaust yourself in going beyond this degree, for in principle, there is only pure non-existence after it. This is what is meant by the Shaykh al-Kamil in his Diwan in the song, 'The Buraq of the Tariq': The adab of looking at the creature is that you see the Creator no second face! So you see the Creator in the created and the Provider in the provision. The Truth is only seen in manifestation, whether by Angel or a mortal man. The first manifestation is the Light of Ahmad, may the most excellent of blessings be upon him in endless-time. By him the Truth has filled every creature and all that is or was. So one door remains open to the seeker his own door. Beyond that there is nothing. Reality is One. The slave is the slave and the Lord is the Lord. But his Lord, the source of his own existence, the mirror-image of the perfection of the Essence he may contemplate in short, he may have knowledge of himself. On the other side of this knowledge is obliteration, and it is the Wisdom of the Wise. This is the meaning of the famous saying attributed to Yahya ibn Ma'ad ar-Razi: 'He who knows his nafs, truly, he knows his Lord.'

The Shaykh al-Akbar counsels: So know your source-form, and who you are, what is your he-ness, and what your relation to Allah is, and by what you are the Truth and by what you are the Universe and the other, and whatever resembles these expressions. So here is the conclusion: So know that you are an imagination, and that which you perceive and of which you say, 'This is not me!' is imagination. So all our existence is imagination within imagination. The world of being and becoming is an imagination but it is, in truth, the Reality itself. His word is: 'Say: if you love Allah, follow me and Allah will love you.' (3.31). So, he called to a Divinity to whom one has recourse and who is known in respect to the whole and is not seen, 'Nor do the eyes perceive Him, but He perceives the eyes,' (6.103), by His lutf and His diffusion in the source-forms of things. The eyes do not perceive Him as they do not perceive their arwah which govern their shapes and their outward forms. 'And He is the All-Latif, the All-Aware.' (6.103). EXPERIENCE IS THE TASTE AND TASTE IS TAJALLI. Tajalli occurs in forms. So they must be and it must be and the one who sees Him by his passion must worship Him, if you but understand! On Allah is the goal of the Path. Another contradictory aspect of the teaching emerged as the Shaykh guided to what was best for the seeker. He had said, we noted: 'Use both tanzih and tashbih in relation to Him and you will stand in the goal of sincerity.' Again we have to learn not an ambiguous approach to existence but a contrary one which clashes one approach against another, irreconcilable forces. As usual, we will begin with their root form which is quite uncomplicated and direct: Tanzih is from NZH, which means: 'to keep something away from anything contaminating or impure'. Tashbih is from ShBH, meaning: 'to make or consider something similar to some other thing'. This second root we have already encountered! And it was in an ayat informing us that certain ayats contained a likenesssign Wisdom that should not be approached through our mental activity, but should be accepted and made the basis of remembering. The key to that knowledge was by dhikr, and not fikr. Therefore these ayats obviously contain the most profound Wisdom and despite this we should not perform this act but keep ourselves aloof from it. Tanzih is to disconnect tashbih is to connect. The truth of the matter is that one can neither hold to one nor the other, these two opposites connecting forms to the Reality and disconnecting the Reality from forms are two truths which must be held in balanced and dynamic tension at the same time. The perfection of this paradoxical Wisdom is stated most clearly in the ayat which declares: There is nothing like Him and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing. (Qur'an 42.11)

In the first part Allah declares His reality to be beyond any association with forms, and thus disconnects. In the second part He affirms that He participates in the form-world, seeing is His and hearing is His, and thus connects. In the view of the People of Reality, merely to practise disconnection is to limit and restrict Allah, and also to defy the nabiyyic teaching method of mithal-wisdom. The Qur'an is full of images which express the transaction Allah has with His creatures. He is assigned 'hands' and 'feet', He 'sits upon the Throne', He 'rolls up the Universe like a scroll'. This is not some Blakean vision of a patriarchal being in the heavens suspended over our heads, and it would be a sign of ignorance to take it as such. The Wisdom-teaching of Islam is categoric: He does not engender forms, and He was not engendered by a form, that is to say that the coming out of forms does not diminish His totality. He has no form, or if you were to practise tashbih it would be based on the understanding that if He is not the forms, He is form-itself, from which all forms come, but that is in the zone of the Names, not the Essence. In other words, to talk of Him in connection with the forms is to be held to the structural framework we have used, in the Essence He is as He was before the creation of the myriad forms. The language of 'likeness' which involves the imagery of 'His fingers' and so on, is the mithal-method which simply shows us how-it-is in the realm to which we have no access without using form language. In the realm of realities we need a form language, for these realities are not the forms, but the forms pass over them, as it were. So when we come to the realm of Essence, the great 'Ama in its impenetrable nature, we have to be prepared to abandon all connection. For Allah in His splendour, there must be disconnection, for Allah, the Lord of the Myriad Form Universe, we must have recourse to form mithals to grasp the realities of existence, the meanings of the phenomenal events. The means is connection. Particular essences are not changed nor do realities change. Fire therefore burns by its reality, not by its form. So His statement, may He be exalted, to the fire: 'Oh fire, be cold and be peace,' (21.16) was not spoken to a form. The form is live coals and bodies of live coals which are being burned by the fire. When the fire stood over them, the fire heard, and so it accepted cold as it accepts heat. Here we see described the governing reality in relation to the form, in the same way we approach His relation to what is manifested of the forms of the world. Therefore we can never know Allah by definition, for to do so we would have to know the definite reality of every form in the Universe throughout the time experience, and this is impossible. Be careful not to fall into the pit of the Christian Orientalists who mistook the Sufis for pantheists. There is absolutely no equating of Allah with the forms, for we have already indicated the structural and dynamic process which permits us to make even this subtle connection, and it only has reality if alongside it we utterly deny the reality of the forms before His unassailable uniqueness and purity from forms. Allah is the Manifest. The Universe therefore is His form, in the framework which we have declared of 'ayn aththabitah, but at the same time, the Universe is also His He-ness. He is the meaning, the spirit of all that is manifest, and so He is the Hidden. So you are His form and He is your reality. 'You are to Him as your corporeal form is to you, and He is to you as the spirit which governs the body.' Let us re-affirm the basic teaching: if you practise connection alone, you are a dualist: if you practise disconnection alone, you are a separator.

We have arrived at a point where we must both affirm that all the source-forms, which are manifestations of the Names, are by that token all of one source-form, for all the Names come together in the Name of the Rahman, the Mercy, on which the Universe is sustained, and it is the same, according to Qur'an, as the Supreme Name, Allah. You know Him from yourself. All the myriad millions of things are not other than the He-ness of the Essence. And we have arrived at a point where we must negate. All the world of manifestation, you yourself, are a shadow of a reality, you are the mirror-image in which Allah contemplates His Names. You are non-existent, a meaning projected into space/time, an imagining. Yet these two, inexorably, are one, and Tawhid is affirmed. Tawhid does not just mean Unity, it means to unify. You have to 'one' reality, and when it is 'one-d' experientially the goal is achieved. All this is but the framework. Unification is our business on the Path: the knower, the knowledge, and the known. This brings us to the method of approach. Clearly it cannot be done by thinking, for we have been warned that in this zone of understanding we have to allow the knowledge to come from the Knower without our intervention. The means is to reflect up to that point where reason and intellect can no longer function. The practice is to allow the mind to be halted. We have to get to the limit of the mind. The edge of the cliff. This practice is called HAYRAH bewilderment. We had reached an already baffling situation, that the Reality in disconnection was the creatures by connection. Even though we distinguished between creature and Creator, we recognised that the many essences were nothing but One Unique Essence. The Hayrah arises because, in the language of the Shaykh al-Akbar, the mind becomes polarised. This is the re-iterated exclamation of the Master Rumi in his great wisdom book 'The Mathnawi' again and again he calls out: 'The mind stops!' We experience and depend on duality for our existence day/night, hot/cold, wet/dry, and the series we have examined of the matrices good/bad, and so on. This is the realm of nature where every one thing comes out from two. Now we desire knowledge of the One whose reality manifests as the numbers, which are of course, in the view of the Shaykh al-Akbar, themselves unitary. Each number is made up of ones, thus every number both has its own identity, two being unlike three and four being unlike five, while at the same time they have in common their being based on one. Yet another mithal of the relation of the essences to Essence. Having seen in nature the primacy of the two, these have to be unified if we wish to achieve our goal. Yet they cannot of their nature be unified, for hot and cold do not mix, as we have seen, nor wet and dry. The same is true when we go to the Names themselves. We have already examined the clash between He who Exalts and He who Abases. What we have to recognise is that He is AT THE SAME TIME the Exalter and the Abaser. He is the Outwardly Manifest and the Inwardly Hidden at the same time, but one face of the Names is turned to the form and another face is turned to the Essence. Shaykh al-Kashani commenting on this Hayrah says:

This ocean of Hayrah is the Unity pervading all and manifesting itself in multiple forms. It is bewildering because of the Unity appearing in a concrete determined form in every single thing and yet remaining non-determined in the whole. It is bewildering because it is non-limitation and limitation. The Master Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz of Baghdad said: 'I reached gnosis of Allah through joining the contrary Names.' Shaykh Moulay al-'Arabi ad-Darqawi, may Allah have mercy upon him, a Shaykh of our Shaykh, and a great Master of sufic Wisdom, who died a hundred and fifty years ago, near Fez in Morocco, describes in detail in his Letters how this experience was the final one on his Path before achieving his Tawhid. After expounding on the doctrine of fana, annihilation of the experiencing nafs, and reaffirming what we have been studying here, that is, that it is only illusion wahm which veils man from reality, that illusion of course lying in our capacity to solidify the manifest objects into multiplicity, he goes on: We observe but Allah knows best that this annihilation takes place, if Allah wills it, in the least possible time, by means of a certain method of invoking the Name of Majesty: Allah. I came upon this method in the work of the Venerable Master, the Wali Abu'l Hasan ash-Shadhili, may Allah be pleased with him. It is mentioned in certain books owned by a scholar among our brothers of the Bani Zarwal, and I also received it from my noble Master Abu'l Hasan 'Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, in a slightly different, simpler, and more direct form. It consists of visualising the five letters of the Name while saying Allah Allah Allah. Each time the letters dissolved in my imagination I revisualised them, and if they dissolved a thousand times during the day and a thousand times during the night, I continued a thousand times a day and a thousand times a night to revisualise them. This method gave me moments of immense inner vision when I practised it for a little more than a month at the beginning of my spiritual Path. It brought me a great knowledge as well as intense awe, but I paid no heed to it, occupied as I was in calling upon the Name and visualising the letters until the month ended. Then a thought forced itself on my attention: 'Allah-ta-'ala says that He is the First and the Last and the Outwardly Manifest and the Inwardly Hidden.' (57.3). To begin with I turned away from this thought that crept in, resolved not to listen to it, and I continued with my practice. But this voice did not leave me alone, it insisted, and would not accept my refusal to listen to it, just as I would not accept its way of acting and did not listen to it. But finally since it would not leave me in peace I answered it: 'As for His words saying that He is the First and the Last and that He is the Inwardly Hidden, I understand them quite well: but I do not understand His affirmation that He is the Outwardly Manifest, because all I see on the outside are created things.' To this the voice answered: 'If by His expression the Outwardly Manifest he had meant something other than the phenomenal world which we see, it would not be outward but inward. And so I say to you He is the Outwardly Manifest.' Then I perceived that there is no reality except Allah and nothing in the Universe except Him, praise and thanks be to Allah.

Annihilation in the Essence of our Lord comes about quickly, if Allah wills, by the method just described, for by this method, reflection bears fruit from the morning to the evening, provided that suspension of thought has been practised long enough. In my case it bore fruit after just a month and a few days, but Allah knows best. Certainly if someone were to practise suspension of thought for a year or two, or even three, the thought which would then appear would grant a great Wisdom and a dazzling secret. This is the Path of our Shaykh and Master, the Qutb, Muhammad ibn al-Habib, may Allah have mercy upon him, and what was true then is true today if a seeker is earnest in his or her quest and simply submits to the practices and dhikrs of the Order. But this tremendous matter, which is our concern, does not exist in a vacuum and cannot simply be grafted onto a life that is led by Christian bourgeois standards, for all the Sunnapractice which we have examined, all the ordinary activity of the slave in leading a life that is in harmony with the laws of existence, is what grounds the seeker in the deep sanity of the Sunna of our beloved Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace. If someone were to regard this, in the manner of the culture in which we were so disastrously mis-educated, as some mental or 'inner' exercise that they could practise as a therapy from the ills of their unstructured existence, they would meet with disaster. The Way harmonises the Sunna and the acts of dhikr into a pattern that is the whole life picture, and it is to that that we are called by the Shaykhs of the Way. Just as the dhikr of the Master described above is the focal point of the Tariq's work, this Hayrah which precedes the final stages of the Way is embodied in the final and highest task that the Muslim can fulfil in this world. And that is the Hajj. The root, HJJ means: 'to struggle with'; 'to make a spiritual journey'; it means 'Hajj' for it is its own root; 'an argument'; 'a single Hajj, a year'. It can therefore immediately be recognised as being a difficult journey, and at the same time it is an argument. What argument? From the point of view of the slave, it is, from its beginning when he is forced to don the ihram, the obligatory robes of pilgrimage which consist of two seamless white pieces of cloth, the argument of his nafs which has continued all his life in the continual rebellion of the self against the very submission-act that is his Islam. The pared down rituals of the difficult journey crystallise the nafs' battle with existence and its perpetually renewed attempts to throw off the chains of submission and regain the illusion of freedom. This of course means to reject the fact of mortality and return to the fantasy that one is going to live for ever without being responsible after death for one's acts in the world. From the point of view of the Lord it is also 'the conclusive argument' that the slave is the slave and the Lord is the Lord. In its profoundly structured set of mathematically precise movements and stoppings, it displays for the seeker a theorem of the whole existence activity which in the ordinary life situation may seem chaotic and random. In the Hajj, a man or woman experiences life and the self within such a determined and patterned geometric activity that though there may be near to two million people, outwardly all engaged in the same practice at the same time, inwardly each has his own unique struggle with the nafs to surrender once and for all the fantasy of selfhood, and the fantasy of otherness on which the world and all its

ravishingly beautiful and terrible commotion is based. The Hajj is 'a year', a complete cycle of existence. To take the matter of 'dispute' one degree further, let us note that the whole experience of life seems to suggest to people that life is a struggle and that the enemy is without. The other, be it man or woman or child or environment or the moment and the event it is this otherness of the world that makes life a struggle. Out there is the cause for my anguish in here. The Hajj is the rite of unveiling which reveals that from one point of view you are identical with all these others, for are you not surrounded with hundreds of thousands of people identical to you, robed as you are, troubled as you are, and is not existence at that time the same for all of you? It is tawaf of the Ka'ba and walking down to Muzdalifa that tires and shatters you all. The Master Rumi has said that the world is a mountain and all you ever get back from it is the sound of your own voice. This is one of the secrets of the Hajj. Nowhere is one more alone than in the surging crowd of 'Arafat, and circling the Sublime House. Nowhere, therefore is one more constrained to follow the counsel of the Shaykh Sidi 'Ali al-Jamal: 'Relax the mind and learn to swim.' Qur'an says: Allah has appointed the Ka'ba, the Pure House, as a standard for mankind, and the pure month, the offering, and the necklaces that you may know that Allah knows all that is in the heavens and in the earth, and that Allah has knowledge of everything. Know Allah is terrible in retribution, and Allah is All-Forgiving, AllCompassionate. (Qur'an 5.97-98) And when we settled for Ibrahim the place of the House: 'You shall not associate with Me anything. And so purify My house for those that shall go about it, and those that stand, for those that bow and prostrate themselves: and proclaim among men the Hajj, and they shall come to you on foot, and upon every lean beast, they shall come from every deep ravine that they may see things from which they will profit, and mention Allah's Name on days well-known over such beasts of the flocks as He has provided them so eat from them, and feed the bereft.' (Qur'an 22.26-28) And take provision: but the best provision is awe-of-Reality, so fear you Me, men possessed of minds. (Qur'an 2.197) As with the basic practice of salat, we find there is one aspect of the rites which is purification or separation and another aspect which is an act of Tawhid and joining. Just as wudu and ghusl prepare the way for the act of prostration, and just as salat has a base of minimal obligatory daily practice which then expands through the nawafil, or extra

acts of prostration, until a climax is reached in Ramadan with the act of tarawih, which literally means 'to become spirit', or to spiritualise yourself and that act intensifies in the climax of the through-the-night recitation of the whole of Qur'an on the Night of Power so the Hajj takes the hajji through a series of practices that intensify, exhaust and shatter him or her outwardly as they also inwardly illuminate. For these trying and difficult acts, the separation needed is more acute than for the simple act of prostration. The hajjis must bathe and then don the ihram robes at the beginning of the rites, and from that moment on they fall under the obligations of the Hajj. These are: not to cut the nails, or remove a single hair from the head or body: not to kill or even dislodge any living creature that comes onto the body: not to have sexual intercourse: not to dispute or lose one's temper: not to trade: not to hunt while within the purified zone of the Hajj: to perform all the rites of Hajj within the time limits specified for each act. What the shahadah or Affirmation of Islam is for the moment: what salat is for the day: what Ramadan and Zakat are for the year: Hajj is for the lifetime. It is a summing up of all the acts of dhikr which the Muslim has been fulfilling all his or her life, and it is a ritualising of the act of living itself. It is movement and struggle and exhaustion, dustcovered and weary the more the pilgrim is shattered, the more the heart becomes illuminated and filled with ecstasy. At the beginning of the rites people are fresh and elated and rather pleased with themselves for being hajjis, at the end as they stumble and drag themselves back to their starting point of Ka'ba, they are dazed, awed, sobered, and illuminated. The three great acts of the Hajj are the circling of the House of Ka'ba, the Running between Safa and Marwa, and the Standing on 'Arafat. The circling of the House may be done as much as the pilgrim desires, although certain tawaf, as they are called, are obligatory. Qur'an designates the House as the first place of worship used by the human race. On the earth there is no more purified spot, no more illuminated building. 'The Ka'ba,' said the Messenger, blessings and peace be upon him, 'is one of the jewels of the Garden.' It is the mithal of the 'Arsh, the starless Heaven which encompasses the Universe of the galaxies. Just as the Angels of Light encircle the Throne, so do the pilgrims encircle the Ka'ba. To circle the Ka'ba is, in the phrase of the Greatest Master, 'to be at the heart of the existence of the world.' One tawaf is completed by doing seven circlings of the House it is followed by the performance of the two rak'as at the Station of Ibrahim which is set near the Ka'ba at the Black Stone Corner. The other important act performed at Makka is the Sa'ee, the going between the two rocks of Safa and Marwa. This is a re-enactment of Hagar's desperate search for water for her son Ishmael, who later helped his father Ibrahim build the House to the One. It is said that she ran between these two rocks in vain looking for a watering place. When she gave up and sank to the ground, there burst out of it before her the well of Zam-zam. Drinking this water is also one of the practices of Hajj. It is one of the miracles of the Hajj that this small desert well rises every Hajj time and sinks again after the Hajj period is over, and during that time it gives water to over a million people each year, and all the more extraordinary since the Hajj time moves throughout the year with the movement of the lunar calendar. This rite is performed moving at a firm pace which increases in the

middle stretch of the distance to a formalised jogging run that in turn breaks down again to a swift walk. There is a 'stop' when you get to Marwa from Safa, and a stop when you get back to Safa from Marwa, and each time you hail the other hajjis with the call 'Allahu akbar', as if to remind them in their flight. When the hajji begins his Sa'ee, he joins an already moving bank of people between the two rocks, so that the stream of people between the two Way-marks is endless. As you fall into that sea of activity rushing from here to there and from there to here, and the ocean of faces washes past you, some seen again and again, others seen once and for all, the rhythmic running from a place to a place takes on the impulse of activity that has governed all one's life of forgetfulness. All the struggle and fretfulness of existence, all the coming and going, becomes condensed into these seven terrible flights from A to B and from B to A. Seven times is enough for the whole series in the life of one to be exposed to one's palpitating heart. It can be seen how simple and profound the rites of the Hajj are. There are the first two in outline: a circle and a straight line. It is also clear to the Hajji that the Sa'ee is about his existence and the Tawaf is about Allah's reality and the slave's non-existence. The Shaykh al-Akbar expresses it thus: The man whose vision is veiled draws a straight line. The man in Hayrah draws a circle. Here he describes the tawaf that opened him to the knowledge of his 'Makkan Revelations': When I reached Makka of the blessings and the source of dwellings spiritual and physical, I was constantly engaged in doing tawaf of His Ancient House. While I practised the tawaf I said: 'Subhan'Allah, Al-hamdulillah, Allahu akbar and La ilaha ila'llah.' Sometimes I kissed it and sometimes I touched it, and sometimes I did only what was required. When I was at the Black Stone I unexpectedly came upon an evanescent youth, a silent speaker, neither alive nor dead, composite-simple, enveloped-enveloping. When I saw him doing tawaf of the House with the tawaf of the living around the dead, I realised its reality and its metaphor, and I knew that the tawaf of the House is like the prayer on the funeral corpse. Suddenly he snatched me from myself and overpowered me. He spoke to me and said: 'Look at the secret of the House before it escapes and you will see what pride it derives from those who have been guided and do tawaf of its stones.' As I watched them I saw it glowing as he said. Then he informed me of the degree of that youth and his freedom from where and when. Once I knew his degree and his stopping-place and saw his place in existence and his state, I kissed his right hand and wiped the sweat of inspiration from his brow and said to him: 'Look at one who wishes to live in your company and desires to be close to you.' So he indicated to me with gesture and riddle that he preferred not to speak to anyone except by sign So I fainted and he took hold of me when I recovered from swooning and my flesh was still trembling from fear, he knew that the knowledge had arrived so I said to

him: 'Tell me about some of your secrets so that I may be among your scribes,' and he said: 'Look at the articulations of my nature and in the organisation of my form, and you will find what you asked about engraved on me. For I am not one who speaks nor is addressed. My knowledge extends only to myself, and my essence is not other than my names. I am the knowledge and the known and the knower. I am Wisdom, the work of Wisdom, and the Wise.' Then he said to me: 'Do tawaf around my footsteps and contemplate me with the light of my moon in such a way as to find from my nature what you will write about in your book ' Had it not been that He did not bid farewell to what my reality necessitated and that my Path had reached Him, I would not have found obtainment of His spring, nor inclination to His knowledge. For that reason I returned to the end, and for this reason, He returns. So put the compass at the opening of the circle with the union of the end of its existence to the dot of beginning, and so connect the last matter to the first. Its after-endless-time is attached to its before-endless-time. So there is nothing but continuous existence and established going-on witnessing The goal is not obtained except by going on the Path Then He said to me: 'This is My House here which signifies the Essence, and the courses of the tawaf are in the degree of the seven Attributes, the Attributes of Perfection, not the Attributes of Majesty, because they are the Attributes of union to you and interaction. So there are seven courses for seven Attributes, and the Ancient House indicates the Essence. Look at the angel with you doing tawaf, and who is standing at your side This Ka'ba of Mine is the heart of existence, and My Throne is the defined body of this heart, and neither of them is wide enough for Me. Do not say about Me what you say about them. My House which does contain Me is your indicated heart, lodged in your witnessed body. The circlers of your heart are the secrets. They have the degree of your bodies in their tawaf of these stones... I am the Great, the Self-Exalted! Limit does not limit Me, and neither the master nor the slave know Me. Divinity is purified, so it is transcendent beyond comprehension, and so it may be ranked with nothing. You are the I! I am the I! So do not seek Me in yourself for you will only gain weariness! So do not seek Me outside of yourself, or you will end Me! Do not leave off My Quest, or else you will be untouched. Seek Me until you Meet Me, and you will be exalted! But have courtesy in the quest. Distinguish between Me and you, for you do not see Me, but you only see your own nature, so remain in the quality of communication. Be a slave! Say it is impossible to perceive beyond the obtainment of perception. In that you will be freed, and you will be ennobled, and true.' So I entered the House of the Hijr with the Angel and he put his hand on my chest and said: I am of the seventh degree of capacity to embrace the secrets of being and the secrets of existence, of particular essences and place. The Truth created me as a piece of the Light of Hawwa (Eve) in her pure state He revealed through myself a rider of high station on a three-legged mount. He bent his head towards me and lights and darknesses expanded and he inspired in my heart all beings, and he rent

my earth and my sky, and informed me of all my names. So I knew myself and other-than-me distinguished between my good and my evil, and differentiated between my Creator and my realities. Then the Angel went from me, saying: 'You know now that you are the presence of the Angel, so prepare for revelation and the arrival of the Messenger.' We have arrived at the final phase of the matter. We have examined the existence of the Universe as a Divine self-manifestation, a series of endless tajalliyat, filled with manifest and hidden wonder and majesty, all of it beauty. There remains one more dimension to our picture if it is to be complete. So far we have examined the creation-picture in terms of structure as if it were static, but now we must reconnect this creation-patterning to what we had discovered about the vibrant and dynamic nature of existence in its shimmering and moving activity. We are at the door of the secret of creation, the breath of life the breath of the Merciful.

The Science of the Moment

The Companion, Abu Huraira, may Allah have mercy upon him, said: 'I carried two bags from the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace I have unfolded one of them to you had I unfolded the other, this throat would have been severed from me.' Before we examine the dynamic nature of the Universe, let us look at the description of the coming into existence of the myriad forms that is used in the Wisdom-teaching from the Messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him. What we will have to grasp in this picture is the relation between the realities and the forms as we have already indicated, the former is dependent on the latter, but the latter implies the former. To talk of one preceding the other is valid in description and in the realm of meaning and clarification, but not otherwise. Up until recently, all the revealed teachings, that is, all the earlier 'Islams', which, although decayed and without centre, still held to a vision of how the Universe came into being, were dismissed as 'pre-scientific' as if we now had a 'factual' picture of how-it-is. While the best scientists have never suggested or accepted this mythology by which they have 'explained' existence, the mass-education view, and that of many of the true scientists' less intelligent followers, has been to look on existence as a thing explained. Our own time has seen a complete collapse of the evolutionary theory and in its collapse, even before the rubble has been cleared, we recognise just how much personal projection was going on under the guise of an illusory objectivity. Men were describing existence as how they thought it should be rather than as it was. That they had observed an undoubted hierarchical fanning out of structural forms so bedazzled them they insisted on its taking place in a step-by-step process of minute change over millennia. That life-forms were not processed in the same way as the early horse and cart, giving way to faster and more efficient kinds of transport through steam to electric monorail system, was outside their own personal and parochial view of reality at the end of the 19th Christian century.

It had always been to those pseudo-scientists, and more so to the people they 'educated' in the rather forbidding and authoritarian edifices they built to honour their own knowledge, a matter of some scorn that these 'mythological' descriptions of how things came into being began with the creation of the human being and then everything fell into place around it. They smiled at worlds on elephants which stood on tortoises, and they shrugged away as primitive a world of Angels and Celestial Pens and Preserved Tablets. They were so clever they 'knew' that there was no large cosmic pen in the sky and that the air was not populated with lots of feathered creatures with wings looking like the imaginings of the simple-minded Giotto. Of course, the people of the Path never imagined this either and would have been enormously amused that these gentlemen should spend such a lot of time disputing a picture that they had never held. Yet precisely the kind of inner seeing that this language of Angels and Pens demands was to be the kind of understanding that the serious scientists were more and more being called upon to make in the formulation of their models and theories. The knowledge they gained forced them to a language of paradox and bewilderment that prompted one modern physicist to find parallels to their new thinking in the Zen Masters' use of the 'ungraspable' koan, or riddle. The Shaykh al-Akbar has indicated in his writings that enigma and riddle are essential when talking about the reality of things coming into being. The important matching we will find in this description is between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the Universe. The inter-connectedness of man's place in the Universe to the basic structure of forms and events which make up our world, this is the pivot of our doctrine of wahdat al-wujud, oneness of existence. In a Hadith-Qudsi, Allah-ta-ala addressed the Messenger saying: 'Oh Muhammad, were it not for you, I would not have created the heaven nor the earth, nor the Garden nor the Fire.' In the beautiful phrase of the Shaykh al-Akbar, 'In the Universe, it is man that is intended.' We have already said that the first created thing was the Light of Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him. This is the meaning of the Messenger saying: 'I was a Prophet while Adam was between water and clay.' It must be remembered that the perspective of the Wisdom-teaching sees him, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him, as being the Seal of the Messengers, and therefore the perfection and totality of what man is, for while he is the First Manifestation from the Lights of the Essence, he is also the last to manifest his perfection among the prophets. So he has firstness and lastness. He is the perfect image of image, and the meaning of form. Now another name for this Light that we call the Nuri-Muhammad is the Universal Self, and another is the Pen. The Pen is a mithal for the dynamic of the creative process. The first existent thing in emanation was the Preserved Tablet of Forms. Thus the Pen 'wrote' on the Tablet all the forms and form/events of all creation from the beginning to the end, these two things, beginningness and endness, only coming into being with the manifestation of form which implies space and therefore in our understanding, also time. The mithal of the Pen's writing on the Tablet is that of semen activating in the womb. From this come the six genera, six being the perfect number, as we saw in the science of

the letters. This is the meaning of the creation-process taking six 'days'. The six genera are Angels: Jinn: Inanimates: Plants: Animals and the setting and ordering of the Kingdom: Man, the Khalif of the Reality. When the world is manifest, Allah is hidden. And so man is put on earth as His Khalif, the one who stands in, during the absence of the King. Man himself, by this meaning, is a barzakh. Allah created the seven heavens and the seven earths. Then in the manifest he gave each heaven a planet, 'each swimming in its sphere.' (36.40). With the manifestation of the spheres, and that means matter, time comes into being. So time is designated by the first sphere, and also by the movement from the first sphere to the second, for time is itself the movement of the space, or vice-versa. With this creation of the spheres came the manifestation of the four matrices air, earth, fire and water. In our system the sun's movement gave us 'night' and 'day'. The night is a father and the day is a mother each father connects to a planet and each mother connects to an element, as the elements connect to the planets in influence and identity. The movements of the spheres and the swimming of the Lights accord with the swirling movements of the waters in the womb. The four matrices of air, earth, fire and water, correspond to the four wives a man is permitted in the Shari'a thus a balanced and fully developed man would be held in perfect harmony by his purification through these unions. Time, starting with the first sphere, begins with the whole creation-process and so time in its movement is the emergence of the Light of Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Of time he said: 'Time revolves like its form on the day that Allah created it.' With this Light comes the Balance. AL-MIZAN. Its meaning is the justice and harmony of all creation and, therefore, of time/space and therefore of us and events. It is the meaning of the Garden and the Fire, of the balance between the matrices. It is what was called in the ancient Tao-form of Islam in China, yin/yang. It is the secret of the contrary Names. It is what we are born and die on, and which turns our acts and intentions into realities to be weighed on the Day of the Balance. The Messenger's nature, being the embodiment of the creation principle, is hot/wet, for that is from the power of the other world. Thus knowledge is greater in Islam in its final form than in its previous forms which were under the dominance of cold/dry. That is why this community comes last and translates all the knowledges of previous communities. This is the meaning of the laughter of the Buddhist Masters, for they have dry/cold but do not have hot/wet which would give them the wisdom of tears. The Messenger's du'a was, 'Oh Lord, reward me with a weeping eye,' and his warning was, 'If you knew what I knew, you would laugh little and weep much.' Weeping is the outward sign of freedom from fear, and the indication of inward balance and complete serenity. Man himself stands at the heart of this cosmic activity by virtue of his being both gatheredness of all the forms, a summing up of the creational process, and the highest complexification of the life-energy. He is the perfection of the Balance in his form when it is perfect, that is, in the Messengers and Prophets, of whom as we noted there have been 124,000 since the beginning of creation. He is in his complete form the pivot of existence. There remains on the Earth always the embodiment of the NuriMuhammadiyya the first of the awliya, and while prophecy is closed and finished with

the Last Messenger, he nevertheless is the embodiment and the transmitter of the Light of the Messenger. For the whole Wisdom-process is nothing but this transmission. This Light is poured out in a descending cascade through a series of perfected ones and they are to the organism of the Earth as the breath-system is to the purification of the blood in the body. The disappearance of these living men, these awakened men, would mean the death of the planet. And what man is to the Earth, the Earth is to the Galaxy and size has nothing to do with these matters. From among the Salihin of the submitted-ones, there are 300 elect in perfection of humility, poverty, love and awe the Nuqaba, or chieftains. From these there are 40 Masters, men who have achieved the goal and are most complete in knowledges and Stations the Nujaba, or nobles. From these there are the Highest and most unified degree of the human species: the 7 Abdal, or substitutes. This word has various implications, but one of them is the essential spiritual capacity of these men to manifest both in their actual place and elsewhere at the same time by recreating 'a substitute' manifestation, which is not in any manner ghostly, but simply a being in two places at the same time. The Messenger, who embodied and surpassed all the stages of the awliya, by that token 'contained' all the stages of the Way in himself. He manifested this capacity on the night of the Miraj, when he was both in his bed in Madinah, and at the Rock in Jerusalem. The Shaykh al-Kamil says of them in his Diwan: The path of the Abdal, dedicated to Allah, is: hunger, sleeplessness, silence, isolation and dhikr. From the Abdal come the 4 Awtad or pillars, and from them are the 2 Imams, and one of these is the Qutb, the pivot of existence, the stillness at the heart of the vast cosmic activity. In the science of states we saw how everything in the earth is moving from state to state. In the words of the Shaykh al-Akbar: So the world of time moves in everything, and the world of breath moves in every breath, and the world of tajalli moves in every tajalli. The reason for that is His word: 'Every day He is upon some activity.' (Qur'an 55.29). All this restless cosmic activity we experience as the interaction of solid forms, existence to us is viscous, opaque, and we imagine 'real' because solid. The forms are 'kathif', thick, dense, while Allah, may He be exalted, describes Himself as Latif, subtle, gracious, sparse, delicate. As we understand it, the Latif is in all things, so that while we specify 'dog' and 'cat' and 'stone' and so on, we are aware that the essences of the existent things are in reality one essence. While this is not that in regard to form, we claim that this is the same as that in regard to substance. Now we must see that in a unitary picture this insideness and outsideness of things is no longer tenable. It must mean that the substance itself is nothing other than the Absolute Reality. We are now also in a position to say that the substance is not kathif but on the contrary is sparse, subtle, and latif itself.

Have we then, despite ourselves, arrived at the pantheism the Masters of the Way so categorically deny? It is at this point that we must examine the last doctrine that completes the creation view of the Sufis. It is called AN-NAFAS AR-RAHMANIY, the Breath of the Merciful. There is a Hadith Qudsi, where Allah-ta-'ala declared: 'I was a hidden treasure, and I longed to be known. So I created the Universe in order to be known.' In the Qur'an the Name of the Lord of the Universe is Allah, and equated with it is the Name the Merciful. This connects the Mercy explicitly with the Essence. This Hadith Qudsi indicates the movement that comes from the overflowing Mercy of the Divinity in its utterly Hidden Perfection out into the creation of manifest energies. This overflowing of Light from the Essence, which is the movement of Mercy, is likened to a held breath which then bursts out and flows over everything. It is as if the held breath were the Names in the Divine Ranks before manifestation, and the breathing-out were the coming into existence of the multiple forms: His Command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it, 'Be! it is.' (Qur'an 36.84) Note that this is not some magical fiat from some exterior Being. We have established that He cannot be associated with the universe of forms, and that at the same time He governs the world from the inside of the world, through the source-forms. He says 'Be' to it. It is there in the realm of source-form. It brings itself into being and actuality according to the potentiality of the locus and the source-form unity. We then say that the 'breathing out' of the Command is the coming into phenomenal reality of the thing, from the Hidden to the Manifest. It follows that the breath itself is a substance. Nature precedes what comes from her, but Nature is no other than the Breath of the Merciful. So, as the breath spreads through all the forms both physical and luminous, its life-giving, form-giving activity takes place. So everything in Nature is of the Breath, and this includes not only the physical, but the Angelic, for the creational reality is dependent on the four matrices for existence. So knowledge of the world is knowledge of this Divine Breath. The coming into existence of the Universe from non-existence into existence is an action, through the Divine Command there is a movement from repose into the activity of creation. This movement, this outflowing we call love. This is the longing referred to by Allah-ta-'ala in the Hadith Qudsi which describes the Creation. Since the movement is love itself, the world also loves to regard itself in existence, for its very existence is a love activity. Now just to make more vivid in our minds what this activity is and also to establish the truth of what is being described, let us look at how the nuclear physicists themselves regard the process of existence within the disciplines and limits of their science. Again, this is not to 'prove' anything Wisdom-teaching has no proofs but experience but simply to clarify what is being said by the vividness of the physicists' grasp of the baffling nature of the creational process. Here is a description of the constant movement of matter by high-energy physicist, Fritjof Capra:

The 'restlessness' of matter implied by the uncertainty principle is a fundamental feature of the atomic and subatomic world. In this world, matter is never completely quiescent, but always in a state of motion. The molecules in solids move and vibrate due to their thermal energy. The nuclei of the atoms inside the molecular structure vibrate because they are confined to this structure. The electrons in the atomic shells are bound to a region of similar size, but being much lighter than the nuclei they move much faster and we have seen that they achieve, in fact, enormous velocities. And finally, as we shall see, the protons and neutrons inside the nucleus are confined to an extremely small volume by the strong nuclear forces and consequently they race about with fantastic velocities. We see that modern physics pictures matter not at all as inert, but as being in a continuous dancing and vibrating motion whose rhythmic patterns are determined by the molecular, atomic and nuclear structure. Addressing the I.C.A. in London the same physicist said: At the beginning of our century, the experimental investigation of atoms gave sensational and totally unexpected results. Far from being the hard and solid particles they were believed to be since antiquity, the atoms turned out to consist of vast regions of empty space in which extremely small particles the electrons moved around the nucleus. With quantum mechanics the theoretical foundation of atomic physics as worked out in the 1920's, it became clear that even the subatomic particles, i.e. the electrons and the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, were nothing like the solid objects of classical physics. The sub-atomic units of matter are very abstract entities. Depending on how we look at them, they appear sometimes as particles, sometimes as waves. This dual aspect of matter was extremely puzzling and gave rise to most of the koanlike paradoxes which led to the formulation of quantum mechanics. The picture of a wave which is always spread out in space is fundamentally different from the particle picture which implies a sharp location. The apparent contradiction between these two pictures was solved in a completely unexpected way which gave a blow to the very foundation of the mechanistic world-view, to the concept of the reality of matter. At the sub-atomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather shows 'tendencies to exist'. These tendencies are expressed, in quantum mechanics, as probabilities, and the corresponding mathematical quantities take the form of waves. This is why particles can be waves at the same time. They are not 'real' three-dimensional waves like sound or water waves. They are 'probability waves', abstract mathematical quantities with all the characteristic properties of waves which are related to the probabilities of finding the particles at particular points in space and at particular times. At the sub-atomic level, then, the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve into wave-like patterns of probabilities. But this again seems paradoxical. How can the physical world consist of mere probabilities? Well, it turns out that the patterns,

ultimately, do not represent probabilities of things, but rather, probabilities of correlations. A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the sub-atomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as correlations between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. This implies, however, that the Cartesian division between the I and the world, between the observer and the observed, cannot be made while dealing with atomic matter. In atomic physics we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves, or as Heisenberg has put it 'Natural Science does not simply describe and explain nature, it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.' Quantum mechanics thus reveals a basic oneness of the Universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated basic building blocks, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole, and these relations always include the observer in an essential way. Fritjof Capra goes on to expound the Relativity Theory of Einstein relating it to the picture he had given of Quantum Mechanics: Relativity theory, so to speak, has made these patterns come alive by revealing their intrinsically dynamic character. In a 'relativistic' description of the sub-nuclear world, i.e. in a description which takes relativity theory into account, space and time are fused in a four-dimensional continuum, and this means that we have to visualise the particles as four-dimensional entities in space/time. Their forms are thus forms in space and time. The particles are dynamic patterns which have a space aspect and a time aspect. Their space aspect makes them appear as objects with a certain mass, their time aspect makes them appear as processes involving a certain energy, and the two are related by Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. Relativity theory thus gives the constituents of matter an intrinsic dynamic aspect. It shows that the activity of matter is the very essence of its being. The objects of the sub-nuclear world are not only active by moving around very fast, they themselves are processes. The being of matter and its activity cannot be separated. They are but different aspects of the sub-nuclear space-time reality. Before continuing this beautifully lucid description of existence, let us return to our sufic perspective of the Breaths of the Merciful. In one chapter of the Shaykh al-Akbar's 'Seals of Wisdom', he makes a long analysis of a passage in Qur'an that recounts the meeting of the Prophet Sulayman, peace be upon him, and the Queen Bilqis, or Sheba. It is presented as the meeting between a woman who was a great heirophant of knowledge coming to her goal in encountering the Prophet who could complete her knowledge by opening to her the secret of Unitary teaching. The Prophet had sent a letter to Bilqis saying: 'In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, rise not up against me, but come to me in surrender.' (27.30-31). Her

followers suggested to her that they should fight, but she declared, 'Kings, when they enter a city, lay waste to it.' (27.34). To the People this means in one of its meanings, the annihilation of the nafs on the arrival of the King of Creation, but Allah knows best. The Prophet, on hearing that the Queen was coming to visit him, asked that her throne be brought to him so that on her arrival he could show it to her and thus demonstrate the superior nature of his knowledge. An Ifrit of the jinn said: 'I will bring it to you before you rise from your place: I have strength for it and I am to be trusted.' Said he who possessed knowledge of the Book, 'I will bring it to you, before even your glance returns to you.' ... He said: 'Disguise her throne for her, and we shall behold whether she is guided or if she is of those who are not guided.' So when she came it was said: 'Is your throne like this?' She said: 'It seems the same.' And we were given the knowledge before her, and we were in surrender, but what she served apart from Allah barred her, for she was of a people who covered-up. It was said to her: 'Enter the pavilion.' But when she saw it, she supposed it was a spreading water, and she bared her legs. He said: 'It is a pavilion smoothed of crystal.' She said: 'My Lord, indeed I have wronged myself, and I surrender with Sulayman to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.' (Qur'an 27.39-44) Commenting on the superiority of the sage over the jinn, the Master says: This superiority is by the degree of time. For the return of the glance to the looker is quicker than rising from one's place because the movement of the eye in perceiving what it perceives is quicker than the movement of the body when it moves. So the time in which the eye moves is the same time which connects it to the object in spite of the distance between the viewer and the object. So the time of the opening of the eyes is the time of its connection to the heaven of the fixed stars. The time of the return of its glance is the same as the absence of its perception. Rising from one's place is not like that. It does not have this speed. So Asaf ibn Barkhiya was more perfect in act than the jinn. The source-form of the word that Asaf ibn Barkhiya spoke was the source-form of the action at one and the same time. So Sulayman, peace be upon him, saw at the same time the throne of Bilqis 'settled before him' so that one must not imagine that he perceived it while it was in its place without moving. With us, displacement does not exist by the unity of time, but it is a going into non-existence and return to existence, inasmuch as the only one conscious of that is the one who has gnosis of it. It is His word, may He be exalted, 'But they are in uncertainty as to the new creation.' (50.15). Not a moment passes them but that they see what they saw. Since it is as we have mentioned, the time of its nonexistence, i.e. the absence of the throne from its place, is the same as its existence with Sulayman from the renewal of creation by breaths. No-one knows this power, rather, man is not aware of it from himself, that it is in each breath. It was not, then

it was. Do not say that and imply a delay, for that is not true. This demands a real knowledge of Arabic, for example, the poet says: 'He brandished the Rudaini spear and it shook.' The time of brandishing of the spear is undoubtedly the same as the time of the shaking of the thing brandished. There is no gap. It is the same with the renewal of the creation with breaths. The time of the non-existence is the same as the time of the existence of the mithal. So the question of the moving of the throne of Bilqis is one of the most difficult of problems except for the one who has gnosis of what we have mentioned. So Asaf did not have any merit in the matter except for the transposition of the renewal of the assembly of Sulayman, peace be upon him. So the throne was not moved from a place to a place, nor did it rise above the earth, nor break the laws of space, for the one who understands what we have mentioned ... When Bilqis saw her throne, and she knew the distance and the impossibility of moving it in that space of time, she said: 'It seems the same,' and she spoke truly through what we have mentioned of the renewal of creation by amthal [pl. of mithal]. It is it. It was true, just as you are the same at the time of your renewal as you were in 'past time'. The Master notes that in her surrender to how-it-is, she surrendered to the Lord of the Universe, placing herself along with Sulayman, peace be upon him, as part of the creation. So their Islam was the same: This is how we are on the Straight Path which the Lord, may He be exalted, is on, for our forelocks are in His hand, and it is impossible for us to separate from Him. So we are with Him implicitly and He is with us by open declaration. He said, may He be exalted, 'He is with you wherever you are,' (57.4), and we are with Him as He takes us by our forelocks. So He, may He be exalted, is with Himself wherever He goes with us on the Path. So everyone in the world is on a Straight Path, and it is the Path of the Lord, may He be praised and exalted. It is this that Bilqis learned from Sulayman, so she said: 'To Allah, the Lord of the Worlds,' without referring to a particular world. This teaching of the Breaths opens to us the dynamic nature of existence. The creation is constantly in renewal AL-KHALQ AL-JADID the ever-new-creation. This overwhelming vision of creation as endlessly being destroyed and endlessly being renewed, as never existing and never ceasing, is the vision of the seekers before they in turn experience their own annihilation. The Shaykh says: This fire is the fire of love for the Light of the splendour of His Face, which consumes all the determined forms and individual essences in the very midst of the ocean of knowledge of Allah and true life. And this true life is of such a nature that everything comes to life with it and yet is destroyed by it at the same time. There can be no greater bewilderment than the hayrah caused by the sight of drowning and burning with life and knowledge, and simultaneous self-annihilation and selfcontinuance.

Let us return to the description of the physicist. He had outlined the new classical theory of how-it-is. He continued with a new model of particular interest to us for the features which we will immediately recognise. This is not offered as a proof, but as a clarification. The model about to be described is known as the Hedron bootstrap model. The basis of the bootstrap model is the idea that nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, like fundamental building blocks of matter, but has to be understood entirely through self-consistency. All of physics has to follow uniquely from the requirement that its components be consistent with one another and with themselves. This idea constitutes a radical departure from the traditional spirit of basic research in physics which had always been bent on finding the fundamental constituents of matter. At the same time it is the culmination of the quantum mechanical conception of particles as an interconnected web of relations. But the bootstrap philosophy goes even further. It abandons not only the idea of fundamental building blocks of matter, but accepts no fundamental entities whatsoever no fundamental laws, equation, or principles. The only requirement is that everything has to be selfconsistent The idea of the bootstrap model is that everything in the Universe is connected to everything else and no part of it is fundamental. The properties of any part are determined, not by some fundamental law, but by the properties of all the other parts. Therefore, in order to really understand any phenomenon we have to understand all the others. This is obviously impossible, and here physics and Eastern philosophy take different attitudes. The teaching of the Way is simple. It is enough that a man understand himself to have understanding of all. He cannot have discreet knowledge of all the forms in the space/time continuum since the 'beginning' to the 'end' as we already had noted, which is what Dr. Capra is saying. What is intriguing is that it is here being suggested that there are no discreet parts to know. However since what follows remains the context of the model, there can be no argument between us, for our concern is our own, and his is that of the model. We nevertheless recall that the Shaykh al-Akbar had said that if you make a model in the Universe you can in the end only make a model of yourself. To continue: What then is the picture of particles in the bootstrap model? Well, it can be summed up in the provocative phrase: every particle consists of all other particles. Like all other scientific models, the bootstrap model can only be approximate, and its main approximation consists of the fact that it describes only certain kinds of particles, the so-called 'hedrons' or 'strongly interacting particles'. These are particles like the proton and the neutron which interact through strong nuclear force. In the bootstrap model, then, all hedrons are composite structures whose components are again hedrons. The essential feature of the model is the picture of the binding forces holding these structures together. The forces between the constituent particles are pictured as the exchange of other particles. This is a general feature of sub-nuclear

physics: the forces between particles i.e. their mutual attraction or repulsion manifest themselves as the exchange of other particles. This concept is extremely hard to visualise. It is a consequence of the four-dimensional space/time character of the sub-nuclear world and neither our intuition nor our language can deal with this image very well, but it is crucial to the picture of the particles in the bootstrap model. The constituents which make up, for example, a proton, are particles, but the forces which hold them together are also particles, and therefore the distinction between the constituent particles and the particles representing the binding forces becomes blurred. The whole notion of an object consisting of constituent parts breaks down. Each hedron therefore plays three roles: it is a composite structure, it may be a constituent of another hedron, and it may be exchanged between constituents and thus constitute part of the forces holding the structure together. Each particle thus helps to generate other particles which in turn generate it. The whole set of hedrons generates itself this way, or 'pulls itself up by its own bootstraps', which is the origin of the model's name. You will realise that this concept of every particle containing all other particles is extremely hard to visualise. This is because it is a relativistic concept. The hedrons are dynamic space/time patterns which do not contain one another, but rather 'involve' one another in a certain way which can be given a precise mathematical meaning, but cannot easily be expressed in words. The bootstrap model is a relativistic model of the inter-connected web of relations which I have mentioned before in connection with quantum mechanics. At one point in 'The Makkan Revelations' the Shaykh refers to one of the Qutbs of the world in ancient times, and of his knowledge of how things come into being. His name was the Qutb Mudawi'l-Kulum and he said about matter: The universe exists on what is between the circumference and the dot, on ranks, and the smallness and greatness of their spheres. The one nearer to the circumference is wider than the one which is inside it, and so its day is larger, its place wider, and its tongue more eloquent. All things look at the point of their essences: and the point, despite its smallness, looks at every section of the circumference by its essence. So the epitome is the circumference, and its epitome is the point, and the opposite, so look! In 'The Seals of Wisdom' the Master is even more explicit. He says: Every particle of the world is from the whole of the world. That is every single particle is capable of receiving into itself all the realities of all the single particles of the world. The Qutb Mudawi'l-Kulum also said:

Man is the sum of all the 'flakes' of the world. And from man to everything in the world is a flake extending from that flake. There is nothing in the universe but that it has an effect in man, and man has an effect in it. And these flakes are light-raysof-light. The focal point of this universal reality which is nothing else than an endless fulgurating display of light upon light is man, not just the species man, but man at his apogee, the Perfect Man, himself Light and knowing himself to be Light, Al-Insanu'l-Kamil. The word for man has a root NAS, meaning: 'to be shaken to and fro', 'to hang suspended': INSAN has a parallel meaning which is: 'the pupil of the eye'. Man himself is a vibrating whirling activity of energy in endless movement he hangs suspended in the cosmos on his small planet, and in the Unseen he hangs suspended between the tremendous efflorations of form that make up the Fire and the Garden. At the same time he is the eye of the universe with which his Creator contemplates His creation. He is a gatheringtogether of all the forms, a resum of the whole creational process from the basic matrices up through the elements and plants to the highest complexification of aspects. And so he is also a small universe, just as the universe from what the Qutb said above, is nothing else but Al-Insanu'l-Kabir, the Big Man. We are of course speaking here in the language of the Sufis and not in the language of ignorance and literalism. This does not lessen the veracity of the assigning to the cosmos the name of the Big Man, it is simply that literalist thinking is too primitive a method of reflection to grasp these matters. The Perfect Man is utterly aware and awake, permeated by all the Names and all the perfections of the Divine Attributes. The Shaykh al-Akbar said that the Prophet Ibrahim, peace be upon him, is called alKhalil, meaning the dear friend, because the word derives from a root meaning 'permeated', and so the Divinity permeates the existence of the form of Ibrahim since this is what He does with all His creation, it must mean that the special rank is due to that penetration utterly absorbing his consciousness as well. It is his awareness, knowledge, and direct taste of permeation which marks him out as al-Khalil. So he is man, both in-time and before-endless-time, a perpetual and after-endlesstime organism. He is the word which discriminates and unites. The universe was completed through his existence. He is to the universe what the face of the seal is to the seal itself, for that is the place of the seal and thus the signature which the King seals on his treasures. He named him the Khalifa because of this, since he guards His creation as one guards treasures with the seal. As long as the seal of the King is on them, no one dares to open them without His permission. So He made him a Khalifa in safeguarding the universe, and it continues to be guarded as long as this Perfect Man is in it. Do you not see then, that when he disappears and is removed from the treasury of this world, nothing of what Allah stored in it will remain? What was in it will go out and each part will return to its own part, and everything will be transferred to the next world. Then he will be the seal on the treasury of the next world for endless-time and after-endless-time.

To achieve this perfection is the meaning and goal of our journey fisabilillah on the Way of Allah. 'The Way' is from the cluster SBL and it has no verbal root, but it indicates 'the road': 'a way': 'a traveller': 'the Way of Allah': 'a necessity': but its real meaning is 'rain'. There is no more perfect mithal than this of true submission and what it brings. The goal we have said again and again is the annihilation of this illusory particularity that limits and encases one in the shell of the nafs. The opening of awareness expands the nafs until it recognises that it is indeed the whole Universe, then beyond that is the shattering, destroying power of the Divine Majesty revealing that all this splendour that is creation is of itself nothing, and there is annihilation, the seeker is uncreated. He is undone. He was a knot and the knot is untied, only the string remains, One, Timeless. The three stages of awakening to the Unity and being snuffed out are described in the 'Fanafillah' of the Diwan of the Shaykh al-Kamil: Constantly cut through your illusion with a pure Tawhid to Allah. So the oneness of action appears at the beginning of dhikr of Allah. And the oneness of Attributes comes from love of Allah. And the oneness of His Essence gives going-on with Allah. He describes the Unitary experience in his 'Minor Song': My beloved gave me a drink of the purity of love, and so I became the Beloved in every way. He made me blind to myself so that I saw only Him, and He destroyed my secret in the manifestations of the Presence. I shattered what was structured in me and joined what was separate: by the isolation of Unity I realised my Tawhid. I attained my desires directly to see His perfection and to experience His reality in every meaning and form. I tore down the illusion of my self's existence, which is the greatest screen, and then I found Him, timeless, in every atom.

I made the Road my Wisdom-Guide as I approached His Attributes, and my Lord revealed to me the secret of my wisdom. So sometimes I see creatures as the manifestation of Ahmad, and sometimes I see them as direct manifestations of Divine Power. Sometimes my act of existing is obliterated by the sight of His Active Existence, and sometimes I see the Attributes appearing from Him, And sometimes I withdraw from this metaphorical existence (the world) into the Unity of a Truth unconnected by shirk. To anyone who withdraws into the Lights of the dhikr of the Truth, creation is nothing but particles of dust in space. Sufism is not focussed on the goal of annihilation, for that is a gift from the Lord to the slave. What is longed for is something even more ravishing, hidden where fana is revealed, lasting where fana is a lightning that strikes. If you like, it is beyond the goal, for properly speaking, it cannot be a goal but merely what its name implies, BAQA, a going-on. Before we examine this final condition of the seeker, let us look at the journey to the goal of fana in its mithal-form in the Hajj. We have already spoken about the rites of tawaf and sa'ee, but after these the pilgrim moves on to the act of Hajj itself, 'Arafat. The Messenger said, 'Hajj IS 'Arafat.' It is a rite that takes man back to his origin, for 'Arafat is the meeting point, the point of the reunion on earth of Adam and Hawwa, peace be upon them. It is the source-point of the human situation. And when the pilgrim arrives there what is the rite? 'Amr bin 'Abdallah bin Safwan quoted a maternal uncle of his called Yazid bin Shaiban who said: 'We were in a place of standing of ours at 'Arafat,' which 'Amr indicated was very far away from where the Imam was standing, when Ibn Mirba' al-Ansari came to us and told us he had brought this message for us from Allah's Messenger: "Stand where you are, performing your devotions, for you are conforming to an ancient practice of your father, Ibrahim."' This is transmitted by Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah. So the meaning of the Hajj and its reality lies in this 'moment', this time at the source of life itself, and what the pilgrim does is stop. Stand on 'Arafat it was for this that the

journey was undertaken. Alone on a wide desert plain surrounded by a throng of others, identical to yourself, bare-headed and draped in two white cloths many there will be buried in these same cloths you just come to a halt quite simply, exhausted, dazed, you stop. At that moment there is absolutely nowhere to go. You are there. With Allah. The journey is accomplished. After that everything is purification and supplication. You move down again to Makka performing a series of rites which culminate in the return to Ka'ba for the farewell tawaf and the farewell stopping, the two raka's at the Maqam Al-Ibrahim, the Station of Ibrahim. The three great rites of the Hajj are simply to describe a circle, a straight line, and finally, a point. The Station of Ibrahim, al-Khalil, is the Station of qurb, nearness: uns, intimacy. The goal. Shaykh al-Akbar describes the difficult journey of which Hajj is the mithal: The first degree is Islam, submission, and the last degree is fana, annihilation in the ascent, and baqa, continuation in the going-on. Between them is what remains. It is iman, ihsan, knowledge, pure oneness, tanzih, richness, poverty, humility, might, colouring, establishment in colouring, and fana if you are going-out, and baqa if you are going-on. Dhu'n-Nun al-Misri, may Allah be pleased with him, was asked, 'What is the end of the gnostic?' He replied: 'When he is as he was where he was before he was.' Abu 'Abdallah an-Nibaji said: Sufism is like the disease of cancer: in the first stages the patient raves, but when the disease takes hold of him, it makes him dumb. Describing this return from fana to baqa in 'The Robe of Nearness' (qurb) in his Diwan, Shaykh al-Kamil says: Invocation of the Beloved clothed us in beauty, radiance, exaltation and joy. In drawing near we threw off all restraint

and proclaimed the One we love to glorify. The Beloved gave us a draught of love to drink which forced all but the Beloved to vanish. We saw created beings as pure particles of dust: we saw the Lights openly appear. After having been obliterated and annihilated in a light-giving wine, we returned to the creation. By an overflowing from Allah we were given going-on and with patience we concealed the One we love. How often have we looked on a Wayfarer so that he has risen to the Stations of those who have plunged into the seas! We have healed the hearts of what had taken possession of them by sciences subtle in taste. We concerned ourselves with something secretly, and so it was, and the One we have chosen to love has come to us. We heard a secret from the Presence of the Unseen: 'With us you are beloved, so be thankful.' We have been given Idhn to quench the thirst of whoever comes to us longing for the encounter and not seeking for information. If gifts are plentiful, still, avoid them and be poor. Humble yourself to the People and they will give you the drink. Draw near to them and have no fear of disgrace. Strip yourself of every knowledge and understanding in

order that you may obtain what the Great have obtained. Offer up the nafs, oh lover of union, and follow the Shaykh in what he has advised. Witness the Truth in him, in essence and heart, annihilate yourself in him, and you will be victorious through him. He is the Light of the Messenger in every aspect, and he is the medicine of hearts, openly and in secret. So look to him and exalt him greatly. Go to him and be abject. Blessings be upon the Prophet and his Companions and whoever has directed people to follow him. And peace, fragrant with musk and every scent, and beauty and unrivalled sublimity. So fana, although it is itself neither light nor darkness, but the basis of these, having no opposite, in its tremendous annihilating power, releases a flood of lights and ecstasy. It is surrounded with miracles and bliss, and often when it occurs people are drawn to the recipient from the other side of the earth. It is so total in its impact that a man must be guarded and guided, and insulated in case the force of the experience, or let us say the cessation of experience, is too much for him, and he remain forever afterwards majdhub, drunk, mad-in-Allah. The science of our tariqa is however what our beloved Shaykh described in 'The Robe of Nearness' it is also the way of Shaykh Junayd, may Allah be merciful to them both. For where the fana gives light, affirmation and joy, the going-on is hidden, humble and obscure. The going-on returns a man to creation for the service of his Lord. He is the last man, not the first. He is the least of men and not the ruler. Our Shaykh, may Allah cover him in mercy, signed himself, 'the slave of the slaves', as we noted at the start of our journey, and the answer of our Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, when he was called, was: 'Labbayk!' 'At your service!' the call of the pilgrims on Hajj to their Creator. Going-on it is total and complete submission: it is in the words of the Shaykh AbuSu'ud: 'What is it except for the five salat and waiting for death?' It is outwardly to be dust and inwardly to be gold. It is as Imam Junayd put it: 'To possess nothing and to be possessed by nothing.' When you get to such a man there is nothing to see. They are the

Sadiqin, the Truthful Ones, for they know how-it-is. Qur'an commands: 'Be with the Truthful Ones.' (9.119). Asked how one would recognise them, the Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, replied: 'When you see them they remind you of Allah.' When you finally get to such a man, you have only arrived at your own self. You have come to a mirror, for he has been polished away all that remains is a clear surface in which you may recognise your own light beyond all the illusory darkness that so troubles you which so persistently seems to keep you from being at peace. You get to him, the slave of your own nafs, your desires, your fears, your past which you long to escape from, and your future to which you long to escape, and you find yourself facing a man who is both the slave of the instant 'Abd al-Waqt', and the worshipper of the instant 'Abid al-Waqt', for that is all there is, and it is Reality. 'Do not curse Time,' said the Messenger, blessings and peace of Allah be upon him, 'for it is Allah.' The Shaykh al-Akbar, the Reviver of the Din, and the illumination of our tariqa, said: Whoever knows that Allah is the same as the Path, knows the matter for what it is. Then He, may He be glorified and exalted, is travelling on it since there is no known except Him, and He is the source-form of the Wayfarer and the Traveller, so there is no knower except Him. He is you. So know your reality and your Tariqa. The matter has been made clear to you on the tongue of the interpreter if you but understand. It is the true tongue, so the only one who will understand is the one whose understanding is Allah. The End Allah, bless and give peace to Muhammad and his family according to the number of all created things.

Introduction to the Charts

The Charts which follow were prepared by me in 1975 while at Berkeley, California. They were laid out with the help of Hajj 'Abdalaziz Redpath and the distinguished translators Hajj 'Abdalhaqq Bewley and his wife A'isha. They are quite simply and somewhat crudely a graphic gloss of one chapter of the 'Futuhat al-Makkiya' of the Shaykh al-Akbar Muhyid-din ibn al-'Arabi. These chapters have always been interpreted by that lamentable group of orientalists who have had the arrogant illusion that they could colonise the Shaykh al-Akbar in the same way that their political counterparts had colonised the Islamic homelands. They have made the same mistakes as those half-crazed rabbis who fell upon these writings convinced that this was the esoteric heart of that Muslim power which was so potent that it extracted from them a slightly higher rate of taxation than the Zakat of the Muslims. They searched among the meanings of the letters, in vain, to escape what was for them life's greatest punishment to have money taken from them which was the opposite of their own philosophy. From this they invented the

Kabbala pretending it had ancient levitical roots. Primitive esotericism of a cabbalistic nature was never the intention of this, the greatest of the Sufi Masters. According to Ibn al-'Arabi there were two ways to apprehend the universe. He had said: 'To understand Allah is easy, to understand the universe is difficult.' He identified two basic ways in which modern human beings tried to make sense of the world. One was by mathematics and the other by language, it must be remembered, this was when mathematical evolution was in full spate and in the hands of the great Muslim intellectuals, many of whom were his contemporaries. From this it follows that there are two instruments of comprehension. One is numbers and the other is letters. He saw that while the equation or the calculation could have enormous complexity, it in the end was dependent on a simple mathematical mode. And so, in the same way, however complex the sentence, it was dependent on the phoneme. The Pythagoreans had stated that the numbers themselves had meaning. The end result of that extraordinary imaging was nothing less than to have created the foundation of the whole western polyphonic musical tradition. Under the Pythagoreans numbers became music. Shaykh al-Akbar declared in the same way that the sentence could not have meaning if the letter itself did not have meaning. The effect of this was to map out an extraordinary pattern of spiritual states and stations. Therefore we could say that the study of the letters as having meaning led to complex Sufism, which is the science of states and stations. That in itself would seem an overwhelming achievement yet the matter goes much further. As a fruit of his visions Ibn al-'Arabi had stated: 'If you make a model of the universe you will only arrive at making a model of yourself.' One could clarify this by a modern reference. One of today's most distinguished scientists and astrophysicists evolved a theory of the universe dependent on the concept of the Black Hole, the Black Hole being an astral zone of anti-matter which sucked up cosmic material into itself, thus making it non-existent. The author of this vision of the universe himself suffered from an incurable motor-neurone disease which involved the slow loss of peripheral power and function in the limbs which inexorably moved in towards the vital centres of life, rendering him speechless, immobile and eventually dead. However persuasive the mathematics, he had made a model of himself. It was on this sufic understanding that Ibn al-'Arabi conceived, or more correctly, perceived that the correct language for understanding the cosmos was not mathematics but linguistics, that the only understanding of the universal possibility was one which bonded the slave into the cosmic process. Allah, glory be to Him, in Qur'an, referring to the human self, states: 'The creation of the worlds is greater, if you only knew.' (40.57) Put in crude modern language he considered a cosmology or a cosmogony more important than an astronomy. What he is recognising is that the cosmic heavens are heavens, therefore they are an unseen immediate reality as well as a distant perceived reality. While the miserable Christian philosopher, Pascal, said that the infinite spaces of the heavens frightened him, the radiant sufic master understood that fear belonged to Allah, for his creation of the worlds, and not to the worlds themselves. In his vision, all

the worlds are harmonic in the Pythagorean sense but are shot through with meanings of the one who perceives them. Thus the first stage of the journey of the seeker is to internalise the total cosmic phenomenon inside himself. 'Abdalqadir al-Jilani, may Allah be pleased with him, said: 'Here is a strange thing. The boat within the ocean! Look! The ocean is within the boat!' False mysticism tries to eliminate the self. The path of Tawhid is this, in the words of Moulay al-'Arabi adDarqawi: 'If the world disappears Allah has to appear'. In this matter the universe is before the self as mirror whatever is in the self must appear in the universe. Thus the universe disappearing is both a swallowing up of the world and at the same time the vanishing of the perceiver. This is the door to the vanishing of the perceiving subject in the light of the Seer, of the only one who sees, Allah, glory be to Him. While at Berkeley I visited a friend there who was a physicist. As we talked in the corridor another scientist came out with a chin-high pile of computer printouts. He stopped in front of us with a look of desperation. He declared: 'Look at this. It is data from one telescope beamed on one constellation. We have a basement full of this stuff. Every observatory in America has a basement full of this stuff. The trouble is there is not one guy who knows how to understand it.' These charts may awaken the heart of someone and at least save them the trouble of trying to approach Ibn al-'Arabi through the orientalists of France and America, but rather encourage them, after their Shahada, to make their Salat, pay the Zakat, having given allegiance to an Amir, fast the fast, and take the Hajj. The Messenger, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, said: 'Hajj is 'Arafat.' In other words, the key rite of Hajj is to stand, if only for a moment, on the plane of 'Arafat. Therefore to do this is to be an 'Arif, and Allah is the only Knower. 'Arif, and Allah is the only Knower.