Centre for Spiritual & Cultural Advancement (CSCA)
Alhamdulillahi Rabbi 'l-`Alameen, wa ’s-salaatu wa ’s-salaamu `alaa ashrafi 'l-mursaleena Sayyidina wa Nabiyyina Muhammadin wa `alaa aalihi wa sahbihi ajma`een.
When the murabbi, the one who raises you and guides you through your life, asks you something, you know their scale is so sensitive, like to weigh gold you don't use a normal scale, you use a digital, very sensitive scale. Awliyaullah’s scale is very highly sensitive to what you are thinking, so you have to be careful in how you respond to them when they ask you a question. If you say, “You know best,” then why did they ask? We were talking just now about the specialties of the walnut and you said, “You know best,” which is maa laa y`anee, an unrelated answer, irrelevant, without value, because generally speaking your answer is rendered in your face. So you have to be very careful because their meezaan, balance is:
أَلَّا تَطْغَوْا فِي الْمِيزَانِ وَأَقِيمُوا الْوَزْنَ بِالْقِسْطِ وَلَا تُخْسِرُوا الْمِيزَانَ
Do not transgress the balance, establish weights with justice and do not fall short of the Balance.
(Surat ar-Rahman, 55:8-9)
Don’t exaggerate in the Scale, say more or say less, aqeemu´l-waznu bil qist, give the best possible element that can be weighed in a scale, meaning you have to be very careful to weigh things justly according to your knowledge and put in your mind that when they ask you such a question they are looking at your heart, what kind of answer you are going to say. (In spiritual rank) you are a Beginner or still a Lover. A Lover can say “you know best,” “you know more,” or whatever they want to say with no restriction, because you don’t question or ask someone who is mentally handicapped. So we are mentally handicapped; don’t think you are Somali, Arab or Pakistani and you know everything; no, you don’t know anything, not you or anyone if they want to weigh it on their Scale! From Lover to Beginner the scale changes and from Beginner to Musta'id, ready, one who is to be given his Trust, they weigh according to a different set of rules.
Like in exams, they test you in English, Math, French, and depending on the course level, 101, 201, 301, they know your capacity to answer at certain levels. In your heart there are five levels, you know them. What are they? Qalb, the heart, is the first level where everyone can enter, it does not need a code to the door: Shaytan can enter, angels can enter, Awliya can enter, everyone can enter there and you can upload and you can download for free. That is why when you give baya` you are telling the shaykh, “Take me out from being in the level of the heart to be in the level above that,” not on the level of muhibeen which is the level that is generally open for everything: one day you love the shaykh next day you don’t love the shaykh, one day you love the mureeds next day you don’t love the mureeds, one day you speak well to mureeds one day you shout at mureeds. Everything is there: you upload, you download, you zoom in, Shaytan enters, that’s where Shaytan can enter.
That is the heart, as the Prophet (s) mentioned: there is a place in the heart that Shaytan can enter. Awliya weigh you according to the level of the heart. To them you are mentally unstable, sick. What do you need, tablets? Don’t go organic because organic is in a higher level. Sometimes you go organic not knowing what the specifications are, you might hurt yourself by taking herbal medicine that is not yet certified, so you might poison yourself, you don’t know. You are on the level of tablets.
What the shaykh gives you, do it! Don’t do more, don’t do less. If the shaykh says do 1500 dhikrullah, do 1500 dhikrullah, you do 1500 dhikrullah. Don’t say, “I want to do 5000.” If he doesn’t give you a specific order to do 5000, don’t do it, because if you do, you go crazy. Don’t say, “I am qualified.” They gave us rukhsa, an easy pass. Why do you want to complicate it? Be a sheep, don’t be a shepherd. You do that and Allah will save you. They know you are on the fringe of Tariqah, not on Islam. You are in Islam when you say Laa ilaaha illa-Llah Muhammadun Rasoolullah and do your obligations, you are entitled to Paradise for sure, no problem. But if you want to be on a higher level, then the shuyookh will look according to their digital balance, how to weigh you. If you are on the level of the heart, they know that you are helpless, it means they have a long rope, you go and go and go, or, if you want water from the well, they give you a bucket and drop it in the well and it goes and goes and goes, until they want to bring you back, they bring you pulling the rope, and now you are purified. That water is purifying.
Sayyidina `Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani (q) never did his dhikr outside the well, all the time winter and summer he would go inside the well, he would take a breath, go under water and do dhikr for as long as he could hold his breath, then he would come up take a breath and go back down. That is not easy. His madrasa is still there, until today. Today there are couches, carpets, microphones, in that time there were no such things. So beginners, you are not yet a Beginner, you are still a Lover: everyone can weigh himself if he is a Beginner or a Lover. Lover is a soup: Beginner is when you separate the soup, you can make soup of different ingredients and from leftovers of three or four days, mix them and you get a soup, it tastes nice, but it is a mix of leftovers. Everything you see in dunya are leftovers, it is going to stay in dunya. When you go to Akhirah then you see real ingredients: this is meat, this chicken this is vegetable, you can differentiate everything. That is the Level of Beginners, but now to make it easy for all of us, we are on the Level of Lovers.
We love the shaykh and he takes us to his shaykh and from his shaykh to his shaykh and from his shaykh to his shaykh, in any Tariqah, we are speaking in general, to Prophet (s), but it has to go through different levels. If you give your hand to the shaykh, he will guide you within the boundaries of Lovers until he fixes you mentally, pull you out of that level and put you in the Beginners level. In that level everything becomes different, it will be like a fuzzy picture on the TV, but there will be a picture, there is something there. You are not seeing it because everything is fuzzy, scrambled from too much dunya. In the level of Beginners, there are pixels. They delete these pixels for it to become a clear picture. This is the beginning of Wilaya. This is not in the heart: in the heart there are five levels. The first level is the Level of the Lover where everything can enter, that is the Maqam al-Qalb. The second level is the Level of the Secret, not everyone can be given the secret.
The child, if you give him a diamond, in the next five minutes he will lose it. Give him a candy and you will find it in his pocket, hiding it from his brothers and sisters, to eat by himself. He will not throw it. To him, it is more precious than the diamond. Awliyaullah see that we are like that. How are they going to give us diamonds? They keep it for you, they are not going to take it from you. What is the speciality of the walnut? [“I don't know!”] That is a good answer. Beginners, they begin to say “I don’t know,” anything they see, “I don’t know” if it’s real or not real. In their vision, at that level of as-Sirr,,which they are beginning to see, even if it is scrambled, it means there is something behind that scrambled vision, that veil. They have to take that veil for you.
Now they give you support to see what is behind that fuzzy scale or else something comes out. That picture, you are not yet able to see it because we are still blind. You are blind from knowing the secrets of every matter or element, you are going to from now on as a follower of a shaykh, you will be able to see things differently. If you keep what the shaykh has given to you in the first Level, which is the Lover Level, 1500 times dhikrullah and 300 times salawaat, that is the best remedy. If you do more you go crazy, if you do less you will be staying in your place. You cannot do more unless the shaykh will tell you “Now come, don’t do 1500 but do 5000.” By his order, he gives you a key to get a higher TV that does not give a fuzzy picture. It can give a real picture, it can take care of you, if what you are seeing is correct or not.
We will make it short...After the Level of Secret there is the Level of the Secret of the Secret, Sirr as-Sirr, and this is in the hands of Awliyaullah. Now everyone in every Tariqah says, “Our shaykh is carrying the Secret of the Secret.” Although they might be in the Level of the Secret they like to praise their shaykh, which is a good thing to do within yourself, not in front of people and fighting, “My shaykh is better than your shaykh.” When you accept everyone, you will get barakah from every Tariqah, there is no differentiation. This is what we are aiming for. At that level the fuzzy picture completely disappears and becomes Reality.
That’s why it is said in a story of Grandshaykh (q), may Allah bless his soul, that Sayyidina Abdul Qadir al-Jilani (q), in the time of Sayyida Abdul Qadir al-Jilani (q), one Wali was once walking with his mureed on the cliff at the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates, they were passing over a high cliff and that Wali wanted to test his follower. He had reached such a high level of sainthood that sometimes miracles came out of his hands. When they were walking, he pushed his mureed off the cliff into the river. The mureed was going down, and he didn’t know how to swim, as soon as he reached the surface of the water, the hand of his shaykh or that Wali was under his feet raising him up. SubhaanAllah wa bi hamdihi subhaanAllahi 'l-`Azheem. He said to his mureed, “You are ready, because you did not complain, you submitted completely, you are ready to receive your Trust.” When he said that, at that moment, the Wali who has the Secret of the Secret, was weighing the belief of his mureed on a scale that is up to that level and found that he was completely submitting, he was ready to get his Trust. All of us are trying to get our Trust, to be good. To gain our Trust is to gain Allah’s Love, Prophet (s)’s love and Awliya's love.
At that moment, another Wali that was higher in level than the first Wali appeared in front of him and said, “Don’t give, yaa Sayyidi! If you want to give, you will be responsible.” According to the level of the second Wali, if it was his mureed, he would not have given him wilaya. The first Wali gave at his level, but the second Wali is at a higher level. “When you pushed him, as he was falling down, he criticized you, I picked it up on my scale that he was saying, ‘What is the wisdom that my shaykh pushed me into the water to drown? He knows I don’t know how to swim.’ Because of that he cannot get his Trust from a higher level.” Look how precise their scale is! You think your shaykh, your Wali is not doing anything, but he is doing many things. In reality, there are a lot of things that they do. They are sitting with the people, but this is what they call khalwati jalwati, seclusion among the people. It means he is doing things among the people through the heart, they work on their followers.
I cut it short. After the Level of the Secret of the Secret, there is the next level which is Khafa, which is the level where the Prophet (s) is looking at everything that the Awliyaullah are doing. He either approves or disapproves of it, then the Wali has to work more on his follower until he reaches the satisfaction of the Prophet (s) and then, they will be given the highest level.
The highest level is Maqaam al-Akhfa, the Most Hidden, that no one knows except Allah (swt), and according to Grandshaykh (q), may Allah bless his soul, this is the meaning of the ayah,:
قُل لَّا يَعْلَمُ مَن فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ الْغَيْبَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ أَيَّانَ يُبْعَثُونَ
Say: “None in the Heavens or on Earth knows the Hidden Reality Except Allah, nor can they [who are living] perceive when they will be raised from the dead.” (Surat An-Naml, 27:65)
“No one knows the hidden except Allah.” What we mentioned, the Secret, the Secret of the Secret, Khafa, these are in the `Abd level. In the Creator Level, laa shareeka lah, there is no partner, no association, no shareek, and there is nothing you can know except what He gave to you as `abd and allowed you to know. Prophet (s) is the only `abd allowed to reach Qaaba Qawsayni aw Adnaa.
So we go back to the characteristics of the walnut: the shell of the walnut is to protect the fruit inside. The shell protects the kernel, that means the body must protect the soul, which means the energy as the mass has to protect the energy of the system and that energy has to be balanced. Every six months, three trillion cells in the body have to be rejuvenated and balanced with special hormones that the glands produce, according to the power of it to take away the poison or kill the microbes.
Awliyaullah resemble the Shari’ah like the shell protects the kernel and the Haqiqah is the fruit, if you keep the shell strong, the Haqiqah is always preserved. If you keep your Shari’ah strong, your shell, then the Haqiqah is always preserved; preserve your Haqiqah, then you will be able to open the shell and benefit everyone. The Awliyaullah are like walnuts. They can benefit their followers because they have balanced their Shari’ah and Haqiqah. Shari’ah comes first, Haqiqah comes second in adab, in discipline. `Amrullah comes first, al-amru fawq al-adab, Haqiqah comes second. You have to preserve your Shari’ah, what you are doing, for your Shari’ah to protect you from any dangerous, wild animal within us.
Wa min Allahi ´t-tawfeeq, bi hurmati l-Fatihah.
That is why Mawlana Shaykh Mehmet's lecture today is especially for these ladies who came from up north. Alhamdulillah, they want to hear something and Mawlana Shaykh (q) opened because of Shaykh Sha'ir or `Abdullah. May Allah forgive us.
There are too many shaykhs, that means too many Awliya. Our duty is to respect all of them, but our love goes first to our shaykh. Your love goes to your father first before it goes to your uncles: your shaykh is your father and all other shaykhs are your uncles. You cannot run away. You have to respect them just as you respect your father, you respect your uncle, khaal is your uncle on your mother's side and `aam is your uncle on your father's side. All Awliyaullah are our uncles, but our father is Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q). He has our love and respect because he is our father and they have our love and respect because they are our uncles. We have to respect everyone whom our hearts indicate has something of spiritual inheritance to give us one day.
We use to recite Khatm al-Khwajagan with its principles and conditions on 108 stones, until Grandshaykh `AbdAllah (q) reached the end of the first Shahadah, then 70 istighfaar, then Fatihah 7 times, then salawaat on Prophet (s) 101 times, then Qul Huwa Allahu Ahad 101 times, salawaat on Prophet (s) 78 times, all this was done silently, counting on stones. Then he said, “tabarrukan.” Naqshbandi Tariqah is known as the way of silent dhikr that you read in your heart, but then we recite jahri, loudly, to take the barakah of all other Tariqahs--Shadhili, Rifa`ee, Qadiri, Chisti--because they do it loudly. In this way, we get benefits of the loud (public) and the silent (private). The private way is the spiritual father and the loud way is the uncles. Every uncle has something to give you. Therefore, show him respect, he will give it to you. That does not mean you will not inherit from your father; he will give you the big reward from his level from what he likes you to get, from what he receives from Prophet (s) he dresses on his followers. The uncles have some reward for you, because you showed them respect and love by imitating the way they do dhikr, so they will come and give you something.
It is like the mureed of Sayyidina Abdul-Khaliq al-Ghujdawani (q), when he was given his amaanaat, there were 124,000 in the masjid, sitting on their knees, him and his shaykh, joining their knees together, and his shaykh was opening in his heart Haqiqah at-Tawajjuh, and more: six powers opening in his heart, pointing to his heart with his Shahadah finger. That mureed was going up to the ceiling then coming down, going up and coming down. Then 124,000 white pigeons appeared, they were Awliyaullah represented by these pigeons. Everyone gave him a secret as a reward from them. They are not Naqshbandi but they carry secrets for you, because when we make Fatihah at the end, we include them, Awliya as-Saliheen, The Pious Sincere Saints. Then 124,000 prophets appeared in his vision. Had there been only a hundred people there (still) no one could see them, except the one getting his Trust. One second can be stretched, there is no time there, time is imaginary in dunya: this is a three dimensional world, not four dimensions.
The mureed received from everyone, after he received from Awliyaullah he received from the division of 124,000 prophets, then his shaykh asked Prophet (s), through his heart, to dress him, and then the spiritual father, our shaykh, will dress you with the permission of Prophet (s). There are too many principles and conditions in Tariqah which order us to show respect to everyone. May Allah forgive us and may Allah bless us.
[Du`a.]
Al-Fatihah.
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