Suhbah after Maghrib
A`oodhu billahi min ash-Shaytani 'r-rajeem. Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem.
As-salaamu `alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh.
It will be a short speech and a bit scientific. Do you like sciences? (Yes.) Or do you like villages? (Yes.) Not cities, but villages? (Villages.) Ah, in the village they don't need a speech, they can go home. (Laughter)
There are some people who are interested in understanding some kind of hidden knowledge and they are always seeking it, always looking outside to teachers who come and give lectures. I am like you! But I have been seeing my guru, my teacher, for fifty years and more, and I also saw his teacher. I met my teacher, Shaykh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani (q), and his teacher, Grandshaykh `AbdAllah al-Fa`iz ad-Daghestani (q), when I was twenty years old. That means, until the time that Grandshaykh left this dunya, I had known him for more than twenty years. I was looking around like you, in the villages, in the cities, to where I can find this hidden spiritual knowledge. Then I looked at the way they were living and found out this knowledge is not away from me.
Don't look outside, look inside, but people are always looking outside. Prophet (s) said that if someone is looking for the truth, Allah will make a teacher in his heart to teach him. So we don’t need to look outwards, look inwards. Look, what is this? (glass of water) What is inside it? (Water) Are you sure? No, how can you be sure? You have to taste it! So the problem is that when we look outside us, we don't know whether it’s water or poison, we don't know what is inside. But when we look inside, we taste.
How can you taste? Let’s accept that this is water, although up til now we don't know. Hold this, it is very safe water. Do you see any drops? (No.) (Shaykh Hisham dips his finger into the glass and lifts it out.) Now do you see any drop? (Yes.) So what did you see here? Drops. Why don’t you see any drops inside, but you see drops outside? Because when you are outside yourself, looking outwards, you will begin to have a form, but when you are submitting in the ocean you become the whole ocean. Outside the ocean you are a form with a shape, but inside, you have no shape, you are the whole cup of water, whereas before you were only one drop.
So if you want to know knowledge, dive in the Ocean of the Self. To know what you need, or in order to implement the knowledge that you need for yourself, in tasawwuf, we say that God will send you a teacher in your heart who will teach you what you need to learn.
Hold this. This is a drop. Do you see anything other than a small drop? (No.) Take it to the lab and put it under the microscope, where you will see all kinds of different species swimming in that drop, not just one bacteria inside it, but many! If the water is infected, then there will be a lot of germs in it. You cannot see that from outside, but if you put it under the microscope you will see that it is like an ocean. When we look in ourselves and audit ourselves, we see a lot of germs swimming there. We have to eliminate them one by one to go back to the ocean. So if you are able to purify one drop, you are able to purify the whole self.
Take a pen and a paper, and put a point. It is so small. If you draw a line, it is bigger than the point, and that line has infinite number of points in it, correct? But we are mistaken, because if we put that point under a microscope and magnify it, it becomes a line. It becomes a bigger circle and inside that bigger circle you can put an infinite number of points. So a linear line is made up of infinite points, which, under a microscope, are an infinite number of circles, and all of these circles make up the line. When you understand yourself, it means that you are understanding these circle can be put together to make a line. You might ask, how? How many points do you have in your body? There are 366 points that are able to regulate the body. Prophet (s) said that there are 366 points in your body and if you balance them, you balance your body.
These are the main points or the mother of points, and under them, as we said, there are an infinite number of points, the cells. How many cells do we have in our body, how many points? The cells in the body are like big factories. Each cell has a defense system against bacteria, an offensive system against viruses with police and military power in every cell! How many cells do we have? (3.2 million.) No, multiply it by more. We have at least three trillion cells, not million, not billion, but trillions in our body! How many arteries, veins and capillaries do we have in our body? If you put them together, how many kilometers long will they be? It is half the distance between Earth and the Moon, when you put all the veins, arteries and capillaries together.
Do you see this hair? Why does it grow? It can’t grow without power from the blood. What kind of a tube is in it? Do you know how many you have? How many hairs do you have? How do you want to know about knowledge when you don't know the number of hairs in your beard or on your head? It is said:
من عرف نفسه فقد عرف ربه
Man `arafa nafsahu faqad `arafa Rabbah.
Who knows his Self knows his Lord.
Who knows himself knows his Lord. If I don't know how many hairs I have, then I am far away from reaching the reality. So we have to look within us, because everything is within this form. Saints get rid of this form and become subtle human beings. They submerge into the ocean and become the ocean. I am giving these examples only for clarification. People have to think like that.
Okay, I am going to say something now; ask if they can hear? (Yes.) Now can you hear? (Speaks without mic.) (No.) How did this happen? I am using the mic and you can hear, but when I am not using it, you cannot hear. This is a human invention. You hear this (taps on mic) because of electromagnetic waves. Voice, sound, and the whole system, the whole universe is built on electromagnetic waves. Long waves, short waves, very acute waves, waves of all kinds. They don't die, they continue moving. Now, when I tap the microphone like this, immediately that speaker received it and sent it for them to hear it. What it received is not my tongue, not my mouth, but it received electromagnetic waves that turned into sound.
This is an ear. The sound comes inside on the drum and it creates the words for you in the inner ear. If you know how to use this ear, then you can hear what people cannot hear. Why? Because now in this room, do you see anything other than us? No, but there are many things here; there are electromagnetic waves. If you switch on a TV in here, you can see all around the world because it has reception. This ear is our satellite dish. All electromagnetic waves come here and the ear pulls it in. If you can hear these electromagnetic waves present in this room, you will be able to hear what other people cannot hear.
Energy is so incredible that when you study it and it enters your heart, you can do miracles! Anyway, we will continue this speech tomorrow. Thank you very much and goodnight. As-salaamu `alaykum!
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