A`oodhu billaahi min ash-shaytaani ’r-rajeem
Bismillahi 'r-Rahmani 'r-Raheem
Nawaytu’l-arba`een, nawaytu’l-`itikaaf, nawaytu’l-khalwah, nawaytu’l-riyaadah, nawaytu’s-sulook, nawaytu’l-`uzlah lillahi ta`ala fi hadha’l-masjid
Alhamdulillah, first as-salaam `alaykum wa rahmatullahi ta`ala wa barakaatuh.
Alhamdulillah that Allah swt honored us to be under the guidance of our Sultan al-Awliya Sayyidee Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani, may Allah give him long life and may Allah give us long life to see Mahdi (as).
And as I said many times before today is that all of us we are to Mawlana Shaykh like different flowers. Every flower has its own nice smell. Like different jewels. Every jewel likes its own color. And the shaykh is happy to see all these colors or all these flowers.
That is to him. That is the description to him that we are jewels or flowers. But we must say to ourselves we are not so even though in his eyes or his heart we are so. Because Allah said in Holy Qur'an: “wa laa tuzakoo anfusakum - Don’t try to give excuse or honor to yourself.”
The Prophet (s) said, “Don’t leave me to myself for the blink of an eye, or less than the blink of an eye.” Laa takilnee ila nafsee tarfat `aynun wa laa aqal min dhaalika. You know the blink of an eye is? (It is) less than one fraction of a second.
Although he is Prophet and the Seal of Messengers he is saying, "Don’t leave me to myself like that."
So what about for us then? It means we are always falling down in the traps of the ego. That is why Allah is honoring us and we have to say we are so lucky that we are honored to come to this door, although all of us have this problem of selfishness or egoism but we are lucky that we have been guided. Although there are a lot of people who have not been guided. There are many people who are not entering such a door. They are not lucky. We have to be happy and to know we are lucky.
And we have to know the sign of due respect for Allah (swt) towards us and for our prophet towards us and for our shaykh towards us is to be humble. Humbleness is the most important aspect of tariqah. Grandshaykh may Allah bless his soul, was always saying that the most humble that Allah (swt) created is Sayyidina Muhammad (s). Although he is the highest he is the perfect, he is the chosen one, and he is the mercy to humanity,. But he was not seeing All that and he was seeing “O Allah I have to be humble.”
He is honored with what Allah gave to him but he is saying, “O Allah I have to be humble.”
And who is the most arrogant? and Grandshaykh, Mawlana Shaykh Abdullah al-Faizi ad-Daghestani was saying, “The most arrogant was Iblees. The most arrogant among Allah’s creation. Out of arrogance he didn’t make sajda to Adam.”
So the sign of humbleness is to know that we are in the presence of a Sultan but in the same time we have to be aware of being in a big ocean here and any mistake we will be drowned. Any mistake it is written against us and that is why when we come here we have to show the sign of respect to everyone. Even that one whom Mawlana might say to him "you lead the prayer" or "you do the suhbat" or "you speak" or "you lead dhikr." He has to know he is not of that caliber but he is fulfilling an order of Mawlana Shaykh . I am saying because it is needed to be said, that Allah is our witness; Prophet (s) is our witness; our Shaykh is our witness that we are, I am not that person that has to see himself, “O I am giving a lecture” or “Mawlana is making me to represent him and speak on his behalf.”
Mawlana can make a stone to speak but it is the value of a stone and he can make a diamond to speak and it is the value of diamond. We have to know we are stones; as Muhammad al-Busayri said,
Muhammadu basharun
Muhammad (s) is a human being
Wa laysa ka ’l-bashari
but not like other human beings.
Huwa yaqootatan
He is a diamond
wa ’n-naassu ka ’l-hajari
while humans are like stones.
Although Allah gave him that characteristic. He is human being but not like us. Can the one who went in Mi`raaj be like us, who went in his physical body? Not with his soul or his spirit. Can any one of us go in Mi`raaj? Can you, M.? Not by soul even. Not anyone. The Prophet (s) went in Mi`raaj in his physical body and he was not affected by the laws of physics that he was moving in space. When the Prophet (s) was moving in space, when he was going to the Divine Presence? Where he went? He went inside this universe or outside this universe? Anyone? He went within this universe or outside this universe. How big is this universe?
I was speaking with Mawlana Shaykh today. He was saying something in the early morning. I said that scientists describe this galaxy we live in, not outside, that it has 80 billion stars, not 80 million, 80 billion. And every star is bigger than our solar system. That means (bigger than) the earth, the sun, the moon, Venus, whatever, Mars, all of them, Pluto, all of them, the solar system, one star is bigger than then all and it is one of 80,000 millon. Did you go into Google, for the pictures, that they have satellite today that they can map every part of the earth, they snap the picture of any home, any mosque, any movie theatre, any church you can locate on Google. Is it not so Shaykh Selim?
And the also have mapping of all the constellations, the abraaj, there are 12 constellations.. And one day I was sitting and my son was opening one of these constellations, he was viewing one of these constellations, and zooming , zooming in, zooming and you cannot count the stars there. Even the smallest one, al-Meezan, the Balance, is made of 3 or 4 stars. But if you go into it you find millions of stars.
And you go in it and it is thousands of stars, and these are only in our galaxy.
I was telling Mawlana Shaykh that they found today that there are 6 million galaxies. No sorry, not 6 million, 6000 galaxies. Every galaxy is 80 billion stars. He looked at me and said, “Your information is old.” He said, “I read an article today that there are 15 billion galaxies – still that is within the universe - 15 billion galaxies and every galaxy has 80 billion stars.” And that is within the universe and this universe is moving in a vacuum at 300,000 km. second. And all these galaxies [are moving together].
So how huge is that? The space shuttle that they launch out and there is an international space station outside the atmosphere. It is 100 miles away, only. And they make this whole issue space shuttle and it is only 100 miles away.
And the Prophet (s) in one night made an ascension for 15 billion galaxies and moving and going beyond that, not within that. How many miles away? They don’t count by miles they count by years. They say this star is one billion years away. You might look at a star and it is one billion years away and you can see it and are still seeing it and it might not be there anymore.
So think Sayyidina Muhammad (s) is navigating that huge distance. When you say you navigate a computer what does it mean? It means you are navigating like a boat in the sea or like a car or plane. And imagine the Prophet (s) was navigating the whole universe and everywhere he passed and navigated he was knowing about it. Allah gave him to know about that. And he was going past 15 x 80 billion billion galaxies. And he was saying, "Ya Rabbee, I am nothing but a servant to you." Look, no ego.
Sayyidina Muhammad (s) al-Busayri said,:
Muhammadu basharun
Muhammad (s) is a human being
Wa laysa ka ’l-bashari
but not like other human beings.
Huwa yaqootatan
He is a diamond
wa ’n-naassu ka ’l-hajari
while humans are like stones.
He is the only one. He is the rare jewel, no one is like him.
Everyone else is like a stone, a pebble. So what are we, we are pebbles, no value.
A pebble, that we been described by a pebble, but the shaykh can make a pebble to speak. If the ego makes the pebble to speak then the ego will make the pebble to speak from the dunya level. But if the shaykh makes the pebble to speak it speaks from akhira level. But all that depends on being humble.
So that makes us to know we are in need of the shaykh’s words - the exact words that he speaks, to use them. Because today there are a lot of, lot of, because Mawlana Shaykh spread the tariqah everywhere. We have all kinds of representatives. All of them are jewels to Mawlana all of them are flowers to him. Whatever you want to say about them. But we are in need of his words. We cannot be arrogant and say, "O the shaykh is inspiring to my heart" and begin to speak. No. Open your notes and show you are in need of every word that Mawlana opens.
In Grandshaykh's time we used to have two sessions, with Mawlana Shaykh Nazim, one before Fajr up to ishraaq, and one after `Asr. He used to open Grandshaykh’s notes and being to explain. He didn’t show, “O it is coming to my heart” and begin to explain. So he showed humbleness and showing that the shaykh is one. He can speak from his heart but we must speak from the notes.
So we are going to follow that consequence now, we establish the basis now, and I am going to see in this subhbah what he says and this is long time ago. This was in 70's.
He said, as-samai`u wa’l-mustami`u yajib an yakoon adhqa fahmahu min al-mutakallim? He said, “the one who is listening must have a better understanding than the one who is speaking.”
Because this means that the speaker , the one who is speaking, there are two types of these speakers: one who speaks from books and these are common scholars that studied in universities. And the one who speaks from spirituality, that means his heart is connected thru his chain of shaykh to heart of prophet and he is taking directly from the heart of the Prophet (s). The listener he said have to have fine-tuned ears, to listen to what is coming. It doesn’t mean the listeners are better than shaykh, but it means for the shaykh to be able to give them what they are in need that they have to open al their different digital radios in order to receive what shaykh is saying. As much as they show importance to what shaykh is saying as much comes fro the heart of the Prophet (s) will send to the shaykh. If we show little importance then what comes to us from shaykh will be little and if we show very fine tuned ears then the shaykh will be pouring out what it necessary to be mentioned, and what we are in need of? Because Subhaanallah everyone sit in Mawlana’s lecture, or guidance or advice, whatever we want to call it. And they think “O that advice or lecture is to me and he is speaking to my heart, he knows what I need.” And that is because he is connected to the main source to Prophet (s). According to what we are asking through our heart they are receiving and they are sending answers.
So that is why the listeners must tune their ears well to listen to the shaykh well in order for him to pull more deeper from the ocean of knowledge he is pulling.
He was saying to me this morning, he mentioned to me today, that isn’t imagined, but think, that every letter of the Holy Qur'an carries with it at least 12,000 different oceans of knowledges, it has at least12,000 different meanings, each meaning is like an ocean. So think about it. When you say alif, not the alphabet that has been used which is 28 letter but the alphabet which has been used in whole Holy Qur'an, which is about 500,000 letters, if you say alif, the lowest level of sainthood, is that saint can pull out of that single letter 12,000 meanings and every meaning is an ocean.
That is how thy understand Allah’s ancient words which cannot be understood easily.
That is why as much as you can open and tune your heart the Prophet (s) is going to send
He was explaining one verse of Surat al-`Ankaboot this morning, and he went into that ocean that makes you stunned , insha-Allah we will explain one day what he was saying, in what he is pulling out from there. He was explaining the importance of the electrons and the mass in the atom, in that verse of Surat al-`Ankaboot. So the Prophet (s), whatever comes, he was hearing and obeying.
So our duty as he said, that is why we have to listen well. Grandshaykh said, anything comes it is listening and obeying.
The Prophet (s) was under two orders, Grandshaykh described that Prophet was under that two descriptions: listening and obeying. Listen to the message that Gibreel (as) brings and obey.
So our duty is what? It is listening to our guides and obeying.
So ibn `Ajeeba (q) said, and he is one of most famous awliya, that came in the 18th century, and he said, “there are two kinds of `ilm, knowledge of awraq, knowledge of books and knowledge of taste, `ilm al-adhwaaq.
Like there is a glass of water, you can describe it as nice crystal water, cool, but that never gives you the taste of the water. that is nice. That when you say bismillahi ’r-rahmani ’r-raheem, it quenches your thirst. But if I describe it to you it doesn’t quench your thirst but if I give you to taste it quenches your thirst. The awliyaullah give to quench the thirst of people who are seeking. Scholars give knowledge of papers. They give the taste of papers. there is knowledge of letters but it does not give the sweetness of the taste.
We will continue next day insha-Allah while we are still on the first line of these of Grandshaykh.