16 January 2009 Fenton Zawiya, Michigan
Before Salaatu ‘dh-Dhuhr
A`oodhu billahi odmin ash-Shaytaani ‘r-rajeem. Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmaani ‘r-Raheem.
Nawaytu ‘l-arba`een, nawaytu ‘l-`itikaaf, nawaytu ‘l-khalwah, nawaytu ‘l-`uzlah,
nawaytu ‘r-riyaadah, nawaytu ‘s-sulook, lillahi ta`ala fee haadha ‘l-masjid.
Ati`ullaha wa ati`u ‘r-Rasoola wa ooli ‘l-amri minkum.
Obey Allah, obey the Prophet, and obey those in authority among you. (4:59)
Subhaanallah. Knowledge that Allah (swt) gave to awliyaullah cannot be described, and how much they are able to bring makes us stunned, astonished. We are living in dunya which is the material world, material life, completely ignorant of what awliyaullah go through of their knowledges Allah (swt) gives them. That is why many people didn’t accept what awliyaullah say, as they cannot have that kind of mind, as a child of two or three years cannot understand adult behavior. A child cannot know (the dangers of) fire; if he is near it he may burn himself, but an adult will run away from it. So what Allah (swt) gave to awliyaullah is only for them; if it was for everyone He would have opened it to their hearts, not letting them to sleep like someone who is sleeping here. Not making them to sleep on this or not giving importance to that knowledge, because they are living that knowledge, but we in dunya are not understanding it.
It is like when the sun rises, what happens? Lillahi ‘a-mashriqu wa ‘l-maghrib, Allah (swt) has the east and the west, and when sun rises from the east, everything in the west can appear. It means when the sun appeared, the stars disappeared. When the sun is not there the stars are appearing. The stars are billions. One sun, and Allah (swt). If you say that Allah (swt) has one sun, it means we are decreasing Allah’s (swt) Greatness. That is why He said, “Allah has the east, the rising and the west, the setting of the sun.” Then He said, rabbu ‘l-mashriqayn wa rabbu ‘l-maghribayn, “He has the two easts and two wests.” That means there is an indefinite number of suns. Therefore, we cannot say that Allah (swt) has one sun; He has many ‘suns’, spelled ‘s-u-n’, because people might think “sons”, not “suns”. So when the sun appears all stars disappear. So they are there. So when heavenly knowledge appears, all false knowledge disappears.
You cannot put Divine Knowledge or ma`rifatullah beside knowledge of dunya. When ma`rifatullah appears in a wali, his love of dunya knowledge disappears. He has no more love to dunya. So when the sun shines over a wali, everything else disappears. That is why when a wali looks at you, he looks at you with that knowledge and he sees everything about you. He will not look at your animal behavior, he will look at the `amal that you promised to do in the Day of Promises. Therefore every human being is honored. wa laqad karamn bani adam. Everyone is honored and the wali sees that honorable sight in you. So he says as Sayyidina Ibrahim (a) in Surat al-Anam, Fa lamma ra’a ash-shams bazighatan...qala hadha rabbee. “When he saw sun rising, he said, ‘That is my Lord.’“ At that time he had not yet received the Divine Sun. He was looking at the sun and when it set, he said, “I don’t like a god that disappears.” He didn’t want to accept any moment in his life to be spent outside the Presence of his Lord. That is why he said, “I don’t like those that disappear.”
So that knowledge, coming then going, it was not ready yet. He said, “I don’t like that. I like that knowledge in the heart that does not disappear.” Do we say, “We don’t like those that set, we don’t want to be away from You, O our Lord.” We forget everything about our Lord and about our Prophet (s) when we are in dunya life! So when the sun rises, dunya disappears. Also if the Reality of Allah’s Essence then appears, rising to a wali, he cannot take it, because he is not yet up to that level to be able to see the Reality. That is why Allah (swt) said no one can see Him: you can only understand His Names and Attributes. If the Reality of Allah’s Essence appears, then the reality of His Attributes will disappear, because you look to the Reality, not to the descriptions of the Reality!
No one can carry looking at that reality except Sayyidina Muhammad (s). He is the only one that can understand the Reality of Allah’s Greatness. Because reality of Allah (swt) is ghaybun mutlaq, they are able to see His Beautiful Names and Attributes. If that Reality is known, they cannot look at it. Can you look at the sun? If you look a little bit you cannot see anything after a while. But Allah (swt) wants His servants to know about Him, that is why He hides His Reality in order to show you His Beautiful Names and Attributes at the level you can understand. That is why we learn and understand from His Beautiful Names and Attributes, and the only one who can go higher and learn more is Sayydina Muhammad (s).
That is why Sayyidina Abdul Qadir Jilani (q) said, qadaamaya haataan `ala raqbat kulli wali, “My feet are on the neck of every wali.” He was able to stand at the horizon where the sun approaches its rising; he was at that horizon but not yet able to see that Reality. When he was there he felt he was the highest of every wali and he said, “My feet are on the neck of every wali.” That is why this Reality it is called dhaat al-buhat fi ‘l-`amaa, “the Reality of the Essence.” In absolute blindness you cannot see. For a blind person it is impossible to see anything, just as no one can see that Reality that Allah (swt) has on His Essence.
So awliyaullah know they are `ajizeen, they have no permission and cannot reach that level, as it is only for Sayyidina Muhammad (s). That is why awliyaullah describe five different levels that a wali learned not by books, but through experience, and this is open for every Muslim and Muslimah. For anyone seeking that kind of journey, it is open for him or her to seek, but not as we are describing now; that is a description of what those awliyaullah have gone through.
Sayyidina Abdul Qadir Jilani (q) said, all these different descriptions of different levels are different realities and the first presence is `Alam an-Nasoot, the Reality of this Universe, of this world. Your journey begins when you know all the Realities that include this universe. Nasoot is a place of worship within this universe. As soon as you grasp the realities of everyone, you can go to the second level. So you have to go through that journey which is discoveries of what Allah (swt) has given to humanity. Everyone has to discover first himself and then those around him, then those who live in this universe, and those who do not live in this universe. This is the three dimensional world that you must understand. So when you find a wali and sit with him, you have to be very careful in your behavior. He might joke with you to keep familiarity, but if you cross that boundary (of adab) you are in danger. So anything three-dimensional is in `Alam an-Nasoot, the world of this life.
The second one is `Alam al-Malakoot, “the World of the Heavenly Kingdom." As soon as you go through first level, through seclusion under your shaykh, then you go to a heavenly kingdom, the second presence. Then you are in a four-dimensional presence. It is a presence and Allah (swt) put secrets in every person that means it is a blessed, honored life. Wa laqad karamna bani adam wa hamalnaahu fi ‘l-barri wa ‘l-bahr, that means he is carrying the secrets, he is representative for Allah (swt). The only Pole is Sayyidina Muhammad (s), as-salaat w ‘as-salaam `alayk yaa rahmatan li ‘l-`alameen! There are spiritual realities that awliya have to know before they go to `Alam al-Malakoot, and there is dunya world and heavenly world that is a presence and it is martabat al-fayd al-qudsiyyah. It is the place of the manifestation of all the Beautiful Names and Attributes they are waiting to appear to you there, or else you cannot get them.
People today they are reciting and they get the baraka of reciting the Beautiful Names and Attributes, but you cannot get them until you go through the first presence, then you go to the heavenly kingdom, then you begin to be dressed by them and know their secrets. That is why when awliyaullah give a wird to recite, don’t ask “why”? They know how to open for you that code of your secret, might be in the wird they give you to recite. And that will be from first heaven to seventh heaven, you will go through that greatness they open to you. If you want to reach that, then act as an angel. What does “angel” mean? It means no nafs. That means if you say that person is an angel, then you attribute everything good to that person. And it might the be definition of angel to you will differ from the definition of angel to me, and so each definition might be different based on what you understand, so it depends on what kind of angelic power you are coming through.
So awliyaullah gave them from different levels of angels. That is why all their actions are angelic. Don’t criticize or complain on what they say to you, it might be (a) big test there, you don’t know. You know only because you make mistakes. Why do you make mistakes? Because they want you to know the reality; when you make mistakes they correct you. They say, “If you didn’t make that mistake you would have received this.” When you make mistakes, you learn. That is why a mistake is forgiven, if you repent. Then you know you made a mistake and not to repeat it another time. Mistakes are good for us (to improve), but I am not saying go and make mistakes. In the way of Gnosticism you might make mistakes, not in dunya mentality, that you cheated here or whatever, but you made a mistake in this journey. You reached a door and acted weirdly and the door didn’t open. Then they tell you, “You made a mistake there: you got angry,” so you learn that if you were not angry what you would have reached. Anger in the way of haqq is okay, it teaches you.
So the second level is the level of heavens, from the first to the seventh heaven. Look how much Allah (swt) will open to you if you pass through the dunya level safely with the guidance of your shaykh. Allah (swt) will open to you reality of seven heavens. He described the whole universe might not be even a house for a mu’min in akhira, so think how great is akhira. Someone built a castle. Look in news about Haiti, the president’s palace collapsed. Who is higher than president? It is a big example for us. Even if you are president of a poor country and you cannot do anything, you are only a figurehead, but you are still a president. If you come to America, the US president will greet you even if you are president of Haiti. You are president of yourself, but do you have power on yourself? No, you have none. The angels shake a little bit, not even shake, but they pushed up from the bottom and the presidential palace collapsed. You have security, you have police, they have no army. But they have secret police. Why they didn’t stop the angels? wa fawqa kulla dhi `ilmin `aleem.
One angel is enough to shake and bring everything down. If you can shake your palace and destroy it, like yesterday they were showing the president at the airport homeless with nowhere to go, so he went to the airport. When you have nowhere to go, everything is collapsed, the only way to go is through Sayyidina Muhammad (s), ji’na ilayk yaa rasulullah yaa rahmatan li ‘l-`alameen fa firroo ila-Llah, ”Run to Allah, then you will be saved.” Then there is no president, no king. Any moment Allah (swt) shakes it, it collapses completely. So when you shake your third life that Allah (swt) will give you at that time, you see that shining light, that sun coming and you cannot see dunya anymore. Can you see stars when the sun rises? You can see the stars when sun sets. What is the benefit when the sun sets? When the sun disappears, if there is no sun and no moon, there is no life. When sun rises everything false goes away.
The second level is `Alam al-Nasoot, the World of People. `Alam al-Malakoot is sun for the people’s world, an-naasoot and when malakoot rises in the heaven of your heart, the worldly level disappears from your heart. Then awliya open and you can see through that or else you are going to still be blind. You are not letting that reality, that sun to appear because your physical veil is so thick that it is preventing that reality to shine. When you take that curtain away then the sun appears. Take the curtain of dunya from your heart and let reality of heavens to rise in the horizon of your heart, and that cannot be done except by guidance of your shaykh and who better than Mawlana Shaykh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, may Allah bless him!
I think he is coming on the live broadcast soon and we continue later with some descriptions of that other level, `Alam al-Malakoot and what realities it carries.
Wa min Allah at-tawfeeq, bi hurmati ‘l-Fatihah.
We will continue that in the evening. Can you be like that (points to cat), not asking anyone to shave her, to clean her, to do an operation for her eyes, to have eyeglasses? The cat is not asking to have dentures, submitting. Look how we are so fragile. Look, may Allah bless his soul, the one who printed Hajjah Naziha’s cookbook, Rizal’s brother Dipo; they called me in Cyprus on 25 December. He was with his brother on vacation in Rome. They went to the hotel, he was sleeping and had a heart attack, died in the hotel room. He was 50 years old! So you don’t know. You run, run, run like... a chicken. At least a chicken is submitting to Allah (swt). We are running, running, running like Shaytan, because he is not submitting, he doesn’t get tired, he is always after human beings. May Allah (swt) forgive us, that is what we need. We ask always, may Allah (swt) forgive us.
I was reciting a hadeeth, man lam yashkuru ‘n-naas lam yashkur Allah, “Whoever doesn’t thank people doesn’t thank Allah.” Our duty is to say, “Yaa Rabbee, thank you for everything.”
Look how 100,000 in one second or two seconds are under the rubble (in Haiti). How fast Sayyidina Azraeel is to take them all, so you don’t know. (And they said only buildings over two stories tall collapsed.) That is because hadeeth an-Nabi (s) says you are not allowed to go over two stories (when you build). Look how high they build now! They are competing in Dubai, how high to go and one earthquake can take it down. They say they are building it with “anti-earthquake” methods. For Allah (swt) there is anti-earthquake?
Wa min Allah at-tawfeeq, bi hurmati ‘l-Fatihah.