Jinn
There are, at least, two categories of created being which
have the capacity for spiritual progress. One category of
being, capable of spiritual development, is human, and the
other category of being with this potential concerns jinn.
God has described the jinn as being constituted of smokeless
fire. In modern language this description might be rendered
in terms of some sort of energy, but God knows best the truth
of the matter.
Historically, there have been various accounts given of some
of the other characteristics of jinn. For example, in general,
they are reported to have extremely long life times,
measuring in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years.
Moreover, jinn have the ability to assume a variety of visible
forms, both human and non-human. However, under
"normal" circumstances, jinn are invisible to human
biological vision.
Jinn are said to have a variety of capabilities which human
beings do not possess. For instance, jinn are described as
being able to travel tremendous distances in a very, very
short period of time.
Some jinn have been described as having a great ability for
mimicry. On occasion, this ability is invoked in order to
confuse human beings and trick the latter into believing they
are dealing with the spirits of departed relatives or loved
ones.
Despite the superiority of jinn to human beings in some
areas, human beings are considered to have, in general, the
greater potential for spiritual growth and attainment.
Nevertheless, jinn do have a considerable spiritual potential,
and some jinn even have taken initiation with certain Sufi
masters.
Like human beings, jinn have a family life. In addition, and
again like their human counterparts, there is a tribal system
which orients the lives of jinn.
Some of these tribes are said to be quite fierce, aggressive
and warlike. Other tribes are quite peaceful.
Jinn have developed legal and judicial frameworks.
Furthermore, some Sufi masters have indicated there are
occasions in which humans may be tried for possible
violations of the laws of the jinn. This may happen, for
example, in the case of, say, the death of a jinn at the hands
of a human being.
As is the case with humans, some jinn are good and moral
beings. On the other hand, there also are jinn who are not
good and are immoral, as is the case with human beings as
well.
Just as there are human beings who have learned certain
occult techniques for capturing and controlling jinn in order
for the latter to do the bidding of the former, so, too, there
are jinn who use their powers and capacities to capture and
control human beings. Moreover, just as there are great
risks for human beings who become involved in these kinds
of activity, there also are great risks for those jinn who
bother human beings.
In the case of human beings, different Sufi masters have
described the personal and family lives of those people who
succeed in learning how to capture and control jinn as being
miserable and under constant threat of retaliation from, and
destruction by, jinn. In one way or another, human beings
who become preoccupied with, and entangled in, occult
manipulation of various members of the jinn, lose control of
their own lives. For the sake of a few occult tricks and
marvels, everything important in life is lost to these people.
One of the risks run by jinn, when they decide to bother
human beings, is the intervention of either Sufi masters or the
properly trained devotees of these spiritual guides. There are
a standard set of sequential, spiritual steps which can be
taken to force jinn to cease and desist their activities in
relation to human beings.
In a sense, the aforementioned sequence of steps are
graduated escalations of the level of intensity of spiritual
means used to force the offending jinn to vacate, so to speak,
the premises of a given human being. Some jinn leave after
only the first step or two. Other jinn require the full sequence
of treatment stages before these recalcitrant, often very
powerful, jinn can be induced to leave.
Sometimes, a jinn will have its own occult chants to perform
in order to try to countervail the spiritual methods brought
against such a jinn. In fact, these jinn, on occasion, may
induce the human being whom is bothered, or people close to
this human being, to engage in those chants in order to
enhance its "staying power".
If necessary, and as indicated in the foregoing, a Sufi shaykh
may assist people, whether initiates of the Sufi path or not,
who are being bothered by jinn. On the whole, however, Sufi
guides try to avoid this for a variety of reasons.
Ridding people of jinn is not their primary responsibility.
They are here to provide spiritual guidance to those
interested in pursuing the Sufi path.
A great many people (far, far more than most people might
suppose), both east and west, as well as north and south, are
bothered, to varying degrees of severity, by jinn.
Consequently, when the general public comes to know of a
given individual's capacity to deal with wayward jinn, that
person's life often becomes consumed by the needs of people
for this kind of treatment. These people, if they are spiritual
guides, then have no time left to do what they ought to be
doing with respect to providing guidance for those who are
seeking it.
There have been instances reported by some Sufi masters in
which there has been an orchestrated scheme perpetrated by
a group of jinn against certain spiritual guides. Such jinn
have tried to keep these guides busy with helping people
being bothered so that these shaykhs would not be able to
fulfil their primary mission of attending to matters directly
connected with the Sufi path.
Many people who wish to become initiated in a Sufi Order,
come to the Sufi master, with a jinn problem. Such people
may have been unaware, for the most part, they suffered
from such a malady.
On the other hand, they may have been aware they had some
kind of problem. Yet, they did not recognize the true
character of the difficulty, attributing it to some sort of
psychological or emotional problem.
Most spiritual guides will provide initiates with recitations
and/or chants to do in order to protect them against
unwanted intrusions by mischief-seeking members of the jinn.
In addition, the shaykhs may quietly set about doing various
things to spiritually help the individual be rid of his or her
jinn problem without necessarily letting the person know
what is going on and, therefore, alarming or frightening the
individual.
Sometimes, when a person who is being bothered by a jinn
comes to the shaykh, being in the presence of the shaykh will
make the person feel physically ill or the person's mind will
become clogged with all manner of emotional and
psychological pressure to run away from the shaykh. Such
people often wrongly attribute this reaction to the "evil"
nature of the spiritual guide.
In reality, what has happened is the following. The, relatively
speaking, "dormant" jinn becomes agitated in the vicinity of
the shaykh's spirituality. The jinn, for whatever reason,
cannot escape or is not permitted to escape or does not wish
to release control of the individual being bothered.
Consequently, the jinn will try to induce the individual being
bothered to leave the presence of the shaykh. This is done, as
outlined earlier, either through making the individual feel
very ill, or through some kind of emotional or psychological
pressure.
The person being pressured in this way never may have
experienced this sort of intense, negative effect previously.
The first time it happens, the individual being bothered may
consider it to be coincidental to meeting with the Sufi shaykh.
Nonetheless, if the same kind of experience should recur over
the course of several more meetings with the shaykh, the
individual may associate the negative aspects of this
condition with the presence of the shaykh. Many people,
unfortunately, who undergo these experiences jump to
incorrect conclusions, blaming the spiritual guide for the pain
and misery which is being experienced.
The spiritual guide has not done anything. The guide is just
being herself or himself.
Instead, the trapped jinn is reacting violently to the spiritual
reality of the guide. The effect of this spiritual presence is
extremely disagreeable to the problem-causing jinn.
Among the jinn who choose to create havoc and difficulty in
the lives of human beings, is one known as Iblis or, in
English, Satan. Satan is one of the chiefs of a tribe of jinn.
According to practitioners of the Sufi path, before human
beings existed, jinn were in existence. Jinn were inhabitants
of the Earth before human beings came into existence on this
planet.
Satan was one of the jinn who had been deeply engaged in
the worship of God for hundreds of thousands of years prior
to the appearance of human beings. The spiritual attainment
of Satan was such that he was permitted by God to associate
with the angels. Moreover, he even was allowed to teach
some of the angels aspects of spirituality of which the latter
had been given no previous knowledge by God.
According to Sufi masters, angels are expressions of pure
spiritual light. Different kinds of angel are manifestations of
various gradations of such light.
However, there are two characteristics held in common by all
angels, whatever their rank. First, because of their spiritual
nature, they are incapable of anything other than submitting
to the will of God. Secondly, although angels are very
spiritual beings, they have no capacity for spiritual growth,
since this kind of growth depends, in part, on the dynamics of
the struggle which accompanies the exercise of choosing
between good and evil.
Consequently, when Satan disobeyed God's command to
prostrate himself before the newly created Divine vicegerent
of creation (i.e., the spiritually realized human being) he fell
from grace as a jinn who had associated with the angels and
not as a fallen angel. From the perspective of Sufi masters,
the notion of "fallen angel" is an oxymoron since it alleges
that a angelic being who, by nature, is incapable of doing
other than the will of God has somehow violated its nature.
One of the reasons cited for Satan's fall from grace involves
the intention underlying the aforementioned refusal of Satan
to obey the Divine command. Satan believed he, as a jinn,
was better than any human being, whether spiritually
realized or not.
Therefore, pride was the downfall of Satan. Indeed, Satan
becomes a warning sign to practitioners of the Sufi path of
what can happen to spiritual wayfarers should pride, of any
kind, become an obstacle to obeying the command of God.
After falling from grace, Satan sought God's permission for a
respite from final judgement. Satan further declared he
would use this period to seduce human beings away from the
journey to God.
God granted Satan his wish. However, God told Satan he
would be unable to dissuade any human being from the path
to God except those human beings who first gave permission
to Satan to have this sort of power over them.
Among Sufi masters, there is a saying. The person who
would step onto the mystical path without being properly
initiated by an authentic shaykh, has Satan or Iblis as his or
her "spiritual' guide.
God has warned human beings, again and again, Satan and
his acolytes are an avowed enemy to us. The only enemy we
have who is more of a danger to us than Satan is our own
ego or false self.
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