The Nature of Deen
Bear with me a bit, for the following introduction is rather lengthy, and the points I wish to make, require a context to be better appreciated -- and, thus, the need for a preliminary set of conceptual excursions. The aforementioned points have to do with the importance of having an authenticate spiritual guide, and the damage which can be done when someone tries to pass himself or herself off as a spiritual guide when such an individual has not been properly selected and appointed.
Hazrat Dada Ganj Baksh or al-Hujwiri (may God be pleased with him), who wrote: Kashf al-Mahjub, which is the oldest extant treatise on the Sufi tradition in the Persian language (written toward the latter part of the 11th century), wrote -- and he was quoting a Sufi who lived several hundred years earlier –– that “once Sufism was a reality without a name, and now it is a name without a reality.” During the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him), there was no word “Sufi” used to refer to the esoteric tradition of Islam ... in fact, during the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) there was no special word used in order to convey the mystical dimension.
There was just the Quranic terms Deen and fitra. Deen does not translate as religion or mysticism, but, rather, it gives expression to a way or methodology for engaging the purpose of life –– the Divine purpose, not human purposes -- which permits one to realize fitra -- our primordial spiritual potential.
Deen encompasses the entire depth, breadth, and richness of the three general aspects of Islam –– both exoteric as well as esoteric –– namely, shari’ah, tariqa, and haqiqah, ... or, respectively, the guardian of faith, the process of spiritual transformation, and the realization of truth concerning, among other things, one’s essential identity as well as one’s unique spiritual capacity.
As such, Islam is a Deen, not a religion. What difference does this make? For starters, one might consider the fact that religion is man-made and Deen is God given.
Deen is what has been given by God since the first Prophet Adam (peace be upon him), and it is what has been given again and again down through the 124,000 Prophets and different books of revelation which have been sent by God. The spiritual resonances among the spiritual traditions which are referred to by different labels –– from the Vedanta, to Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Native spirituality and so on, are a reflection of the God-given Deen which constitutes the essence of any authentic spiritual tradition. The theological disputes among such traditions are all a manifestation of what happens when one either tries to use the wrong tools (reason, an unredeemed nafs, and/or an unrealized self) to make sense of what is God given, and/or one forgets that not everyone has the same spiritual capacity or potential, and, consequently, two people of differing spiritual capacities may both be right even though, on the surface, one might feel that the two people are saying something quite different about the nature of reality or truth (and this is not at all the same as saying that anything and everything goes with respect to claims concerning the nature of truth or reality because although truth/reality is complex, multi-dimensional, subtle, and infinite, it is neither arbitrary nor relative ... only human understanding is relative and affected by context and circumstances.
Why was Hazrat al-Hujwiri (may God be pleased with him) quoting from a Sufi who preceded him by several centuries? Because they both were attempting to draw attention to the fact that even a thousand years, or more, ago, it was becoming very difficult to differentiate between the real and the counterfeit in the realm of spiritually authentic teaching. And, to a very large extent, things have, with certain exceptions, gone downhill since then.
We may feel we live in enlightened times, but we do not, and the condition of the world constitutes exhibit number one for the prosecution. The foregoing is not intended as a nostalgic appeal to the days of old, since as the above quote indicates, things were not so great -- spiritually speaking -- then, either, but rather it is an allusion to a spiritual principle which stipulates that the nature of life in this world is, spiritually speaking, very dangerous, unstable, elusive, and dark –– except for those who have the good fortune to have access to, and become receptive to, guidance in the form of a Prophet, and/or a book of revelation, and/or a spiritual teacher.
The Prophetic tradition ended with Muhammad (peace be upon him), and although his spirit is still active in this world, we might do well to remember that even his close Companions indicated that spiritual darkness had entered the world when the Prophet (peace be upon him) departed, physically, from this realm. Just one small reminder of this set of circumstances, comes in the form of Hazrat ‘Ali (may God be pleased with him) who ruled, when Khalifah, that those who were to give testimony in a judicial proceeding could no longer be present in court when others were giving testimony because although in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) the veracity of people was such that their testimony would be unaffected by what they heard others give testimony to, nevertheless, unfortunately, the level of veracity had declined since the passing away of the Prophet (peace be upon him) just 50, or years, earlier, ... and things have, for the most part, declined a long way since those days.
Furthermore, although the Qur’an is still with us in an accurately preserved form, the people who understand it correctly, even in a purely exoteric way, are not all that plentiful –– although many people suppose that they do understand everything and are quite willing to impose their opinions on others in such a regard ... apparently, forgetting the Quranic injunction “that there is no compulsion” in matters of Deen (2:256), and, therefore, a niyat or intention which is not freely chosen is spiritually useless. In addition, there are many people who speak and read Arabic quite well, who do not have the slightest clue what Deen is all about, or, maybe, they do know, but in best hypocritical fashion, say one thing to one’s face, and do something exactly the opposite behind one’s back.
For example, most of the leaders of al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the suicide bombers -- to name but a few groups -- all know Arabic, but they abuse the Qur’an and the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon them) through their self-serving interpretations of textual material, or by taking many teachings entirely out of their appropriate context -- distorting and skewing meanings thereby -- or, simply by lying about the actual nature of Islam or Deen.
The concept of ‘jihad’ is but one example among many which could be cited in support of the foregoing statements. The word means ‘spiritual struggle’, and there is a great deal of evidence to indicate that the primary, essential sense of this notion of struggle focuses on an individual’s conflict with one’s own lower nature and not on armed conflict with an external opponent.
Thus, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said that the best and most superior form of jihad is the Hajj (Pilgrimage) which finds acceptance with God. The Prophet also indicated that speaking the truth in the face of oppression was doing jihad, and, moreover, that one’s inner struggle was the ‘greater jihad’ while physical battles with those who were threatening to exterminate Islam constituted the ‘lesser jihad’.
In a different context, the Prophet (peace be upon him) said ‘there is a polish for everything, which takes away the rust of that which is polished, and the polish for the heart is zikr Allah.’ One of the Companions asked: ‘Is not repelling the infidel like this?’, and Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: ‘No, even if one fights until one’s sword is broken.’ The Qur’an counsels people with: “O you who believe, fight against those infidels close to you.” (9:123), and, surely, the infidels who are closest to any of us are given expression through our own unredeemed nafs.
Yet, the propaganda continues that jihad is only about using arms in order to force others to believe as such warriors do. This sort of behavior from Arabic speaking people who should know better but, apparently, do not.
Even apart from such issues, there are good-hearted people who spend their lives reading the Qur’an in the original Arabic and, yet, may have little or no access to, or insight into, the mystical dimensions of the Qur’an. This is because language is created, while the original Qur’an is the uncreated Word of God for which the created language of Arabic serves as a entry point –– gaining access to the uncreated Word of Divinity may begin with Arabic, but it does not end there, and having facility with the Arabic language does not guarantee that one will journey any further than some of the meanings of the linguistic roots which make up such created words.
In fact, many, if not most of the names of Allah which are given in the Qur’an were not derived from Arabic words but have become incorporated into the Arabic language over time. Thus, when the people of Mecca heard the Prophet mention the name: al-rahman, they asked the Prophet who it was for they had never heard the name before, and this is because the name was derived from sulyani, the language of the soul, and not Arabic.
The Qur’an instructs us to “Enter houses by their doors,” (2:189) and the door to the house of tasawwuf, the mystical discipline, is the shaykh, pir, murshid, guide, or teacher (which ever term one prefers), who is the locus of manifestation through which one is instructed via the Divine barakah (grace) which is transmitted through a silsilah, or chain of spiritual lineage, that extends back to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and, through Muhammad (peace be upon him) to the entire Prophetic tradition. The Prophet (peace be upon him) has said: “The shaykh among the following of such a shaykh is like a Prophet among the people of that Prophet,” and the Qur’an informs us: “God appointed for you stars, that you might be guided in the darkness of land and the sea.” (6:97)
The stars which guide us along the path of tasawwuf, which is hidden among, and protected by, 70,000 veils of darkness and light are the spiritual guides who are, as the Prophet (peace be upon him) has indicated: the “learned masters [who] are the inheritors of the Prophets.” On the other hand, the Prophet (peace be upon him) also has said: “Verily, God does not take away knowledge from the hands of Divine servants, but takes away such knowledge by taking away the learned, so that when no learned people remain, the ignorant will be placed at the head of affairs. Causes will be submitted to their decision, and they will make judgments without knowledge, and they will err themselves, and lead others into error.”
A false teacher or counterfeit shaykh is the foregoing sort of ignorant person who makes all manner of judgments about spiritual matters without any real esoteric knowledge, and, as a result, not only errs in such judgments, but, also causes those who follow him or her to err as well –– and, it is of vital importance to grasp the fact that the knowledge which is being discussed here is not a matter of belief or opinion or information or concepts, for, as the Prophet (peace be upon him) indicates: “Whoever knows Allah curbs one’s tongue from speaking about Allah, since this kind of knowledge cannot be contained in speech,” but, the fact that someone chooses silence does not, in and of itself, prove that such a person knows Allah. Today, the fate of many people who consider themselves mureeds or students of this or that so-called shaykh or spiritual guide is, unfortunately, being greatly shaped, colored, oriented and directed by the counsel of the kinds of ignorant people who refer to themselves as shaykhs or spiritual guides but who are not anything remotely like the ‘guiding stars’ to which the Qur’an alludes, for they possess none of the requisite knowledge.
These ‘shaykhs of darkness’ do not have any insight into the actual spiritual capacity of the seekers who come to them for assistance, and, therefore, the alleged teachers are not in any position to advise a person about what practices to observe, or when such practices should be observed, or for how long, and under what circumstances. Moreover, these spiritual shadows who call themselves shaykhs are not in any position to know the significance of the states and stations which may be experienced by a seeker or what remedies to apply in the case of the numerous kinds of difficulty which might be encountered by a would-be seeker.
Because these so-called teachers have not developed the sciences of dhawk (tasting), imbibing, or quenching in relation to the spiritual experiences given expression through the purification, calibration, and activation of such inner spiritual faculties as: heart, sirr, spirit, kafi, or aqfah, and because they do not speak from having experienced anything of fana (absorption in the Divine Presence) or baqa (subsistence as an unique individual within the Divine Presence), and because they have not traversed the spiritual stations of repentance, longing, sincerity, patience, dependence, gratitude, or love, such alleged spiritual guides are not in any position to advise a seeker about anything of importance.
Because these presumptuous, mystical cretins know little or nothing about spiritual kashf (the unveiling of spiritual secrets), they have no way of determining if the experiences of their “charges” is authentic or spurious. Because these self-appointed guides do not understand that “only those who possess the kernels remember,” (39:9) and possessing of such kernels is only acquired through accessing the house of tasawwuf through authorized doors, they fail to understand that they have nothing of any real, essential, substantial value to offer to those seekers who come to them and, consequently, they cannot help but short-change and mislead such individuals.
These ‘lords of ignorance’ give arbitrary interpretations to the dreams of their mureeds. As a result, a very valuable and important means of spiritual communication between Divinity and the individual is garbled and dreams become a tower of Babel, rather than a source of guidance.
Just as the Qur’an stipulates that: “nor does Muhammad speak of his own accord,” (53:3), so, too, authentic shaykhs do not speak of their own accord but, rather, in accordance with the light which comes to them through the agency of the silsilah, and, therefore, through the agency of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and, consequently, from Allah. Individuals who have not been properly authorized through a legitimate silsilah and, as a result, have not been given permission to serve as a guide on the spiritual path, speak of their own accord, and to precisely this extent the counsel they give is in error.
All of the foregoing distinctions are relatively obscure and opaque to a seeker. In fact, the presence of such a lack of knowledge is what differentiates a seeker from a teacher.
However, generally speaking, almost every genuine seeker has a correct intuition about the absolute necessity for such knowledge in a teacher, or that, at the very least, an intuition which acknowledges that an authentic spiritual guide must be in a position to serve as a locus of manifestation for the transmission of such knowledge via the barakah which is channeled, by the Grace of God, through the silsilah that serves as a guarantor, God willing, for the authenticity of a given spiritual guide.
Not all spiritual guides are of equal capacity, nor of equally realized spiritual stations, and a shaykh may be more spiritually mature at a later junction of spiritual travel than at a previous one. Jalaluddin Rumi was a very different shaykh after his time with Shamsi Tabriz, than he was prior to those encounters. On the other hand, not every shaykh is destined to meet up with a Shams, and not every shaykh is necessarily destined to rise to the level of a post-Shams Rumi.
The sine qua non of a spiritual guide, however, is to be firmly ensconced in the barakah of an authentic silsilah which falls under the umbrella of Divine Grace as dispensed through the Prophetic tradition. Without this spiritual connection, spiritual possibilities on the mystical path are extremely limited, and the conditions of travel are very, very hazardous.
There is a story associated with Hazrat Junayd (may God be pleased with him) in which there was a mureed of his who came to the conclusion, after many years of following the instructions of the shaykh, that the time had come when the mureed was sufficiently spiritually mature to be able to continue the path on his own. Consequently, the mureed went off and began observing the practices he had been given in relative isolation.
The very first night, the mureed had an incredible experience in which, while engaged in a spiritual practice, he was visited by two beings who invited the mureed to mount a horse-like creature (presumably, reminiscent of the Buraq upon which the Prophet rode during the night journey), and, then, the mureed was transported to a wonderful destination which was too beautiful to describe and that was filled with all manner of wondrous happenings. Eventually, the mureed was brought back to his residence.
The next night, the same thing happened. If anything, the experience was even more amazing than the previous evening.
Thus it went for some number of days. Somehow, Hazrat Junayd (may God be pleased with him) came to hear about the mureed’s set of experiences, and the shaykh had one of the other members of the silsilah convey a message to the mureed who was undergoing the altered states of consciousness.
In effect, the message simply asked the mureed to recite a certain litany or formula the next time the mureed had such an experience. Out of respect for his former mentor, the mureed decided he would comply with the request entailed by the message, and, therefore, that night when the same sequence of events began to occur, he recited the formula he had been given, and, immediately, there were shrieks, the whole scene disappeared, and the mureed found himself on a mound of dust and bones.
With a start, the mureed realized that he was being seduced by non-spiritual or anti-spiritual forces during these anomalous experiences, and, as a result, he repented for his misunderstanding and misdeeds, and returned to associating with his shaykh. He thanked God that via the agency of his spiritual teacher he had been saved from a spiritual catastrophe.
The reason the foregoing story has been told is not to serve as a cautionary note against those who would strike out on their own prematurely –– although, of course, the story does carry such a lesson. Rather, the story has been related in order to bring attention to the fact that one might have all manner of wonderful, amazing, indescribable, intense, pleasant experiences and still end up on a mound of dust and bones, and the enticing character of an experience is not necessarily an index of its degree of validity or authenticity.
Many people step onto the mystical path in search of peace, acceptance, community, ecstasy, altered states of consciousness, anomalous experiences, happiness, satisfaction, knowledge, certainty, and so on. What most of these people do not appreciate properly is that one must journey through both the Divine attributes of jalal (majesty, transcendence, rigor, awe, justice, power), as well as the attributes of jamal (beauty, compassion, love, friendship, forgiveness), in order to come to know one’s Lord in a complete sense (as complete as one’s spiritual capacity is able to realize).
A false teacher cannot help a seeker with respect to either side of the ledger –– the jalali or the jamali. In fact, a false teacher is only capable of leading one to a mound of bones and dust –– that is, spiritual emptiness. Indeed, if it is a mistake for a mureed to try to prematurely abandon the guidance which is being made available by Divinity through a legitimate silsilah (in the form of an authentic locus of manifested Grace known as a shaykh), the magnitude of the error is multiplied by a factor of thousands when an ignoramus who is not a duly authorized shaykh tries to pass himself or herself off as being authentic.
A seeker is between a rock and a hard place. They intuitively understand they do not have the requisite knowledge and understanding to be able to travel the spiritual path without assistance, and, therefore, if they wish to proceed, they are in desperate need of help. At the same time, they really have no way of knowing who they should or shouldn’t trust in relation to the matter of guidance, and, furthermore, they do have at least a vague sense that if they trust the wrong person, they could end up in the spiritual equivalent of quicksand or become hopelessly lost or essentially damaged.
These are very high stakes. The choice is fraught with peril and problems.
When a person finally makes the decision to commit oneself to this or that alleged spiritual guide and, subsequently, comes to learn that the so-called teacher is not what she or he represented herself or himself to be, the seeker is struck with a deep, intimate, essential, fundamental sense of betrayal, disappointment, sadness, grief, and loss.
The potential of the mystical path –– which one felt to be so close at hand and which one felt one had been extremely blessed to be given access to –– has turned out to be an illusion within a delusion. Suddenly, one is beginning at no beginning, and one is working toward no end –– rather, one is lost in space with no way to re-orient oneself because virtually every indicator which one had been using to gauge spiritual orientation, progress, knowledge, and so on, has been undermined and corrupted since the key element that, heretofore, had rendered one’s mystical gyroscope an effective means of navigation –– namely, the teacher –– has been proven to be completely unreliable.
One can’t go to Walmart and get a replacement. In fact, one is confronted with a problem –– one that the seeker considers to be among the most important and pressing issues of life -- such that one has no idea how to resolve the difficulty and get things back on track (or even whether such a resolution is possible), while, simultaneously, having to deal with all the negative emotions which come to the surface when one has been betrayed in such an essential manner -- one is often inundated with waves of anger, depression, frustration, alienation, apathy, existential malaise, distrust, cynicism, grief, and loneliness.
Many people who are not interested in the Sufi path or who believe they have an authentic shaykh may remind the person who is in spiritual crisis to: “Say: He is my Lord; there is no God save Him. In Him do I put my trust and unto Him is my recourse,” (13:30). On the other hand, the Qur’an also says: “Say Muhammad: If you love Allah, then follow me, so that God may love you.” (3:31)
To learn how to trust God and to accept Divinity as one’s recourse, one must follow the way of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Furthermore, the Qur’an instructed the Prophet (peace be upon him) to: “Say (O Muhammad): This is my way. I call to God upon insight –– I and whoever follows after me.”(12:108).
One sought out a teacher because one wished to be initiated into the way of calling to God via spiritual insight. One sought out a teacher because one believed the Prophet (peace be upon him) when he indicated that ‘this world is maintained in existence by illusion’ and when he said: “People are asleep, and when they die, they wake up”, and when he said: “Your most hostile enemy is your soul enclosed between your two sides,” and when he said: “The one who knows oneself, knows one’s Lord”, and when he said: “Die before you die,” and when he said: “People die in the state in which they lived, and they are resurrected in the state in which they die.”
We sought out a spiritual guide because we understood something about the relationship between illusion and the world, and we suspected we were spiritually asleep and wanted to awaken, and that the unredeemed nafs was responsible for helping to maintain illusion and keeping us asleep, and that we needed to know ourselves in order to be actively aware of the presence of Divinity in our lives, and that in order to come to such knowledge we had to die to ourselves before our physical death overtook us, and that if we did not succeed in this mission, then, we would be raised up in the state in which we passed away from this life. We sought out a spiritual guide to help us struggle with all of the foregoing issues because we didn’t know how to do any of this on our own, and because the likelihood of going astray, while trying to act as our own guide continues to haunt us –– after all, the Qur’an says: “Shall we tell you who will be the greatest losers in their works? Those whose striving goes astray in the present life, while they think they are working good deeds.” (18:104)
In the absence of an authentic teacher, one could return to just observing the requirements of shari’ah, but once one realizes, however dimly, that there is a reality or haqiqah to shari’ah which goes beyond mere words, litanies, observances, beliefs, and practices, one remains existentially restless, and one is not content to remain a stranger to the inner aspects of one’s own spiritual tradition. The potential or possibilities are seen, but the means to bring this potential to fruition -- in the absence of an authentic teacher who serves as a locus of manifested Grace for a legitimate silsilah - is a huge problem.
In the absence of a teacher, one could concentrate on zikr for the Qur’an clearly indicates that: “Lo! Ritual worship preserves one from lewdness and iniquity, but, verily, remembrance of Allah (zikr) is more important,” (29:45) and God assures us that: “Call upon Me, and I will answer you.” (40:60)
Nonetheless, in the absence of authentic spiritual guidance, we often are at a loss to understand the nature of the Divine ‘answer’ in response to our remembrance, and we do not necessarily know in just what way remembrance of Divinity is more important than ritual worship. In addition, we may recall the Quranic warning: “Have you seen him who has taken his caprice to be his god, and Allah sends him astray purposely, and seals up his hearing and his heart, and sets on his sight a covering,” (45:23), or, alternatively, “Is he, the evil of whose deeds is made fair seeming unto him so that he deems them good, other than Satan’s dupe?” (35:8)
There have been many people who have mistaken the caprice of their own thoughts, opinions and logic for the truth and bowed down to those beliefs only to be sent astray by God. There have been many people whose errors were induced by nafs and Iblis to be made fair seeming and good in their eyes, when such was not the case.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “All people are doomed to perish except those of action, and all people of action will perish except for the sincere, and the sincere are at great risk.” The Prophet (peace be upon him) also said: “Islam began as something strange, and it will revert to being strange as it was in the beginning, so good tidings for the strangers.” Someone asked: “Who are the strangers?” The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The ones who break away from their people for the sake of Islam.”
To break away from one’s people in a way that is not rooted in caprice and error requires spiritual guidance. But, today, such spiritual guidance is increasingly becoming a stranger because such guidance is considered by many to be an oddity, just as Islam was perceived in the beginning. We look for the stranger –– the one who can lead us away from the illusions of culture, dunya, philosophies, and even exoteric science, to the light of esoteric truth -- and when we think we have found such a stranger, only to learn differently, subsequently, this is a very difficult time in a seeker’s life –– a difficulty from which some never recover.
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