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Bayat
At Hudaibiya, more than 1400 companions swore allegiance (took bayat/bai'at) to the beloved Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and this bayat greatly pleased Almighty Allah that those who had taken bayat at the hands of the beloved Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had taken bayat with Almighty Allah. (Above their hands were the hands of Allah - Quran XLV111-10)
The
philosophy is that when one takes bayat at the hands of a
Spiritual Guide (Pir), he then in fact swears allegiance to
the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace)
and then to Allah. In a Hadith,
it is reported that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him
and give him peace) has said:
"Bani Israil was ruled over by the Prophets. When one Prophet died, another succeeded him; but after me there is no Prophet and there will be Caliphs and they will be quite large in number. The one to whom allegiance is sworn first has a supremacy over the others. Concede to their due rights, that is, obey him." [Muslim]
Contact
His
Eminence lays great stress that his disciples (mureeds) should
keep contact with him. Only through attendance with the
spiritual Guide can the door of Mercy be opened. He should
regard the Spiritual Guides heart as a boisterous sea, filled
with pearls of knowledge, and with the jewels of Marifat,
which at times from the furious blowing of the winds of favor
of the Eternal, casts some of those jewels on the shore of the
tongue. Thus the disciple should always be expectant and
present at every gathering so that he may not be excluded from
the advantages arising from the
Spiritual Guides speech and
presence.
Love
for the Spiritual Guide
If the
disciple regards another one more perfect, loves bond becomes
weakened and the Masters word has little effect on him. When
the Spiritual Guides words and actions take effect, love
emerges. As his love is greater so is his readiness to accept
the Masters instructions with a greater desire. There is only
one thing that counts and that is the personal relationship
with his Spiritual Guide and teacher. All other things must be
kept at bay. The disciple is here for his Master to send him
where he wishes. He has chosen him. There is no way out.
Hazrat Kwaja Moinuddin Chishti (may Allah be pleased with him) served his spiritual
guide, Hazrat Usman Harooni (may Allah be pleased with him) for
22 years.
Whenever his spiritual guide used to undertake a journey, he
used to carry on his head his bedding and basket. The beloved
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said, none will experience the sweetness of
faith until he loves a person and loves him for Allah’s
sake, and until it becomes dearer to him to be thrown into the
fire than to revert to disbelief after Allah has brought him
out of the fire and until Allah and His Apostle become dearer
to him than anything else (Bukhari)
Prayer
Prayer
is of two kinds. One type of prayer is that of the ordinary
man which is confined to precepts and practice. But for the
mystic it bears a deeper significance. This type of prayer
is that of the Prophets and the Auliyas, which is performed
with a receptive heart. Its reward is the unison with God.
Zikr (Remembrance of Allah)
At first
one remembers Allah with the tongue. After continuous
practice, one remembers Allah within the heart and then Zikr
is transferred to the soul ‘rouh’. The Prophets and the
Saints are always engaged in the inner remembrance of God.
Hazrat Abdullah bin Busr (may Allah be pleased with him) told of a desert Arab coming
to the beloved Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and asking who was the best
among men, to which the Prophet replied, “Happy is he
whose life is long and whose deeds are good.” He asked the
prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) what deed was most excellent, and the reply
was “That you should leave this world with Zikr of Allah
fresh on your tongue” (Mishkat). The time of death is very
critical. This is the time when Satan tries every trick a
Muslim to become a disbeliever. If we want to pass through
this trial safely with ‘imaan’ and with Zikr of Almighty
Allah on our tongue, we should concentrate on Almighty Allah
during our entire lifetime.
Self
(Nafs)
His
Eminence lays great emphasis on the renunciation of the ego
and the inner
struggle. The Nafs is the abode of all sins and unlawful desires. Only by
renouncing ones nafs and the vain desires of this world can
one attain Allah Almighty.
Abstinence
from Sins
To
perform good actions is easy but to abstain from sins is
very difficult. It is only through the grace of Almighty
Allah that this restraint is obtained. The beloved Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) has described this constant struggle against
'nafs
Ammara', the unruly animal self as 'Jihad Akbar' (Greater
Jihad). Here are a few golden rules:
Keep silent and speak only when necessary.
Avoid using foul
languages avoid backbiting and telling lies. When you speak,
speak with justice and truth.
To
abstain from the sins of the hands and feet, don’t use
your hands to harm the creatures of Allah and with your feet
don’t go to places where the law has forbidden you to go
Keep the eyes clean from seeing obscenities and to always lower your gaze.
With the ears don’t take pleasure in listening to shameful stories and vain conversation.
Don’t
take any person as lower than yourself, nor laugh at him.
Perhaps, in the sight of Allah, he is better than you. And
don’t rejoice at others misfortunes
Clean
the heart from inward ills that is, jealousy and envy, greed
and avarice, hatred and cruelty, pride and arrogance, show
and ostentation, boastfulness.
Renunciation
Renunciation
is the fundamental principle in His Eminence’s mystical
philosophy. Without renunciation, one cannot reach his goal.
The people of the world run after material objects, not
knowing it is an illusion and will not last forever. They
indeed, are the wisest, which have taken to renunciation.
The object should be to have no ‘object’. To loose an
object is to gain an object. Those who are in ignorance are
to be pitied. They take happiness as trouble, and treat
trouble as happiness. He, indeed, is the wisest, who upon
the mere thought of some worldly object renounces them, then
and there, accepts piety and renunciation as the ultimate
goal. The mystic should renounce all and he should be
devoted to Almighty Allah alone, who is Everlasting and
Eternal. Wealth and power are two of the biggest idols and
have led and are leading many astray. These individuals
worship the gods of position and wealth. Wealth and money
should be spent in the way of Almighty Allah instead of
spending it to feed the desires of the nafs. The individual,
who has love of wealth, position and the love of any other
object other than Almighty Allah, has indeed performed a
negative act and vibration, but the one who has attained the
Gnosis of Almighty Allah has performed the positive act. And
this can only be attained through remembrance (Zikr) and the
love of Almighty Allah.
Almighty
Allah has described these Saintly persons in the following
verse:
"Men
whom neither traffic nor merchandise can divert from the
Remembrance of Allah (Zikr) nor from regular prayer, nor
from the practice of regular charity. Their only fear is the
day when their hearts and eyes will be transformed (in a
world wholly new)". [Sura Nur v37]
According
to His Eminence, the greatest barrier which prevents one
from attaining Almighty Allah is the “I” or the
egotistic self. As long as an individual is engrossed in his
own self, he will not see Almighty Allah. There are not two
personalities, but there is only one personality existing
and pervading in the Universe. When the “I” is effaced,
then and only then, does one reach a stage of Baqa.
Existence
of Deep Knowledge (Marifat)
This is
a knowledge that cannot be learned through books. It is
knowledge, which is a gift of Almighty Allah who bestows it
to His chosen ones among the Auliya (friends of Allah) who
have reached a certain degree of nearness to Allah. It is
out of this knowledge that Hazrat Abu Huraira (may Allh be
pleased with him) one of
the Sufi companions (Ashaab-as-Suffa) has said:
"I
have memorized two kinds of knowledge from Allah’s
Apostle. I have propagated one of them to you and if I
propagated the second, then my pharynx (throat) would be cut
(i.e. be killed)". [Bukhari]
This
knowledge cannot be disclosed. It has been transmitted from
the breast of the Spiritual Guide to his disciples. To
spiritually grasp and experience the real meaning of the
under mentioned verse of the Holy Quran, it is only possible
to those rare persons who have obtained the Grace of
Almighty Allah.
"God
is the light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of
His light is as if there was a niche and within it a lamp:
The lamp is enclosed in a Glass. The glass as it was a
brilliant star from the blessed Tree. An olive, neither of
the East nor West, whose oil is well-nigh luminous. Through
fire scarce touched it: light upon light Allah doth guide
whom He will to His Light (Sura Nur v.35)"
Once
there was a poor Fakir. He prayed to God that he might be
fed without being obliged to work, One day in a dream the
Fakir was told that his prayers had been granted and that he
would find hidden treasure. He was directed to travel out of
the city where there stood a shrine of a Saint. He was then
to turn his back to the sacred shrine and his face towards
Mecca. He was then to place an arrow in the bow and where
the arrow fell, there he should dig for the treasure.
The
Fakir was delighted and followed the directions given to him
in the dream, but after shooting many arrows and digging in
various directions the Fakir failed to find the treasure.
Having failed to hit the spot where the treasure was buried
and despairing of success by his own unaided efforts, the
Fakir invoked the assistance of God in the location of the
treasure. That night in a dream the Fakir was told:
“You
were directed merely to fix an arrow in your bow and let it
drop. You have instead drawn the bow with all your might and
overshot. See that the arrow falls close to where you
stand”. The following day the Fakir complied with the
instructions and succeeded in discovering the treasure.
The
moral brought home is that in order to find God we undertake
long journeys and pilgrimages while God is nearer to us than
the veins of our neck. Instead of looking far beyond
horizons one should first look inward for there alone one
can have the brightest visions-the vision of God.
By
telling this tale Maulana Rumi (may Allah be pleased with
him) also brings out the
point that men are apt to overlook the spiritual treasures
close to them, and that is why Prophets are not honored in
their own lands.