If you go to Konya, which is in Turkey, and where Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Rumi lived, they have a diorama (I think that’s the right word) they have this little building, with scenes of what dervish life was like during the time of Rumi himself. They have different scenes with people doing different things, but in the first scene, there is a shelf where dervishes who are seeking admission into the order, put their shoes when they walk in. And when they walk out, if their shoes are still there, they can come back. But if their shoes are not still there, that means they haven’t met the criteria of the order and their courtesy, their chivalry, wasn’t at a level necessary in order to be allowed to stay within the group.
Chivalry was a very big part of the Tariqats in early Sufism. Tariqat means “that order” and there are lots of different orders. Rumi’s order is known as Mevlevi. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen’s lineage is Qadiri, and if you look at the front of the Mosque, it actually says “Sufi” and then it says “Qadiri” next to it and that’s from Abdul-Qadir Jilani. The idea of chivalry is very strong in Sufism, you have to know how to act, and if you don’t know how to act you can’t stay within the group. There are kinds of behavior that are just not allowed.
So, a dervish, a devotee, has to be able to take on a certain way of being. That leads to the question of what does it mean to be a devotee? What does it mean to be one who has decided that in their life, they were not going to live it entirely in the world of illusion and be governed by maya, illusion, but they were also going to live it in reverence to some ideal, and that ideal being Allah? They’re going to live it in reverence to Allah. There’s also, of course, the teacher, and there’s the reverence towards the teacher, and that’s of course then transferred to Allah.
What does it mean to have reverence towards Allah? And how can you have reverence to Allah? What does it take to have reverence to Allah? What does it take to be truly a devotee?
You may have heard, and this was an oft repeated phrase from Bawa, “Only God can pray to God, only God can know God.” There are a lot of implications in that phrase, and in that understanding. The essence of it is that you cannot be a devotee unless you take on the qualities of Allah because only the qualities of Allah can pray to Allah. Anger can’t pray to Allah. It’s like the drug smugglers in Pakistan who go to the Sheikh to be blessed as to their next drug deal. It’s not a reality; it’s not the kind of thing that can occur.
So when you are angry, and you pray for the things that your anger wants to do, that’s not prayer. If you’re jealous, and you pray for the things that your jealousy wants to do, that’s not prayer. If you need the things in the world, and you pray for the things in the world because of your desire, and because of the strength of your desire, that’s not prayer…
