Sufism used to be practiced in Dargahs. Dargah is another word for monastery. The Sufi dervishes would each have small rooms inside a building that was constructed to house devotees, which was sort of usually placed at a distance from the rest of the community.
Men who had decided that they wanted to devote their life to understanding Allah, to understanding God, would come there to get instruction from the master of the Dargah, the teacher, the sheikh. And usually on a daily basis, he would give talks to the community, and give individual instruction to the dervishes so that they could move forward on their progress towards understanding haqq, or reality.
This instruction was given on a one-on-one basis and was usually different for each devotee depending on their individual inclinations and their individual needs. The core of what needed to be understood by the devotees was the relationship between man and God, and how this relationship could be grown, and what needs to be done to have this relationship grow.
At the core of that is the understanding of the nature of Allah, or God, as far as man can understand that the nature of haqq, which is one of the names of God which means reality, and the understanding of the world and how its nature is different than the nature of God. The world, the dunya, is the distraction, the creation, that which is other than the Creator. Haqq is reality, one of the names of God, and haqqiqat is the journey towards reality, the life in reality.
There is a book called the Asma al-Husna which has all of the names of God that we know which is ninety-nine plus Allah. For us these qualities are our understanding of the nature of our Creator. Our Creator can’t be seen, He doesn’t have form, and He can’t be described, except He does have names. And in these names, we can begin to understand His nature.
These names for our Creator are actually His duties, they are how He works; they’re His job, to put it in a rather simplistic way. Rahman is a duty of Allah because it’s what He does on behalf of His creation. Rahim is a duty of Allah; it’s what He does on behalf of His creation. So mercy and compassion, Rahman and Rahim, are Allah’s duties to mankind. This is what He has given to mankind and what he gives to mankind.
In the Dargah, the sheikh tries to impart these duties onto his dervishes. One of the things that a true sheikh can do is to give to the ones who are near him the qualities that he has. He can impart his essences to the dervish. So God has given the essence to Muhammad, the sheikhs get their essence from Muhammad, and then pass it on to the dervishes. And each dervish takes on the responsibility of fomenting these essences, these qualities, within him so that as he walks through the world these essences are spread out and people have the opportunity to see them and to understand them.
A dervish was asked, “What do you learn when you are with the sheikh?”
And his response was…
