The central questions that we are involved with in Sufism, and that we are involved in with our shaikh, are common to all civilizations, and to all countries. There are stories in Hinduism, in Hasidism, and in Sufism, of men who get to the point where they ask the questions, “Why am I here? Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of all of this?” The Sufis have an interesting way of going about teaching the answers to those questions, and if you go to Konya, which is where Rumi, Jellaludin Mevlana Rumi, lived, there is a mosque there, and they have a museum there. In the museum they have dioramas. They have an area set up with portrayals of what it was like to be there. There are mannequins in a kitchen showing what the kitchen looked like, there are mannequins in an entrance.

One of the things we see there in the museum are small explanation plaques. When you come in to join the group, or you are an apprentice, or a novice, and you come in, you take your shoes off, and your shoes go into a certain place.  They then get to know you, and examine you, and spend time with you. If you are allowed to stay, your shoes stay in the same place where you took them off. If you are asked to leave, they do not ask you to leave, they just put your shoes in a different place and that means you cannot come back. 

What is it that they try and teach the novice in the early onset of his experience with Sufism? What are they trying to convey? In Turkish it is called adab, and that means courtesy. There are tremendous rules as to courtesy, and to the interaction between people in the dergah. The dergah is a Sufi monastery. If we cannot conform to this kind of behavior, we cannot stay within the group. What does conforming for this kind of behavior mean? It means that we have to enter into a profound sort of etiquette. For instance, every time they shake hands they kiss each other’s hand. Every time they pass one thing over to another, for instance if you are passing a spoon to someone sitting at the table next to you, you would kiss the spoon and hand it over. Everything involves a kind of elevated etiquette and kindness. If you cannot enter into this elevated state of etiquette, you cannot become part of their group. It has to do also with the way you use language, with the way you interact, and with the kinds of things you talk about.

A Sufi does not gossip. A Sufi does not talk about other people. A Sufi does not get angry, at least not in front of other people. There has to be a control that you have of yourself and of the way you act. This control of the self is necessary in order to begin the process of tremendous change that Sufism is trying to bring about in people. If you cannot control your tongue, how are you going to control your anger? If you cannot control your anger, how are you going to sit still in the presence of God? If you do not have control over your mannerisms, you will not be able to break the veils that separate you from the truth. What is the key to that? You can control your mannerisms if your attachment to your mannerisms is not overpowering. But if your attachment to the world is overpowering, then you cannot control your mannerisms because what goes on in the world becomes so incredibly important that you have to react. One of the great lessons is learning how not to react. Well, if reaction happens spontaneously within you, and you cannot control the need for that spontaneous reaction, you cannot do what is necessary to do to become a Sufi.

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In this world, we categorize things, and we give things names. There is the animal kingdom, then there are the different species within the animal kingdom, and they all have different names. There is the kingdom that lives in the ocean, and the fish all have different names. Then there is the world of humans, and all the humans have different names. In some ways we are categorized the same as we categorize animals. Different parts of the world are categorized by names. There are the Asian countries. There are the African countries. There are the European countries. Then there are the subsets within each larger set. It gets all the way down to different religions, different nationalities, different tribes, sometimes even different neighborhoods. Often there are incredible conflicts in all of these situations. 

In some countries, if a stranger visits that country he could not tell that there was a north and south. He could not tell that these people were at each others’ throats because they speak the same language, and they look the same. Yet there is a terrible animosity between them caused by various reasons, often that reason is religion, such as the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland. 

Man sees the world in different ways. Transcendent man sees a unity in existence. Non-transcendent man sees differences. He sees his own egocentric self as separate from every other person, and every other egocentric self. Sometimes, a group of egocentric people join clubs, these clubs are given names such as religions, and then they see this group as different than every other group. The point being that man sees differences and as long as man sees differences, man cannot become unified. As long as man equates things as ‘mine’ or ‘his’ or ‘ours’ and ‘theirs,’ there is constantly going to be conflicts and there is constantly going to be chaos.

Now, a lot of this stems from the nature of the mind, and the nature of desire. The mind, if you have watched it, and we should all watch our minds to get some idea of how it works, the mind is the critic. The mind sees things and it says, “Well, this is good and this is bad, and this is alright, but I shouldn’t go there, and it’s okay to go there, and I can do this, but I can’t do that.” Now, we wonder where did all these things come from? Well, they have been ingrained in us since we were children. Our mind has been taught likes and dislikes. These things are incredibly deep-rooted and very difficult to transcend. Bawa says, “That which you learn as a youth is like writing in stone. That which you learn later is like writing on water.” So, the things that are ingrained in us when we are young are things that we carry with us. 

Now, when we are young and we are taught these things by our parents, and our parents’ friends, and our teachers, we do not think of these things as prejudices. We think of these things as truth, and herein lies the great difficulty. We are taught what we consider inherent truths when we are young, and in reality these things are not truths. What they are is the attempt to make prejudices legitimate, and we are taught by our parents and by our society how to legitimize prejudices, and how to legitimize differences. Somehow we, as an individual, need to overcome all of these legitimized differences that we hold as sacred within our being.

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Within religions and spiritual paths there are many ways that people are instructed to come closer to their Lord, and to serve their Lord. There is the path of religious ritual, and people can take up as much time as they like, or can afford to give up for religious ritual. There is the path of service where people do work on behalf of others, selflessly. There is the path of knowledge, where people try to learn everything they can about their Lord, and become closer to Him that way. 

It is said that the most direct path, and the path that is most successful for the average man is the path of love. The path of love brings us directly in contact with our Creator. Love by its very nature is able to overcome all of the lower forces and all of the lower inclinations, it is like a fire that wipes them away. Without love it is very difficult to subdue the fire of the lower forces. The intellect cannot subdue them, but love can subdue them. Each one of us should imagine times when love in us was very powerful, and the effect that it had on us. What we will remember is that all of the difficulties, or the things that bothered us, or the anxieties we had, when love is strong they fade away. There is no room for them. Love suppresses them. Love suppresses them, and then burns them up.

What we need to do is we need to meditate on love. We need to meditate on bringing love into our being. We need to think about how powerful God’s love is for us, and how this life force that we have has been given to us through love, and how love maintains and sustains us. If we understood for a second that if God lost His love for this creation, this creation would disappear, but this creation is held in place by God’s love. We need to try to comprehend that love, and return that love to our Creator.

It is in that love for our Creator that we can come in touch with reality because the string that attaches us to our Creator is love, and the string that attaches us to reality is love. When love is strong, illusion, maya, fades away because love is stronger than illusion, love is stronger than maya. Karma fades away because love is stronger than karma. We constantly have old attachments that we were born with, that came to us through our parents, and they influence our being. Everyone wants to know how we can rid ourselves of all of these influences. The way we rid ourselves of these influences is to be in the state of Divine Love. 

God has no karma. His love has no karma. His love has no attachments. He is and He gives. He does not have favorites. He does not pick one over the other. He gives to everyone. The air is free. The water is free. The love that He gives is free. If we can find this love, and attach ourselves to this love we become free. It is in that freedom, through that love that we can begin to understand reality.

As maya fades, as karma fades, as this world fades from us, as its influence on us fades, we come closer to the truth. The truth is non-manifest, and this is a difficult concept to grasp, but when we are constantly using our senses as the way we find our way around the world, we come closer to maya and to karma. If we live our lives through our body, and through our body’s senses, through our eyes, nose, ears, touch, taste, we come closer to illusion. As we come closer to illusion, it seems real, it seems as if our sustenance is there. We miss the point of where our sustenance actually comes from, and it does not come from the world. Our sustenance is supplied to the world and to us by our Creator. 

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Different people approach this world in different ways. From these talks over the years we have all realized that consciousness is on a sliding scale. It is like the board game Chutes and Ladders. We can go up and we can fall down, we go up and we fall down. Just because we are at a lower state does not mean we cannot be at a higher state. Just because we are at a higher state does not mean we cannot slip and go to a lower state. Well, we, all of us, have all of these states within us. This is hard sometimes to recognize, especially when we see things in other people that are incredibly noxious. We say, “How could that be in me?” Well, it can be.

The difference is that the ones who do not have these noxious states have been able to suppress them so that they no longer influence them. The noxious states no longer erupt out of them in difficult moments. So, the difference, by the grace of God, between those of us who are less noxious and those of us who are more noxious is the ability to suppress those qualities which are abhorrent to truth.

Different people, as they walk through this world, sense this world in different ways. The world is more difficult for some than for others. There is an expression, “He takes everything to heart.” This means his or hers empathy for the things that are around them is very powerful. If others seem sad, they become sad. It is something that happens quickly and without notice, so they walk around a lot of times in despair because they see so much despair around them. Not everyone is touched by despair. Some people are able to shrug it off like a duck shrugs off water. Some people cannot. But the truth is that we are all in this world where despair does exist.

We are all within difficulty and going through difficult things. We all have a need to be able to handle these difficult things and to be able to pull ourselves out of difficult situations that we all find ourselves in from time to time. For some people, the difficulty of just being alive brings upon great despair because they see the end-result of this existence, and it frightens them. So, people have fears, people have doubts, and the constant question that is on everyone’s lips and on everyone’s mind and in everyone’s heart is, “How do we get relief from all of the trials and tribulations that are in the world?”

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Religion has been around for a long time. Religion has been used in different ways in different civilizations at different times. Often, religion becomes a method for a government to control people, for the government to keep people in line. Religious beliefs were originally brought through the 124,000 prophets that God sent into this world. It was a methodology for people to see in a manifest form God’s love in this world, and to be able to, by looking at that manifest love, begin to bring that love into their own being, and become like what they saw. What happened was that people tried to carry on what the prophets brought, but often the people carrying on what was brought were not at the level of consciousness as the people who brought it. When their own self-interests began to interfere, change came to religions and as opposed to being a path for people to understand themselves, to understand their Lord, it became a political power system.

Sufism grew in the time when religions had lost their way. The understanding of Muhaiyaddeen came forth as one who brings back the truth to the religion. Religions, over time, lose their integrity, they lose their power, they lose their truth, and the truth had to be brought back to them. The Muhaiyaddeens were sent into the world, the qutbs (divinely wise beings) were sent into the world, to bring back that integrity. The religions were already established and there was no need for a new religion, but there was a need to bring truth back into the hearts of devotees.

Truth is beyond physical and religious procedures. Truth is beyond externalities. Truth is beyond the world of illusion. Truth goes to the heart of things. Truth goes to the essence of things. Sufism became known as the essence of religion, the essence of the truth. Sufism stayed away from politics, stayed away from power, and those following this path stayed within themselves trying to put themselves within their Lord. This was the purpose of Sufism, this was the purpose that the qutbs began to convey to the people who listened to them. They said, “There is something beyond this political world. There is something beyond this material world. There is something beyond what the eyes can see. This teaching is what is beyond all of this.”

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If we are looking for books these days we are probably not going to a bookstore, we are going to Amazon. If we are looking for books on metaphysics, or Sufism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Christianity, or Judaism, we will find, literally, thousands upon thousands of books that are trying to explain religion and/or the mystical experience. What we will find is a lot of these books are very complicated. They seem to make the search for the truth a very complicated, and convoluted experience. Many of these explanations are really difficult to understand, and one of the reasons is that people are trying to explain things that they do not understand. What I have found in my experience with people is that when people understand, their answers are usually short, and to the point, and make sense. People who do not understand will take hours to explain something, and we still won’t have any idea what they are talking about.

What we need to do for ourselves in our own quest, in our own search, is focus on things that we can understand. Focus on things that we have experience with. Focus on things that we have lived, endured, and make that more a part of our lives, and broaden that aspect of our existence. Quite simply, all of us have felt love. All of us have been in a state where we were so overwhelmed by feelings of joy and love that everything else was pushed to the side. Nothing else mattered because, for that moment, love was supreme. I believe that if we focus on love in our lives on a regular basis and make it an important part of our daily being, we will expand and learn more and more about the truth. We need to be in a state where the truth can reside within us.

What do we need to create the space for truth to come to us? We need to be in a state of love. We need to be in a state that is compatible with truth. If we want truth to come to us we need to be in a state where truth can dwell. Truth dwells in a state of love. Truth cannot dwell in a state of anger. Truth cannot dwell in a state of hatred. Truth cannot dwell with animosity. Truth cannot dwell with resentment. All of these things will push truth away because there is no truth in anger. There is no truth in resentment. There is no truth in animosity. There is no truth in hatred. All of these things are antithetical to the truth. They are the opposite of the truth. They are anathema to the truth.

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The scientific world has begun to enter into the metaphysical world, and has been giving explanations based on scientific inquiry with all of the modern technology that is now available to measure things. There has also been a cross between the metaphysical and the religious. The metaphysical is less interested in specific religions as it is in understanding the mystery of existence. The religions, for a long time, in its normative form, have been used as a method to create morals, a moral fiber for society, and to give people a sense of how to act towards each other. We now have all of the different approaches to existence available for us. We now are able to read about quantum mechanics, and to read about mysticism by way of different religions because each of them have their own mystical path in addition to the normative orthodox path. Very often, the mystical path has been excommunicated, removed from being part of religions by the orthodoxy within the religion.

But, for those of us who are not so interested in joining clubs, not so interested in differences and in separations, there is an opportunity to look at things from many different directions. What I have learned in my experience entering onto the mystical path through my shaikh, Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, has been buttressed by all of these findings in religion, in science, and in every other way.

What we need to do is begin to understand what the reality that Sufism is, and try to understand this. We will find that others who have seen some of the truth would buttress the findings that we see from our shaikh. For instance, he tells us that there is sharī‘at, tarīqat, haqīqat, and ma‘rifat, which are the four levels of spiritual ascendance. But he also explains that finally there is sūfiyyat, which is the fifth level. Sūfiyyat is the place beyond religion.

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I read a book many years ago by a woman whose name is Annamarie Schimmel, she is a great Islamic scholar who taught at Harvard. It was a book about Sufism, and there was a line in the book that was from around the 12th century that was, “Sufism used to be a way of being. Now, at best, it is a philosophy.” We need to understand this because it is critical to understanding this path. Sufism is about becoming. It is not about talking about things. It is not about explaining things. It is about being a certain way.

Many of us were fortunate enough to have had an exalted teacher for 14 years, and in that time, when we were with him, we saw what it was that he was talking about. We understood what it meant to become an insān kāmil, a true human being, because he was the example of a true human being. There were phrases that we heard that we began to try to understand, like, “To die before death is the Sufi way of life.” What does this mean? Any separation between ourselves and anyone else is a separation between ourselves and God. What does this mean? How do we incorporate this into our being?  How do we become that?

Sufism in the early days used to have what they called dargas, which were monasteries for people who wanted to follow the path. These people actually separated themselves from the community to try and work on themselves to become the way that the teacher was, to become like the teacher, to learn what he was talking about. What separated the teacher from regular people? What was the difference about my teacher, M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, than the students? Why did people come to see him? Well, there were a lot of reasons, but once we were in his presence, it was evident that he was very different than everyone else that we had ever met, he was detached from this world in a way that we had never seen before. He interacted with us as if he did not have the burdens of family, culture, or societies’ upbringing and the rules and regulations that we have all grown up with. He acted in a way as if these things did not burden him, or were not involved with him. But, what we did learn was that there was kindness there that was beyond normal kindness, that was difficult to explain. There was a love there that was so overwhelming that it was difficult to put into words. There was a peace that came over us that was not available anywhere else, and immediately up one entering into his presence, it is as if the molecules in the air changed, and everything was different.

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If you have ever seen babies and I’m sure you have, when they are in their early two’s, they often throw tantrums. These tantrums come about because they cannot resolve situations internally, and they do not know exactly how else to express themselves.

As adults we also carry strong emotions at times. If we cannot resolve these strong emotions within ourselves we end up doing things that are inappropriate, sometimes grossly inappropriate.

Emotions are a large part of who we are, and how we act. Until we get to the point where we have some control and knowledge of our emotions, we are subject to our emotions. So, when anger comes, people do angry things. People react in angry ways. People forget the rules of conduct, and feel that they are entitled to do what they want. One should realize that in a state of anger, actions that come out of us are not controlled by us, they are controlled by the anger within us. Anger makes us feel that we are a victim, and because we feel like a victim we do whatever we want in retribution to correct the injustice that we believe has been done to us. Anger forgets about God, anger forgets about the fact that all things are corrected by God, and that all things are put into their place by God. Anger makes us believe we have the right of judgment, which in reality is God’s responsibility.

We need to be very careful about the emotions that we carry. We need to try to intend to carry certain emotions. The emotion of love is one that we need to intend. We need to intend love constantly in our being. It is through love that we are able to alter other emotions, and stop them from coming into being. Love is the answer to most problems. Love has a soothing nature that can correct interior falseness, interior wrong thinking, interior animosities, interior jealousies, interior hastiness, interior rambunctiousness, and interior hatred. Love corrects all of these. If we are without love, these things will not be corrected because anger makes us believe that we should alter things externally. Anger makes us believe that we should change our external circumstances, so that those external circumstances fit within what our angry state thinks the way things should be, or judgment thinks the way things should be.

The truth is that anger is an internal phenomenon, and will not be changed by altering external conditions. What we need to do is focus on who we are from an internal point of view. We need to focus on being able to conjure love into our being.

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The whole world talks about meditation, and different kinds of meditation. Today we will talk about meditation in the Sufi mode. The word dhikr or zikr, which means remembrance, is at the essence of Sufi meditation. There are many different forms of Sufi meditation, but it mostly has to do with the repetition of the names that are associated with God. These names can be found in the Asmā’ ul-Husnā, the compilation of the names of God.

A sample of zikr is the repetition of Yā Shakūr, Shakūr means Gratitude, or Rahmān or Rahīm, Mercy or Compassion. The point being that the repetition of these words is supposed to engender inside of us the meaning of that word. When we recite God’s names, it is not like we are just saying a word, over and over and over, we are reciting a word with a specific meaning, over and over and over. If we are not conscious of this meaning then the meditation is lost.

If we are saying Yā Rahmān, the Merciful One, Yā Rahīm, the Compassionate One, if we say these words, we need to simultaneously attempt to bring about that emotion, that understanding, that quality within ourselves. The meditation is two-fold, first it is constant repetition, second, it is an act of intention within us to bring about the meaning of that word within ourselves.

We need to work at bringing about an emotional reaction to mercy, or an emotional reaction to compassion, or an emotional reaction to love. These are the higher emotional states which take us to higher levels of consciousness. If we are actually doing a zikr meditation, it needs to involve becoming that which we recite. If we do not become that which we recite then in a very real way we are not accomplishing very much, we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. The intention of zikr is to bring about within our being the qualities that we are reciting. We need to be able to picture the qualities that we are reciting, we need to be able to picture the emotion that we are trying to engender, we need to be able to get in touch with that part of us that is that name of God.

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