LETTER 58 THE STATES OF A MUSLIM

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Brother Shamsuddin, may God adorn you with fitting states! The states of a Muslim are one thing, and the qualities of human nature, something quite different. Until human qualities are brought under control by sincerity, the states of a Muslim cannot become rooted in a person's heart. The collection of these qualities is called the ego by people who investigate reality. It is the selfish soul about which you have heard. The form and mold that you see with limbs and joints contains no dangers. It is a mount that bears the burden of the commands of religion. I have sent you a mount from the threshold my own power. Jump on its back and proceed along the path of religion. As long as it is going straight ahead, you have nothing to worry about. It is a mount, and it bears the burden of commands. Do not trouble it. If, however, it decides to wander off the road of religion, then rain the whip of self-struggle upon it, that it might return to the road. The limit of the form is this: If someone pricks himself in one of his bodily members with the point of a needle and says, I am punishing my carnal soul, it would be a sin in the eyes of God Almighty. This fault is a result of great ignorance but, in his foolishness, the ascetic thinks it is a wonderful work. One should be careful not to go beyond the limits prescribed by sound knowledge, for your mount is precious. It is capable of bearing the burden of the trust of God. You cannot bear the burden of your covenant with God except through it, nor can you gird your loins with the belt of devotion except by means of it. It should not be put to grief.

It is the selfishness of one's ego that has to be uprooted and destroyed. It desires to launch an attack on your faith from the stronghold of the qualities of human nature through the torments of rebellious behavior. It wants to upset completely the storehouse of your security and draw you to the threshold of calamity. That desire of the ego should be opposed, and one's inner self should be alert to its snares, and one's outer being alert to its destructive nature. This indeed is one's duty! Anyone who derives any pleasure from his lower soul, by following his own desires, should be told: Do not say you are a follower of Islam! Do not claim for yourself membership in the community of the Prophet! The Lord Almighty is percipient. He can tell the difference between a friend and an enemy. God can distinguish the mischief-maker from the reformer (Q2:220). Our leader, the Prophet, is completely sinless. He clearly recognizes the members of his own community. Whoever has washed himself of us is not one of us, nor does he belong to our religion.

Be careful, O man with head bowed in foolishness, For the sake of the world, you abandoned your faith. How long will you worry about what you eat or wear? How long will you be concerned with name and fame? Why are you proud of commanding the respect of a demon? You have gone mad! You yourself have become a demon! When from this furnace you reach that rose garden. It will seem that you had never seen this furnace. The armies of the entire world are drawn up in two lines: one, the forces of God, and the other, the forces of Satan. Look carefully to yourself to see which is your cavalry unit.

The starting point of both roads is in this world. People are slow to travel, but as the Quran has prescribed: One group will be in paradise, another in hell! (Q42:5). On the Day of Resurrection their condition will become clearly visible. The roads to heaven and hell have been open a long time. Many have already trodden these roads, and many are doing so at the moment. The Day of Resurrection is the promised time of arrival in paradise or hell, although we actually travel along the road in this world itself. Anyone who travels along the road to hell in this world will not be allowed to change over to the road to paradise on the Day of Resurrection, even if he wants to change, he will be thrown into the eternal prison. His heart and eyes will be afflicted for all eternity with strokes of grief and regret. The secret meaning of this is:

The one thing you want is not to be left on the way. Keep your gaze fixed toward heaven, less you get stuck in a well.

Real men are not in search of either this world or the next: They are only in quest of the One, regarding both worlds as dust

Adam gave up paradise for a couple of grains of wheat: If this work has fallen to your lot, you too will have to sell it.

O brother, it has been said by the investigators of Truth that people of today are too foolish to recognize that Inn for if, some day, the dust of this Inn were to reveal itself intimately to you, and elicit friendship from you, then you would experience even more intimacy and friendship than if the eight heavens were to appear before you, their loins girt for service. Only at the very end will scatterbrained and foolish people know the power of this Inn. By then, however, the opportunity will have been lost, only grief and difficulties will remain.

A captive, with a hundred pains and professions of repentance, Was being borne off to hell on the Day of Resurrection. Stabbing his eye with his finger, he plucked it out, And flung it angrily by the side of the road.

What purpose does this eye now serve? he declared: I have no desire to see at all, if I cannot see my Beloved!

From the divine threshold came this address: Do not bind your heart here. Otherwise you will certainly not find this wealth again. You are simply squandering your time. Five times a day you are summoned to Our threshold with these soothing words: Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! And yet you paid no attention to this call. Nor did you take advantage of this wealth. Hence I have closed the doors of devotion to you. If the master of the seven heavens and the seven earths were to shed tears of blood on that day, pleading that you might once be granted permission to perform one inclination of prayer, or one prostration, you would still not be allowed this privilege. For all eternity you would not see it. The world has passed away, only the work you did in the world remains upon your neck!

A Sufi has said: If there is anyone who does not worship the Lord unless you bribe him with the promise of heaven, or who does not keep his skirt free from the stain of sin unless you frighten him with the punishments of hell, then this is a sign that the King of Unity has not yet bound part of his heart with the knot of love. If, for example, Rizwan were sent to you along with the eight paradises, and were to praise you, and say: Either perform two prostrations of prayer with all the prescribed conditions and with due reverence, or go to paradise and enjoy yourself without any limit, the reality of unity would demand that you opt for the performance of prayer rather than a thousand favors in paradise. A soul of lofty aspirations had this to say:

When the jewel of Your love is buried in my mine. The burden of Your afflictions weighs heavily upon my soul. Mere mention of Your name refreshes me, heart and soul Remembrance of You is the comfort that supports me, When my intellect has become a slave at Your threshold, Then the king of this world is my servant and doorkeeper!

This is a great wealth that has been divided into prayer and union-half for me and half for my slave. Where can you find this in heaven? It cannot be found anywhere else except in prayer. Indeed! what great wealth derives from water and dust Half belongs to Me and half to My slave. What more could you want All praise and glory belongs to Me, while your portion is indigence, need, and petition. This is your duty. When you have fulfilled all that is due Me from the

very bottom of your heart, then I shall bestow upon you the Object of your prayer and supplication. If you understood the great power of prayer you would not hanker after paradise. If you were to choose your mount from the various mounts of prayer and spring upon it you would not even reflect upon the torments of hell. What room is there in the sea of this saying of the Prophet concerning the need of paradise or the fear of hell? When anyone of you enters into prayer, then his Lord grants him salvation. His Lord is, in fact, between him and the direction of prayer. The self-asserting pride of all intellects should be humbled, and the qualities and desires of human nature should be brought low, in order to be able to arrive at the very Source of the meaning of this saying, namely His Lord is between him and the direction of prayer. This tradition is from the collection made by Bukhari. known as Al-Jami al-Sabib Genuine traditions) and it has been confirmed by a further Tradition: The person who enters a mosque is paying God a visit, and it is the duty of the One visited to bestow His favor upon the person who visits Him. Certainly no one can take a few steps along My road in righteousness without My showering him with favors. It is impossible, however, for anyone to strike a bargain with Me. If you see somebody in the bazaar at the time for prayer, console him on account of the distress he experiences, for he has not been granted admission; he has been cut off from the threshold of prayer.

O brother, such was the life of those who have gone before us, while our own lives are passed in play and foolishness. Tomorrow, on the Day of Resurrection, every hair from the heads of those just ones will be equal to a thousand worlds, while a hundred thousand like us are not equal to a single blade of grass. All those who are alert to what goes on are grieving over our religion, while we are preoccupied with what we should eat and what we should wear. You go through this vain world in that foolish manner, and you will rise on the morn of the Day of Resurrection full of grief:

Because of the infidel within our very nature, True Muslims in this world will certainly decrease.

On a big feast day Shibli was seen wearing black clothes. The people were astonished. Today is a feast day. What sort of a garment is this? Why are you getting around like this? they asked. I look at the world today, he replied, and I see people wearing new clothes and celebrating the feast, but not one of them pays any attention to God. Today I am lamenting and grieving over them. They have become accustomed to being heedless. They are consumed with self-concern, bound up with pampering to their base desires and living as creatures of habit. They throw their precious lives to the wind. On no day of your life will you experience good fortune. You will continually be occupied with breaking promises and compromising with all sorts of sin. Hold this to be true: As long as you do not fling from your back the fine garments of your demonic ego, you will not be clothed with the jewel of religion. Nor will the religion of friendship reveal its visage to you until you consider this pleasure-prone self as your enemy. To see the beauty of There is no god but God! you must break away from coming to terms with Satan. One who finds the road to the source of all righteousness must first turn away from the allurements of the world.

When Abraham flung the idol to the ground. He shunned all that was doomed to perish. On this way there are thousands of heads like polo balls, What place is there here for trading and talking. You have set out along the road of lovers: Can you be less vigilant than a dog on that road?

O brother, the One who has made you the object of the worship of the angels and turned you into the envy of the heavens has done a great work. Every mirror in the presence of this muddy soil becomes illuminated and sanctified, for the secrets of angels and the conjectures of men are of no use in discovering this meaning. When its flames begin to arise, the angels are astonished and the heavens find their head in a spin. The former humble themselves, while the latter are humbled by necessity. Of this Khwaja Attar has given us a hint:

Were the angels to see your nature,

They would come to worship you in a different fashion. Is not your nature worshiped by the angels?

Has not the crown of viceregency been placed upon your head? You are born of a viceregent. Reject this rubbish heap, Go to the rose garden! Abandon the manner of a beggar

Since kingship awaits you in Egypt Why, like Joseph, do you remain in a well?

He is the Beginning. He is the End. The secret of this is known to anyone acquainted with Meaning. If you take your beginning from Him, you do not really come And since your end is in Him, you will not really go anywhere. There is no god but God is from the divine world, and nothing at all can become separated from it and joined to what is not God. Since all beginnings are from Him, then certainly all return is also toward Him. The description of separation and union, coming and going, is really only metaphorical. All such talk is but a story, indeed, a long one, and one should exercise caution here. Khwaja Attar has said:

For many a year it was my impression that I had passed through several different states: All those going backward, or all those coming forward, Show themselves equal in their astonishment. No one is aware of the secret of the Infinite. We are all prisoners, from the moon above to the fish in the ocean.

We have searched much to gain acquaintance with this secret, But we have not seen, even after a lifetime of searching. Here it is not proper to speak of this mystery; Here the door to these secrets cannot be pierced.

Peace!

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Brother Shamsuddin, may God adorn you with fitting states! The states of a Muslim are one thing, and the qualities of human nature, something quite different. Until human qualities are brought under control by sincerity, the states of a Muslim cannot become rooted in a person's heart. The collection of these qualities is called the ego by people who investigate reality. It is the selfish soul about which you have heard. The form and mold that you see with limbs and joints contains no dangers. It is a mount that bears the burden of the commands of religion. I have sent you a mount from the threshold my own power. Jump on its back and proceed along the path of religion. As long as it is going straight ahead, you have nothing to worry about. It is a mount, and it bears the burden of commands. Do not trouble it. If, however, it decides to wander off the road of religion, then rain the whip of self-struggle upon it, that it might return to the road. The limit of the form is this: If someone pricks himself in one of his bodily members with the point of a needle and says, I am punishing my carnal soul, it would be a sin in the eyes of God Almighty. This fault is a result of great ignorance but, in his foolishness, the ascetic thinks it is a wonderful work. One should be careful not to go beyond the limits prescribed by sound knowledge, for your mount is precious. It is capable of bearing the burden of the trust of God. You cannot bear the burden of your covenant with God except through it, nor can you gird your loins with the belt of devotion except by means of it. It should not be put to grief.

It is the selfishness of one's ego that has to be uprooted and destroyed. It desires to launch an attack on your faith from the stronghold of the qualities of human nature through the torments of rebellious behavior. It wants to upset completely the storehouse of your security and draw you to the threshold of calamity. That desire of the ego should be opposed, and one's inner self should be alert to its snares, and one's outer being alert to its destructive nature. This indeed is one's duty! Anyone who derives any pleasure from his lower soul, by following his own desires, should be told: Do not say you are a follower of Islam! Do not claim for yourself membership in the community of the Prophet! The Lord Almighty is percipient. He can tell the difference between a friend and an enemy. God can distinguish the mischief-maker from the reformer (Q2:220). Our leader, the Prophet, is completely sinless. He clearly recognizes the members of his own community. Whoever has washed himself of us is not one of us, nor does he belong to our religion.

Be careful, O man with head bowed in foolishness, For the sake of the world, you abandoned your faith. How long will you worry about what you eat or wear? How long will you be concerned with name and fame? Why are you proud of commanding the respect of a demon? You have gone mad! You yourself have become a demon! When from this furnace you reach that rose garden. It will seem that you had never seen this furnace. The armies of the entire world are drawn up in two lines: one, the forces of God, and the other, the forces of Satan. Look carefully to yourself to see which is your cavalry unit.

The starting point of both roads is in this world. People are slow to travel, but as the Quran has prescribed: One group will be in paradise, another in hell! (Q42:5). On the Day of Resurrection their condition will become clearly visible. The roads to heaven and hell have been open a long time. Many have already trodden these roads, and many are doing so at the moment. The Day of Resurrection is the promised time of arrival in paradise or hell, although we actually travel along the road in this world itself. Anyone who travels along the road to hell in this world will not be allowed to change over to the road to paradise on the Day of Resurrection, even if he wants to change, he will be thrown into the eternal prison. His heart and eyes will be afflicted for all eternity with strokes of grief and regret. The secret meaning of this is:

The one thing you want is not to be left on the way. Keep your gaze fixed toward heaven, less you get stuck in a well.

Real men are not in search of either this world or the next: They are only in quest of the One, regarding both worlds as dust

Adam gave up paradise for a couple of grains of wheat: If this work has fallen to your lot, you too will have to sell it.

O brother, it has been said by the investigators of Truth that people of today are too foolish to recognize that Inn for if, some day, the dust of this Inn were to reveal itself intimately to you, and elicit friendship from you, then you would experience even more intimacy and friendship than if the eight heavens were to appear before you, their loins girt for service. Only at the very end will scatterbrained and foolish people know the power of this Inn. By then, however, the opportunity will have been lost, only grief and difficulties will remain.

A captive, with a hundred pains and professions of repentance, Was being borne off to hell on the Day of Resurrection. Stabbing his eye with his finger, he plucked it out, And flung it angrily by the side of the road.

What purpose does this eye now serve? he declared: I have no desire to see at all, if I cannot see my Beloved!

From the divine threshold came this address: Do not bind your heart here. Otherwise you will certainly not find this wealth again. You are simply squandering your time. Five times a day you are summoned to Our threshold with these soothing words: Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! And yet you paid no attention to this call. Nor did you take advantage of this wealth. Hence I have closed the doors of devotion to you. If the master of the seven heavens and the seven earths were to shed tears of blood on that day, pleading that you might once be granted permission to perform one inclination of prayer, or one prostration, you would still not be allowed this privilege. For all eternity you would not see it. The world has passed away, only the work you did in the world remains upon your neck!

A Sufi has said: If there is anyone who does not worship the Lord unless you bribe him with the promise of heaven, or who does not keep his skirt free from the stain of sin unless you frighten him with the punishments of hell, then this is a sign that the King of Unity has not yet bound part of his heart with the knot of love. If, for example, Rizwan were sent to you along with the eight paradises, and were to praise you, and say: Either perform two prostrations of prayer with all the prescribed conditions and with due reverence, or go to paradise and enjoy yourself without any limit, the reality of unity would demand that you opt for the performance of prayer rather than a thousand favors in paradise. A soul of lofty aspirations had this to say:

When the jewel of Your love is buried in my mine. The burden of Your afflictions weighs heavily upon my soul. Mere mention of Your name refreshes me, heart and soul Remembrance of You is the comfort that supports me, When my intellect has become a slave at Your threshold, Then the king of this world is my servant and doorkeeper!

This is a great wealth that has been divided into prayer and union-half for me and half for my slave. Where can you find this in heaven? It cannot be found anywhere else except in prayer. Indeed! what great wealth derives from water and dust Half belongs to Me and half to My slave. What more could you want All praise and glory belongs to Me, while your portion is indigence, need, and petition. This is your duty. When you have fulfilled all that is due Me from the

very bottom of your heart, then I shall bestow upon you the Object of your prayer and supplication. If you understood the great power of prayer you would not hanker after paradise. If you were to choose your mount from the various mounts of prayer and spring upon it you would not even reflect upon the torments of hell. What room is there in the sea of this saying of the Prophet concerning the need of paradise or the fear of hell? When anyone of you enters into prayer, then his Lord grants him salvation. His Lord is, in fact, between him and the direction of prayer. The self-asserting pride of all intellects should be humbled, and the qualities and desires of human nature should be brought low, in order to be able to arrive at the very Source of the meaning of this saying, namely His Lord is between him and the direction of prayer. This tradition is from the collection made by Bukhari. known as Al-Jami al-Sabib Genuine traditions) and it has been confirmed by a further Tradition: The person who enters a mosque is paying God a visit, and it is the duty of the One visited to bestow His favor upon the person who visits Him. Certainly no one can take a few steps along My road in righteousness without My showering him with favors. It is impossible, however, for anyone to strike a bargain with Me. If you see somebody in the bazaar at the time for prayer, console him on account of the distress he experiences, for he has not been granted admission; he has been cut off from the threshold of prayer.

O brother, such was the life of those who have gone before us, while our own lives are passed in play and foolishness. Tomorrow, on the Day of Resurrection, every hair from the heads of those just ones will be equal to a thousand worlds, while a hundred thousand like us are not equal to a single blade of grass. All those who are alert to what goes on are grieving over our religion, while we are preoccupied with what we should eat and what we should wear. You go through this vain world in that foolish manner, and you will rise on the morn of the Day of Resurrection full of grief:

Because of the infidel within our very nature, True Muslims in this world will certainly decrease.

On a big feast day Shibli was seen wearing black clothes. The people were astonished. Today is a feast day. What sort of a garment is this? Why are you getting around like this? they asked. I look at the world today, he replied, and I see people wearing new clothes and celebrating the feast, but not one of them pays any attention to God. Today I am lamenting and grieving over them. They have become accustomed to being heedless. They are consumed with self-concern, bound up with pampering to their base desires and living as creatures of habit. They throw their precious lives to the wind. On no day of your life will you experience good fortune. You will continually be occupied with breaking promises and compromising with all sorts of sin. Hold this to be true: As long as you do not fling from your back the fine garments of your demonic ego, you will not be clothed with the jewel of religion. Nor will the religion of friendship reveal its visage to you until you consider this pleasure-prone self as your enemy. To see the beauty of There is no god but God! you must break away from coming to terms with Satan. One who finds the road to the source of all righteousness must first turn away from the allurements of the world.

When Abraham flung the idol to the ground. He shunned all that was doomed to perish. On this way there are thousands of heads like polo balls, What place is there here for trading and talking. You have set out along the road of lovers: Can you be less vigilant than a dog on that road?

O brother, the One who has made you the object of the worship of the angels and turned you into the envy of the heavens has done a great work. Every mirror in the presence of this muddy soil becomes illuminated and sanctified, for the secrets of angels and the conjectures of men are of no use in discovering this meaning. When its flames begin to arise, the angels are astonished and the heavens find their head in a spin. The former humble themselves, while the latter are humbled by necessity. Of this Khwaja Attar has given us a hint:

Were the angels to see your nature,

They would come to worship you in a different fashion. Is not your nature worshiped by the angels?

Has not the crown of viceregency been placed upon your head? You are born of a viceregent. Reject this rubbish heap, Go to the rose garden! Abandon the manner of a beggar

Since kingship awaits you in Egypt Why, like Joseph, do you remain in a well?

He is the Beginning. He is the End. The secret of this is known to anyone acquainted with Meaning. If you take your beginning from Him, you do not really come And since your end is in Him, you will not really go anywhere. There is no god but God is from the divine world, and nothing at all can become separated from it and joined to what is not God. Since all beginnings are from Him, then certainly all return is also toward Him. The description of separation and union, coming and going, is really only metaphorical. All such talk is but a story, indeed, a long one, and one should exercise caution here. Khwaja Attar has said:

For many a year it was my impression that I had passed through several different states: All those going backward, or all those coming forward, Show themselves equal in their astonishment. No one is aware of the secret of the Infinite. We are all prisoners, from the moon above to the fish in the ocean.

We have searched much to gain acquaintance with this secret, But we have not seen, even after a lifetime of searching. Here it is not proper to speak of this mystery; Here the door to these secrets cannot be pierced.

Peace!