LETTER 23: IN QUEST OF THE WAY

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

Brother Shamsuddin, may God make a seeker of you! Everyone who is a seeker along this Way must be able to build on the capital of the Law in order to proceed from the Law to the Way. When he has found this path to the Way, he will be able to turn his steps from the Way to the Truth. How can anyone who has not laid hold of the Law be able to find the Way? And if he has not yet happened on the Way, then what can he possibly have to do with the Truth?

Never has permission been granted to any foolish person, who is both bereft of divine knowledge and ignorant of the Law, to place his feet upon this Way. Indeed, there would be the fear that such a per son might be destroyed and end up nowhere. If a person undertakes struggles, difficult things, and ill-advised austerities all by himself, and if any of them be displayed publicly, then so much pride, arrogance, self-conceit, and folly would become manifest in him that he would throw his own faith to the wind and become enmeshed in the snares of Satan! Know for certain that God Almighty has never made an ignorant fellow a saint, nor would He ever do so. The sheikhs tell us this, and the Quran testifies that God did not befriend an ignorant man (Q17:111)-for ignorance is the root of all baseness!

They say that the Way of travelers devolves on a twelvefold knowledge: divine unity, work, divine knowledge, conditions, ecstatic contemplation of God, witnessing God, being addressed by God, hearing God, realization of the divine existence, knowledge of the spirit, the ego, and the intellect. These types of knowledge are separate but interconnected, for knowledge of one implies knowledge of the others. It should be known that the members of these groups are all devotees of knowledge of the Law, the Way, and the Truth. They were so in the past and will always be in the future. But there were some poverty-stricken ones who perished of thirst in the wilderness. Of what use to them was the Tigris of Baghdad or the Nile of Egypt?

Some thirsty ones fell in the desert and died, how would it benefit them if the whole world were the Euphrates

The traveler along the Way should mull over such a thought! If this world and all its allurements were given to him, as well as the world to come, with all its joys, or if the calamities of the world were to be rained down upon him, or if all his efforts, substance, and plea sures were to be handed over to strangers, or if the future life, with the Poys of paradise, were to be handed over to the faithful, while calami ties and misfortunes were reserved for him, then his repentance should be such that, while everyone else repented of having done for bidden things in order to avoid falling into hell, he would repent of Hatful things, so that he might not go to paradise! His intention should be such that, whereas all worldly men seek their own desires and ease and pleasure, he remains in quest of the face of the Lord. All men seek an increase in prosperity as a result of their efforts, while he Seeks Him in little! If he gets anything, he gives it away, while if soothing comes to hand, he still gives thanks to God!

The sign of the traveler is that he is happy even when he does not get what he wants. In this way he will be free of all bonds. His dealngs with his rebellious nature should be such that even if it were to Carn for something for seventy years, he would not give in to it! He hould also have pursued the path of acquiescing to the Truth sodili Latently that calamity or good fortune, denial or affirmation, rejection or acceptance-all are the same for him! He sets out with gresttrust, not asking anything from men or God, for he considers asking from men to be polytheism, and is too ashamed to ask anything of God. His abstention is such that if all he possesses in the world is a patched garment or a blanket he is so happy with it that others envy his absorption in remembrance of God: seeking Him by day, he spends his nights devoted to His service and labor. If his lower self were to cast a glance at all this submission, he himself would sell the worship of seventy years for a morsel of bread and throw it before a dog in order to escape a prideful sense of astonishment. [An example is then given.

A traveler should be intelligent. He extinguishes his natural in calcinations in the furnace of asceticism in order to open his mind to the gifts of God. If he looks to the right, he sees God, if he looks to the left, he sees God, if he stands up or sits down, he sees God. In his magnanimous vision the kingdoms of this world and the next amount to naught. His body melts away in eagerness, while his heart blessed by God. Thoughts of wife, children, this world or the nest no longer find a lodging place in him. Although his person is still in the world, his heart is with God! His soul remains here, but it has already attained its desired stage, having seen the Friend with the eyes of the heart. This stage can be acquired under the protection of an experienced spiritual guide. Assisted by the sanctity of such a master of the heart, one can safely pass through the calamities that lie along the Way. All the sheikhs of this group, the great men of religion, and scholars are in agreement on this point that, without an experienced guide, no one (except in rare instances) can reach God. As the pot has said:

Until the glance of a man of God falls on you, Where will you learn about your own existence? If you are prone to sitting by yourself. You will not be able to travel this Path alone! You need a guide for the road, do not go alone! Open your eyes lest you drown in this ocean!

Many travelers become puffed up with pride after making stprogress; they think they have attained the glory of God! Without experienced guide, a person will become like Satan, and the duplicon of his lower self will come to light. He will be thinking about world matters and his own demands. He will remember a few wors someone has spoken and think that he has attained his object! He will consider himself to be in possession of lawful influence in the kingdom of the Lord. He will fall into extravagant and heretical ideas, just as someone has hinted in the following verse:

They are garbed as Sufis, these immature fellows, But they have attained only the babble of beginners! Having advanced but a few paces on the path of truth and purity,

They already indulge in slandering the good name of others!

Anyone who sets out upon this Way and experiences the pain as sociated with it should find for himself a spiritual guide who is much respected by other guides and sheikhs. There should be general agree mint about the man's preeminence as a leader and his lawful exercise of spiritual power. All should concur that he follows the will of God, is a man of noble ancestry, and is experienced in the kingdom of the Lord. The novice should imitate him and bind himself to him so that he might remove every obstacle that lies in his path, point out to him the defects of his lower self, and inform him of the dangers that lie along the Way. Thus the novice will be enabled to come completely out of himself, as the poet has testified:

When a well-esteemed man comes across your path, He will protect you in all your endeavors! Since you can never distinguish the Way from its pitfalls, How far can you progress without a staff? The volcanoes that mark this Way are many, It is not for everyone that this work is intended.

The condition of being a novice is that, when someone wishes to bind himself to an experienced guide as his disciple, he will first have to put aside his own desires. The lexical meaning of the word disciple is to seek, to want, and a disciple is one who seeks. Among the members of this group, a person is called a novice if he is seeking Him but has not yet obtained his desire. The sheikhs have said, He is a disciple who, in compliance with his guide, is like a dead man in the hands of the washer-he turns whichever way he is turned! A novice should be so submissive to his guide that, at the slightest hint from the latter, he would gladly offer his life, his spiritual riches, and his worldly goods, but not leave his guide! He would obey him, even if the guide were to command him to drink poison!45. He would not de lay but comply at once. He would make no use of his mind or rational knowledge.

The example has been adduced of Shiekh Bu Ali Farmdi. Once he told his guide, Sheikh Abul Qasim Gurgani, about a dream he had had: You spoke to me in such and such a fashion in the dream: why, O Sheikh? Abul Qasim Gurgani turned his face away and said: If there were no room for 'why' in your heart, then it would not have found its way to your lips! A disciple cannot make genuine progress if he is always seeking the why and wherefore of the injunctions given him! The root of the matter at hand is this: There are some things close at hand that you do not like, even though they are actually very good for you; and there are other things at hand that you like, but are harmful to you. God knows best, it is you who are ignorant! Every thing is smooth along the path of the disciple who is destined to enjoy eternal bliss and becomes an heir to everlasting wealth. Everything that he needs is at hand. The malicious glance of his enemy falls harmlessly on his beauty, and misfortunes are far from the wealth piled up in his lap. On the other hand, that poor fellow who is des tined for misery falls into all sorts of thorns and is attacked from be hind as he proceeds along his way At every step a hundred obstacles and dangers arise to confront him!

O brother, everyone who has had the bridle of favor placed around his neck will find himself in the position of being a felicitous one who is born thus from his mother's womb. He will repel all rage and vehemence, banishing them from within himself as well! On the other hand, a miserable person is born thus from his mother's Womb, as the poet has hinted.

This misfortune did not befall us today: The color of our blanket comes from Gilan!

Now what will you do? You should place hope before you and tolerate misfortune. Even though household goods are defective and not befitting the sanctuary, your hope should still be that whatever God finds, He will buy! [Some examples are given to confirm this teaching.!

Peace!

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

Brother Shamsuddin, may God make a seeker of you! Everyone who is a seeker along this Way must be able to build on the capital of the Law in order to proceed from the Law to the Way. When he has found this path to the Way, he will be able to turn his steps from the Way to the Truth. How can anyone who has not laid hold of the Law be able to find the Way? And if he has not yet happened on the Way, then what can he possibly have to do with the Truth?

Never has permission been granted to any foolish person, who is both bereft of divine knowledge and ignorant of the Law, to place his feet upon this Way. Indeed, there would be the fear that such a per son might be destroyed and end up nowhere. If a person undertakes struggles, difficult things, and ill-advised austerities all by himself, and if any of them be displayed publicly, then so much pride, arrogance, self-conceit, and folly would become manifest in him that he would throw his own faith to the wind and become enmeshed in the snares of Satan! Know for certain that God Almighty has never made an ignorant fellow a saint, nor would He ever do so. The sheikhs tell us this, and the Quran testifies that God did not befriend an ignorant man (Q17:111)-for ignorance is the root of all baseness!

They say that the Way of travelers devolves on a twelvefold knowledge: divine unity, work, divine knowledge, conditions, ecstatic contemplation of God, witnessing God, being addressed by God, hearing God, realization of the divine existence, knowledge of the spirit, the ego, and the intellect. These types of knowledge are separate but interconnected, for knowledge of one implies knowledge of the others. It should be known that the members of these groups are all devotees of knowledge of the Law, the Way, and the Truth. They were so in the past and will always be in the future. But there were some poverty-stricken ones who perished of thirst in the wilderness. Of what use to them was the Tigris of Baghdad or the Nile of Egypt?

Some thirsty ones fell in the desert and died, how would it benefit them if the whole world were the Euphrates

The traveler along the Way should mull over such a thought! If this world and all its allurements were given to him, as well as the world to come, with all its joys, or if the calamities of the world were to be rained down upon him, or if all his efforts, substance, and plea sures were to be handed over to strangers, or if the future life, with the Poys of paradise, were to be handed over to the faithful, while calami ties and misfortunes were reserved for him, then his repentance should be such that, while everyone else repented of having done for bidden things in order to avoid falling into hell, he would repent of Hatful things, so that he might not go to paradise! His intention should be such that, whereas all worldly men seek their own desires and ease and pleasure, he remains in quest of the face of the Lord. All men seek an increase in prosperity as a result of their efforts, while he Seeks Him in little! If he gets anything, he gives it away, while if soothing comes to hand, he still gives thanks to God!

The sign of the traveler is that he is happy even when he does not get what he wants. In this way he will be free of all bonds. His dealngs with his rebellious nature should be such that even if it were to Carn for something for seventy years, he would not give in to it! He hould also have pursued the path of acquiescing to the Truth sodili Latently that calamity or good fortune, denial or affirmation, rejection or acceptance-all are the same for him! He sets out with gresttrust, not asking anything from men or God, for he considers asking from men to be polytheism, and is too ashamed to ask anything of God. His abstention is such that if all he possesses in the world is a patched garment or a blanket he is so happy with it that others envy his absorption in remembrance of God: seeking Him by day, he spends his nights devoted to His service and labor. If his lower self were to cast a glance at all this submission, he himself would sell the worship of seventy years for a morsel of bread and throw it before a dog in order to escape a prideful sense of astonishment. [An example is then given.

A traveler should be intelligent. He extinguishes his natural in calcinations in the furnace of asceticism in order to open his mind to the gifts of God. If he looks to the right, he sees God, if he looks to the left, he sees God, if he stands up or sits down, he sees God. In his magnanimous vision the kingdoms of this world and the next amount to naught. His body melts away in eagerness, while his heart blessed by God. Thoughts of wife, children, this world or the nest no longer find a lodging place in him. Although his person is still in the world, his heart is with God! His soul remains here, but it has already attained its desired stage, having seen the Friend with the eyes of the heart. This stage can be acquired under the protection of an experienced spiritual guide. Assisted by the sanctity of such a master of the heart, one can safely pass through the calamities that lie along the Way. All the sheikhs of this group, the great men of religion, and scholars are in agreement on this point that, without an experienced guide, no one (except in rare instances) can reach God. As the pot has said:

Until the glance of a man of God falls on you, Where will you learn about your own existence? If you are prone to sitting by yourself. You will not be able to travel this Path alone! You need a guide for the road, do not go alone! Open your eyes lest you drown in this ocean!

Many travelers become puffed up with pride after making stprogress; they think they have attained the glory of God! Without experienced guide, a person will become like Satan, and the duplicon of his lower self will come to light. He will be thinking about world matters and his own demands. He will remember a few wors someone has spoken and think that he has attained his object! He will consider himself to be in possession of lawful influence in the kingdom of the Lord. He will fall into extravagant and heretical ideas, just as someone has hinted in the following verse:

They are garbed as Sufis, these immature fellows, But they have attained only the babble of beginners! Having advanced but a few paces on the path of truth and purity,

They already indulge in slandering the good name of others!

Anyone who sets out upon this Way and experiences the pain as sociated with it should find for himself a spiritual guide who is much respected by other guides and sheikhs. There should be general agree mint about the man's preeminence as a leader and his lawful exercise of spiritual power. All should concur that he follows the will of God, is a man of noble ancestry, and is experienced in the kingdom of the Lord. The novice should imitate him and bind himself to him so that he might remove every obstacle that lies in his path, point out to him the defects of his lower self, and inform him of the dangers that lie along the Way. Thus the novice will be enabled to come completely out of himself, as the poet has testified:

When a well-esteemed man comes across your path, He will protect you in all your endeavors! Since you can never distinguish the Way from its pitfalls, How far can you progress without a staff? The volcanoes that mark this Way are many, It is not for everyone that this work is intended.

The condition of being a novice is that, when someone wishes to bind himself to an experienced guide as his disciple, he will first have to put aside his own desires. The lexical meaning of the word disciple is to seek, to want, and a disciple is one who seeks. Among the members of this group, a person is called a novice if he is seeking Him but has not yet obtained his desire. The sheikhs have said, He is a disciple who, in compliance with his guide, is like a dead man in the hands of the washer-he turns whichever way he is turned! A novice should be so submissive to his guide that, at the slightest hint from the latter, he would gladly offer his life, his spiritual riches, and his worldly goods, but not leave his guide! He would obey him, even if the guide were to command him to drink poison!45. He would not de lay but comply at once. He would make no use of his mind or rational knowledge.

The example has been adduced of Shiekh Bu Ali Farmdi. Once he told his guide, Sheikh Abul Qasim Gurgani, about a dream he had had: You spoke to me in such and such a fashion in the dream: why, O Sheikh? Abul Qasim Gurgani turned his face away and said: If there were no room for 'why' in your heart, then it would not have found its way to your lips! A disciple cannot make genuine progress if he is always seeking the why and wherefore of the injunctions given him! The root of the matter at hand is this: There are some things close at hand that you do not like, even though they are actually very good for you; and there are other things at hand that you like, but are harmful to you. God knows best, it is you who are ignorant! Every thing is smooth along the path of the disciple who is destined to enjoy eternal bliss and becomes an heir to everlasting wealth. Everything that he needs is at hand. The malicious glance of his enemy falls harmlessly on his beauty, and misfortunes are far from the wealth piled up in his lap. On the other hand, that poor fellow who is des tined for misery falls into all sorts of thorns and is attacked from be hind as he proceeds along his way At every step a hundred obstacles and dangers arise to confront him!

O brother, everyone who has had the bridle of favor placed around his neck will find himself in the position of being a felicitous one who is born thus from his mother's womb. He will repel all rage and vehemence, banishing them from within himself as well! On the other hand, a miserable person is born thus from his mother's Womb, as the poet has hinted.

This misfortune did not befall us today: The color of our blanket comes from Gilan!

Now what will you do? You should place hope before you and tolerate misfortune. Even though household goods are defective and not befitting the sanctuary, your hope should still be that whatever God finds, He will buy! [Some examples are given to confirm this teaching.!

Peace!