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ADVICE
ON THE NECESSITY AND FRUITS OF WORSHIP
"Love"
is the raison d’etre of this universe.
O
my selfish soul! O worldly friend! Love is the raison d’etre
of this universe. It is also the bond between all things, and
the light of existence and its life. Since man is the most
comprehensive fruit of existence, a love so overflowing as to
invade the whole universe has been included in the heart of
that fruit, which is its seed or core. One who deserves such
an infinite love may therefore only be one with infinite
perfection.
Therefore,
O soul and friend, there are in man’s nature two faculties,
one being the means of fear, the other, of love. In whichever
case, that love and fear is felt for either the created or the
Creator. Fear of the created is a painful affliction, and love
of the created, a troublesome pain. For you fear such things
or persons that they neither have mercy on you nor accept your
request. If this is so, fear of the created is a painful
trouble. As for love of the created, those you love either do
not care for you, or as is the case with your youth and your
possessions, leave you without saying farewell. Do you not see
that ninety-nine percent of lovers complain of their beloved
ones. Because love of the idol-like worldly beloved from the
bottom of one’s heart, which is the mirror of the
Eternally-Besought-of-All, is unbearable in the view of the
beloved ones and therefore rejected. For man naturally rejects
and repels what is unnatural and undeserved. (Animal love is
out of question here.)
In
short, those that you love either do not care for you or
belittle you or do not accompany you. Contrary to your desire,
they leave you. Since this is so, turn your fear and love
toward such a One that your fear will be a pleasant humility
and your love, a happiness free of humiliation. Fearing the
All-Majestic Creator means finding a way to His Compassion and
taking refuge in Him. In fact, fear is a ‘whip’ to
stimulate one into the embrace of His Compassion. As is known
to everybody, a mother frightens her child away from something
or someone and attracts him into her arms. That fear is very
pleasurable for the child because it draws him into the arms
of care and compassion. However, the care and compassion
shared by all the mothers in the world is only a ray from the
Compassion of God. That means, there is a very great pleasure
in fear of God. If there is such great pleasure in fear of
God, you can understand what infinite pleasure there is in
love of Him. Furthermore, the one who fears God is freed of
the worrying, troublesome fear of others, and his love of
created beings in the Name of God does not cause pains and
separation.
Man’s
first love, before all others, is his self. Then, he loves his
family and kin, his nation, living beings, the world, and the
universe. He has relations with each of these spheres. He
takes pleasure in their satisfaction and happiness, and feels
pain at their pain. However, since nothing remains in a fixed
state in this tumultuous, ever-changing world, the heart of
helpless man is continuously wounded. The things he clings to
slip out of his hands, scratching, cutting them. He always
remains in pain, or throws himself into the drunkenness of
heedlessness. Since this is so, O soul, if you have a sound
mind, give all the love you divide among beings to the One Who
deserves it truly, and be saved from all those pains and
troubles. Only One Who owns infinite perfection and beauty
deserves infinite love, and only when you are able to assign
that love to its rightful owner, then for His sake and in
respect of their being mirrors to Him, you may love all things
without suffering any pains and troubles. That is, that love
must not directly be assigned to existence for the sake of
existence itself. Otherwise, while being a most pleasurable
Divine grace, love becomes a most painful ailment.
There
is another aspect of the matter, which is this: O soul! You
assign your love to your self. You idolize yourself and see it
as worthy of adoration, which must be assigned to God only.
You sacrifice everything for your self, and revere it as
though the Lord. Whereas, something is loved either for its
perfection-for perfection is loved because of itself-or for
its benefit or the pleasure it gives or the good it brings or
something else of a similar nature. Now, O soul! I have
convincingly argued in some of the Words that your nature is
‘kneaded together’ out of defect and deficiency, and
destitution and impotence, so that in the same way as darkness
shows the strength of light proportionally to its density,
according to the rule of contrasts, you should act, through
those essential elements of your nature, as a mirror to the
All-Majestic Creator’s Perfection, Grace, Beauty, Power, and
Mercy.
So,
O soul! You should cherish not love but enmity for your self
[because it tries all the time to seduce you] or have pity on
it, or after it has attained to the rank of being a peaceful
self due to its full conviction of the truth of the principles
of faith and satisfaction in worship, you should show care and
mercy to it.
If
you love your (carnal) self, since it is addicted to pleasure
and always looks after its own interest, it means you have
been captivated by pleasure and self-interest. Do not prefer
such pleasures and self-interest, which are quite
insignificant, over boundless true pleasures and advantages.
Do not be like a firefly! For it drowns all its friends and
everything it loves in the fright and solitude of darkness,
and contents itself with a tiny glow of its own. You should
love the Eternally Beloved One in Whose favor, together with
your animal pleasures and interests, the interests of all the
beings with whom you have relations and from whom you receive
benefits and whose happiness makes you feel happy, originate.
By doing that, you may take pleasure in the happiness of all
of them, and receive the same infinite pleasure as that which
you receive from the Absolutely Perfect One.
Your
intense love for your self is, in fact, the innate love for
His Essence, which you unconsciously carry in yourself but
wrongly appropriate for your self. That being the truth, tear
apart the ‘I’ in yourself and show ‘He’. Also, all the
instances of love which you share among the beings in the
universe are, in fact, the love implanted in your being for
Him, because of the misappropriation of which you suffer pains
and troubles. For the return of an ‘illicit’ love
cherished for those that are unworthy of it is pitiless
ailment. An atom of love for the Eternal, Beloved One, Who
through His Names of Most Merciful and Compassionate has
created an abode like Paradise full of houris, where you will
be able to satisfy all of your bodily desires, Who through His
other Names has prepared for you in that Paradise eternal
favors with which to meet all the needs of all of your
immaterial faculties including your spirit, heart, intellect
and innermost senses; and in each of Whose Names are numerous
immaterial treasuries of favor and munificence, may compensate
for the whole universe. Rather, the whole universe cannot
compensate for a single particular manifestation of His love.
If this is so, listen to the following eternal decree which
the Eternal, Beloved One made His beloved declare, and follow
it:
If
you really love God, follow me that God may love you .
(3:31)
"Worship"
is the necessary result of a past Divine favor
O
soul! Worship of God is not an act through which to demand a
Divine reward in the future. Rather, it is the necessary
result of a past Divine favor. It is truly so because we have
already received our wages, and in return, are charged with
serving and worshipping Him. Because, O soul, since the
Majestic Creator Who has clothed you in existence, which is
purely good, has given you a hungry stomach having appetite
and, through His Name the All-Providing, has laid before you
all the edible things as a table of favors. He has also given
you a sensitive life, which, like the stomach, demands
sustenance particular to itself. Before all your senses, like
your eyes and ears, He has laid down a particular table of
favors as vast as the earth. Further, since He has bestowed on
you ‘humanity’, which demands numerous immaterial favors,
He has laid before it a peculiar table of favors within the
grasp of the reason and as many-dimensional as the material
and immaterial worlds. In addition, since He has granted to
you faith and Islam, which is the greatest humanity demanding
endless favors and nourished by the fruits of infinite Mercy,
He has opened up for you a table of favors, happiness and
pleasures encompassing, together with the sphere of
contingencies, the sphere of the Most Beautiful Names of God
and His sacred Attributes. Besides all these, having bestowed
on you love, which is a light of faith, He has granted to you
still another table of favors, bliss, and pleasures. That is,
with regard to your physical aspect, you are a small,
insignificant, impotent, wretched, and restricted particular
being but, through His grace and favors, you have become a
universal, enlightened and enlightening one. For, by endowing
you with life, He has promoted you to the rank of a particular
kind of universality; by giving to you humanity, the rank of
true universality, and by granting to you Islam, the rank of a
sublime and luminous universality, and by bestowing on you
love and knowledge of God, He has made you attain an
all-encompassing light.
Thus,
O soul! You have already received these wages, and are
therefore charged with worship, which is, in fact, an easy,
pleasant and rewarding Diving gift. However, you show laziness
in performing it. When you carry it out defectively, as though
the wages given to you in advance were not enough, you demand
more in an arrogant way. You also put on airs, saying, ‘Why
are my prayers not accepted?’ Whereas, your due is not
putting on airs, but petition and supplication to God
Almighty. He bestows Paradise and eternal happiness purely out
of his Grace and Kindness. Therefore, always take refugee in
His Mercy and Grace, and in reliance on Him, heed the
following Divine declaration:
Say,
‘Out of His Grace and Mercy’, and at that let them
rejoice. It is better than what they have been
accumulating.
(10:58)
Question
How
can we respond to God’s universal, infinite favors through
our restricted, particular thankfulness?’
Answer
Through
a universal intention and infinitely profound belief and
devotion. Suppose a poor man enters the presence of the king
with a present of a few dollars and sees that gifts worthy of
millions each have come from the king’s favorite men and
been arranged there. He thinks: ‘My present means nothing,
but this is what I can afford.’ Then he says to the king:
‘O lord! I offer you all those precious gifts in my own
name, for you deserve them. If I were able to, I would give
you the double as my gift!’ The king, who though in need of
nothing accepts the gifts of his subjects as a token of the
degree of their respect and loyalty, accepts the universal
intention and desire of that poor man and his deep feelings of
devotion as though it were the greatest gift. In exactly the
same way, a poor servant says in his daily prescribed prayers:
‘All veneration and reverence is for God’, by which he
means: ‘I offer You in my name all the gifts of worship
which all beings present to you through their lives. You
deserve all of it, rather, much more than it.’ This belief
and intention is a most comprehensive and universal
thankfulness.
The
seeds and stones of plants are their intentions to grow and
become each an elaborate plant. For example, with its hundreds
of seeds, a melon intends: ‘O my Creator! I want to exhibit
the inscriptions of Your Beautiful Names in many places of the
earth.’ Having full knowledge of the future of things,
Almighty God accepts their intentions as worship in deeds. The
Prophetic saying, The intention of the believer is better
than his action, (Munawi, Fayd al-Qadir, 6.291) is
to express this reality. That is also why we glorify and
praise Him with phrases expressing infinitude, like the
following:
Glory
be to You and praise be to You to the number of Your
creatures and the things pleasing to You and the
decorations of Your Supreme Throne and to the amount of
the ink of Your words; and we glorify You with the sum
of all the glorifications of Your Prophets and Your
saints and Your angels .
Also,
in the same way as a commander offers the king in his name all
the services rendered by his soldiers, so man, being the
commander of all the earthly creatures including plants and
animals, and acting in his own private world in the name of
everyone, says, You alone do we worship and from You alone
do we seek help, and offers the Worshipped One of Majesty
in his name all the worship of all human beings and their
entreaties for help.
Also,
by saying,
Glory
be to You with the sum of all the glorifications of all
of Your creatures and with the tongues of all of the
things You have made,
he
makes all of the creatures speak in his own name.
Also,
he says,
O
God! Bestow blessings on Muhammad to the number of the
particles of the universe and the compounds of it,
and
calls God’s blessing on the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be
peace and blessings, in the name of everything. For everything
is connected with the light of Muhammad, upon him be peace and
blessings. Understand from all this the wisdom in glorifying
God and calling His blessings on Muhammad, upon him be peace
and blessings, to the extent of infinitude.
Following
the Sunna of the Prophet
O
soul! If you want endless accomplishments with regard to your
afterlife in a short lifespan, if you want to see each minute
of your life as fruitful as a whole life, and if you want to
transform your ordinary daily deeds into acts of worship and
your heedlessness into peace and constant awareness of always
being in the Presence of God, follow the elevated Sunna of the
Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings. For when
you act according to the rules of the Shari‘a, it gives some
sort of peace, and becomes a kind of worship, which yields
many fruits for the Hereafter. For example, at the moment you
utter the phrase, I bought it, which the Shari‘a requires
you to utter in a buy-and-sell transaction, that ordinary
transaction of yours becomes an act of worship. Such
remembrance of a rule of the Shari‘a reminds you of Divine
Revelation, which, in turn, causes you to think of the
Revealer of the Shari‘a and to turn your attention to Him.
This produces some sort of peace. That means, by acting
according to the elevated Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad, upon
him be peace and blessings, one can make one’s transient
life produce eternal fruits to be the means of an eternal
life. Therefore, heed the following Divine decree,
So,
believe in God and His Messenger, the unlettered Prophet
who believes in God and His words, and follow him so
that you may be guided.
(7:158)
and
try to be a comprehensive object to be enlightened by each of
the Divine Beautiful Names manifested in the rules of the
Shari‘a and the elevated Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad, upon
him be peace and blessings.
O
soul! Do not be deluded by the apparent glitter and illicit
pleasure of the worldly people, particularly those leading a
dissipated life
O
soul! Do not be deluded by the apparent glitter and illicit
pleasure of the worldly people, particularly those leading a
dissipated life, more particularly, the unbelievers, and be
deceived into imitating them. For, even if you were to imitate
them, you would not be able to be like them. You will fall too
low. You cannot be like animals, either. For your intellect
will be an inauspicious ‘tool’ and give you endless
trouble.
Suppose
there is a palace in the central room of which is a big
electric light. In all the other rooms, there are small lights
connected to the big, central light in the central room. If
someone turns off the big light, the whole palace will be left
in darkness. There is another palace where the small electric
lights in its rooms are not connected to the big, central
light in the central room. If the owner of the palace turns
off the central light, the other rooms will still remain
illuminated, He will be able to do his work in the palace, and
no thief will attempt to rob the palace.
Thus,
O soul! The first palace represents a Muslim. The Prophet
Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, is the big, central
light in his heart. If he forgets him, if-God forbid- he
discards him from his heart, then he will no longer be able to
believe in any other Prophet. Moreover, there will be left no
room in his spirit for any kind of perfection. He will not
recognize his Lord, even. All his inner senses and faculties
will be left in darkness and his heart will be terribly ruined
and invaded by despair and gloom. I wonder what, in the face
of such ruin and desolation, you can build up familiarity with
and seek consolation in, what beneficial thing you can find to
compensate for the harm caused by that ruin! Whereas the
Christians and Jews are like the other palace. Even if they
are not illuminated by the light of the Prophet Muhammad, upon
him be peace and blessings, they can manage with the light
they suppose they have. Their belief in the Creator and the
Prophets Moses or Jesus, upon them be peace, however deficient
it is and tainted with associating partners with God, can
still be the means of some sort of moral perfection for them.
O
evil-commanding soul! You can never be like an animal! For the
intellect in your head will continuously trouble you with the
pains of the past and anxieties for the future. It blends a
single pleasure with a thousand pains. But an animal enjoys
itself with no pains. So if you want to live like an animal,
first discard your intellect, and then be an animal! Also, be
attentive to the Divine blow of warning and instruction: They
are like cattle, rather, more misguided than them. (7:158)
Worship
of God is a line of union which turns the worshipper from
mortality to permanence, from the created to the Creator, from
multiplicity to unity, or it is a point of juncture between
the beginning and the end.
O
soul! As I repeatedly state, since man is the fruit of the
tree of creation, he is a most comprehensive being related
with the whole of the creation, who carries in him a heart
which, like the stone of the fruit, is the center in which all
parts end and join together. He is inclined toward multiple
things which are worldly and mortal. But worship of God is a
line of union which turns him from mortality to permanence,
from the created to the Creator, from multiplicity to unity,
or it is a point of juncture between the beginning and the
end.
If
a fruit carrying a seed looks down at the tree and, priding
itself on its beauty, leaves itself to its own support or
leaps off the tree in heedlessness, it will quickly be lost.
If that fruit, by contrast, finds its point of support, then
the seed or stone in it, in which the whole life of the tree
is included, will be the means for the tree to perpetuate its
meaning, and in itself will gain a comprehensive reality in a
perpetual life. In exactly the same way, if, drowned in the
multiplicity of things and intoxicated with the love of the
world, a man deludes himself with the smiles of mortals and
leaves himself in their arms, for sure he will be lost to an
infinite degree, with nothing to gain pertaining to eternal
existence. He will also die in spirituality. If, by contrast,
hearing the lessons of faith from the tongue of the Qur’an
with the ear of his heart, he comes to his senses and is
inclined toward unity, he will be able to reach the summit of
perfections by the stairway of worship and servanthood to God,
and gain eternal existence.
O
soul! Since this is the truth, and since you are from the
nation of Abraham, upon him be peace, like Abraham, say, ‘I
do not love those that set’, and turn your face to the
Eternal Beloved One, and weep, saying:
A
beloved who disappears by declining or setting is not
beautiful, for one that is doomed to decline cannot be
truly beautiful. It is not-it should not be-loved in the
heart for the heart is created for eternal love and is
the mirror of the Eternally-Besought-of-All.
A
desired one who is doomed to disappear below the horizon
is not worthy of the heart’s attachment or the mind’s
preoccupation. It cannot be the object of desires, and
is not worthy of being regretted after. So why should
the heart adore such a one and be attached to it?
I
neither seek nor desire anything mortal. For I am myself
mortal, and I do not desire one who is mortal. What have
I do with any such?
A
worshipped one buried in decay-I do not invoke such a
one, nor seek refuge with it. For I am infinitely needy
and impotent. One that is itself powerless can offer no
cure for my endless pains, nor can it solve my
infinitely deep wounds. How can one who cannot save
himself from decay be an object of worship?
The
mind that is obsessed with appearances wails
despairingly on seeing the decay of the things it adores
in this universe of upheavals, while the spirit, which
seeks an eternal beloved, also wails, saying: I love not
the things that set.
I
do not want, I do not desire, separation, and I cannot
endure it.
Meetings
followed immediately by separation are not worth
troubling about; they are not worthy of being longed for
especially. For just as the disappearance of pleasures
is pain, imagining it is pain also. The works of the
lovers, that is, the works of poetry on metaphorical
love-love for the opposite sex-are all lamentations
caused by the pain arising from imagining this
disappearance. If you were to condense the spirit of all
the works of such poetry, from each would flow this
lament.
It
is because of the pain and tribulations coming from
those meetings doomed to end and those painful
metaphorical loves, that my heart cries out and, like
Abraham, says: I love not the things that set!
If
you desire permanence in this transient world,
permanence is born out of transience. Annihilate
yourself with regard to your evil-commanding soul, so
that you may gain permanence.
Free
yourself of bad morals, which are the basis of worldly
adoration, and realize self-annihilation. Sacrifice the
goods and property that are in your disposal in the way
of the True Beloved. See the end of beings, which marks
extinction. The way leading from this world to
permanence passes through self-annihilation.
The
human mind, which is absorbed in causality, laments
despairingly in bewilderment over the upheavals caused
by the decay of the world. The conscience, which desires
true existence, like Abraham, wails, I love not the
things that set. It severs the connection with
metaphorical beloveds and decaying beings, and is
attached to the Truly Existent One, the Eternal Beloved.
O
my mean soul! Know that the world and all beings are
certainly mortal, but you may find a way leading to the
Permanent Being in each mortal thing, and may discern
two gleams, two mysteries, of the manifestations of the
Undying Beloved’s Grace, on condition that you succeed
in sacrificing your mortal being.
In
each bounty the act of bestowing is discerned and the
favor of the Most Merciful perceived. If you succeed in
discerning the act of bestowing through the thing
bestowed, you will find the Bestower. Also, each work of
the Eternally-Besought-of-All points out the
All-Majestic Maker’s Names like a missive. If you
succeed in understanding the meaning through the
inscription, you will find by means of the Names the One
called by those Names. Since you can find out the
kernel, the essence, of these transient things, obtain
it. You can throw away without pity their meaningless
shells, their outer coverings, into the flood of
mortality.
Indeed,
in the universe there is not a single thing which is not
a word of embodied meaning and does not show many of the
All-Majestic Maker’s Names. Since beings are words,
words of Divine Power, understand their meanings and
place them in your heart. Fearlessly cast the letters
left without meaning into the wind of transience. After
they are gone, do not concern and occupy yourself with
them any more.
The
worldly mind, which is preoccupied in appearances and
whose capital consists of only the knowledge of the
material world, cries out despairingly in bewilderment
and frustration, as its chains of thought finally end in
nothingness and non-existence. It seeks a true way
leading to truth. Since the heart has withdrawn from
those that set and are mortal, since the heart has
abandoned the deceiving beloveds, and since the
conscience has turned away from transitory beings, you
too, my wretched soul, seek help in ‘I love not the
things that set’, and be saved.
See
how well Mawlana Jami expressed it, who was intoxicated with
the ‘wine’ of love as if he was created from love:
-
Want
only One (the rest are not worth wanting);
-
Call
One (the others will not come to your help);
-
Seek
One (the others are not worth seeking);
-
See
and follow One (the others are not seen all the time; they
become invisible behind the veil of mortality);
-
Know
One (knowledge other than that which adds to your
knowledge of Him is of no benefit).
-
Mention
One (words not concerning Him may be considered without
benefit and useless).29
I
admit that, O Jami, you spoke the truth absolutely. The True
Beloved, the True Sought One, the True Desired One, and the
True Object of Worship is He alone.
For,
in the mighty circle for the remembrance and recitation of God’s
Names, this universe, together with all its beings, in various
tongues and different tunes declares, There is no deity but
God, and testifies to Divine Oneness. It salves the wound
caused by those that set, and, in place of all the deceiving
beloveds, points to the Undying Beloved. |
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