Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Rapture and Intoxication 5 Ramadan 1444 Late Night Majlis Ribat
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We reached this Mubarak, 5th night of Ramadan.
Time is going quickly, so whoever wants to
do something,
let them do it sooner rather than later.
You know, this this attachment is really unique.
It's really good. You know what,
it, like, allows you to do different things
with the mic. You know you know what
it's called?
It's a grocery shopping bag.
That's a good for life. You know? You
gotta get get through with what you got.
You know?
Don't wait for it to be perfect. Otherwise,
it's never gonna happen.
So today, he talks about the 3rd paradigm
of,
of of how to drive a person's suhuk
toward Allah.
Obviously, it's not like they're different
they're not like different religions or different sects
or anything like that. It's just that somebody,
a certain color, is dominant in them or
a certain thing attracts them more
and,
pushes them in there,
travel to Allah
on the journey,
on the path to Allah It
propels them more. So he then
picks a sheikh who expressed a particular doctrine
well, and then makes them the archetype for
that for that doctrine. Although all of these
things are there,
in the of
anybody who travels this path.
So number 3, he he the the third
the third archetype
he discusses is the Tayfuries.
They are the followers
of Bayazid Tayfur bin Isa
the great and eminent Sufi. So is
like a really big person in the history
of,
Islam, and he was a very celebrated personality
in,
in his age.
And he is a person if you want
to know about our civilization, you need to
know about him, and he's very interesting.
And,
his
I guess his life story, his biographical
account from this book and from other books
we talked about in one of the previous
majalis, so you can look that up from
one of the previous year's majalis.
But today, we're gonna talk less about his,
his life in particular,
and more about,
his, I guess, driving doctrine in terms of
how he,
how how his and the of those who
followed his way,
was propelled.
So he says his doctrine is rapture and
intoxication.
And so the words in Arabic that are
used here,
are are,
That a person, the howl, should come on
a person
so strong that overwhelms them.
And intoxication
sukur is what? I mean, it's literally the
word for being drunk. But here, we're not
talking about drunkenness.
So this is one of the things that
you'll find when you, like, listen to stupid
people who don't know how to read Arabic
or who don't know how to read literature
in general.
They say, oh, look, like, you know, Rumi
has this all this poetry about wine. And
so, like, it shows that Sufis are okay
with all that, you know? And no, the
answer is no. They're metaphors for
spiritual states.
Why? Because those are things they're using words
to describe things that there are no words
to describe. That's kind of why poetry is
what it is. Otherwise, instead of writing a
poem about love, people just write textbooks like
they do about physics and chemistry and things
like that.
And even those are filled with weird words
that people don't usually use,
you know, in
in the same in the same sense. Like,
when you say charge
in normal speech, and you say charge in
a book of chemistry, they mean different things.
When you say spin, when you're talking about
spin with regards to a quirk, it's not
like something that spins in
normal speech,
etcetera.
So, this is talking about what?
About about rapture and and intoxication.
Sheikh Ali Hajri continues. He says, rapture is
longing for god and intoxication of love cannot
be acquired by human beings, and it is
an idle claim and absurd to imitate,
anything that lies beyond, the range of acquisition.
So he he's talking about his own opinion
now. He's like, he's
he respects Bayezid Bastami a lot.
You hear about or you read his,
kind of biography about it, it's clear. From
the previous chapter, he apparently thought he was
a chef that was great enough that, you
know, he very reverently
would make a ziara to his
mazar and,
say the zikr there out of the hopes
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would
help him in his. So he's not disrespecting
him, but you can tell by the way
he tells he reads the chapter. He thinks
he's like, this is one of those, like,
kids don't try it at home,
type of explanations. But that's what makes the
person even more interesting, actually,
to a lot of people.
By the way, Bayezid Bistami's name also is
there. It's
mentioned as a link in
the in the,
in the of the Tarik Anash Bandi as
well. It's right beneath Jafar as Sadiq,
He says, intoxication is not an attribute of
the sober, and man has no power of
drawing it on himself. The intoxicated man is
enraptured and paid no heed to created things
that he should manifest any quality involving,
conscious effort or taqleef.
The sheiks of Tassa'uluf are agreed that nobody
is a proper model for others unless he
is steadfast must have been and has escaped
the circle of, quote, unquote, states.
But there are some who allow,
that the way of rapture and intoxication
Weep or else make weep or else make
as though you wept.
Right?
That that either either tobacco, like, you know,
tobacco.
Cry or at least pretend like you're crying
or make effort that you should cry so
that you could be amongst those who weep
for the sake of Allah ta'ala.
Now to imitate others for the sake of
ostentation is sheer polytheism. This is if you're
a shawaf, he's he just called you kafir.
But it's different when the object of the
imitator is that god may perchance raise, him
to the rank of those who he imitated
in accordance to the saying of the messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Whoever makes
himself like one of the people is one
of them.
So you see, Masha'Allah, it's not all like
fluffy idol talk. He's bringing
like the liu for everything that he talks
about. These are not basic, baseless things. These
are things that are that have a a
a root in the sunnah, and they're attempts
for people to operationalize the sunnah of the
prophet
in the very practical
enterprise of of making the journey toward Allah
Ta'ala.
And one of the shayfhs said contemplation,
is the result of mortification.
To see the goal that you're looking for
is the result of a person's,
their their their struggles against themselves.
My own view is that although mortification in
is always excellent,
intoxication and rapture cannot be acquired at all.
Hence, they, cannot be induced by Mujahada,
which in themselves never becomes a cause for
intoxication.
I will now set forth different opinions of
the mashaikh concerning the true nature of the,
doctrine of sukur of intoxication and sobriety,
in order that difficulties may be removed. So
he talks about these two things as antonyms.
In a person's suluk, a person may experience
1 of 2 states. Either they have their
intoxicated or they're
they're they they have,
sobriety, like the like,
when a person is aware of what's going
on around them fully, like a person wakes
up in the morning.
You must know that intoxication and rapture are
terms used by spiritualists to denote the rapture,
of love for God. While the term sobriety
expresses the attainment of that which is desired.
Some place the former above the ladder and
some hold the ladder superior. Bayezid and his
followers prefer intoxication to sobriety.
Again, if a person wants to go through
the, there are many there are many
examples from the aslaf
of the intoxication that people had with the
zikr of Allah that somebody is hit with
arrows while reading tahajjud and don't feel it.
I
think,
I don't you know, he's he doesn't have
suraba, but, he you know, it's there's a
story about him actually, like,
getting a gangrenous
limb
amputated
without
without anesthesia, and telling them to wait until
he goes into,
his tahajjud so that he doesn't feel it.
Otherwise, he's not gonna be it's gonna be
difficult to hold him down. They actually told
him, like, you have to you have to
get drunk, use wine in order to get
get you malleable enough to be able to
do this operation that's needed to save your
life. He said, no. Just wait until so
that's intox literally, there's a
there's literally a
Parallel. Not a parallel. I mean, literally, they're
one is for the other. They said drink
get drunk so that you can get through
the surgery. And he says, no. There's another
drunkenness that I know.
These things are, you know, they're real. There
are things that the Aslaf used to understand
and experience. It's just later people are trying
to, you know, like, document what is all
of this. Like, the rest of the Sharia,
like the rest of the hadith, like the
rest of all of you know, so many
other and things like that.
So they say sobriety involves the fixity and
equilibrium of human attributes, which are the greatest
veil between God and man, whereas intoxication involves
the destruction of human attributes like foresight and
choice and the annihilation of man's self control
and god so that
only those faculties survive in him that do
not belong to the human human genus. So
you kind of transcend your own humanity. That's
why they say that the intoxication is a
good state,
and that they are the most complete and
perfect.
Thus, like we remind mentioned yesterday, thus, Dawud
alaihi wasalam was in the state of sobriety
and an act proceeded from him which god
attributed to him when
he
said that David slew Goliath, but our apostle
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was in the state
of intoxication.
An act preceded from him which god attributed
to himself when he said,
You did not throw when you threw, rather,
Allah threw.
How great is the difference between these 2?
The attribution of a man's act to god
is better than the attribution of god's act
to a man.
For in the latter case, the man stands
himself, while in the former case,
he stands through god.
Then
he will go ahead and
give his, his his kind of
counter, counter opinion,
to this. You'll see my Shaykh who followed
the doctrine of
used to say that intoxication is the playground
of children, but sobriety is a death field
of men. Meaning what? That intoxication is a
lower path, and sobriety is is is much
more difficult for a person to tread. I
say in in agreement with my shayef. His
shayef is Abu Qasem Gorgani,
who's also in the, his name appears in
the silsula of Deed, Nakshbandiya,
but as far, you know, he's a shayef
of the entire Ummah, you can say.
I see an agreement,
with my that the perfection of the state
of the intoxicated,
man is sobriety.
That through intoxication, if a person is really
driving them to Allah Ta'ala,
that will in its perfection lead to sobriety.
The lowest stage in sobriety consists in regarding
the powerlessness of humanity.
Therefore, a sobriety that appears to be evil
is better than an intoxication that really is
evil.
It is related that Abu Uthman Margaribi,
in the earlier part of his life, past
20 years in seclusion, living in the deserts
where he never heard the sound of a
human voice until his fame was his frame
was wasted, his body. His frame was wasted,
and his eyes became small like the eye
of a sack needle.
After,
20 years, he was commanded to associate it,
to associate with mankind.
He resolved to begin, with the people of
god who dwell behind his holy sanctuary,
since by doing so, he would gain greater
blessings. So he's a man who cut himself
off for 20 years from all human beings,
and then he had this,
intuition that was strong in him that now
the time is to go and mix with
people again.
So he thought, I'm gonna ease myself back
into the dunya. Go to Haramain, Sharifin, Hajjib,
Hazrat are like the good way of doing
don't just go straight back, straight duniya,
all in one leap. I'm gonna go to
Haram Sharif, and this this is how I'm
gonna do it.
The shayefs of Makkah Mukarama were aware of
his coming and went forth to meet him.
Finding him so changed that he hardly seemed
to be human creature, they said to him,
oh, Abu Uthman,
tell us why you,
went, and what you saw, and what you
gained, and why you've come back.
He replied, I went because of intoxication.
I saw the evil of intoxication. I gained
despair, and I have come back on account
of weakness.
So he made him caught of that, that
he was in a perpetual state of intoxication
for such a long time,
and he he saw what the the downside
of it is. A person cannot be like
that all the time, and you have to
be who you are with
with with some steadfastness.
All the sheikh said, oh, it is not
lawful for anyone after you to explain the
meaning of sobriety and intoxication, for you have
done justice to the whole matter and shown
the 4, the shown forth the evil of
intoxication.
Intoxication then is to fancy oneself annihilated
with the attributes,
while the attributes of a person's self really
subsist, and this is a veil. Sobriety, on
the other hand, is the vision of subsistence
while the attributes are annihilated.
This is the actual,
unveiling.
It is absurd for anyone to suppose that
intoxication is nearer to annihilation than sobriety is.
For intoxication is a quality that exceeds sobriety.
And so long as a man's attributes,
tend to increase,
he is without knowledge. Whereas, when he begins
to diminish them, the seekers of God have
hope in him. It is related that Yahya
bin Muadar Razi
wrote to Bayezid,
what do you say of one who drinks
a single drop of the ocean of love
and becomes intoxicated?
Bayezid wrote in reply, what do you say
of one who, if all the oceans of
the world were filled,
with the wine of love and would drink
all of them and still cry for more
to slake his thirst?
People imagine that Yahya was speaking of intoxication
and
sobriety, but the opposite is true. The man
of sobriety is he was unable to drink,
even one drop. Whereas the man of intoxication
is he who drinks all and desires more
still. Wine is the instrument of intoxication,
but the enemy of sobriety. Intoxication demands what
is homogeneous with the self, whereas sobriety takes
no pleasure in drinking. This is a a
a really, important point. It has to do
with something that we talked about before, which
is what
people
who
take their journey to Allah to Allah in
their own hands and attribute it to to
themselves.
People who do a lot of dhikr, people
who strive a lot, people who punish themselves
greatly in order to subdue the nafs, etcetera,
etcetera. These things are useful.
But the people who take that active,
you know, the vision of their active part
in,
in prosecuting their saluk and traveling toward Allah
That itself becomes an obstacle to them,
that you attribute your
progress to yourself.
Whereas the goal is not to be the
active participant, but the passive one.
You love Allah Ta'ala so much that you
yourself become beloved.
That's the goal. It's not to love Allah
Ta'ala whole like, so much.
It's to what? To become beloved by Allah
Allah.
Say, if you love Allah Allah, follow me
so that Allah may love you. Why do
you get to the goal? The reason you
love Allah Allah is you wish to have
His love back. This is what he's talking
about. Right? Imagine somebody drinks one drop, and
then they become
they they become intoxicated.
Versus the other person who just says, give
me more, give me more, give me more.
So this state of intoxication, Allah will send
it down on the on the slave at
a time as a for them when they
need it. When they despair of things, when
things are overwhelming, when it seems like the
door is gonna close on them, etcetera.
This is a a a type of help
Allah gives to a person so that they
can pass through unscathed from the challenges of
their their life and of their saluk. But
to try to be that way and to
want to be like that every single hour
of every single day, it's it it will
make you into a person like somebody who
listens to music too much.
What happens? You become numb to the world.
You can't tell what's the roof, what's the
floor. You no longer enjoy listening to the
Quran. You don't enjoy anything. It's like the
spiritual dopamine rush. Your,
dopamine receptors become super, like, overfilled, and all
of a sudden, you become numb to everything,
and you have to, like, chill out. You
have to peace out for a very long
time before you,
you know, before you taste any any any
joy and anything anymore at all ever.
And so it's good if a person the
state comes on a person,
you know,
glad tidings to you, and I'm happy for
you and I'm proud of you that you
felt this state. It doesn't mean that you're
special. It doesn't mean that you're, like, automatically
one of the
took pity on us. And takes pity on
us from time to time that we're able
to do this. We're able to, like, plow
through the
difficulties of life and the difficulties of other
people
constantly,
you know, hacking us down or trying to
make life difficult for us, while all we're
trying to do is make our journey toward
Allah
So if you get it, that's like a
wonderful thing. Obviously, it's not it's a sign
you're not, like, just some, like, scumbag eating
a, you know, burger at Burger King or
whatever. Right? But the point is is what?
Is that that in and of itself isn't
the
goal.
And if you depend on that too much
rather than,
the thing that you do when you're, like,
in control and, like, normal,
then why is you you know, like, what
are you doing and what are you getting
out of it? And if you depend on
it too much, you just end up kinda,
like, losing the plot and losing the,
losing your way toward Allah
which is what, obviously, what what,
that Sheikh Ali Hajway is saying. There's a
little bit more, in the chapter he says
about intoxication. All of it is his refutation
of
intoxication. So it's not really about that chapter.
So I'll leave it for tomorrow when he
talks about the doctrine of Imam Jannaid,
Abdul Qasim, Abu Dhabi,
whose doctrine is the diametric opposite that a
person should try to stay in all the
time, that a person should try to stay
in sobriety
constantly. So I'll couple that actually with the
next
chapter, because it more, formally and properly belongs
with that. Allah
give us, from his mother then get us
through this,
short life
unscathed and without doing anything too terribly over
embarrassing more than what we've already done.