Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Sahl Tustari and Self Mortification 8 Ramadan 1444 Late Night Majlis
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We reached this Mubarak
8th night of Ramadan.
We're
about a quarter of the way through, this
Mubarak month.
So whoever wants to do something in it,
don't wait for it tomorrow. It's passing.
It's slipping through my fingers. I make sure
to mention this at least once every Ramadan.
The thing that 100% scratches the chalkboard of
my soul
is when people say, oh, Ramadan went by
so fast. So fast.
Don't don't say that. If you're actually using
a month,
one day should feel like it's like a
week or a month or a year for
you. If you're using the time properly, you
should
at Assar time,
Fajr should have been so distant to you
in your memory that that it seems like
it was an age ago.
But, you know, if you're just passing time,
then the time will pass one way or
the other. Allah.
Allah give us.
So the 6th, archetype of saluk he mentions
is the
Sahlis.
They're the followers of Sahil bin Abdullah
Tustari.
Tustar,
sometimes it's spelled Shustar
as well. The actual name is a place
name in Iran. There's a place called Shustar,
in Iran that he's, from. Obviously, this is
when Iran was still,
under the wheel of the Ahlul Sunnah.
They're the followers of Sahel bin Abdul Law
of Tustar, a great and venerable Sufi who
has already been mentioned.
His doctrine inculcates endeavor and self mortification, mujahada,
and aesthetic training.
He used to bring his disciplines to perfection
in Muja Hadat.
It is related in a well known anecdote
that he said to his disciples, strive to
say continuously for one day, You Allah, You
Allah, You Allah,
and do the same the next day after
that until you become habituated to saying those
words. He then bade the disciple to repeat
them at night as well until they became
so familiar that he uttered them even during
his sleep. Thereafter, he said, do not repeat
them anymore, but let all of your faculties
not be engrossed in remembering Allah.
The disciple did this until he became absorbed
in the highest thought of god.
One day when he was in his house,
a piece of wood fell, on his head
and broke his, head.
The drops of blood that trickled to the
ground bore the legend on them, Allah, Allah,
Allah.
The path of the Sahlis is educate the
disciple through acts of
and austerity,
that of the Hamdunis.
We mentioned the Sheikh Hamdun Khasr a couple
of days ago is, to serve
and reverence one's fellow, travelers on the spiritual
path. And that of the Junaidis too, keep
watch over one's own spiritual state.
The object of all austerities
and is
resistance to the lower soul, to the nafs
until a man knows his
lower soul.
His austerities are up to no use to
him.
So he says something really important. He says
that until a man
knows his own lower soul,
until a man knows his own nafs, his
austerities are of no use to him.
So this is
why actually
learning things like medicine.
Although that's not the entire knowledge of the
nafs, but there's a side of what the
nafs is that's connected to that.
Knowing what the nafs is, knowing what its
function is, knowing why you have it, what
it's there for, how it's supposed to help,
what its benefit is, why people have
knowing, the nafs
is necessary. Without them, the are
not gonna help a person. Because if your
nafs is so evil, why not just jump
off a bridge and kill yourself? Whatever?
Why
or whatever? Why not do all sorts of
things? So who mentioned some of the the
interesting stories and anecdotes,
with regards to with
questions like this? But this is the important
thing. If you don't know what the nafs
is, then your are a waste of time.
Discourse on the true nature of the lower
soul of the nafs and the meaning of
passion.
You must know that the nafs etymologically
is the essence or reality of anything. Thank
you.
But in popular language, it is used to
denote many contradictory meanings. It can mean spirit.
It can be, virility.
It can mean body. It can mean blood.
The mystics of this sect, however, or of
this group are agreed that it is the
source of principle evil.
And while some assert that is it is
a substance, an eye located within the body,
as the spirit is. Others hold it to
be an attribute of the body as life
is. But they all agree that through its
base qualities,
through it, our base qualities manifested and that
it is the immediate cause of blameworthy actions.
Such actions are of 2 kinds, namely sins,
and base qualities,
akhlaqidani,
like pride, envy, avarice, anger, hatred, etcetera, which
are not commendable in the law nor in
reason.
These qualities can be removed through discipline, riyava.
Example, sins are removed by repentance.
Sins belong to the class of external attributes
where the qualities above mentioned belong to the
class of internal attributes.
Similarly, discipline is an external act and repentance
is an internal act.
A base quality that appears within is purged
by excellent outward attributes,
and one that appears outside is purged by
laudable inward attributes.
Both the lower soul and the spirit are
subtle things.
They're ethereal. They don't have a physical manifestation.
Existing in the body,
just as devils and angels,
and paradise and * exist in the universe,
but, the one is the seed of good
while the other is the seed of evil
in its particular locus.
Hence, resistance to the lower soul soul is
the chief of all acts of devotion and
the crown of all acts of Mujahada.
And only thereby can a man find the
way to god because submission to the lower
soul involves his destruction, and resistance to it
involves his salvation.
Now every attribute
needs an object whereby it subsists. So you
can't just have like a a a a
an abstract attribute floating around.
It has to it has to be attributed
to something. Every attribute needs an object whereby
it subsists and
knowledge, of that attribute name namely of the
nafs is not attained saved by knowledge of
the whole body,
which knowledge in turn demands an explanation of
the qualities of human nature of Insania itself
and the mysteries thereof,
and is incumbent upon all the seekers of
the Haqq, because whoever is ignorant of himself
is then yet even more ignorant of other
things. And in as much as a man
is bound to know god, he must first
know himself in order that he may,
by rightly perceiving his own temporality, recognize
the eternality of god, uh-uh,
and may learn the everlastingness of god through
his own perishableness.
Uh-uh, it's related that Rasulullah
Alaihi Salam said, who knows himself knows his
Lord.
This is Masha' quoted, I think, in a
really goofy way by a lot of people.
It's not that you knowing your own nafs
is not gonna tell you anything about Allah.
It's knowing Allah through opposites.
It's everything that's not you.
That's how that's how you can tell that
how how you can recognize, which is one
of the reasons this is so pernicious that
there's,
fitna amongst people of anthropomorphism. That they try
to describe Allah as having a physical body
and driven by physical motives and reacting things
to things in time and space. The point
of this is that knowing yourself is
a means to knowing Allah in as much
as it tells you what Allah is not.
That you know you're perishable. It will teach
you what does it what does it mean
to be everlasting.
I e he who knows himself as perishable
knows that god is everlasting. If he ever
knows himself as humble, then he knows god
is almighty. If he knows himself as a
servant, then he know knows god as the
lord.
Therefore, one who does not know himself is
debarred from knowledge of all things.
As regards the knowledge of human nature and
the various opinions held on that topic, some
Muslims assert
that man is nothing but a spirit, of
which the body is the, and
temple and residence in order to preserve it
from being injured by the natural humors,
and of which the attributes are sensation and
intelligence. This view is false.
You're not just your spirit.
This is one of the things that the
Christians, for example, they say, like, you know,
they believe in, like, a a a a
spiritual paradise, not a physical paradise. And they
actually faulted the messenger of Allah for
this. He said, this is one of their
early polemics. One of the only arguments they
could come up against Muslims
was, oh, look how gross you guys are.
You have, like, a physical body in Jannah,
and you, like, have * and things like
that.
It will gross. And whenever someone says that,
I said, you know, it's not that gross
after at the end of the day. Right?
Your mother did it.
So it should be. It's not that bad,
is it?
This view is false because a body from
which the soul,
that John has departed is still called a
human being. It's still called an insan.
If the soul is joined with it, then
it is a live human being, and if
the soul is separated as a dead human
being. Moreover, a soul is located in the
bodies of animals. However, the animals are not
called human beings. There's a spirit in animals.
They have as well. But if the has
what made you a human, then the animals
you when they have the inside them, you
would call them humans as well, but you
don't.
If the spirit was the cause of human
nature, it would follow that the principle of
human nature must exist in every creature,
possessed of a soul, every jandar
creature,
which is a proof of the falsity of
their assertion.
Others, again, have stated that the term human
nature is applicable to the spirit and the
body together, and that it no longer applies
when one is separated from the other.
For example, when two colors, black and white,
are combined in a horse, the horse is
called.
Whereas, when the same colors are apart from
each other, they're called black and white separately.
This too is false in accordance to god's
word. Did there not come over man a
space of time during which he was not
a thing worthy of mention?
Meaning what? That the reality is is is
something deeper.
In this verse, man's clay without the soul,
for the soul had not even been yet
joined to the body is still called man.
Others,
say that man, is an Adam, a Jawhar,
centered in the heart, which is a principle
of all human attributes. This also is absurd,
for if anyone is killed and his heart
is taken out of his body, he does
not lose the name of human being. Moreover,
it is agreed that the heart is not
in the human body from before the soul,
which is interesting as well.
There are some people who,
they they use this as their big proof
that, for example, like, abortion is murder,
you know, from the because the heart starts
to beat at a very early age or
whatever. And so this is in
in the old times they're negating that. That
the heartbeat is important. It's great. It's important
for you physically, but it's not, and I'm
not trying to get into that debate, but
it's not it's not what makes you a
human being.
Some pretenders to Sufism, imagine that you can
actually run on the cusp. I don't think
the technology is all that far off that
a person could live with a artificial heart.
People live for some time. They have, like,
a wing screw. They have no heartbeat, everything.
They can still live. You're not gonna say
that the person doesn't a person is a
human is not a human being at that
time. It's emotional attachment rather than anything with
Sully.
Moreover, it is agreed that the heart does
not, was not in the human body before
the soul, the spirit.
Some pretenders to to Solu have fallen into
error, in this topic. They declared that man
is not that which eats and drinks and
suffers decay, but a divine mystery of which
the heart is the vestiture,
situated in the interfusion of the natural humors,
and in union with, of the body, the
spirit. To this, I reply, by universal consent
that the name of human being belongs to
sane men and mad, infidels, and immoral and
ignorant persons in whom there is no such
mystery.
So he's saying this is all, the soft
fluff. And and those who suffer decay and
eat and drink, it's still there in them
and there is nothing called man in the
body either while it exists or after it
ceased to exist.
God almighty has given the name of man
to the sum of the substances which he
compounded in us, excluding those things which are
not to be found in some human beings.
For example, in the verses, and we have
created man from the
choices of clay.
Therefore, according to the word of God,
who is the most voracious of all those
who speak the Haqq. This particular form with
all of its ingredients and all of its
changes that it undergoes is man.
In like manner, certain Sunnis have said that
man is a living creature whose form has
the characteristics,
has these characteristics, and death does not deprive
him of the of that name. And that
he's endowed with,
definite,
and
a distinct organ,
both externally and internally.
By definite physiognomy, they mean that he has
either good or ill health. And by distinct
organ, they mean that he's mad or sane.
It generally, it is generally allowed that the
more sound Sahih Hating is, the more perfect
it is in its constitution. You must know
then that in the opinion of the Sufis,
the most perfect composition of man includes 3
elements.
The spirit, the the
nafs, and the body. And that each of
these has an attribute which subsist therein. The
attribute of the spirit being intelligence, the attribute
of the nafs being passion, and the attribute
of body being sensation,
senses.
Man is a type of a whole universe.
The universe is the name of 2 worlds.
And man, there is a vestige of both.
For he's composed of phlegm, blood, and bile,
melancholy,
which the 4 humors correspond to the 4
elements found in the world,
with regards to water, earth, air, and fire.
While his soul, his, sorry, his spirit spirit,
his John, his spirit, and his lower soul,
his and his body correspond to paradise in
the universe, * in the universe, and, the
place of resurrection.
That the spirit corresponds to Jannah.
And the nafs
corresponds to to Jahannam.
And the, body,
corresponds to the machar and manshar, the place
of resurrection.
Paradise is the effect of god's satisfaction,
and * is the result of his anger.
Similarly, the spirit of the true believer reflects
the peace and knowledge in his lower soul,
the error which veils him from god.
As at the resurrection, the believer must be
released from * before he can reach paradise
and attain real vision and pure love.
So in this world, he must escape from
his lower soul before he can attain,
the real Irada, the real,
seeking, of that which the spirit is a
principle,
and to any real proximity of god or
knowledge of him.
So that's what it is. Just like on
the day of judgment, you have to go
through the process of judgment and be judged
worthy. There's a difficulty everyone goes through. Even
those people who go to Jannah forever.
Just like that, the body needs to go
through a certain amount of in order to
be
then authorized to walk the path toward the,
of Allah
in his Quran.
Hence, whoever knows him in this world and
turns away from all beside and follows the
highway, of the sacred law of the Sharia
at the resurrection, he will not see *.
Uh-uh, but will pass the Sarat.
In short, the believer's spirit calls him to
paradise
which is
a of a type in this world. Which
it is a type in this world I
should say. And his
calls him to * which of which it
is also a type in this world.
Therefore, it behooves those who seek god to
never relax in their resistance to the knuffs
in order that they may reinforce the spirit
and the intelligence
which are
the place where the divine mystery dwells.
So this is something I was listening to
and
he quoted
a
a
a bait of Maulana Rumi that sheikh Tamim
also is very fond of quoting
that,
that this is the entire thing is summarized
in these 3. Right? The the the the
entire journey of the spirit pulling a person
toward paradise,
and the journey of the body pulling a
person away from it toward Jahannam.
That this Ramadan, Allah gave to the believers
by actually commanding them to fast. Why?
It's the type of that shuts down the
ability of the nafs to pull a person,
and then on the other hand, he increased
the value of good deeds and the just
the attraction that good deeds have to a
person by increasing their reward and by increasing
the attractiveness of them, in this time. That
Milano
Rumi said,
or
that shut your your eyes
and shut your ears and shut your mouth.
If after that, you are not able to
see the secret of the haqq,
the the the reality of the haqq, then
you can laugh at us. You can say
that that this person really they're just selling
snake oil.
Cut off your connection with the with the,
with the, and you will weaken its ability
to pull you away from the path of
the sacred lot.
And, if afterward, if, like, doing some that
you don't see a difference in yourself, then
you can say this is all a scam,
this is a cult, somebody is trying to
make donation off of us, and,
whatnot. And you can move on and do
bigger and better things in your life. But
if you see that that actually has some
benefit in it, for you,
then you know that the principles of this,
toward Allah are sound. And, we then pray
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala take us all
to our,
intended destination.