Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Union With God 22 Ramadn Late Night 1444 Majlis
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AI: Transcript ©
So today we start,
the 8th archetype
and driver of saluk that he's going talk
about. The archetype is that of the,
and the archetype of saluk is the concept
of and,
which you'll
explain. It's somewhat of a dense
introduction, so we're not gonna read a whole
lot today.
So Karazis,
they're the followers of the sheikha Busaid Al
Karaz,
who wrote brilliant works on Tasawaf and attained
a high degree
of detachment from the world. He was the
first to explain the state of annihilation and
subsistence, fana and baha.
These are two terms that are thrown around.
People oftentimes misunderstand them,
and so he's gonna talk about what this
doctrine of fana and baka is, of annihilation
and of subsistence.
And he comprehended his whole doctrine in these
two terms. He would explain all of tasolef
through these two terms.
Now I will declare their meaning and show
the errors into which some have fallen in
this respect and order that you may know
what his doctrine is and what the Sufis
intend when they employ these current expressions.
So discourse on Baqah,
subsistence, and annihilation, fana.
You must know that annihilation, Fana,
and subsistence, Baqah, have one meaning in.
And in the material sciences, as well as
the religious sciences. They have one meaning in
and another meaning in.
And the formalist,
zaharian,
the people of
formal sciences, are more puzzled by these words
than they are by the other technical terms
of the
So every group of people have their mustala,
they have their technical terms that they use
to mean something or another.
The word grip means something different.
When you're
working out at the gym, it means something
different if you're shooting a movie, if you're,
you
know, telling someone to get a grip, like,
you know, giving advice, it means something different
in different contexts. So
from the particular
terminology of the,
these are the most confusing of words to
those people who are not familiar
with the concepts of tasuluf.
Subsistence in its scientific
and etymological
exception is of 3 types.
One, the subsistence that begins and ends
in annihilation, something that starts in subsistence
and ends in annihilation.
For example, this world which has a beginning
and will have an end, but isn't currently
subsistence, it's Baqi right now.
To a subsistence which came into being
and will never be annihilated.
So like the Jannah and Jahannam paradise and
the hellfire
and the next world and all of its
inhabitants. There's they came into existence at a
particular time, but they'll never
they'll never be annihilated, they'll always exist.
This is not the Sufic discussion.
He's talking this is actually very, like, Kalami
introduction that he's giving.
And number 3, a subsistence that always was
and will always be, meaning the subsistence of
Allah and His eternal attributes.
Accordingly, knowledge
of annihilation lies in your knowing
that this entire world is perishable,
and knowledge of subsistence
lies in knowing that the next world is
everlasting.
Then he shifts the gears to
the the the way the
understand it.
He says, but subsistence and annihilation,
of a state, in a particular state in
a person, of
a hal, denotes, for example, that when ignorance
is annihilated,
knowledge is necessarily subsistent.
And when sin is annihilated, piety is subsistent.
And when a man acquires knowledge of his
piety, his forgetfulness
is annihilated by the remembrance of Allah, I.
E. When anyone gains knowledge of Allah and
becomes subsistent in knowledge of him, he is
annihilated from, meaning he entirely loses ignorance of
him.
And when he is annihilated from forgetfulness, he
becomes subsistent in the remembrance of him. And
this involves the discarding of blameworthy attributes and
the substitution of praiseworthy attributes.
A different signification, however, is attached to the
terms
in question by the elect of the Sufis,
the people of the highest rank.
They do not refer to these expressions,
they do not refer these
expressions to knowledge or to state how, but
apply them solely to the degree of perfection
attained by those oliya who have become free
of the pains of Mujahada and have escaped
the prison of stations and the vicissitude of
states, the prison of
Maqamat al Ahwaw,
and whose search has ended in discovery
so that they have seen all things visible,
meaning all things visible to them,
not completely visible. That's something only Allah can
see. So that they have seen all things
visible, and have heard all things audible, and
have discovered all secrets of the heart.
And who, recognizing the imperfection of their own
discovery this is why. See, by the way,
I'm not trying to just be Wahhabi and,
like, be like, oh, look. You know? He's
trying to make that wheel for this guy.
He's a crazy Sufi, and, like, I'm trying
to make that wheel to break drag him
back into orthodoxy or whatever. Right?
He's saying that a person has seen everything
that they can possibly see and heard everything
they can possibly hear, that there's
an experience that a person has when they
reach a particular mapam, where they find the
thing that they're looking for.
And
these are oftentimes very extraordinary and supernatural experiences
for some people, although I don't think for
everybody they are.
But that person, once they get there, then
they're beholden to their own imperfection.
They're beholden to their own imperfection that they've
seen all these things. They see they see
that now that I've maxed out, I'm beholden
of my to my own imperfection.
Who, recognizing the imperfection of their own discovery,
have turned away from all things and have
purposely
become annihilated in the object of their desire.
They said that now I see all this
stuff, and I see I myself,
my own existences,
my own sifaat
is an impediment
between me and the realization of the thing
that I'm seeking, the thing that I'm looking
for.
So they have purposely become annihilated in the
object of desire, and in the very essence
of desire,
tasul, for example. Right? A disciple, they oftentimes
call them mureeds. Right? Someone was. Someone once
came to the sheikh of,
and said, I want to become your.
And the sheikh tells because he's a student
of knowledge,
this this disciple
or budding or
potential disciple.
So he says, what does
tell me, what does murid mean? He says
the person who has who has irada, he
says, no. It's not.
He says, tell me what does it mean,
and then I'll accept you and tell them
to get lost.
So he went and he's perplexed. Like, what
am I what would you say? You found
your like, this is, you know, this is
the big shift. You're gonna like whatever. And
you probably saw some dreams and, like, smelled
perfume and, like, whatever. Also, they're, like, fun
stuff. Right? And then he tells you that
you're and you think this is easy, like,
no brainer. Like, you give him the right
answer, and then he's like, no. That's not
what it means.
So he's perplexed.
And then, he went back and he opened
the books of Sarf,
which is a good thing to do from
time to time.
And he came back. He said, no. The
is the one who's has salbab, his own
irada.
He says, yeah. That's what it means, and
then he accepted him as a disciple. This
is kind of weird, actually. Arabic has this,
like, where the same
the same root has
opposite can have opposite meanings?
Right?
Like,
what does that have?
This is like sweet water. Right?
Now tell me, what does have to do
with?
So you can have you know, this is
why it's important to understand Sarf, because if
you don't understand Sarf, you will end up
sometimes missing, like, what the you know, what
what's some depth and richness or even the
entire meaning of something altogether.
And so the idea is what? Is that
the person who makes salba his own irada,
that person is the true disciple. The person
who completely
negates his
own desire.
That person is the true disciple. This is
what this means. This is what he's saying
is that when beholding
everything and then you're like, oh man, it's
clicks now.
I myself
am the impediment between me and the thing
that I desire.
This is what's meant by a lot of,
like, for example, if you wanna read the
poetry of the Sufis and things like that,
you'll see
expressions
and formula that seem to indicate halu, that
a person wishes to be like, I'm one
with God, which you don't. That doesn't he'll
very emphatically negate all of that. Right?
Stupid people cannot tell the difference between one
and the other. This is why smart people,
quote, unquote smart people and quote, unquote spiritual
people or advanced people or, like, you know,
whatever the select and elect and whatever type
people, they should not say these things in
public.
Why? Because it becomes a fitna for for
for simple minded people.
Because
simple minded people and the elect should know
that this is not what it means.
The negation of one's own desire
and wishing
to
to to put in exchange, to substitute for
it the desire,
of the of the one that's being desired.
There's something different between that and saying, well,
I become I'm god now, or, like, god
lives in me or something stupid like that.
And so this is this is what he's
saying, is that when a person becomes beholden
to this fact that they themselves are the
biggest veil between them and what they want,
they become annihilated
in favor of the object of desire, and
in the very essence of desire have lost
all desires of their own. For when a
man becomes annihilated from his own attributes, he
attains perfect subsistence.
He is never
he's neither near nor far, nor is he
a stranger, nor intimate, nor sober, nor intoxicated,
nor separated, nor united. He has no name,
or sign, or mark, or brand.
In short, real annihilation from anything involves consciousness
of its own imperfection
and absence of desire for it. Not merely
that a man should say when he likes
a thing, oh, I'm subsistent therein,
or when he dislikes the thing he should
say, I'm annihilated therefrom.
For these qualities are characteristic of one who
is still seeking.
In annihilation, meaning true annihilation,
there is no love or hate, And in
subsistence, meaning true subsistence,
there is no consciousness of union or separation.
Some wrongly imagine that annihilation signifies loss of
essence and destruction of personality, that you actually
stop being you,
in the, in in in the most literal
way possible.
And that subsistence,
indicates, the subsistence of god inside of a
man with. Both of the notions are absurd.
In India, I had a dispute on this
subject with a man who claimed to be
versed in chronic exegesis, meaning tafsir, and in
theology and Kalam. When I examined his pretensions,
I found that he knew nothing of annihilation
and subsistence, and that he could not distinguish
between eternal and phenomenal.
Between what? The kadeem and the hadith.
Allah is the kadeem. Allah is the one
who's
transcendent above time and space.
Hadith is everything accidental, who just that lives
in the circus of
causes and effects.
So I found that he couldn't differentiate one
from the other, which is a great number
of people
that open their mouths
and pretend to from the ummah,
to this very day. Said many ignorant Sufis
consider that total annihilation, is
possible, but this is manifest error for annihilation
of different parts of material substance, the the
the
the the that you're made of,
the the the the earth that you're made
of.
For the annihilation of different parts of a
material substance can never take place.
The first law of thermodynamics, the only the
only one who has the license to to
to,
be exempt from it is Allah Ta'ala. Otherwise,
everybody else is bound by it.
I ask these ignorant and mistaken men, what
do you mean by this type of annihilation?
If they answer annihilation of substance,
that
is impossible,
because matter and energy are neither created nor
destroyed,
except for by the creator and destroyer.
If they answer annihilation of attributes,
that is only possible in so far as
one
one attribute may be annihilated through the subsistence
of another attribute. Right? The the the the,
one
characteristic can be
annihilated by the existence of another one. Something
can't be like black and white in the
same sense, in the proper sense at the
same time.
Both attributes belonging,
to man,
one can replace another. That's all. But it
is absurd to suppose that anyone can subsist
through the attributes of another individual.
This is where he gets to a very
interesting point.
He said, the historians of Rum and the
Christians hold that Mariam
annihilated by self mortification, by
all the attributes of humanity in her side
of herself.
That through her worship, that she annihilated all
of the attributes of her own, humanity, Osafi
Nasuti.
And that the divine subsistence became attached to
her, so that she was made subsistence
through the subsistence
of God and that Christ was, the result
thereof.
And that he was not originally composed of
the stuff of humanity,
but because his subsistence
is produced by realization of the subsistence of
god,
and that in consequence of this, he and
his mother and God all are subsistent through
one subsistence, which is eternal and an attribute
of God,
which he said is
impossible. It's a type of silliness, but this
is the type of
this is the type of talk that Christian
theology is based on. I would like to,
right now,
interject some
relevant tangents.
1, is that this is
all repackaging and repurposing of like neo platonic
paganism.
People suppose
that the Romans accepted Christianity, but
that's only part of the story.
There was actually quite a
quite a large contingent
of philosophers
from amongst the Byzantines. Because within Rome,
the the philosophy was always dominated by the
the
helenocentric
part of the empire. Meaning, the people who
were
they spoke
and taught in Greek. Greek, you had to
learn, even as a Roman, you had to
learn Greek in order to become a philosopher.
And so that class of philosophers
were like really not cool with
anything having to do with
the actual teachings of Christ.
And so there was a tussle, a push
and pull. There were some people who actually
accepted Christianity, and then they apostated, because the,
the
the Greek philosophers, the Neoplatonic
philosophers,
they actually
argued, you know, in favor of their
paganism and their, like, kind of philosophical
peripatetic philosophical worldview.
And there was actually in fact, one of
the Roman emperors, actually, after the Christianization of
the empire, actually apostates and becomes a pagan
again. I think his name is Julian. We
can look it up, though. Don't quote me
on it in front of other people and
make a fool out of yourself. Go learn
these things from, like, the people you should
learn them from. But the point is is
what? Is that,
is that this
basically becomes like a big, you know, like
a big public
debate and discussion.
And what ends up happening, you know, one
would think is that the Christians win over
the Neoplatonist pagan philosophers. What actually ends up
happening is they kind of make a truce
and they like,
you know, they don't have this, like,
in their, in their you know, that's not
something that they they consider
part of their deen. So they kind of
just make a truce with one another and
they
accept enough paganism to keep the pagans happy,
to keep the philosophers happy, and enough Christianity
to keep Christians happy, and that's how we
get all of these kind of weird Christological
heresies that, like, ended up in genocide in
the early church.
And so he mentions all of this, and
then look what he says. This is the
relevant part that we should you know, that
that I wanted that I wanted, you know,
people to hear. All of this, this thing
he said about, like, you know, the
of the the attributes
of the in
say that Mariam alaihis salaam and resulting in
Christ, and etcetera, etcetera.
He said, all of this agrees with the
doctrine of the anthropomorphic sect of the
The Muslims, anthropomorphous Muslims, who maintain that the
divine essence is a locus of phenomena,
and that the eternal may have phenomenal attributes.
I ask all who proclaim such tenets, what
difference is there between the view
of the eternal,
that the eternal is the locus of phenomena,
and that the view that the phenomenal is
the locus of the
phenomenal has eternal attributes.
If you're going to say you can mix
between 1 and the other, what's the difference
between
those Muslims who say
that Allah has a body and is in
the sky, and walks around, and
looks like a person, and all of these
other things that the categorically
refute.
What is it impossible about this idea that
Christ is God?
If you accept this type of conception of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
Which is a very valid question. It's extremely
valid question. If you're gonna say that God
can walk around, you know, in the,
you know, in the earth, in the guise
of a human being,
then what's different between, you know, you and
between the Christian? Why is it that the
Christians, what they say is impossible
the
Such doctrines involve materialism,
which is what? Attributing material reality to the
divine,
and attributing divine reality to the material. So
some people say that what? That God is
like a person. So they're attributing
material realities to the divine, that he has
a body, he sits in a chair, he
goes from there, he comes here, he says
something,
he responds to something, you know, he changes
his mind, he gets angry, he gets upset.
Just all the same things that happened in
the, the things that live in the world
of cause and effect.
And some of them, what do they do?
They attribute the attributes of divine to material
things, Like the Hindus, for example, that they
believe that the material world
has always been around, that it has baka,
that it's
And that it will always be around, it
has
And that it can neither be created or
destroyed, it just goes through cycles
again and again, and it just lives forever
like this, which is what? Attributing
divine attributes to material things. From both sides,
it's
it's materialism.
And,
destroy such and doctrines involve
materialism and destroy the proof of the
phenomenal nature of the universe,
and compel us to say that both the
creator and his creation are eternal or that
both are phenomenal,
which is what the end up saying, including
their most famous representative that we don't need
to name right now, but also who believes
that the Alem is.
They say no he says no one thing
in the Alem in the universe is is
was eternally existent, but
the universe itself was eternally existent. It's just
like an endless,
circle of, like, causes and effects, cause and
effects. No one cause or effect of being
eternal, but
the phenomenon that the universe is made up
of has always existed.
Although they oftentimes won't say that publicly because
the Muslims were are not really going to
appreciate that a whole lot because it seems
pretty open and shutkufr,
as well as being
patently against the hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
That are completely incompatible with this conception of
the universe.
It destroys the proof of the phenomenal nature
of the universe and compels us to say
that both the creator and his creation are
eternal,
or that both are phenomenal,
both are they have always been there and
that both are subject to causes and effects,
or that
what is created may be commingled with that
which is uncreated, or that what is uncreated
may descend into that which is created. And
so this is one of the earliest books
on tasala. He's saying very clearly this idea,
which is a caricature,
the straw man caricature that many, of the
haters make against the mutasawaf saying that this
is what they believe, that it's like somehow,
like, a person becomes one with God or
or all this other nonsense that this is
what the Sufis teach. It's never it never
was. It never was. It always it's always
been considered kufr, and this is not what
Fana and Baqaa mean.
If they cannot help admitting that creation is
phenomenal, then their creator also must be phenomenal
because the locus of a thing is like
a substance. If the locus if the Mahal
is phenomenal, then it follows that the contents
of the locus of the the hal within
that Mahal are phenomenal as well.
In fine, when one thing is linked and
united and commingled with another, both things in
principle are as one. Accordingly, our subsistence and
annihilation are attributes of ourselves.
The fana and baqa'at that the Musa so
I talk talk about, this is an attribute
of oneself, it's not an attribute of Allah
Ta'ala.
And resemble each other in respect of their
being our own attributes.
Annihilation,
fana, is the fana of one attribute through
the subsistence of another attribute.
One may speak, however, of a fana that
is independent of substance
and of also of a baqa, subsistence that
is independent of annihilation.
In that case, annihilation means the annihilation of
all remembrance of the other.
So it's not to be taken, like, literally
to that that level. And subsistence means the
subsistence of the
remembrance of god. Meaning what? The fanay,
the
the fanay of
the desire of other things, and the baqa
is the baqa is zikrihaqq,
the baqa of the remembrance of Allah. Whoever
is annihilated from his own will subsists in
the will of God,
because your own will is perishable and the
will of God is everlasting.
And when you stand by your own will,
you stand by annihilation.
But when you
are absolutely controlled by the will of god,
you stand by subsistence.
Similarly, the power of fire transmutes
to its own quality anything that falls into
it, and surely God's will is greater than
fire. It can change the nature of things.
But fire affects only,
the quality of iron. It doesn't change its,
its actual,
its actual material because iron can never become
fire. This is
a analogy he makes,
but it's short. Why? Because you cannot make
an analogy between the creator and the created.
So, obviously, there's a fire that you can
make that's hot enough that will actually
burn iron into,
iron oxide or whatever.
I guess, theoretically, you could pump enough energy
in the system that you can actually rip
the, the the the nucleus apart, and it
just will, like, be scattered,
what are subatomic particles or whatever. Right? But
with Allah, you can never it'll never get
to that point. The point he's trying to
say is what? Is that there's
enough there's enough
power within the fire that it will alter
the attributes of the iron, but the iron
is not gonna burn in it.
So Allah
has enough power that it
will alter your attributes,
except for you'll never be so consumed with
it that you become it.
And so that's what that's what he means,
that's what we mean, and that's what the
the
when they talk about
what they mean by
it.