Husain Sattar – Sustaining the Soul Talk
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If you look through the entire Quran,
you'll see that Allah
has 2 ways in which creation is described.
Meaning, there's 2 ways in which things were
created by Allah. So, for example,
if you look through the Quran and you
you read certain places, it says that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala created everything in 6 days.
Right? He created the heavens and the earth
and us and everything that we see around
us. He created them within 6 days.
So that's one way in which Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala creates.
Then there's a second way, and the second
way is and people hear this all the
time that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, when He
desires something to exist, He says, kunfa yakhun.
Be and it is.
So
there's 2 ways in which creation actually occurs.
1 is this 6 day method,
and the other is
this method of saying konfaya
kon, be, and it is.
Those things which are create those things which
are created in the 6 day method,
they are called or classified by scholars as
annam al khalq,
the world of creation,
meaning both the world of things that was
created in 6 days. So that includes
our bodies,
the ground, the earth,
the skies,
the trees, animals. Every single thing that you
see on this planet was all created over
a 6 day period.
Those things that were created
in
through the statement, kun fa yakuen, is called
Alem al Amar,
the world of the command. Those things that
you created by the command. And in general,
as a very rough
sort of dividing line, everything below the arsh
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala was created by
Khalk
over 6 days. And everything above the arsh
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala was created by
Ummah.
Now,
what's unique about us is that we are
a compound of 2 components.
So we have bodies and we have souls.
Our bodies were created through Chalog. They were
created across the 6 day period there or
from below the arish.
And our souls were created from Ama.
So you have to understand this because this
is one of the fundamental
concepts in tasauwuh,
that our bodies, our actual physical bodies, were
created through Khalq
and our souls were created through ama.
Now, in general,
those things that are created from hulk, they
take their sustenance from hulk.
For example, our bodies
that takes or the clothing that we wear,
It's from Khalq. So the clothing comes from
plants, and plants are from things that were
created.
Similarly, the food that we eat, that food
is from Khalq.
Similarly,
the houses that we live in,
those houses are made of brick and mortar
and wood, and all that stuff is from
hulk.
So the body, which is from hulk, takes
its sustenance from hulk, from the created things.
And the soul, which is from amar, takes
its sustenance from things from the amar. So
the Nur of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
the faiz of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the
barakah of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
the benefits that you get from reading the
Quran, the benefits that you get from prayer,
all these things
are nourishment for the soul
because they were created from Amma, and the
soul is also created from Amma.
Now if you understand this much, then you'll
understand one of the fundamental principles of the
soul, and this is where people get confused
all the time:
You cannot take things of haruk and try
to advance the soul, because the soul was
created from Amma. So no matter how well
you feed yourself,
no matter how nice of a place you
live in, no matter how nice your clothings
your clothing, no matter how nice your car,
those things will not spiritually advance you, because
those things are created from hope. They are
not
the food,
and they are not the, sort of, the
growth substance of the of the soul.
Those things can only advance the body. So,
yes, you can move in a nice house,
you can drive a nice car, you can
have nice food, and that will improve your
body. And you'll see. You'll see people who
live in such circumstances, their bodies look very
healthy, their bodies shine, their bodies glow.
But if you
want to advance the soul,
then you have to use things that are
created from that same Adam from that same
Adam. So, for example,
reading the Quran,
doing good,
attaining the Nur of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
dhikr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
These are all things that act to draw
the Nur of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala into
our lives.
That Nur
then subsequently acts as the growth, such
acts as a means of sustenance of the
soul.
So these are 2 very, very important concepts
that we should keep in mind, Aramal Khalk
and Aramal Amr. Aramal Khalk
is those things that are created by the
6 day method, and those things are the
earth and everything that's around us. Andalamulamal
are those things that are created through kunfu
yakun, and they include our soul. And we
are a compound of both of those, both
hulk andamal.
So for our bodies, we have to work
and attain food, clothing,
and shelter.
But for our soul, we have to do
rikr, and you have to remember Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. You have to recite the Quran.
You have to be good to one another.
All these things, they attract the nood of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and that actually is
the means of sustaining the soul. So if
you want to advance the soul, then you
have to use those things from Allah. And
if you want to advance the body, then
you use those things from Quran. So we
should keep that in mind. Now
this whole concept of marakaba.
When we talk about marakaba,
especially the first within marakaba, there's marakaba means
to watch over.
That's simply really what it means in the
simplest level.
So when somebody does murakaba,
they're watching over their soul,
just like you do when you do the
same thing. If you there's 2 words. Think
about it this way. There's muhasava and murakaba.
Muhasaba
is to watch over your body, and murakaba
is to watch over your soul. So when
you do mohasaba, when you do accounting,
you watch over how much money came and
went. How much did you spend on this?
How much did you use to buy that?
That's called that's the accounting of the body.
And if you don't keep proper accounts,
you're gonna end up overdrawing on your account.
You're gonna end up having problems for yourself.
Similarly,
in for the soul, there's murakaba.
And what you do with muraqabah is you
reflect on your connection with Allah,
you reflect on the Day of Judgment, you
reflect on the Quran, you reflect
on the Messenger of Allah and all the
sacrifices that he made, you reflect on the
greatness of the Sahaba, that's called muraqabah.
In fact, there's 35 lessons within the tariqa.
The very first five lessons are all reflecting
on Allah, in the sense that you just
reflect and imagine that your heart is saying
Allah or that the soul is calling on
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But later on, there's
muraqabah of the Quran, where you just imagine
the greatness of the Quran, you think about
a verse and you just reflect on that
verse all not to your actual lesson. And
other times, there's muraqabah of the Prophet where
you reflect on the Prophet and all the
sacrifices that he made and all the blessings
that he brought to us. There's another miracle
when you think about the day of judgement.
There's a another miracle when you think about
the fact that nothing exists in this world
except Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, meaning a true
existence.
So these are the levels of the advancement
of the soul. Now the very, very first
five lessons
that you do
in this tariqah
are all concentrating on the soul. So when
you do marakaba, what happens is that you
concentrate on remembering Allah
and those are
focus points of the soul to the heart,
for example. When we reflect on Allah, we
do muraqabah and Allah
we imagine that new one is entering into
our hearts. That actually is a sustenance for
the soul.
So you have to keep these very, very
fundamental principles
in mind in order to understand
where these lessons are derived from. And in
fact, you'll read this in Tafasir as well,
and there's much more detail than what I'm
giving right here. But so take home these
few central points. One is that there's 'alam
al khalq. The second is that there's 'alam
and ama. Those things of khalq are sustained
by hulk, those things of ama are sustained
by ama.
Barakaba
aims to draw the nur of Allah
within our lives, helps us to reflect and
watch over
the progress of the soul, and at the
same time to draw the nur of Allah
into our hearts.
So, with that in mind, inshallah,
every week I'll try to give a basic
concept that this elephant
uses 5 or 10 minutes to help better
sort of give the intellectual basis of the
rigor that we do.