IN PURSUIT OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE
from
"Living Islam – East & West"
(Excerpts Only)

By: Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri

We all wish for the prolongation of life. However, long life does not mean much, nor does good health, tranquility, or anything else, unless it is on the Path, unless it is to acquire the most important knowledge, knowledge of God Alone.

In our traditions, simply asking for the knowledge of the Essence will get us nowhere. We have to seek the knowledge of God's attributes, of God's actions, of God's laws, so that we may guard against transgressing them in this world. Guarding against falling prey to the pitfalls of following our own whims will protect us from the reaction born of wrong action which we call punishment. Punishment is part of the love of Reality for us. The entire creation is based on love. The pain we occasionally feel is because the balance has been disturbed due to our ignorance, because we do not know how to unite our expectations and desires with God's decrees and absolute laws. We are bound to adjust to them, and that is the meaning of slavehood. We are enslaved to that truth, whether we like it or not. The sooner we submit to it – and this is the true meaning of Islam – the sooner we will come to know from our hearts where to stop and where not to venture. If we make a mistake, then we have acted upon a desire or whim.

The purification of the heart occurs degree by degree, and the way to this purification is by going against one's own personal selfish motives, desires, expectations, and so on. This is called the struggle of the self, al-jihad an-nafs. Maintaining this jihad constantly, and keeping diligently to the shari'ah (the body of Islamic law) as it has come to us, one eventually ends up being the free man who is a true slave. If you are a slave, you have no choice. If you have no choice, you are free. Choice is confusion. Enslavement is fusion. There is no other way to this purification.

One can only deal with what is in front of one at any given moment, at any given time, in any given circumstances, and that is all one can do. The next experience will take care of itself. What happens after that is not our problem now. Let us sort out our problems here, in this existence. Let us cross this bridge properly, courteously, with full honor, with full dignity, and with full humility to the Magnificent One, the Omnipotent, in whose eyesight we are nothing. The entire universe is nothing. There is a tradition saying that if you take the entire cosmos, it is no more than a ring thrown in a vast desert.

God says,

The heavens and earth do not contain Me, but the heart of a believer (mu`min) contains Me.

So what a vast potential a human being has! That potential cannot be realized unless his options are narrowed down – narrowed down to such a point that there is no more narrowness. That is the meaning of fana' fi'llah, annihilated in God. These are all terms or indicators, meaning nothing more than a state, a taste. Once the state becomes a permanent condition of the heart, then that heart is a true reflector.

If the heart is a clean and polished reflector, it reflects the truth. The objective of all inner practices is to reach a point where the heart is completely free of everything – completely open. Outer sound, in the form of dhikr (invocation of God), is utilized in order to bring about inner silence. When inner silence comes, a situation occurs which is a very healthy and normal condition for humankind, a situation of being able to reflect the truth.

Nobody likes disturbance in this existence, because the Creator has created it in perfect balance and harmony. We do not like discord, because our life has sprung from a harmonious foundation, and is based on that harmony. Harmony, however, is not possible without dissonance. This is why man is at a loss, for dissonance must exist in order to show us the bounds of harmony. Finally, a stage is reached when the dissonance is not felt as dissonance but only as harmony.

Today someone stopped us in the traffic. A woman who was behind us pulled up alongside our car, lowered the window and waved us down. I did not know what to do – I thought she was telling us that we had a flat tire. I was sitting in the front seat, and lowered my window. The woman called out, "Who are you? Where are you from?" I replied, "I am from the same Creator and we are on our way back to Him." She said, "I have been following this car, and there is peace and light in it." I said, "Where is it that there is no peace and light?" Where is it that God is not? What this woman recognized has become the exception, the extraordinary, whereas, a time will come when it will become the rule.

We are caught in the situation of no choice. We want peace, we want harmony, and yet life is based on dynamism. This situation seems a contradiction in terms, but it is not. The dynamism of life has sprung forth from the perfect non-time, the beyond-time state or essence which contains the dynamism that sprung from it, but is not contaminated by it. That Reality is not affected by what you and I can discern or observe or feel or talk about. It contains it, yet is not impaired by it. He is wahid al-ahad, the One and Only. We will all come face to face with that dimension, that confrontation, when the potentiality of duality in this life disappears, which is the point of death. When there is no more of this imaginary double – good/bad, up/down, night/day, man/woman, health/illness – when this duality disappears, everyone will recognize the one foundation that supports it all.

Adam could not have recognized the meaning of falsehood until after Shaytān had told him to eat from the tree. Up to that moment the Prophet Adam, the Adamic consciousness, had only heard the truth. He did not know the meaning of a lie. Once that occurred, duality necessarily became the foundation of our existence – good and bad, up and down, lies and truth, and all other aspects of duality. It is incredible, wonderful, and perfect.

Let us share some verses of the Qur`an. We, as Muslims, live by the Qur`an. There are two types of knowledge. One is knowledge revealed to the prophets, and the other is acquired, descriptive, existential, encyclopedic, and informative. Revealed knowledge is thrown as light into the hearts of great beings – these include 124,000 prophets, and many of those who follow in their footsteps, if they have the courtesy not to disturb the dust of these footsteps. The Qur`an is the ultimate revealed knowledge of God. It is a manual by which we live from moment to moment, just as we breathe in and breathe out. It is the ultimate manual for correct existence, not just a book to be brought out for major overhauls, like when somebody dies. It is for every moment, day and night.

The key to the Qur`an is with Muhammad and the Ahl al-Bayt (the People of the Household of the Prophet), and the Sahaba (his Companions). Full access to that revealed knowledge can only be obtained by means of those who were living with him. Otherwise, misguidance occurs or one may try to re-invent certain things.

I would like to share with you several ayāt from Surah Ya Sin. Yasin is one of the names of the Prophet Muhammad, and his family or his tribe is Al-Yasin.

In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful

The Beneficent is the One whose mercy is all-encompassing. The Merciful is when one actually experiences the mercy.

I swear by the Qur`an full of wisdom; Most surely you are one of the mursalin (Messengers of God). On a Straight path. (36:2-4)

The straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and the ultimate objective is knowledge of the Creator. You will come to believe in God at first by simply accepting that He already contains all knowledge. He even contains the knowledge of one's existence before that existence comes into being. This is taken on trust until such time as you attain certainty of it.

A revelation of the Mighty, the Merciful. (36:5)

The message has been brought down by the 'Aziz. 'Aziz is from 'izzah meaning scarcity, power, strength. 'Aziz also means rare, and dear, sought after as a result of its dearness.

That you may warn a people whose fathers were not warned, so they are heedless. (36:6)

A prophet or a messenger comes in order to correct something that is going off its prescribed direction. No prophet, no messenger was sent to people who were completely and utterly on the path. God is not wasteful. Yasin was sent for those who wished to follow the path to knowledge of Allah. There is a hadith, a saying of the Prophet, that the men of knowledge are the heirs of the Prophets. They are the heirs of the Prophets because they love that knowledge. Through that knowledge they obtain life. The hadith also says that people are like walking tombs until they are enlivened. The Qur`an says,

Therefore believe in God and His Messenger, the unlettered Prophet who believes in God Alone and His words, and follow him so that you may walk in the right way. (7:158)

The Qur`an addresses those who trust that there is a purpose to this life. Those who trust that the inner joy and knowledge sought after is attainable, by exclusion – by excluding anything that is likely to cause trouble. That which has never caused harm nor ever will is already there. Exclude expectations, agitations, and desire. Leave all that aside. Know the mechanics of how these things arise. Automatically they will be left aside. Sometimes Shaytān is disguised in a good action, bringing doubt and trouble to the heart of a decent human being by joining him in his good actions. Observe how many people involved in charitable acts all of a sudden blow everything because they have not been properly acknowledged, or given their due respect. This occurs because Shaytān slips in where there is weakness. Usually one becomes vulnerable when one is not fully alert. Generally speaking, full awareness is not present when one considers oneself to be on a smooth path. On a smooth journey one generally encounters a sudden unexpected bump and Shaytān comes at moments when one is least expecting it.

Shaytān is, in a manner of speaking, very intelligent. A great wali (friend of God) was asked: "Who was your most brilliant teacher?" He replied: "Shaytān taught me, because he was more brilliant than all the other 'ulama (scholars) whom I've come across. He was so brilliant that every time I thought I had caught him, he came up with a new set of horns, or way of doing the same thing." Shaytān is not just a funny thing; he strikes suddenly, and is very subtle. Anything that causes the heart to be tarnished, anything that causes doubt, is from Shaytān, no matter what it is. The believer must have discrimination, not doubt. If one doubts about a person or a thing, one is doubting oneself, one's own judgment, because of one's ignorance.

Basically, doubt and confusion are proofs of a deeper situation called anger. The power of anger turned against ignorance dispels it. If one's anger is turned against some other situation, blaming the stock exchange or another person, one is missing the point. If people look at their faults, they will never have time or energy to look at anybody else's faults. This applies at all times. You will conserve your energy because you will find deeper and more amazing things about the lower ego or nafs within us: how the nafs rises when one least expects it, how the nafs takes hold, guiding one towards a wretched abyss, under the guise of what appears to be nice and correct.

The believer must never be angry. If you are angry, then you are at a lower degree of iman (belief, trust, faith). The perfect believer as well as the perfect kafir (denier of the truth) does not exist. We all have varying degrees of kufr in us. Kufr is covering up, covering up the truth that occasionally we come to know and fully believe in, that there is only God. That is the unquestionable truth that one whose state is right and whose heart is open can come to believe.

There is only one Reality. We are suspended by that Reality's grace in order to discover it, because it is beyond time, beyond place, beyond space, yet it contains space, and it contains us and everything which we know and everything which we do not know. As the Qur`an says,

With your Lord alone shall on that day be the place of rest. (75:12)

This verse refers to the resting place of that Being, Rabb, whose job is tarbiyah, upbringing. Rabb is translated as Lord, making it almost meaningless. Rabb is one of the infinite attributes of God. Every speck of dust is an attribute, is an action, is an outcome of Allah's creation. We must recognize the fact that all prophets and all the messengers of God were sent to correct situations where there was a wastage of energy and lives.

The most precious capital that we have is our lives. Almost everything is potentially replaceable except that day, the moment that you now experience. For this leads to the Day of Judgment, the Yawm ad-Din. The Qur`an asks,

Again, what will make you realize what the Day of Judgment is? The day on which no soul shall control anything for (another) soul; and the command on that day shall be entirely God's. (82:18-19)

On the Day of Reckoning no self can help nor vouch for any other self. One is committed only to one's own inner state. The affair belongs to God Alone. No action is possible. Another state of consciousness has taken over. If that state is attainable today, then a version of the Day of Reckoning has been tasted, because on that Day all that is hidden (now) will be apparent, and all that is apparent (now) will be like a shadow. This is the reverse of the present life. Nothing in existence can be experienced unless there is the reverse of it. Life is not possible without death. Sweetness cannot be experienced without bitterness. One cannot taste the amazing faculties of consciousness unless sleep is experienced.

We love sleep more than anything else in this existence. Sleep is a preparation for death. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that this body does not belong to us. We have simply used it for a while, and we are returning it to where it belongs. So who then dies? How can the spirit die? Allah says,

And they ask you about the soul. Say: The soul is one of the commands of my Lord... (17:85)

Our spirit lives on forever, free, beyond anything, because it belongs totally to its Creator. Therefore, in its slavehood it is utterly and absolutely free – beyond time. For that reason, the believer is never afraid of death. For him it is the most natural thing, and can occur to us at any moment.

We believe in foreverness. We believe that God is al-Samad (the Eternal). The reason why some people of insight and inner knowledge do not want death is because there is something within them which suggests, in an indirect way, that there is no death. But they do not know that this state beyond the death of the physical body means. The believer, the mu`min, knows what it means.

The believer is never angry. Anger is a tremendous power. Lust is a tremendous power. All of these emotions and instincts are incredible powers, but they must be channeled correctly. Lust must be sublimated beyond physical lust, in pursuit of knowledge, in pursuit of a state of inner joy that is beyond description, an inner freedom that can only be attained by those who have the necessary fortune and forbearance and perseverance. If you have tasted it even for a moment, then you are hooked. It is like a drowning person who, while struggling, occasionally forces his head to the surface of the water. He tries with all of his strength to remain above water, but there is a courtesy necessary to enable him to keep his head permanently out of the water. The path is based on courtesy. Simply by moving one's leg, one is not going to swim in the current of life. Simply desiring to keep one's head above water, is not going to make it happen. Desire is necessary but one must also find a wasilah, a way, to make sure that his heart is where it belongs and his body where it belongs. His body belongs to this world, and what is inside, his heart, belongs to that world which contains this world and all other worlds, beyond time. If you have understood that, then you are truly born, then you are in balance. Then you can qualify as a human being, as a true slave of God. From this point on your life begins, because although outwardly you see affliction, duality, turmoil, and trouble, inwardly you are in the ecstasy of knowing how these things arise.

It is utterly simple. It is not complicated. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is not a matter for debate. It is. You either do it or you don't. If you do it, you get hooked to it, because the beginning is the beginning of the end. So God sends these Messengers, anbiya, to people who have lost the way, like us. That is why we need the prophethood of Muhammad.

We need to hang on to what the Qur`an reveals. We need to live by the Qur`an, moment by moment. If we are foolish, if we have acted foolishly at a moment of high inner inspiration, then it is we and no one else, who are to blame. Luqman advises his son, "Do not open your hand fully, and do not withhold it fully." Be in balance, so that you do not blame anybody later on. Someone suddenly has his heart opened, and becomes overly generous. It is a mood. Later on he blames those to whom he was generous for one reason or another. He was caught by his mood. It was a good mood, but do not blame anybody else. What we want is a state, not a mood. A mood of generosity is a spark of the Creator, because He is the most generous; everything is from Him, and it is to His grace that we shall all ultimately return. God's reservoir has no end. It is your reservoir and my reservoir that have limitations. We give a little bit and have expectations of a certain return or result.

(As for) those who believe and do good, they shall surely have a reward never to be cut off. (41:8)

The Qur`an speaks about the people who have attained that state, not a mood. Be careful of generous moods. That generosity may be the worst thing that one is doing. Suppose a mood of pity or generosity comes upon someone for a child who has a very bad kidney. If one does not know about the child's condition, one may buy him chocolate candy. This shows a lack of discrimination. When there were plagues in the 16th century in England, the men of the clergy generously collected everybody under one roof. They did not know that they were actually speeding up death by doing so. Those who were not within the purvey of kindness of those ignorant people survived.

A true, pure action is fi sabili'llah (in the way of God Alone), and actions in the way of God Alone are for the sake of other people, for God has no need for our actions. The Qur`an says,

If you do good, you will do good for your own souls, and if you do evil, it shall be for them... . (17:7)

Thus, the believer never imagines or thinks that what he has done in a moment of generosity was wrong. If ever one performs a good action and later has second thoughts about it, then that good action was not in the way of God Alone. If it was performed with the right intention, then your reward will come from God, and how do you know what God's measures are?

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We become too exposed and this results in our becoming enticed and agitated. Yet we want to be at peace. Everything calls out beckoning one to become a consumer. More and more – more of what? First this thing is obtained then that. Bolts, locks, insurance, maintenance contracts, and so on. How can one ever manage to obtain a moment of inner peace and tranquility in a situation like this? How do people manage to spare a moment with their families? In America, women take three months off to have a baby and then place the baby in a 'kiddy depot' for 9-10 hours per day. Everything is treated as if it were a possession.

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The Prophet said, "There is a lump in a man's breast. If it is well, everything is well. And if it is not, then nothing is well." This means the heart, the purity or the state of the heart. Every one of us has outer limitations. What if one has inherited a limp or something similar? Everyone has his own idiosyncrasies, but we can live with them. The key is the state of our hearts. Prophets were sent in order to remind people why their hearts had become hard, what had brought them into that dreadful state. They came in order to tell people that they had transgressed the laws of the Creator, often ignorantly and inadvertently, by being distracted.

Distractions brings about destruction. Every now and then, after weeks or months of staying on course, trying not to be distracted, I find myself completely off course. Once I rushed to my teacher and said, "I have followed your teachings, I would have been able to face you every moment for months, but for only two days I found myself off the track." He replied, "You are speaking like a person who says, 'I have driven on a highway completely alert for ten hours, and slept for only ten seconds.' Those ten seconds would see you to the grave." One second of ghaflah (distraction) is enough.

If a person is unable to open his heart and keep things within his heart, they accumulate there, and in the end they cannot be easily washed away. A sledge hammer is needed to break through. Those who are on a strict path know what I am speaking about. Those who are occasionally taken someone under their wing, or helped another fellow traveler on this short journey, know what I am talking about. Suddenly one sees someone, and says, my goodness, what has come over him? His face has completely changed. The reverse can also happen. For someone who has a hardened heart, light may hit the heart through a small crack, and quickly the whole shell shatters and a being is born.

The Prophets come in order to warn people what went wrong. Two days ago we were reading about the Prophet Noah. The name Nuh in Arabic is from the verb naha, 'to cry'. He cried for his people. He was with them for 950 years, according to the Qur`an. He wept because they would not listen. He was trying to tell them that what they were doing was bringing about an ecological disturbance, which in turn would bring about their physical destruction. They had disturbed the cosmos to such an extent that it was going to flood. The consequences of one's actions will undoubtedly appear. There is no disconnection in this world. It is a complete jigsaw puzzle, and every bit fits. The great being who was with us today said, "If the head of a needle refuses to be what it is, the entire cosmos will be destroyed." This means that all of these powers and forces in the cosmos are so delicately and perfectly in balance, that not a thing can be disturbed without a reaction. The Qur`an says,

... then look again, can you see any fault? (67:3)

Look again, do you see any crack? Yet much of the time, either in our heart or our intellect, there is a crack that causes a lack of comprehension or discrimination.

The intellect is for differentiation, the heart is the connector to the source of differentiation. The head is for consciousness – to be conscious of this, that and the other: right and wrong, correct behavior and incorrect behavior; positive dynamism and action and being simply negative and aimless backward. The source of discrimination is in the intellect, in consciousness – which ascends higher and higher until one reaches pure consciousness. The root of the intellect dwells in the heart. Thus the saying, "Have a warm heart and a cool head." Warm means connected to the power source. Cool head means being a witnesser, to differentiate, to be objective.

One cannot be objective if one has attachments, expectations, and desires. The prophets came in order to guide people to the way, and the way has been and always will be one. It is called the way of submission, of Islam. Adam was the first and we will not be the last. There will be others who will discover the same thing. What differed from one prophet to another were the outer limitations prescribed. Each prophet brought greater outer restraints – stricter, narrower – to make it easier, more immediate. The more specific the boundaries, the less choice one has. Ultimately, with real knowledge there is no choice. If one knows what the right ambient temperature should be for a room, there will be no choice between 20 degrees of 21 degrees. One knows it is 20.3 degrees. If one is offered a plate of various fruits, there appears to be a choice. If, however, one knew exactly what his system needed in order to be restored to its full balance, there would be no choice. He would take three and a half grapes, one and a half bits of apple, and everyone would think he was crazy. But he has no choice, because he has come to realize exactly what is appropriate for his condition.

When we say we have a choice, we mean we are ignorant. The more ignorant we are, the more choice we have. It is like a small child who does not know. He has all these choices, but as he grows older he finds that he has little choice. Ultimately, if we have inner insight of pure consciousness, we have absolutely no choice. That is the freedom that the prophets have come to teach, the freedom of no choice, according to the different circumstances of their people. There were prophets within one family, and there were prophets for a village. There were prophets who had their prophethood for a few moments, and others who had it for hundreds of years. The source of prophecy for each one was from the same divine spark. They carried the same message, in a different language, in a different era, until the Prophet Muhammad, Yasin, came to a people, the Arabs, who had experienced no prophet among them since Isma'il. It so happened that he was the last and the Seal of the Prophets.

The Prophet Muhammad's message includes the outer application, the Shari'ah, as well as the inner way. The inner and the outer are one, as they are only two sides of the same coin. You cannot have an outer condition without an inner state. An inner state cannot come about or be tasted unless there is an outer condition. His way was the most perfect, because it was the most direct, the easiest, and most applicable at all times, in all circumstances, no matter where one is. One may live by it safe and sound in any place or time. By the Prophet Muhammad's way, one may live in this world inwardly as though one is in the Garden of eternity, whereas outwardly one may be striving and struggling. There is access to an inner state that is beyond description. That access can only come about if the key is manufactured. The key is based on battling with oneself, thrashing it out. If the self wants something, do the opposite. If the self is lazy, give it a push. When you go to a place where there may be a useful situation, the self will balk at going. At night, if you suddenly awaken, get up and pray the night prayer even though the self wants to turn over and go back to sleep. The reward of such actions is immeasurable. There are rules about how to perfect the self. Once these are practiced, one is able to go further and further.

The prophets have all come to remind man that what he should be striving for is already there. It is only his ignorance, his self-delusion and the whims of the lower nafs which deprive him of this knowledge. Put the lower nafs aside, and ascend higher with the higher nafs, until neither high nor low is seen. Only the manifestations of the One and Only Reality are seen. Then one is in the station of true submission.

The great man of knowledge with whom we spoke today said that Imam Husayn was in that state of submission on the day of his martyrdom. So think how miserable our state is. One should never imagine that one has attained the goal, for even a child can tell that one does not know. The knowledge which we are talking about is not a knowledge that can be discussed in words. It is haqq al-yaqin (the truth of certainty). It is the certainty that la ilaha illa'llah, Muhammadun Rasulu'llah (There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) is true even if you are cut up into bits. Every bit, every cell, will sing la ilaha illa'llah, Muhammadun Rasulu'llah. That is what the prophets have come to give. This is what our Prophet Muhammad brought in the Qur`an through the medium of this most incredible language – the Arabic language.

To understand the Qur`an, one must do so through the medium of its language. There is no other possibility. Then one realizes

Certainly the word (decree) has proven true regarding most of them, for they do not believe. (36:7)

The majority of people are the type who will not come to know the true message. They will not come to this realization, to this iman (trust, faith, belief). Iman is its own fuel, its own reward. The believer is in a state of trust at all times, so that even when something hits him and he does not know what, his trust in God Alone will reveal to him what is happening, and will immediately put it right. If he is acting in the way of Allah, then he has removed all obstacles. Where is the problem? Why should he be upset? He can only be upset with his ignorance, for misapplying his energy at the wrong time in the wrong place. Those who are at a loss are described in the Qur`an:

Surely We have placed chains on their necks, and these reach up to their chins, so they have their heads raised aloft. (36:8)

These are chains of the drudgery of dunya (the material world). I must do this, I must do that. People become choked. The world has gobbled them up. They have no time. Their altar is the bank and their high priest is the bank chairman. 'In gold we trust.' This is today's form of worship. They work like slaves in order to have one or two weeks of holiday. The word holiday is from 'holy day', but there is nothing holy about it. I would like to have a holiday all the time, all my life. Why not? Why only for a few weeks? To go to some overpriced place where one is only concerned about whether or not the fish is cooked properly or whatever. Then later the madness is relived by showing our neighbors photos or home movies. All this is fixated, dead.

And We have made before them a barrier and a barrier behind them, then We have covered them over so that they do not see. (36:9)

People's own actions and ignorance cause them to become disconnected. Every one of us is the product of his past. Every one of us, in our bodies and in our thoughts, is a mixture of our physical, genetic, environmental, and social material mixed together in various permutations and combinations. The outcome of it is the so-called individual self. If we do not recognize how this has arisen, we are disconnected from Allah. If I cannot see that my illness or the weakness of my kidney is the result of a combination of factors – an inherited disposition and my ignorant abuse of my kidneys and so on – then I am at a loss. It is cause and effect. It is scientific, it is perfect. Once one sees that, there is no harm.