"There is No Longer A Journey to Undertake, No Longer A Destination to Reach"

Sultan Bahu

Alif Allah chambe di booti, Murshid man wich laaee hoo
Nafee asbaat da pane milia, Har rage harjae hoo.
Andar booti mushk machaya, Jaan phullan te aae hoo
Jeeve Murshid Kaamil Bahu, Jain eh booti laee hoo

My Master Has Planted in My Heart the Jasmine of Allah’s Name.
Both My Denial That the Creation is Real and My Embracing of God, the Only Reality, Have Nourished the Seedling Down to its Core.
-When the Buds of Mystery Unfolded Into the Blossoms of Revelation, My Entire Being Was Filled with God’s Fragrance.
-May the Perfect Master Who Planted this Jasmine in My Heart Be Ever Blessed, O Bahu!-

Allaah parhion hafiz hoion, Na giaa hijabon pardaa hoo
Parhh parhh aalim faazil hoion, Taalib hoion zar daa hoo
Lakh hazar kitabaan parhiaan, Zaalim nafs na mardaa hoo
Baajh Faqeraan kise na mareya, Eho chor andar daa hoo

-You Have Read the Name of God Over and Over, You Have Stored the Holy Qur’an in Your Memory, But this Has Still Not Unveiled the Hidden Mystery.
-Instead, Your Learning and Scholarship Have Sharpened Your Greed for Worldly Things,
-None of the Countless Books You’ve Read in Your Life Has Destroyed Your Brutal Ego.
-Indeed, None But the Saints Can Kill this Inner Thief, for it Ravages the Very House in Which it Lives.

Alif-aihad jad dittee wiskaalee, Az khud hoiaa fane hoo
Qurb, Wisaal, Maqaam na Manzil, Na uth jism na jaanee hoo
Na uth Ishq Muhabbat kaee, Na uth kaun makanee hoo
Aino-ain theeose Bahu, Sirr Wahadat Subhanee hoo

-When the One Lord Revealed Himself to Me, I Lost Myself in Him.
-Now There is Neither Nearness Nor Union. There is No Longer A Journey to Undertake, No Longer A Destination to Reach.
-Love Attachment, My Body and Soul and Even the Very Limits of Time and Space Have All Dropped From My Consciousness.
-My Separate Self Has Merged in the Whole: in That, O Bahu, Lies the Secret of the Unity That is God!

Allaah sahee keetose jis dam, Chamkiaa Ishq agohaan hoo
Raat dihaan de taa tikhere, Kare agohaan soohaan hoo
Andae bhaaheen, Andar baalan, Andar de wch dhoohaan hoo
‘Shaah Rag’ theen Raab nerhe laddhaa, Ishq keetaa jad soohaan hoo-

-The Moment I Realized the Oneness of God, the Flame of His Love Shone Within, to Lead Me On.
-Constantly it Burns in My Heart with Intense Heat, Revealing the Mysteries Along My Path.
-This Fire of Love Burns Inside Me with No Smoke, Fuelled by My Intense Longing for the Beloved.
-Following the Royal Vein, I Found the Lord Close By. My Love Has Brought Me Face to Face with Him.

-Alif alast suniaa dil mere, Jind balaa kookendee hoo
Hubb watan dee haalib hoee, Hik pal saun na dendee hoo
Qaihar pave is raazan duneeaa, Haq daa raah marendee hoo
Aashiq mool qabool na Bahu, Zaaro zaar ruvendee hoo

-When, At the Time of Creation, God Separated Me From Himself, I Heard Him Say: “am I Not Your God?” , “indeed You Are,” Cried My Soul, Reassured. Since Then Has My Heart Flowered.
-With the Inner Urge to Return Home, Giving Me Not A Moment of Calm Here on Earth.
-May Doom Strike this World! it Robs Souls on Their Way to God.
-The World Has Never Accepted His Lovers; They Are Persecuted and Left to Cry in Pain.

http://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/poets/sultan-bahu/

Hadrat Sultan Bahu is one of the most renowned sufi saints of the later Mughal Period in the history of Indo Pakistan subcontinent. He is often called Sultanul Arifin ( the Sultan of gnostics) in the Sufi circles. His ancestors belonging to the tribe of Alvids called Awan and coming from Arabia via Hirat (Afghanistan ) had settled in the soon Sakesar Valley of Khushab District in Punjab.

His mother taught him the essential sufi exercises of dhikr (invocation of Allah and His Names ) and he probably needed no more guidance after that. He was initiated to walk the path of Sufis intuitively.  He died in 1691 A.D. at Shorkot where he was buried close to the bank of the river. His body had, however, to be transferred twice to other nearby places due to the floods. Now the place he lies buried under a beautiful tomb is called Darbar Hazrat Sultan Bahu ( District Jhang, Punjab).
 He wrote many books in Persian. He also wrote ghazals and poems in Persian as a well as Abyaat in Punjabi. His Punjabi poetry contains spiritual fervour and passionate expression of the exalted state of Divine Love. 
He was the greatest teacher and propagator of Faqr ( spiritual poverty ) which is the shining guiding star in his teachings. He may be considered one of the greatest Revealers in the history of Sufism.
His dargah has always been supervised by the Sajjadah Nashins of his own family.

http://www.ummah.com/Al_adaab/biography/sultanbahu.html

Dîn, Modernism, Evolution, Science & Transcendence

Omar K N

1.1 Definition of tradition

Therefore according to how we understand the concept from its etymological root: tradere (deliver, transmit) - Tradition has nothing to do with peoples' usages or customs from old, but is understood as *revealed* tradition, that is truths and principles of divine order revealed or unveiled to mankind.

“Tradition is essentially of "super-human" origin, which is quite exactly also its correct definition and nothing traditional cannot be qualified as such without the presence of this vital and axial* foundational element, which defines its own authentic character.”

“Nothing which is purely human can be considered traditional, that is why it is wrong - as René Guénon rightly says - to talk about a "philosophic tradition" or a "scientific tradition"... because only the heritery forms of an uninterrupted chain of transmission (silsilah) deserve the qualification "traditional" for they will guarantee the reality and permanence of the "vital element", ie. that of non-human origin, inside a particular tradition.” DRG

Or to put in another way: Tradition is the light with which the human kind has been endowed with from the beginning of times to the end of it; it is the light of meaning in an otherwise meaningsless void, it is the light of spiritual guidance in a materialistic and hedonistic era, it is the light of the Logos shining upon the contingent entities. This Light is from God, the light of the heavens and earth.

In the case of Islam, which is the most recent - and the last of traditions, the concept of tradition, the dîn, is seen as being twofold:

• in its general meaning the transmission of an element of the suprahuman level - the Qur'an,
• and in its specific sense the words and sayings reported from Prophet Muhammad  may Allah bless him and grant him peace, which have been recorded in the hadith collections together with the entire Islamic religion.

2.1 Modernism & postmodernism

In modernism it was believed that materiality or phenomena was everything there is and that it is superiour to anything else. This philosophy of science is called positivism - it is a rejection of metaphysics, as it holds that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience, which we can observe and measure and nothing beyond that. 

In some quarters there was still an underlying, dormant longing for the construction or discovery of the Grand Design (4*), meaning a new unity of being, of what reality really is, but a unity which had to do without religion and metaphysics. ( 2.3ff  )

(4*) Probing the "Grand Design, in posing the greatest questions: How vast is the Universe, the entirety of existence? Was there a beginning? Will there be an end? What is the origin and fate of the Universe?" 
< From "Cosmology: A Cosmic Perspective" >

However, as Charles Upton has shown ( SAC-33 ) 
in postmodernism it is always held (as a conviction or belief ?!) that:
(1) there is no Grand Design,
(2) truth is plural and ultimately subjective,
(3) reality is only as it is configured,
(4) there is nothing out there but chaotic potential.
So much for the quest for truth! ( 2.2  )

Furthermore, with today's "celebration of diversity", normal logical thinking seems to have evaporated from many a contemporary mind, as modernism and postmodernism even can work together, or so it seems, in the mind of a single individual, confounding it and neutralizing any attempt toward a traditional or metaphysical view of reality! SAC 

____So much so that by now "modernism has become nothing more than a sub-set, one more disrelated item in the postmodern spectrum of "diversity" ." SAC-34/5

2.5.5 Man did not 'evolve'

As long as man has lived on this earth he has had a traditional outlook or perspective on life, which is proven by the many old cultural remnants, not the least his holy scriptures. It was then that he relied on the Higher Being, God, Allah and lived under His protection and guidance. Man has never only been an individual with a brain without heart, nor just a heap of molecules in a DNA-structure, meaning that the mind is luckily more than nerve-threads and electrical signals. Instead man has a potential for knowing God and his soul and for choosing what is better in any given situation, or creative of the most beautiful, - as God's viceregent.

The traditional outlook on life is opposed to the modern or postmodern way of seeing reality, in fact the two are irreconcilable. Man has always been man, he did not have to evolve from some lower being, from an ape or a fish ... The idea of bringing out the higher from the lesser is a modern myth, it is both illogical and unscientific! 

____Imagine a piece of computer evolving - by accident - from its integrated IC-circuits, from its bits and zeros into the practical machine which it is - without the mind to design it and programme it! How much less is this conceivable in the - much more complex - biological domain of life itself !

Or the words of Charles Upton:
"The projection of this false myth of progress on biology results in the ideology known as 'evolutionism', the doctrin that the less is the causal origin of the greater, that the higher and more complex life forms, including man, have developed incrementally from simpler forms. The Traditionalists, on the other hand, teach that the advent of new life forms, which the fossil record shows to be more discontinuous than continuous - thus calling Darwin's 'natural selection of random mutations' into serious question - actually represents the descent of matter-organizing spiritual archetypes from the higher planes of Being, in response to God's creative word. These 'Platonic Ideas' of species then draw themselves the matter they need in order to construct physical vehicles for their life in space and time." SAC-105

2.4.2 Principles Are Necessary to Transcend the Human Level

However, doctrines and principles are necessary to gain meaning from empirical sense-data and to gain meaning is proof of perfection and permanency, and giving up on the quest for meaning leads to ignorance and despair. As one of the ancient savants, Aristotle, declared:

"The things which are most knowable are first principles and causes; for it is through these and from these that other things come to be known, and not these through the particulars which fall under them." AM I.ii.6

Man has therefore to prepare himself to a way of life concerning thought and practice, which will enable him to transcend the materialistic, and only psychological levels of understanding.

2.4.3 The Validity of the Modern Sciences

Transcending the materialistic and psychologic levels of understanding is neither intended nor envisaged by modern science. Obviously can neither empiricism, nor validification through induction, nor "reliance upon the data of the senses as confirmed by reason, serve as principles in the metaphysical sense." TIM These scientific methods are valid on their own restricted levels leading to results and applications of the sciences which created them, but they are neither able to answer our existential questions nor improve our normal human condition. (normal: how man was meant to be, ...  )

____What is worse, modern science has with all its inventions brought about a serious disequilibrium in this world - despite their partial benefits - , precisely because of it being divorced from - and its inability of taking account of - the higher principles, even if this may not always have been the intention of the individual scientist.

4. True science is based on the Intellect

In modernism reason is conceived as a purely human activity, also cut off from the Transcendant and in postmodernism one is set to deconstruct reason by taking hold of and referring to the irrational levels of the human psyche, whereas in traditional sciences the human mind is understood as being a mirror of the Divine Mind. The picture produced on the mirror is the product of the Picture-maker reflecting Itself on it. 

Thus tradition has always held that the organ ''and container of knowledge is not the human mind but ultimately the Divine Intellect.'' Therefore ''true science is not based on purely human reason but on the Intellect which belongs to the supra-human level of reality, yet illuminates the human mind.'' TIM p.100. 

"When Descartes uttered, 'I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), he placed his individual awareness of his own limited self as the criterion of existence, for certainly the 'I' in Descartes' assertion was not the Divine 'I' who, through Hallâj, exclaimed, 'I am the Truth' (ana'l Haqq): The Divine 'I' which alone, according to traditional sources has the right to say 'I'. Until Descartes, it was Pure Being, the Being of God, which determined human existence and the various levels of reality. But with Cartesian rationalism, individual human existence became the criterion of reality and also the truth." TIM p.100

   And what could be of more success to earthly man than to relate his intellect to the higher Intellect which is not of his own and which is unrestricted and independant of place and time. ( Quran 24-19 )

Read full: http://www.livingislam.org/mmt_e.html

References:

TIM: Traditional Islam In The Modern World; Seyyed Hossein Nasr;

SAC: The System Of Antichrist; Truth And Falsehood In Postmodernism & New Age; Charles Upton; Sophia Perennis, NY 2001

DRG: Dictionnaire de René Guénon, Jean-Marc Vivenza; Éditions Le Mercure Dauphinois, Grenoble 2005

The Esoteric and Exoteric Schools of Thought in Islam at the time of the Prophet: In Spirit, Not Form

Hazrat Shaykh Wahid Bakhsh Rabbani r.a.

There has been a long drawn-out controversy between the esoteric (Sufi) and exoteric (Zahirites) schools of thought in Islam. Both of the schools blame each other for having deviated from the right path.

While the externalists are trying to determine the period when Sufism entered into Islam, the Sufis are at pains to find out when exotericism found its way into Islam. The Sufis maintain that Sufism is real Islam and that exotericism is of later growth. They regard it as the result of carelessness and ease loving tendencies of the later generations who were contented with the bearest minimum of Islamic worship and failed to maintain the full standard of Islamic worship as urged in the Quran and practised by the Prophet(s) and his companions. Therefore they failed to reach the stages of Divine nearness, presence, union and communion with God, reached by the Prophet(s), his companions and companions of the companions, while the Sufis who maintained that standard of Islamic worship, did and still do reach these stages of Divine nearness.
 

Let us now see in the light of the Quran and Sunnah (practice) of the Noble Prophet, which school of thought is right and which is wrong.

It is true that the word Tasawwuf (Sufism) was not in vogue in the Prophet’s time, similarly all the Islamic sciences like Tafsir, Hadith, and Fiqh etc., were also not known by these names during the Noble Prophet’s time. Are then these sciences (Ulum) also alien to Islam?

The reality is that Tasawwuf and all these Islamic sciences were very much present during the Prophet’s time but they were there in spirit, not form. They were formulated into regular sciences later on, when the companions of the Prophet(s) were free from Jihad (sacred warfare).

Those who pondered upon and provided the meanings of Quran were known as Mufassireen and the branch of their knowledge was called Tafsir. Those who formulated the science of Hadith were known as Muhaddithin and their science was called Ilmul Hadith. Those who worked on the formulation of Muslim Law were known as Fuqaha and the branch of their knowledge was called Fiqh (jurisprudence). Those who specialized in the science of spirituality were called Sufis and their science was called Tasawwuf (Sufism). This did not mean that those who worked on one science were ignorant about others. The fact of the matter is that the companions of the Prophet(s) were proficient in all these sciences.

By virtue of his company and teachings they were well versed in the meanings of the Quran, Hadith, Islamic Law, as well as spiritual science without being known by the names of Mufassireen, Mohaddithin, Fuqaha and Sufis.

Read more: http://cyclewalabanda.blogspot.com/2007/07/quranic-origin-of-sufism-pt-i.html

Biography: Hazrat Wahid Bakhsh Sial Rabbani (R.A.)

He was initiated into the Chishtiyya Spiritual Order in 1940. He retired from military service in 1946 and joined the Civil Secretariat of the Bahawalpur Government and retired in 1968.

He wrote several important books in Urdu and English, such as ''Islamic Sufism, Mushahida-e-Haq, Maqam-e-Ganjshakar, Reactivsation of Islam, Hajj-e-Zauqi, Ruhaniyat-e-Islam,'' etc. He also translated significant Sufi books from Persian to Urdu, including ''Mirat-ul-Asrar, Iqtabas-ul-Anwar, Maktoobat-i-Quddusiya, Maqabis-ul-Majalis, Talqeen-e-Ladunni,'' etc.

His translations with commentary of ''Lawaih-e-Jami, Jawami-ul-Kalim, and Kashful Mahjub'' have also been published. He was buried in his hometown of Allahabad, in district Rahim Yar Khan (Pakistan).

http://www.informationdelight.info/encyclopedia/entry/captain_wahid_baksh_sial_rabbani