Two Aspects of Beingness Qadīm and Hadath

Transcription

1 Two Aspects of Beingness Qadīm and Hadath Dinner blessing: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. O Allah, bless the hands that made this food. Help us to be appreciative of all the bounties You give in Your Nai mah and Fadl. We ask You, Allah Swt, to make us worthy of all these bounties. So many people are starving. So many people have nothing on their tables today. So many people are in transit. We ask You, Allah, to please, please, make peace in this world. Suhbat: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. I said that we should know that the people of the Shar īah, and in this case we mean Divine Law (I m not going to get into the political Shar īah), talk about two aspects of beingness. One is the qadīm, preeternity. Time immemorial, we say in English. Sometimes I refer to it as semper eternity, pre-existence. And the other is hadath nascent time, transient, temporal, temporality. Hadath. Qadīm by its own definition has no beginning, yet hadath has a beginning. We refer to this at dhahir, as evidential, creation, and has nothing hidden within it. Understanding that, I want to talk about the ta wil of that. To know that what is pre-existent is called by another name. Do you know what that name is? Allah, called God in other religions. And the hadath is called ālam, the universe. Allah is other than ālam, and ālam is other than Allah, in the sense that Allah is the Creator, Producer, Manufacturer of ālam, this universe. It is characterized by different attributes. It is, in its essence, pure, not tainted. It doesn t entropy; it doesn t disintegrate. It says, What It (Hu) willed, Hu created ālam (this universe). And again, When It wills, It shall destroy ālam. This is in Qur an. Once this is clear, you have to understand that the people of Divine Law say that the first 1

2 entity produced by the sublime, subtle, blessed san a (sculptor, potter) was an essence, jauhar, the first thing that was created. That intrinsic essence was called rūh. That essential primordial soul, when Allah willed to create the realm of the mulk (the malakut, the realm of the angelic beings and souls), It/He/Allah cast Its gaze upon the jauhar, the essence, and it boiled. It heated. In the news in London today, a building, from the reflection of the light, melted a car below the building. If you can t look at the light of a building, how can you look at the light of Allah? When you heat something in cooking, what happens to it? You have a reduction. It condenses, caramelizes. What happens is the intrinsic essence rises, like the foam rises when sugar is heated, and what is less pure settles to the bottom, like ghee. When you make clarified butter, ghee, some foam rises to the top and you can scrape that off. Then when you are done with it, you strain it because there is sediment at the bottom; therefore, the Haqq / Truth/ Absolute Reality, al Haqq, the Lord, from that pure, condensed essence creates the realm of malakut, the souls. Remember this, because those of you going into other Orders will begin by contemplating lahut, malakut, and jabarut. The remaining sediment, impurities, were used to create the physical world; therefore, it was called ālam, the universe, the world, the cosmos. Everything in the world has a name. If you are going to Lynchburg, you will see a sign that says, Lynchburg on it, or Washington, 93 miles, Charlottesville, 92 miles, New York, 400 miles. Allah creates a book/kitab with this writing on it. This universe is likened to a book that has to be read to find your way toward your destination. Everything in the ālam comes from the boiling of the jauhar. It is of it, and therefore has the qualities of its created beingness; but it s the sediment of it. For the traveler on the sayr ul suluk, it is an isharat, a pointer, a hint. But you have to know how to read the book; hence, it all gets codified at the very beginning not at 2

3 the end of the revelation, not after 23 years of revelation. Or if you like, all the revelation comes at one time, and then comes out of the Prophet over 23 years. However you want to look at it It begins with: READ, in the Name of the Lord. Read what? Read this world. Read what you are standing in, swimming in, drinking, breathing, touching, creating. By the way, analogically, you are going to find out that you are the khalifa, which means that you, in some very strange way (every one of you), is going to experience the whole thing, which is the creation and the destruction, which eventually comes in eternity when Allah wills it. But a little bit of it happens in everyone s life creation and destruction, creation and destruction. It is said that whoever is reading this book will observe and behold, Allah says, I and My, Knowledge, Will, Power, and will be aware of that. The problem is we are infinitesimally small, and the universe is huge, and our ability and capacity to observe is like we can barely read the number of the footnote, let alone the footnote in the book. Forget about reading the book; you can t even see a page. It knew that we were helpless. It being Hu? Yes. It knew we were helpless, and so made a sort of mini-copy of this world and wrote a précis of this book. It called the first world the emanate world, and the copy of it the imminent world, or the minor world. The first book was the larger book, and the summary was the minor book. You have the same thing: the minor comes from the major. The ālam comes from the Creator. The world we live in has little worlds inside of it. The world we create in community has worlds within that. As long as you maintain the integrity of those things, you maintain the resonance with the original creator and creation. When you break that integrity, you are in a sense out of resonance and out of sync. For whatever reason, people break the integrity, and they break it for all kinds of 3

4 reasons. They do it out of stupidity, greed, power, money, whatever, work. For a million reasons, you break the integrity of it. So people keep trying to create their little worlds and their little communities, but how do you define that? You have a gated community like Hilton Head, a beautiful gated community. Do you think everyone inside that gated community has the same ideology, philosophy, principles, morality, ethic, intention and hope for the world? Of course not. Are they in resonance because there is a gate around their community, or because it s called a community? You go to any of these colleges and universities. What was the one word we heard all the time? Community, community, community. We are a community at Virginia Tech. Well, a guy went in there a few years ago and killed a bunch of people. How do you define it? You have to stay in this fabric of the jauhar, and the ālam, and the qadr. You can t just stay in it because of ritualistic behavior. Look around the Muslim world today. Look at the Christian world today, and the Jewish world. What does that mean? You can t do that. What happens? How do you keep it organized? How do you keep it as a possibility to maintain the non-structured structure, the rhythm of it, the resonance? It s always going to have some structure; it s ālam. Well, Allah / It sent Its khalifa. Who are the khalifa? Technically, the khalifas are all the souls in potentiality; but in reality, it s not all the souls, because there are some pretty nasty souls in the world, sent from the major world to the minor world. The Rabb s khalifa is the awal / the primordial deputy aql, the intellect. This aql is the epitome of the Sifat / Attributes of Allah Swt. Why? Because you have to have an intellect to be able to name and understand the names, the attributes; otherwise, everything would seem the same. There would be no need. Everything that Allah Swt or this qadīm has created has attributes, with characteristics of Its 4

5 own khuluq, Its own disposition and propensities. Those are transferred to some degree to the lesser world, this world. That s why it has been said by the Prophet (sal) that the Haqq, the sublime Truth, the absolute Truth, created Adam in Its own form (likeness), awal, the primordial essence. The aql/intellect is the khalifa within this world. And everything around us, everything, is a signpost, and it has a message on it. When you are driving up the road from Lynchburg to Charlottesville, there is a sign that says, If you go straight, you will go to Appomattox. If you turn right, you will go to Charlottesville. Then there is a sign that says, If you turn left, you will go to the Tye River. If you go straight, you will go to Charlottesville. If you turn left in a little while, you will go to Saunders Peach Orchard. You will pass through Lovingston. If you go right through Lovingston, you will go to Swami Satchitananda s Yogaville. On this signpost, you find the writings of the Book. Allah says, Read the Book. (It s good to take notes also. There is going to be a pop quiz and a mom quiz, and you will all be tested.) Every religion says the same thing. If you can read the words of the Book, you will know the direction toward the Divine Presence. That s why the poet, the artist, the musician has looked into nature to create from, because it s another step in toward the Divine. It s one more step in the photographer, another step in; the poet, another step or two in; the composer, it s all there. The mystic goes in and in and in. What comes out of the mystic is some music, some poetry, some art, some this and some that. You can track them, and you can go pretty far in with a Hafez, or Rumi, or Sabastari, or Attar, because the symbology that is used, the essence of what is being told, is being seen. It s being read. The people of wahadat/oneness, of course, claim there is only one beingness, and this is Allah Swt, the qadīm. There is nothing but the existence of this Reality, and that Reality is also known as the Haqq/Truth. But you realize other things are along 5

6 this path. In the ālam, there is hierarchy. One thing is superior to another thing. One person is superior to another person. Does one stroke of the pen have superiority over another stroke of the pen? Does one letter have superiority over another letter? Does one word have superiority over another word? Does it? Why do you get stopped there? Well, we live in time. Words that are said here may have influence over this moment, or a moment far later. Because people have egos they hold memories, and grudges, and assumptions, and opinions, and biases, and bigotries, and prejudices. But one word does not have superiority over another word. Objects, words, circumstances might have past or future connotations to it, and that s it. If you don t know that, you create superiorities. We do. But in truth, there is only one thing for us to hear, one thing for us to understand and comprehend. There is only one Beingness and one Truth, and that is qadīm, Allah. Other than this Divine Oneness, this Divine Uniqueness, which we call tawhid, there is no other form of existence. That means that this Singular Oneness, this Beingness, this one Truth has two aspects to it: the dhahir and the batin, the outer manifestation and the hidden, concealed interior. I have already explained the ghee. It comes from the same source made of the same thing, and has a different quality, under certain circumstances. You can t see that quality when it is butter; only when you heat it do you see that quality. This Divine Oneness, this Divine Truth, Nūr / Light is something so attractive that even every human being, knowingly or unknowingly, searches after it. The thing about it is we don t search after it with our eyes only; we search after it with our ears. It talks and it listens. It gives and takes to and from its own self. It discloses and occludes. It affirms and denies. Though we are encouraged to strive to search for the Light/ Nūr, you have to first learn how to see the world as a means to that light, so you can find not only the means of doing that, 6

7 but you can stop attributing Divineness, Truth, morality, ethic, righteousness, to things other than Allah. Recently, a Congressman asked, Tell me what the difference is between dying slowly of gas and dying slowly of a bullet. Tell me the difference between a thousand people dying from gas, and a thousand people dying from bombs and bullets. I only heard him once; he obviously didn t get picked up on all the news broadcasts. The word went out, I guess. It s not a clean issue. Oh, well, it s wrong to do this and right to do that. It s not that simple. I saw on the news on television today, a group of people sitting in Syria. One of the members of their family had been taken and arrested, I assume by us or something, and the person said simply, Okay. You have him; try him. If he s guilty; kill him. If he isn t; let him go. But he s standing in the doorway, neither here nor there, and we don t even know where he is. It s not clear. We are striving to find the light, but we get distracted by circumstances. One of the shaykhs said, I finally saw this light, illimitable, directionless. It doesn t sleep, nor does it eat or sleep. Nor does it need anything. There was no way I could stop seeing this light. I shared this experience with a dear friend, and he told me to go to some stranger s stable and pick up a fistful of hay without permission. I did so and suddenly could no longer behold the Divine Light. He had to commit a sin to stop seeing the Divine Light. He had to take a handful of hay without permission. Ha, ha! I don t know where you re at, but I ll tell you.! 7

8 Some other dear one said, I finally saw this light, and once I truly saw this light, I could no longer see myself. Everything was this light, and there was nothing else, including myself. Once the salik reaches that light, there are signs. One is that you can t see yourself again, because yourself occludes the light, like the hay. Since it occludes the light, it becomes a barrier. If we can see the object of the self, then the person is a mushrik/ polytheist, because he is seeing the light and seeing himself. Once the self is gone, then that polytheism is gone. Then one becomes the ghee fana. There was a report on background radiation. Did you see that report? Many cancers are avoided because of background radiation. We think radiation is causing them, but a certain amount of background radiation actually keeps us from getting certain cancers. Similia similibus curenter it s very Homeopathic. A little radiation is good for you. Let s run to the dentist tomorrow! The day I saw that report, Sabreen was at the dentist. They called me from the office to ask if it was okay if she takes the xray. I forgot to tell them that she s 18 and can make up her own mind, but I said, Sure! Radiation is good! This cosmic background radiation (CBR) is fixed. It comes from the sun, at a microwave level of transmission, which means you don t have to stand far away from the microwave tomorrow, either. It s measured in every point in space and time. We don t know about dark matter and dark holes, but we assume. The physicists interpret this overflowing / fayd of radiation as a long past event. It started in pre-eternity, but we know it only from when it started. As Sufis, we interpret this a little differently. Instead of some event, some presence long past, some of the Divine Beloved s light penetrates every point in space. Even though you can t see it in space, the light is penetrating from every point in space, from all those stars and ālam. If that light didn t penetrate every point in space, nothing could 8

9 exist there; hence, we call that a black hole, because we don t see it. It absorbs the light. This cosmic background radiation is the signature of Allah s effulgence upon everything. It s His print on everything. You couldn t be seeing me without it; I couldn t be seeing you without it. Raheel called me today about leaving up the icicle lights. Okay fine. At night it is pitch black; but you don t know that in that pitch black there is all this high intensity radiation of light. We just don t see it, but it s there. This is isharat. Isharat is a hint, but a hint is something else a hint that is always a hint, and nothing other than a hint (so help me hint) that never changes, because it is there, from Allah, from the moment of creation. It is also called something else. It has another name, hence another meaning for the word isharat, which I always say is point or hint, is paradigm. It s a paradigm to use this cosmic radiation as a finger pointing toward Allah Swt. How do we know? It s what every astrophysicist tries to do. He tries to follow the light back to its source. Let s build another big telescope. What are we doing when we build a big telescope? We are looking back in time until we get to the moment when this universe was created from what or from Hu? This light upon light, nūri nūr, this ocean of light, is the ocean of creation and the waves. Well, we are the waves. We see the waves from the ocean. We know the waves in the ocean are one, but we just call them by a different name. We know that the waves go back into the ocean, and as soon as they do that, they are called ocean again. When they rise up, we say, Oh, look at the waves on the ocean! It s just the ocean, and we call the top of the ocean, waves. When it is still, we say, There are no waves today. Where are they? They are hidden. They didn t come out. Come out, come out, wherever you are! 9

10 I want to get off on another subject, so I think I d better stop. The next subject is love. Where does that love emanate from? Does Allah love Himself? Does It love? Is that a big topic? Tune in tomorrow or whenever. Any questions? Is this a good topic? Asalaam aleikum. 10