The Story of Adam: Finding our Adamic Nature Again Lessons to Understand Dinner blessing: Thank You, Allah, for the blessing of the food and the hands who made it. We ask you Allah to help us never forget about those who have no food on their tables, who are struggling just to keep alive, and who are under oppression in this world right now, who because of their name, religion, or where they live, they are being repressed. We ask You, Allah Swt, to lift the veil over the eyes of the oppressors, open their hearts, and send them long distances away. We ask You, Allah, to heal those who are ill, especially those in this community, special blessings for them. We thank You for the brotherhood and friendship that You give us in our brother Joe Robinson, who has come here and brought his light to us tonight. We ask You, Allah, to give him health, long life, and blessings, and have us continue to receive his mentorship and love. Amin. Suhbat: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm. Did you ever wonder why we say in Islam that a human being is born in the state of fitrah, eternal essential goodness, but human beings descend from Hazrat Adam (as) who fell from grace, from that state of perfection? Did you ever wonder that? The essential, original disposition, or fitrah of Hazrat Adam (as) is the essential disposition of all what am I going to say (all of his descendants?) No, [it is the essential disposition of] the whole universe, because the Prophet Adam (as) is the self-revelation or self-expression of Allah Swt. Allah discloses His essential Beingness in the creation of Hazrat Adam. That means within this prophet is the istidad. In this case, it means capacity of absolutely everything existent in the universes. 1
We find that there is an Adamic story in every religion, and an essential story in every religion. In that way, through this Adamic reality where Allah Swt creates this manifestation of the capacity of everything in the existent universe, you have this affirmation of our own Adamic essence also. On a much more simplistic level, we can say that virtually everyone (not everyone), and virtually every society and ummah that has ever been created has glorified Adam (as) in every language and in every corner of the worlds. Hazrat Adam (as) acts as a container or a bearer for that manifestation or disclosure of Allah s Attributes and Qualities, but it s contingent. It s contingent on the fact that he has to fulfill the role of every human being, and must know himself. This whole descent from the paradisical realm to the earth by going against the will of Allah and eating the fruit from the tree is the beginning of disclosing the Divine Attributes in creation through his physical life and progeny. If anything, one can say that Hazrat Adam cannot and does not know his Rabb in any other way than discovering himself, which began with repentance for his act, hence the hadith quds, Know thyself and know thy Lord. If there is anything that distorts, veils, or blocks the view of the totality of the truth for Adam (as), it is that, like all of us, he s not a perfect human being. He committed this crime against himself. It wasn t against Allah. He and Hawa limited their own selves by their actions. No way did it affect Allah. The fact that he is not a perfect being means he didn t have perfect knowledge of himself after that point, because knowledge of oneself is the means to knowing Allah, one s Lord. His original state was awareness of Allah Swt, so he knew what the purpose was, and what the creation was for. He knew why he was created. In that state, before he and Hawa ate of the fruit, the fact that he knew his own 2
disposition and his own reality was the reason why Allah says He taught Adam all the names. If you are taught something and you know it, then you own it, and it is reflected. At the root of all of that was he remembered the names. The core of all Islamic teaching and all Qur an is dhikru-llāh, remembering those Names, remembrance of Allah. You have to also remember that the word dhikr doesn t just mean remember; it also means to mention. In the Qur an, it is made clear to us that remembering Allah demands that we mention His Names verbally, mentally, or in the heart. If we are sincere, and we follow the injunction of the Prophet Muhammed (sal) to live in ihsan, the beautiful life, it means to serve and to worship Allah as if you see Allah. The best way to do that is to mention Allah Swt s Name. When the Prophet Adam (as) names things, teaches the angels the names of things, this is all a process of continuous dhikru-llāh. I m not going to go into the names so much tonight. When Shaykh al-akbar, Ibn Araby, speaks about the human being s search for perfection, that perfection is the knowledge of those names and attributes as Hazrat Adam knew them. This is our Adamic urge to reach the goal of perfection, al ain al maqsuda. It means to seek after a goal. But it is really more a re-finding of that goal, of oneself. Another way of looking at Adam (as) is to think of him as being the complete text himself. If he knew all the names, he knew all the interfaces of those names. He knew all the ways in which those attributes interfaced with one another. It makes him the text himself, the kitab of these attributes, which were never named or understood until the time of Hazrat Adam, who was created for that purpose. When the non-differentiated reality, the cosmos, the universe is brought together and consolidated in some kind of a form, it is aggregated into the Prophet Adam (as). 3
Adam represents the stage of the nafs ammāra, the awakening of the self. Let me remind you of a story of the Prophet Adam (as). It s a long story; I will only do part of it. Allah reveals; Remember when your Lord said to the angels that Verily I am going to place mankind, generation after generation, on the earth. And they said, Will you place therein one who will make mischief and shed blood, while we glorify you with praises and thanks, and sanctify you? And Allah Swt said, I know that which you do not know. So he creates Adam. He teaches Adam the names of everything, and showed them to the angels and said: Tell Me the names of these if you are truthful. And the angels said, Subhanallah, we have no knowledge other than what You taught us. Truly, You are the all knower and the all wise. Then He turns to Adam and said, You, Adam, inform them of the names. When he informed them of their names, He said, Did I know tell you that I know the unseen in the heavens and the earth, and I know what you reveal and what you have been hiding? Remember when we said to the angels, Prostrate before Adam, you all prostrated except Iblis. He refused and he was proud, and was one of the disbelievers. And We said, O Adam, dwell you and your wife in Paradise, both of you freely with pleasure. And delight in things therein whenever you will, but come not near this tree or both of you will be of the wrongdoers. Then Shaytan distracts them and deceives them, and got them out from where they were. We said, Get you down with all the 4
enmity between you. The earth will be a dwelling place for you and an enjoyment for a time. Then Adam (as) receives from Allah words of pardon, as he repents immediately. Allah Swt accepted his repentance and truly He is the one who forgives. He said, Get down all of you from this place. Whenever there comes to you guidance from Me and whoever follows My guidance, there shall be no fear on them nor shall they grieve. But those who disbelieve and belie Our āyāt, such are the dwellers of the fire and they shall abide in the fire forever. And then also Allah reveals: Surely, We created you, your father Adam, and gave you the noble shape of the human being. And then We told the angels to prostrate to Adam, and then they prostrated except Iblis. He refused to be with those who prostrated. And Allah said, What prevented you, O Iblis, that you didn t prostrate when I commanded you? And he said, I am better than him. You created me from fire, and You created him from clay. Allah said, O Iblis, get down from this Paradise. It is not for you to be so arrogant. Get out for you are of those who are humiliated and you are of those who are disgraced. And Iblis said, Allah, give me respite until the Day they are raised up in the Yawmi Qiyama. And Allah said, You are of those who are allowed respite. Iblis said, Because You have sent me astray, surely I will sit and wait against them (human beings) on this straight path, and then I will come at them from before and from behind them, and from their right and from their left. And You will not find most of 5
them thankful. They will not be dutiful to you. And Allah said, Get out from Paradise, disgraced and expelled. Whoever of them will follow you, surely, I will fill Hell with all of you. And Allah said, Dwell you here in Paradise, but do not go near that tree. Then Shaytan whispered a suggestion to them, in order to uncover that which was hidden from them. He said, Your Lord did not forbid you this tree save that you become angels and become immortals. Shaytan swore by Allah saying to them, Verily I am one of the sincere well-wishers for you both! (Sounds like a politician!) He misled them with deception. Then when they tasted of the tree, what was hidden from them of their shame became manifest to them, and they began to stick together the leaves of Paradise over themselves in order to cover themselves. The Lord called out to them, Did I not forbid you, and tell you that Shaytan is an open enemy to you? They said, O my Lord! We have wronged ourselves, and if you forgive us not and bestow not your mercy upon us, surely we are of the lost. Allah says, Get down, one of you an enemy to the other (meaning Adam and Hawa, and Shaytan). And earth will be a dwelling place for you and an enjoyment for a time. There in you shall live, and therein you shall die, and from it you shall be brought out and resurrected. Now, life has its limitations. Up to this point, there was no limitation. We can imagine that when Allah Swt decided to create Hazrat Adam (as), and told the angels to prostrate before him, he wasn t asking their opinion or taking their advice. He told them He was going to create this vice-regent who was going to propagate. Indeed, there was going to be difficulty, shedding of blood. That s why the angels asked the question. There are a lot of different traditions about the angels before 6
the creation of Adam. One says, the angels were informed of the creation of Adam and his progeny by the jinn who lived before Adam (as). Someone calculated that the jinn were created 2,000 years before Adam, but I don t know how they calculated it. There are all these stories, and it was prophesied. The description is also interesting. It says that Adam was created by a handful of dust taken from the different lands, so the children of Adam were according to the composition of the land. So some were of white clay, some were of black and red and yellow clay. Because of that, you have all the different colors of people. Other people said that the land itself, the clay, had qualities: happiness, sorrow, grief, etc. The human being was created with those sensitivities. Ibn Masood and the other Sahabah of Rasūlu-Llāh (sal) said: Allah sent Jibreel to the earth to get clay, and the earth said, I seek refuge in Allah from you decreasing my quantity or disfiguring me. Jibreel returned, not having taken anything. He said, My Lord, the land sought refuge in You and it was granted. Allah then sent the prophet Mikhail for the same purpose, and the land sought refuge in Allah, and it was granted. He went back to Allah and said what Jibreel had said before him. Then Allah sent Azreel, the Angel of Death. And the land sought refuge in Allah, and the angel said, I also seek refuge in Allah from returning without carrying out this command! So he took the clay from the face of the earth and mixed it, and didn t take it from one particular place but from different places. He ascended to Allah with this sticky clay. Allah said to the angels, I am going to create man from this clay, and when I have fashioned him and breathed into him his soul, created by Me, then you 7
fall down and prostrate to him. This is all set up in the Qur an. Allah shapes Adam into a human being, and then it says: He remained a figure of clay for 40 years. The angels went past him, and they were seized with fear by what they saw. Iblis feared the most. (Though Iblis was with the angels, he was really a jinn.) They used to pass by the figure of Adam, and would tap it. They would hear the hollow sound you hear when you tap ceramics or pottery. Allah said He created Adam from sounding clay, like the clay of pottery. It says this in Qur an, Surah 55. This was all planned out, and had to happen at the right time. When the time drew near to breathe the Ruh into Hazrat Adam (as), he commanded the angels, When I breathe My spirit into him, you prostrate before him. It was staged. Allah breathes His Rūh into Adam (as), and when it reached his head, Adam sneezed. The angels said, Say all praise belongs to Allah! to Adam. Hazrat Adam repeated it, Alhamduli-Llāh! And Allah said to him, Your Lord has granted you mercy. And when the rūh /spirit reached his eyes, Adam looks at the fruits of Paradise. When it reached his stomach, he felt appetite for food. He jumped before the spirit could reach his legs, so he could eat from the fruits of Paradise. Allah therefore said, Man is created of haste. because he wasn t patient. He didn t wait until the rūh went through the rest of him. Then the angels prostrated themselves, except for Iblis, who refused. This indicates that even before the fall, before the instruction, even in the moment of creation, Allah had created the human being with the potential to obey or disobey, or the potential for patience or impatience. This being was created with frailties from the very beginning. It s exactly because of that fact that Shaytan could distract him. Abu Hurayra narrated that the Prophet (sal) said, 8
Allah created Adam from the dust after He mixed the clay, and left him for some time, until it became a sticky mud. After which, Allah shaped him. After that, Allah left him till it became like potter s clay. Iblis used to go past him saying, You have been created for a great purpose. After that, Allah breathed His spirit into him, and the first thing he did when it passed his eyes and his nose was he sneezed. That is the way it is narrated in the Sahih Bukhari. You have it from both Qur an and the hadith. Allah Swt revealed: Remember when your Lord brought forth from the children of Adam, from their loins, the seed and made them testify to themselves, saying, Am I not your Lord? And they said, Yes, we testify, lest you should say in the Day of Resurrection, Verily, we were unaware of this, or lest you should say, It was only our father aforetime who took other partners and worshiped along with Allah, and we were merely their descendants after them. Will You then destroy us because of the deeds of men who practice polytheism, and committed crimes and sins in worshiping others other than God? These were the signs and the āyāt. Then the story goes on that the progeny of Adam say, Our Lord! We bear witness that you are our Lord and we have no other then you. And Allah raised the children of Adam and saw those of them who were rich and those of them who were poor, and those who had good forms, and those who had not, and Hazrat Adam said, O Allah! I wish you to make your 9
servants equal. And Allah replied, I love being thanked, and Adam saw among the prophets, like lamps among his progeny. Allah said, Remember when We took from the prophets their covenant, and from you, O Mohammed, from Nuuh and Ibrahim and Musa and Isa son of Mary, a strong covenant. (23:7). In another verse, Allah Swt commanded: So set you, O Mohammed, your face toward the religion of pure Islamic monotheism / hanif with the fitrah with which He has created mankind. No change let there be in the religion of Allah. That is a straight religion, but most people do not know this. There are other stories that say, when he blew his spirit into Adam s body, his body quivered. Allah said, Kun fayakun. Be and it became. Adam opens his eyes, and sees the angels prostrating before him, except for one, who is standing at a distance. He realized who he was, and then you know the story from the beginning. What follows is what this all means. I wanted to re-tell the story, as I don t know the last time you read it. I think we all know it; but I think you didn t know the 40 years part. I don t think you knew that Iblis was playing him like a musical instrument. What we all have to understand about this Adamic nature is that though we are part of eternity, we spend part of this time in the pain of the transitoriness of human life. While our father Adam repented and was accepted, we still have to go through that same process of remembering Allah Swt and repenting ourselves. The third thing I think we should understand, and spend more time on, is Shaytan, and the tendency to disobey, to deceive and self-deceive. That tendency can be turned to be a reminder to us of the Divine Presence. Another lesson is to learn 10
about the limitations to freedom, appreciation, and the qualities that accompany a human being in this world: like greed, fear, anger, enmity, things like that, and why we have those qualities, and what it takes to overcome them. You already know the answer. The short-hand answer to that is remembrance, dhikr. But do we really understand how the purification/at-tazkiyat takes place by the mere mentioning of the Names of Allah Swt? There are people who get caught up in wanting to know where Paradise was; how many kilometers outside Istanbul it was, whatever. Was it really in New York state or Missouri, or on the planet Qolob? There are those who tell this story as a story to cause fear in people about sin. But we can learn a lot from this story about our own strengths and weaknesses, and about our own generosity and temptation. One of the ways the story is told is that Hazrat Adam stretches out his hand, picks the fruit and gives it to Hawa as a gift of love. You feed your wife every day, don t you? There are beautiful stories about Hawa and how she was created. One of my favorites is that Hazrat Adam is sleeping, and he wakes up and sees this beautiful person next to him. In the night Allah had taken the rib and made Hawa from the rib. Each one of these stories has a meaning to it. Try to visualize this miracle of life, this breathing of life into a lifeless creation. Try to understand that we all know the vicissitudes and challenges of day to day life; the things that tarnish us, diminish us, and cause us anxiety; we all know about shortcomings. There is no one who doesn t know, or know about limitations. We know about remembering what is right and what is good, and we know about the power of that. We know about the limitations of physical life, and we know that there is much that can be accomplished in the physical reality. We know the value of service, and we know the dangers of things that look good but aren t really good. This is all in the physical world the Adamic reality. Nothing had any meaning until Adam was 11
created, because they had no names and no meanings. It is like having a shell with no life in it. In order to create the dynamic of meaningfulness, things had to have meaning, names. What was happening before? I don t know, but would you say that everything was perfect because there was no dissension, no difficulty, no problems, and no remembrance in the way we know it now? Yes, the angels were praising Allah, but there was no backdrop. Allah created a backdrop for it to have meaning. That s how we have to look at our own lives. If we don t see that the struggles we have are meaningful, they will mean less and less every day, until our life is meaningless. But if things are meaningful, then every day will be fulfilling the purpose of life. You may remember what the Hindus say: Om poornamidah, poornamidam, poorna poorna mudachayate When something is full; it is full. If you take from the fullness, the fullness still remains. Just like lighting one candle from another candle. Perhaps this is part of the inner meaning of the Adamic nature: to fulfill our purpose, Allah will keep us full and fulfilled. If we do less than we can, if we forget the meaning of life I don t mean just in physical energy of external effort, but especially internally if we do less than we are capable of doing, slowly, slowly life becomes meaningless. [It can get] to the point where we become so distracted we leave the siratal mustaqim, and we don t even know. Or we leave it, and it doesn t mean anything. So what? I used to be a Muslim. I used to be a Sufi. I used to be a yogi. I used to live in the community. Isn t that the state most people are in, in the world? We say in English, They don t know what they are missing. You can see this as a constant struggle, or as a constant affirmation. You can see it as a deception of Shaytan, who comes from behind you and in front of you; tells you a lie. Or you can see it as ibāda, worship. You can see that dhikr is worship, and that surrender is worship. 12
The first thing Adam does is what? He repents. Immediately, he sees what has happened. No forty years passes. No, Oh, we just blew it. Do you think we should ask for forgiveness? No, instantly. The second they eat of the fruit they became aware of their physicality, their nakedness. They start taking from the world to hide their physicality, just like people who wander off the siratal mustaqim start taking more and more from the world, because there is less and less meaning in life. Or, as you become more and more distracted and lazy and enamored of the world, life becomes more and more meaningless. What happens? You forget the names. Not only do you not remember them, you forget them. You forget how to be compassionate and merciful, just and kind. You forget the value of the truth, and then you run for President of the United States. Sorry. I m making a joke, but that s the truth. You see these people, and they are whatever they are Christians, Hindus, Mormon. They forget the truth. Where is the compassion? Where is the mercy? It becomes like theater of the absurd. If you want to see theater of the absurd, read the Torah. Read the Qur an. The stupid things people do: Don t look back! Whoops, pillar of salt. Don t eat the fruit! Yum, yum. Stupid things. Why? People get distracted/ gafla. They forget. How is it possible that a Muslim can take the life of another human being when the Prophet Mohammed (sal) said, If you take the life of one human being, it is like taking the lives of all human beings. If you save the life of one human being, it is like saving the lives of all human beings. How can they not know that? Is that not eating from the tree? Allah very clearly says in the Qur an: Don t destroy the land of people; don t take their animals. Clearly He addresses the Ahl al-kitab, (people of the Book): A black is not better than a white, nor a white than a black. Nor an Arab better than a non-arab, nor a non-arab better than an Arab. Clearly! This is where 13
the Shaytan is. This is where the Adamic nature gets lost. Why? There is no immediate repentance. You know the story about how often you have to repent: until you forget to repent. Why would you forget to repent? Because Shaytan is whispering in your ear something else. It s not just simple things like sitting in a corner with your tasbih all the time, making sure you don t make any mistakes, and you live your life that way, and therefore you are going to go to Paradise. That s not the truth; that s not the way it works. Adam repents, but he is still on the earth. He still has a life, and he is going to have death. He has children, and those children becomes Noah s children who don t listen, either. That s more than I was going to say tonight. What s the promise? Here s the promise, see if you can put it into modern language. Here is how it comes from Surah Ta Ha. O Adam! He whispers to him, Shall I lead you to the tree of eternity, and to a kingdom that will never waste away? That s the promise. That s the means, the tool Shaytan uses to turn us away from the siratal mustaqim. What does he depend on? The weaknesses of the human being until he directs them to fall into the state of disobedience. When that happens, he says, And Shaytan will say, when the matter has been decided, Verily, Allah promised you a promise of truth, and I, too, promised you. But I betrayed you. I had no authority over you, except that I called you and you responded to me. So blame me not; blame yourselves. I cannot help you; nor can you help me. I deny your former act in associating me, Shaytan, as a partner with Allah. By obeying me in the life of the world, verily there is a painful torment for the dhalimun (polytheists). That s just the manifestation of Shaytan dressed in spiritual robes; the guy who catches the rope. We should fear this, because in our own community we have had 14
people like this. Let s wake up. People get distracted and they fall. Ask them; they will tell you they are doing exactly the right thing. We are the idiots; and they are the smart people. This is the truth. You see it all the time. People recognize it. There is no one in this room who doesn t recognize what I m saying about the political situation. But ask yourself what you don t see. What is it, you, yourself, are not seeing? That s when you make dhikrullah. That s why one has to find their Adamic nature again. That s what is really important. Asalaalmu aleikum. 15