amin suhbat bismi- -r-rah - circle group · prophets, with very little deviation. ... mystical, the...

Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid January 5, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat

1

Cycles of Time: the Universe Created and Re-Created Seeking the Time of Perfection through a Transformative Process

Dinner blessing: O Allah, You shower upon us such blessings, and we are not grateful

enough for the food on our table, and the peace around us. We don’t hear bombs

going off; we don’t see fires blazing. We don’t see people injured by war; we don’t

see poverty or misery. Yet we take everything for granted. We take our friendship

for granted, our love for granted, our families. So many people have lost one if not

all of those, and we ask You, Allah, to be merciful upon all humanity. Give us real

guidance and good leadership, Ya Allah. Reveal to us the inner truth and bring peace

upon this earth, Amin.

Suhbat: Bismi-Llāhi-r-Rahmāni-r-Rahīm We have been drawing some parallels

recently in the discussions of ta’wil. There are a group of philosophers, Sufis, in the

traditions, who talk about cycles of time. It is not uncommon to discuss cycles of

time in the mysticism of all paths. The Hindus talk about approximately 385,000

year cycles, and having 34 of those cycles. Actually, within certain Islamic circles,

they talk about 360,000 year cycles, and 360 of them, which is 130 billion years.

What is said is there are seven of those cycles. Each cycle has its Adam and its

prophets, with very little deviation. Allah creates and re-recreates the universe. The

seventh of those cycles is when the Mahdi comes, and there will be no more of those

cycles, at the end of those 130 billion years. That puts evolution and all kinds of

things into a nice… Allah made it so it all works. Subhāna-Llāh.

Those six cycles represent the very dominant cycles of the message being revealed

to humanity – Adam (as), Nuh (as), Ibrahim (as), Musa (as), Jesus (as), Prophet

Muhammed (sal). See how nice and orderly it is? In every cycle, the same lesson is

../../../../WC%20Video/DVD%202013%20Inventory/January%202013.docx


2

taught to humanity. In every era, the 7th Imam or Anwar rises in rank from the

composite of what has come before to be the Prophet Mohammed (sal), or the

Messenger. So each era gives rise to the next messenger, in a sense, of refinement.

You see the message gets refined in certain ways. Hazrat Adam makes an error,

falls, and repents. His line is carried on by these sets of twins who are born and

intermarry. Then Seth and Nūh comes, who has a disbelieving family. Then Ibrahim

(as) comes, who has a believing family, but a disbelieving parent. Every aspect of

human possibility takes place. You have an orphan in Musa (as).

Then each one, as I said the other day, has an adjunct with them. Harun is with the

Prophet Musa. The adjunct actually manifests as the teacher of those teachings, not

the messenger. The only time this pattern changes is in the seventh era. The Shi’a

call it the seventh imam, but it’s really the 12th imam. The prophet who is a

messenger doesn’t reveal a new religious law, but publically fulfills or manifests the

mystical, the esoteric truths outwardly. What is in the batin becomes clearly

understood in the dhahir. Nothing new comes, other than the newness of the

realization of what is hidden. Just like the Shi’a have a “hidden imam,” we have khafī

and akhfā, the hidden and the most hidden. What is most hidden moves its way

outward through the refined self.

If you look marocismically, before the end of the world, there is an era that comes of

pure spiritual clarity and knowledge. The Hindus call it, in their cosmology, the

Golden Age, Satya Yuga. There is a time of pure spiritual knowledge. That pure

spiritual knowledge is so pure there is no need for any “law,” because law is there to

keep the world and people in order and intact. But when people have been given the

insight, and can see the truth, there is no need for law. Now, the Shar’īah becomes

the sharh again. It becomes this broad boulevard, well-trodden path, upon which

everybody is walking.


3

When you look at the goal of an individual, a society, or a group of individuals,

whether we call them Muslims or yourself or self-realization, you see that people

are searching for this time of perfection, this time when everything is just fine. It

manifests independently in the life of a seeker, in the sayr ul suluk. It manifests

collectively in the mysticism of religion. It manifests in this day and age, in the inner

teaching of Islam, and ultimately in this period of truth and light that comes before

the end of the world, where the essential Truth/ Haqiq is given by Divinely guided

messengers of the prophetic chain. It becomes the gnosis or knowledge of everyone.

That’s what we pray for. That’s what we meditate for. That’s why Allah says,

“Remember Me and I will remember you,” and in the hadith qudsi, “Know thyself

and you will know thy Lord.”

If everybody knew themselves, then Allah’s Presence would be obvious. All of this is

based on revelation, tahlil, of Qur’an. It’s through this process of seeking that a

person uses the capacity of reason and intellect to, in a sense, be “born again.”

Christians call it being born again in Jesus, but this born again is a kind of khalq

thani, a second creation. We are told, “Die before you die.” We are born again, or

awakened in Allah. What goes along with this is the fact that no one can attain this

on their own; hence, you have a line of gurus in Hinduism, or roshis in Buddhism, or

shaykhs in Islam, or priests. However it is, you have those processes. That’s because

at the core of every one of these traditions is tarbiya. There is an educative process.

In essence, it is ta’alim.

We all need teachers, guides. A person who visited me yesterday asked, “Is it

absolutely necessary to have a teacher?” I said, “Well, you are a doctor. Was it

absolutely necessary for you to have a teacher?” This person had just told me about

a mentor she had who she loved very much and was still working with. I said,


4

“Well, you had a surgeon-shaykh!” Yes, it’s absolutely necessary. It’s the way the

system is set up. Only when we initially turn our attention to the guidance of the

prophets, of the shuyuk,h or Imams (I’m using it in the Shi’a sense, not as the imam

in a mosque sense) that’s when a person can partake of the blessing of the madad,

the support, and maiyyat, accompaniment in love of Allah Swt, or the Divine support.

Those teachings that one receives are in themselves attenuated of the revelation of

the revelation. What I speak, what the shuyukh speak, is not coming from us. It may

be tweaked this way or that way, and appropriate for this time and place and the

people. But it is the revelation being re-revealed in a way in which we can find our

own salvation through the knowledge our teachers teach.

In accord with this prophetic tradition that runs through all of the major religions,

you see it is revelational, not intellectual or rational. In fact, one of the things that

happens when you read the Qur’an for the first time is it doesn’t make any sense.

This story doesn’t follow that story; this sentence doesn’t follow that sentence. You

want to read it like it’s a story book, but you have to read it in a totally different way.

You have to read it for the moment, and with some understanding of the language.

You have to read it for its revelatory nature. What is revelatory is not always linear

and rational.

Allah Swt and the principles of spiritual worlds and physical worlds are not able to

be comprehended by reason. Allah tells us that in the Qur’an. We are told by the

Prophet (sal), don’t try to understand Allah. Nūh is told the same thing: there are

questions you don’t ask. If you ask them, you become like those people who doubt.

That doesn’t mean you can’t understand the answer. It means that internally you

can come to the answer, not just through rational or reasonable questioning.

Things can change within you. What you find in these teachings is that they are

universal; they address the whole universe. The Qur’an addresses the whole


5

universe. It tells you about the stars, and dimensions you cannot see, and beings

you cannot see. It tells you about paradigms. It tells you about atomic structure and

time and space. Everything in the universe is discussed in Qur’an.

The intellect has the capacity to strive to grasp it, though it can’t be grasped by the

intellect alone. It can only be grasped by the intellect in conjunction with the heart.

When you realize that, there are certain things you begin to realize. Let’s take the

example of Lawhim Mahfūdh, the Book that everything is written in. Is it written

sequentially? If everything is written in that book, it’s written at one time, at one

instant. Is it written over time? Abul Hasan is going to be born; I’d better write a

chapter on Abul Hasan? I see Khaled’s spirit coming; I’d better write his life story.

Does Allah have a bunch of angel scribes writing all this stuff out, hoping they don’t

get behind? It all happens at one time, all at one moment, all at once—ibda,

excelling in creativity. All at once, bang! It’s the big bang theory called “kun faya

kun.”

All at once, all those cycles are in existence. Now they will be played out linearly, but

they all happened all at once, which is also the reason why a person can have an

epiphany all at once, and grasp huge amounts of knowledge at one time. Whatever is

in the universe, is also in the individual in potential. Everything, of course, has its

origination in Allah Swt, but it is manifest step by step gradually in this process of

what some might call “emanation” (Ibn Araby called it that); or causation,

proceeding from the mind of Allah Swt, which is a strange kind of a statement, into

creation, in accordance with taqdir. In this case, taqdir means not fate, but ordained

by Allah.

The first thing Allah really does in this creation of this capacity is create the capacity

to be conscious: the intellect. It’s all united / tawhid in Allah by this original, single


6

act. Allah is called al-Mubdi, the Originator. We see it played out in creation all the

time. We see it on a subatomic level, when the egg is fertilized by the sperm. Snap, in

a moment, [there are] two separate entities. Those entities come from one entity,

the Originator, al-Mubdi. This is described in Qur’an as “al-badi al samawati al

‘ard” of the Divine Amr, which is also identified in the imperative term as kun / be.

The Originator of all the worlds from the moment of kun faya kun.

It’s said that just as you and I have an intellect and a consciousness, it comes from an

aspect of the Divine, which in very limited terms you would call the Divine Intellect.

It’s not the same, of course. What begins to happen is, as this creation gets manifest,

Allah also along the way gives us more and more volition, more choice. The more

that is manifest – the beings that are created, eventually coming to the human being

– comes to choice. How do we know this? The two things that distinguish Adam and

Hawa from anything that has been created before is their knowledge of the names of

things, and the fact that they can choose. If you think of every positive thing and

negative thing that ever happened in your life, it all has to do with choice.

The choice is based either on some desire or apparent knowledge that will

theoretically benefit you, if it’s not so wrapped up in just pure desires, fears, or

anxieties. See how nicely this all fits together? The fact that we have choice, even

trickles down in the public venue, where people who don’t have choice have no

liberty or freedom of choice, even on the social, political level. It’s all consistent.

People who have no choice, no freedom, they struggle for their freedom. A person

who has knowledge, which can lift themselves up from their lowest nature, struggles

through the seven stages of their nafs. Each one of those stages is characterized by a

prophet. Each latifa is characterized by a prophet. Each stage of universal

development is characterized by a prophet, as well as each cycle.


7

One has to ask what the motive is. The motive has to be a kind of force that pulls you

back toward your Creator, sayr-i-Llah / moving toward Allah, realizing sayr-fī-Llah

and sayr-ma’-Llah, that you are moving with Allah, in Allah. The first cause, ilā (as in

lā ilāha illa-Llāh), of the world is this word, this order that became united with a

universal consciousness. What do you call someone who causes something?

Causator? Mu’il illat al illal. What does this have to do with us? It has to do with

something hidden. We say an occluded imam; the hidden truth, the hidden self, the

khafī and the akhfā. There is something hidden within us that we wish to discover.

Not everybody wishes to discover it. Most people don’t. Then there are the people

who went to California looking for gold in the 1840’s, too.

There is just something that drives some people to find out what the truth is. That

committing of oneself to a journey has also a name: it’s called “ta’til.” It is a

commitment to seek out the Divine Essence, the Divine Presence. Some say it’s just

a kind of hidden form of tashbih – a word I don’t know how to translate. It means we

have within us, if you allow it to be stimulated, this real desire for knowledge. We

are back to tarbiya. When you really stimulate that in the educative process from

childhood on, a person never stops seeking. A child who is raised in a good way, who

is given an education that is not just a didactic education and memorization, but is

taught creative thinking, and questions the universe around them, never stops

seeking.

That person is the one who represents what Allah tells us He is seeking: the seeker.

When a person seeks as a murīd or murīda, eventually Allah calls them by another

name: murad. He calls the person to him. First you are seeking, then He calls you to

him. The murīd becomes murad, affirmed by Allah Swt. With that, other things

develop: a certainty of knowledge; a certainty of your role in life, of what you can

accomplish; a certainty that the tools and everything you need are available if you


8

look for them. Whatever you are doing, whatever your profession, it’s like you can

work magic, because it’s already there, already present in creation, just waiting, like

the fruit, to be plucked from the tree. But most people truly don’t care.

Seeing Allah is impossible; we know that. But seeing the manifest indicators,

pointers, isharat of Allah Swt, is everywhere. You can’t see Allah, but everywhere He

has left his mark—pointers. Good geometry: follow this one, and that one, and this

one; very soon, whether on a curve or a straight line, you will arrive. It’s just good

geometry. Of course it is; because He invented geometry. So we depend on our real

knowledge, not just on our personal experiences, because they are mixed in with a

lot of preferences, fears, doubts, worries, pains, struggles, and joys. We rely on our

real knowledge by learning how to understand the analogical and metaphorical

truth that Allah has placed in the text called the Qur’an.

We understand that by a transformative process within ourselves. I have been

calling it the “magic decoder ring.” You can decode what is going on in front of you

and what is transpiring in your life if you have the courage, and if you have the

degree of separation from the physical / material world enough that you can stand

the pains, the vicissitudes, trials and losses, even though you don’t want to. You can,

because the greater journey, the jihad al akbar, is within you. Yes, it’s wonderful to

have everyone around you find and healthy, and people loving one another, and

caring for one another, and serving one another, and having our families and our

community. This is wonderful. This is an incredible blessing we should thank Allah

for all the time. We should never forget to thank Allah Swt for that. But what can

you sustain beyond that? What can we choose beyond that?

We realize at a certain point that there is a need for the human mind to have

guidance, mu’alim. Mu’alim doesn’t just mean teacher, it means Divinely guided,


9

spiritual guide, a person who knows, and who is able to distinguish between what is

true and not true, lasting and not lasting. The essence of the divinely guided

teaching is a kind of refined tarbiya. It’s a kind of knowledge that is always related

to the whole, the macrocosm, to the universes. It’s always related to tawhid, always.

So you feel eventually that “wheresoever you look, there is the countenance of

Allah”—just that little ‘āyat in Qur’an. Not that “God is everywhere,” but you really

begin to understand that “wheresoever you look, there is the countenance of

Allah.” That’s the essence of this special ta’alim. You are not only in that Presence,

but everything is a metaphor for it. Are you still with me?

Think about if you looked at life analogically as opposed to unequivocally. You look

at this (picks up his tea glass with tea) and say, “This is tea.” Unequivocally, it is tea.

You’ll know it if you taste it. It has something sweet in it. But, the beauty of tea, the

story of tea (which some of you may remember) is all a metaphor. How it’s grown,

how it’s made, how it had no value until someone dried this bitter leaf – the whole

story of tea makes it a story about the transformation of a human being into insānu-

l-kāmil. You see? One looks at it analogically, not just equivocally. Am I enjoying my

tea any less? No. Is it any less tea? No. I’m still enjoying this cold tea… freezing cold

tea! But it’s telling me something, if I’m tuned to it. Do I have to think about it? No.

Do I have to be conscious of it when I’m immersed in the analogy, or the metaphor?

I don’t have to think, “Now I’m going to drink my metaphorical cup of tea, and I’m

going to enjoy it, and think about all that it means.” That’s fine as a process to learn,

but eventually, it’s all there. The whole thing is there.

You and I have met people that, when you meet them, they are full. Every word they

speak, the liquid in their eyes, the sweetness in their voice, they are full, like my

mother in law. They are overflowing. Why? They couldn’t tell you. What are you

thinking that makes you say something like that? Nothing. Grandma said to me this


10

morning. “Last night I talked about you a lot. I was telling everybody about you.”

What is she telling? Is she telling about a man who is shaykh, who has a community,

who is teaching people? No, she’s talking about a process, something she sees in me

that maybe I don’t see in myself. But it carries the message of what is most

important to her of Islam. That’s what she is sharing in that form – an analogy, a

metaphor. We are all metaphors. That’s why when you make decisions in your life,

and choices in your life, whatever it is, for your children, who to marry, where to be

buried, whatever it is, it has to be in a greater context to fulfill the whole purpose of

your existence. And you only arrive at that through practice.

The only thing that is unequivocal is Allah. Allah is not a metaphor for anything. The

only one Truth there is, illa-Llāh, is Allah—unequivocally true. Allah is Haqq. If you

want to go get a marriage license, you have to go to court. The person stamps it and

makes it valid. The person is empowered to stamp that and sign it, and that makes it

valid. Allah is the One Who validates everything in this universe. All truth is made

valid by al-Haqq. All peace is made valid by as-Salaam. All compassion is made valid

by ar-Rahman. Everything in the universe, if you push it all together into one big

ball, is made valid by Allah, Who is beyond anything. He is the Validator of

everything.

What is it we are doing? We are on this journey to validate the knowledge of our

own existence. We have been validated, but we are trying to discover our

authenticity. It’s like an orphan seeking out their parents, to validate one’s own self.

Look how people try to validate themselves in the world we live in: with material

things, power, money, fame, name, information, knowledge. But Allah has given us

the essential validation by saying very simply, “He makes the truth valid, and the

falsehood invalid (void).” How? That’s a big story, because we have to talk about

life, and death, and what comes after that. The essential answer is that when we are


11

created, we are created essentially good, in fitrah. That goodness is attracting Allah

to us, and us to Allah. That’s the GPS. You follow that essential goodness. You learn

about that in your tarbiya, your akhlaq, your ‘aqida. You learn that and strive for

that and teach it to your children. When you make a mistake, Allah has an eraser,

called astaghfirh –Llāh, tawbah, and you keep following the fitrah. That’s the GPS

that takes you there.

You eventually discover that what emanates from One is only one, not two. Why

didn’t Allah Swt create Hawa separately from Adam? Because from one comes one

comes one comes one. What’s one times anything? The same number. That was a

great discovery in mathematics, only next in importance to zero. This unity of Allah

Swt is not just a unity of the number one, of a whole, of the sum of a species, or an

individual, or multiplicity. Allah says in Qur’an, “On the Day when the spirit and

the angels will stand in a row before Allah (meaning rūh).” It means that at the

end of the day, every “one” that Allah created stands in one line, before one truth,

and one reality. We say, “every one,” don’t we? Even in English it carries.

I don’t know how this helps you; but I hope what it does is begin to build a basis for

understanding not only how deep these teachings are, but that you have the

capacity to think and to reflect upon such thought. What it will reveal to you about

yourself is a level of potential most of us never even approach. Most people couldn’t

care less. Yet you still have all these religions, and sects, and groups of people within

these religions, who represent something they have never thought about, have no

understanding of, have no comprehension of its depth, no sense of the journey they

are on, and no sense that they are committing not only shirk, but they are

trespassing horribly on other people’s lives. And they are taking responsibility for

people’s lives, a responsibility they can’t even take properly for themselves.


12

So we have a big task, if nothing else, to keep this knowledge alive; if nothing else, to

be able to keep our brains and hearts active in such a way we will save some of this

knowledge. Some of it will die; some of it will pass, at least out of our capacity. But

we have something to save, and the only way you save it is by living it. How was the

Qur’an compiled? Some people scratched it on clay; some people put it on

parchment. Some people had it in their memory. You couldn’t go down to the local

Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy. Can you see Hazrat Adam going down to the

Barnes and Noble and picking up a copy of, “The Idiot’s Guide to Islam?”

There is something very attractive in prophetic tradition, something very

interesting. If it wasn’t so, how would we, for so many thousands of years,

remember these stories? If I whisper a story to him, and he whispers it to the next

person, and we go around the room, we don’t have to go very far before it’s a totally

different story. And that’s here, now. You have stories floating around for 6,000

years, being told over and over again, and never lose their veracity. How is that

possible? Do you know how it is possible? It is being revealed over and over again,

because you heard it from the time it happened. You were present when it

happened, and you are remembering that. So it’s very easy not to forget something

you were present at. It’s not just a story being told; it’s a reminder. That’s how

humanity remembers these stories. Why do you find them in the depths of the

Amazon, and in Islamic and Christian and Judaic stories? Why are you hearing only

one story? Because there is only one truth, one revelation.

So what? So if you really care, if you really want to understand and get to that point

of beginning, you have to come to the ending, which is where I’m at right now. You

have to come to the point where you at least commit not to stop searching, not to

stop seeking, no matter what. What is the adage? “Only he who seeks, finds.” Plenty

of people think they find; but only the person who seeks, finds. How do you know


13

the difference between someone who says they have found, and someone who has

found? Humility and gratitude. They are always acting humble, and speaking with

gratitude. Those are the great people, and this is the Path.

Question: Hanifa. I was wondering about the seven cycles, and seven eras in those

cycles. We have all been here before. Have we all been here before together?

Shaykh: Why not? The real question is, are we here right now? If there’s only Allah,

how can we be here, and where is Allah? Did you dream the other night? Did you

have a weird dream? This is a week of strange dreams. It was the kind of dream

when you get up, and go back to sleep, the dream comes back. That’s right. Life is

but a dream… (sings). It’s just a dream. We are all playing around in the mind of

Allah, dancing and thinking we are somewhere else.

Hanifa: Is that why, when we hear the truth, it seems so familiar?

Shaykh: Yes, it becomes familiar and clear. And you can live this life, knowing that

beyond it you are living a whole other life. There is a whole other reality. Some

people get a glimpse of that in this world. Some people leave this world, seeing it

before they leave the world, alhamduli-Llāh. Pray to be one of those. You want to go

out of this world peacefully, not screaming and kicking. Asalaam aleikum.

amin suhbat bismi- -r-rah - circle group · prophets, with very little deviation. ... mystical, the...

Documents