First Allusion: Explanation of Sufism, path, sainthood, and spiritual journeying.

FIRST ALLUSION

Underlying the terms ‘Sufism,’ ‘path,’ ‘sainthood,’ and ‘spiritual journeying,’ is an agreeable, luminous, joyful, and spiritual sacred truth. This truth has been proclaimed, taught, and described in thousands of books written by the scholars among the people of illumination and those who have had unfolded to them the reality of creation, who have told the Muslim community and us of that truth. May Allah reward them abundantly! In consequence of some of the compelling circumstances of the present time, we shall point out a few droplets, like sprinklings, from that vast ocean.

Q u e s t i o n : What is the Sufi path?

T h e A n s w e r : The aim and goal of the Sufi path is -knowledge of Allah and the unfolding of the truths of belief- through a spiritual journeying with the feet of the heart under the shadow of the Ascension of Muhammad (PBUH), to manifest the truths of belief and the Qur’an through illumination and certain states, and to a degree by ‘witnessing;’ it is an elevated human mystery and human perfection which is called ‘the Sufi path’ or ‘Sufism.’

Yes, since man is a comprehensive index of the universe, his heart resembles a map of thousands of worlds. For just as innumerable human sciences and fields of knowledge show that man’s brain in his head is a sort of centre of the universe, like a telephone and telegraph exchange for innumerable lines, so too the millions of luminous books written by incalculable saints show that man’s heart in his essential being is the place of manifestation of innumerable truths of the universe, and is their means, and seed.

Thus, since the human heart and brain are at this centre, and comprise the members of a mighty tree in the form of a seed in which have been encapsulated the parts and components of an eternal, majestic machine pertaining to the hereafter, certainly the heart’s Creator willed that the heart should be worked and brought out from the potential to the actual, and developed, and put into action, for that is what He did. Since He willed it, the heart will certainly work like the mind. And the most effective means of working the heart is to be turned towards the truths of belief on the Sufi path through the remembrance of Allah in the degrees of sainthood.