Sheikh Nazim 

REACH TO THE HEAVENS

with the

FUEL OF ZIKR

Rasoolullah (Sal) said that you should speak to people so that they are able to understand.  If they are not able to understand, then what you speak ? you are wasting ? mubudiroom Ikwanus Shaiteen.  Haji Ismail is asking me a question on ?Ruh? (Soul), and asking me to say something that would be easy to understand, and easy to remember.  It is also a question on knowledge (As suaatu nisful ilm).  If a person does not know something, he does not ask any questions concerning it.  If a person wants knowledge about something he must already have some knowledge of it and the reason he is questioning about it, is to make his knowledge a certainty.  He asks questions so that doubt may leave his mind.  Doubt should leave and give its place to certainty.  We are in need to save ourselves from doubt, particularly regarding beliefs.  Doubts are sometimes illnesses of the heart.  Therefore you must not leave any room for doubts in your hearts, because when doubts are cleared, certainty begins.  There are many levels of certainty.  Do not think that you will reach to perfect certainty in one step.  You can reach to perfect certainty only gradually, step by step.

Once when a muezzin was making the call to prayer and was saying ?Allahu Akbar?, Mansoor al Hallaj (may Allah bless him) shouted out, ?Oh liar?.  The people who heard this caught hold of him and took him to the judge (qadi) and complained to the judge that he called the muezzin a liar, when he called out ?Allahu Akbar?, and requested the judge to punish him.  The judge asked Mansoor whether he called the muezzin a liar, when the muezzin called out ?Allahu Akbar?.  He replied ?Yes, I called him a liar?.  The judge said ?what do you mean, how do you know that he is a liar?.  Then Mansoor al Hallaj said ?come with me all of you who are here?.  All of them followed him to the place of a blacksmith where there was a big piece of iron.  He then stood on top of this piece of iron and shouted out ?Allahu Akbar?.  The iron began to melt and run like water, then Mansoor said, ?If he was really saying it the minaret in the mosque would have come down, therefore I called him a liar.  He did not say it with that certainty.  If he did, these things that have no life would have understood and melted like water.?

Therefore certainty is important for all believers.  You can?t reach to certainty by only reading books.  There are so many scholars and so many Doctors of letters today more than in any other age, but there is no certainty in their knowledge. They know only something through their tongues and not through their hearts.  Certainty is through hearts and makes a person to improve himself to reach heavenly stations.  If there is no certainty your level is always low.

Now, with regard to ?Ruh? ? it is a secret ocean.  You can?t put a secret ocean into a small cup.  Even if you try to do that it would be a waste.  Yes our capacity is only limited.  Only one drop from that ocean will be sufficient so as to divide it among the humanity of mankind, even one drop may be too excessive.  As long as we are imprisoned with our physical body, even that little bit, that was given to the whole of mankind, even that small drop, can be given and shared by everyone.  It is from this small drop that you are able to look, able to hear, able to smell, able to taste, able to speak, able to touch, able to hold, able to walk, able to feel, and finally able to understand.  How is it that you are able to look, hear, smell, taste, speak, understand and yet you do not know how you are looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, speaking and understanding?  You may lift your hand up and let it fall down again, you may catch something, but you don?t know how you are catching that thing.  You are walking, but you don?t know how you are able to walk.

Look into yourself and you will see a perfect balance.  There are 360 organs (inner and outer) each one has its own function.  When one of them works it does not prevent the other from working.  How is it possible for you to understand about ?Ruh? more than this?  Perhaps when your ?Ruh? leaves your body and returns to that secret ocean you may be able to know the limits of that endless ocean. 

You shall keep on taking more and more and that is your endless pleasure.  The more you reach, the more you will plead for the will of mankind will never get fed up.  However, you will always be satisfied when you are asking for more.  You will be thirsty for ever, but this thirst is not like the thirst that we are familiar with.  This is, thirst, that will be with satisfaction.  This is endless pleasure for all mankind that Allah Almighty has given endlessly. 

You are not going to be hungry or thirsty, but yet you will be hungry and thirsty for this secret ocean.  It will not be painful hunger or painful thirst.  It shall be a pleasurable thirst.  As an example, it would be like a person falling in love and his love increasing, more and more.  As long as his love increases his pleasure also increases and it is not going to be painful for him.  The more it increases, the more he asks.  In the same way the soul asks for itself more and more from that secret ocean.  Yes to reach for more and more from oceans to oceans, and still more from oceans to oceans, to endless oceans.  This should be, forever for, our souls.

This explanation is a very short one.  But I think that on the level of our present understand it is good to know even such a small amount about the knowledge of ?Ruh?.  We hope that as long as we are improving our Zikr, our understanding will change and our horizons of understanding will increase.  Zikr leads people to that secret ocean.

If a person wants to fly over the clouds he must take a plane.  He cannot go by himself, but he has to seek the help of inanimate things, like planes.  This is fault for mankind because he depends on these inanimate things to fly.  He should be able to do this by himself alone.  Our soul has the power not only to fly over clouds, but to go over space and even out of space.  To reach not only throughout the universe, but also to reach outside the universe.  We have this jet power, jet engine, but we are not putting fuel for our jet machines.  Therefore, we are only running about on earth.  What is that fuel?  It is zikr.  Shaitan is now preventing people from doing zikr.  People are saying that zikr is an innovation (bidaat) and therefore not to make zikr.  This is wrong.  Zikr is fuel for our ?Ruh? to fly over clouds, and to fly over the universe, and to reach to the heavens.  You can?t reach there with anything, other than zikr.

The End