Hosh means "mind." Dar means "in." Dam means
"breath." It means, according to Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani (q), that
"the wise seeker must safeguard his breath
from heedlessness, coming in and going out, thereby keeping his heart
always in the Divine Presence; and he must revive his breath with
worship and servitude and dispatch this worship to His Lord full of
life, for every breath which is inhaled and exhaled with Presence is
alive and connected with the Divine Presence. Every breath inhaled and
exhaled with heedlessness is dead, disconnected from the Divine
Presence."
Ubaidullah al-Ahrar (q) said, "The most important mission for the seeker
in this Order is to safeguard his breath, and he who cannot safeguard his
breath, it would be said of him, 'he lost himself.'"
Shah Naqshband (q) said, "This Order is built on breath. So it is a must
for everyone to safeguard his breath in the time of his inhalation and
exhalation and further, to safeguard his breath in the interval between the
inhalation and exhalation."
Shaikh Abul Janab Najmuddin al-Kubra said in his book, Fawatih
al-Jamal, "Dhikr is flowing in the body of every single living creatures
by the necessity of their breath -- even without will -- as a sign of
obedience, which is part of their creation. Through their breathing, the
sound of the letter "Ha" of the Divine Name Allah is made with every
exhalation and inhalation and it is a sign of the Unseen Essence serving to
emphasize the Uniqueness of God. Therefore it is necessary to be present
with that breathing, in order to realize the Essence of the Creator."
The name 'Allah' which encompasses the ninety-nine Names and Attributes
consists of four letters, Alif, Lam, Lam and the same Hah (ALLAH). The
people of Sufism say that the absolute unseen Essence of Allah Exalted and
Almighty is expressed by the last letter vowelized by the Alif, "Ha." It
represents the Absolutely Unseen "He-ness" of the Exalted God (Ghayb
al-Huwiyya al-Mutlaqa lillah 'azza wa jall). The first Lam is for the
sake of identification (tacrif) and the second Lam
is for the sake of emphasis (mubalagha).
Safeguarding your breath from heedlessness will lead you to complete
Presence, and complete Presence will lead you to complete Vision, and
complete Vision will lead you to complete Manifestation of Allah's
Ninety-Nine Names and Attributes. Allah leads you to the Manifestation of
His Ninety-Nine Names and Attributes and all His other Attributes, because
it is said, "Allah's Attributes are as numerous as the breaths of human
beings."
It must be known by everyone that securing the breath from heedlessness
is difficult for seekers. Therefore they must safeguard it by seeking
forgiveness (istighfar) because seeking forgiveness will purify it
and sanctify it and prepare the seeker for the Real Manifestation of Allah
everywhere.
It means that the seeker while walking must keep his eyes on his feet.
Wherever he is about to place his feet, his eyes must be there. He is not
allowed to send cast his glance here or there, to look right or left or in
front of him, because unnecessary sights will veil the heart.
Most veils on the heart are created by the pictures
which are transmitted from your eyes to your mind during your daily living.
These may disturb your heart with turbulence because of the different kinds
of desire which have been imprinted on your mind. These images are like
veils on the heart. They block the Light of the Divine
Presence. This is why Sufi saints don't allow their followers, who
have purified their hearts through constant Dhikr, to look at other than
their feet. Their hearts are like mirrors, reflecting and receiving every
image easily. This might distract them and bring impurities to their hearts.
So the seeker is ordered to lower his gaze in order not to be assailed by
the arrows of devils.
Lowering the gaze is also a sign of humility; proud and arrogant people
never look at their feet. It is also an indication that one is following the
footsteps of the Prophet ,
who when he walked never used to look right or left, but used to look only
at his feet, moving steadfastly towards his destination. It is also the sign
of a high state when the seeker looks nowhere except towards his Lord. Like
one who intends to reach a destination quickly, so too the seeker of Allah's
Divine Presence is moving quickly, not looking to his right or his left, not
looking at the desires of this world, but looking only for the Divine
Presence.
Imam ar-Rabbani Ahmad al-Faruqi (q) said in the 295th letter of his
Maktubat:
"The gaze precedes the step and the step follows the gaze. The
Ascension to the high state is first by the Vision, followed by the
Step. When the Step reaches the level of the Ascension of the Gaze, then
the Gaze will be lifted up to another state, to which the Step follows
in its turn. Then the Gaze will be lifted even higher and the Step will
follow in its turn. And so on until the Gaze reaches a state of
Perfection to which it will pull the Step. We say, 'When the Step
follows the Gaze, the murid has reached the state of Readiness in
approaching the Footsteps of the Prophet, peace be upon him. So the
Footsteps of the Prophet
are considered the
Origin of all steps.'"
Shah Naqshband (q) said, "If we look at the mistakes of our friends, we
will be left friendless, because no one is perfect." {Qadam
Or Footsteps signifies Will, Trying to Match our Will with the Will of our
Shaykh , Then Prophet (s) Then our Lord. Ati Allah wa Ati Rasul wa Ulul amr
minkum }
It means to travel to one's homeland. It means that the seeker travels
from the world of creation to the world of the Creator. It is related that
the Prophet said,
"I am going to my Lord from one state to a better
state and from one station to a higher station." It is said that the
seeker must travel from the Desire for the forbidden
to the Desire for the Divine Presence.
The Naqshbandi Sufi Order divides that travel into two categories.
The first is external journeying and the second is internal
journeying.
External travel is to travel from one land to another searching for a
perfect guide to take and direct you to your destination.
This enables you to move to the second category, the internal journey.
Seekers, once they have found a perfect guide, are forbidden to go on
another external journey. In the external journey there are many
difficulties which beginners cannot endure without falling into forbidden
actions, because they are weak in their worship.
The second category is internal journeying.
Internal journeying requires the seeker to leave his low manners and
move to high manners, to throw out of his heart all worldly desires.
He will be lifted from a state of uncleanness to a state of purity. At
that time he will no longer be in need of more internal journeying.
He will have purified his heart, making it pure like water,
transparent like crystal, polished like a mirror, showing the realities of
all matters essential for his daily life, without any need for external
action on his part. In his heart will appear everything that is needed for
his life and for the life of those around him.
"Khalwat" means seclusion. It means to be outwardly with people
while remaining inwardly with God. There are also two categories of
seclusion. The first is external seclusion and the second is internal
seclusion.
External seclusion requires the seeker to seclude
himself in a private place that is empty of people. Staying there by
himself, he concentrates and meditates on Dhikrullah, the remembrance
of God, in order to reach a state in which the Heavenly Realm becomes
manifest. When you chain the external senses, your internal senses will be
free to reach the Heavenly Realm. This will bring you
to the second category: the internal seclusion.
The internal seclusion means seclusion among
people. Therein the heart of the seeker must be present with his
Lord and absent from the Creations while remaining physically present among
them.
It is said, "The seeker will be so deeply involved in the silent Dhikr
in his heart that, even if he enters a crowd of people, he will not hear
their voices.
The state of Dhikr overcomes him. The manifestation of the Divine
Presence is pulling him and making him unaware of all but his Lord.
This is the highest state of seclusion, and is considered the true
seclusion, as mentioned in the Holy Qur'an: "Men whom neither business
nor profit distract from the recollection of God" [24:37]. This is the
way of the Naqshbandi Order.
The primary seclusion of the shaykhs of the Naqshbandi Order is the
internal seclusion.
They are with their Lord and simultaneously they are with the people.
As the Prophet said, "I have two sides: one faces my Creator and one
faces creation." Shah Naqshband emphasized the goodness of gatherings when
he said: Tariqatuna as-suhbat wa-l-khairu fil-jamciyyat
("Our Way is Companionship, and Goodness is in the Gathering").
It is said that the believer who can mingle with people and carry their
difficulties is better than the believer who keeps away from people. On that
delicate point Imam Rabbani said,
"It must be known that the seeker at the beginning might use the
external seclusion to isolate himself from people, worshipping and
concentrating on Allah, Almighty and Exalted, until he reaches a higher
state.
At that time he will be advised by his shaikh,
in the words of Sayyid al-Kharraz, 'Perfection is not in exhibitions of
miraculous powers, but perfection is to sit among people, sell and buy,
marry and have children; and yet never leave the presence of Allah even
for one moment.'"
The meaning of 'Yad' is Dhikr. The meaning of 'kard'
is the essence of Dhikr.
The seeker must make Dhikr by negation and affirmation on his tongue
until he reaches the state of the contemplation of his heart (muraqaba).
That state will be achieved by reciting every day the negation (LA
ILAHA) and affirmation (IL ALLAH) on the tongue, between 5,000 and 10,000
times, removing from his heart the elements that tarnish and rust it.
This dhikr polishes the heart and takes the seeker into the state of
Manifestation.
He must keep that daily dhikr, either by heart or by tongue, repeating
ALLAH, the name of God's Essence which encompasses all other names and
Attributes, or by negation and affirmation through the saying of LA ILAHA
ILLALLAH.
This daily dhikr will bring the seeker into the perfect
presence of the One Who is glorified.
The Dhikr by negation and affirmation, in the manner of the Naqshbandi
Sufi Masters,
demands that the seeker close his eyes,
close his mouth,
clench his teeth,
glue his tongue to the roof of his mouth,
and hold his breath.
He must recite the dhikr through the heart, by negation and
affirmation, beginning with the word LA ("No"). He lifts this "No" from
under his navel up to his brain.
Upon reaching his brain the word "No" brings out the word ILAHA
("god"), moves from the brain to the Right shoulder,
and hits the heart with ILLALLAH ("except The God").
When that word hits the heart its energy and heat spreads to all the
parts of the body. The seeker who has denied all that exists in this world
with the words LA ILAHA, affirms with the words IL ALLAH that all that
exists has been annihilated in the Divine Presence.
The seeker repeats this with every breath, inhaling and exhaling, always
making it come to the heart, according to the number of times prescribed to
him by his Shaikh.
The seeker will eventually reach the state where in one breath he can
repeat LA ILAHA ILLALLAH twenty-three times.
A perfect Shaikh can repeat LA ILAHA ILLALLAH an infinite number of
times in every breath.
The meaning of this practice is that the only goal is ALLAH and that
there is no other goal for us.
To look at the Divine Presence as the Only Existence after all this
throws back into the heart of the murid the love of the Prophet
and at that time he
says, MUHAMMADUN RASULULLAH ("Muhammad is the Prophet of God")
which is the heart of the Divine Presence.
This is a state in which the seeker, who makes Dhikr by negation and
affirmation, comes to understand the Holy Prophet's
phrase,
ilahi anta maqsusdi wa ridaka matlubi ("O my
God, You are my Goal and Your Good Pleasure is my Aim.")
The recitation of this phrase will increase in the seeker the
awareness of the Oneness of God, until he reaches the state in which the
existence of all creation vanishes from his eyes.
All that he sees, wherever he looks, is the Absolute One. { Every
thing in the Bahr Qudra}
The Naqshbandi murids recite this sort of dhikr in order to extract
from their hearts the secret of Oneness, and to open themselves to the
Reality of the Unique Divine Presence.
The beginner has no right to leave this dhikr if he doesn't find its
power appearing in his heart. He must keep on reciting it in imitation of
his Shaykh, because the Prophet
has said, "Whoever
imitates a group of people will belong to them." And whoever imitates his
teacher will some day find this secret opened to his heart.
The meaning of the phrase "baz gasht" is the return to Allah
Exalted and Almighty by showing complete surrender and submission to His
Will, and complete humbleness in giving Him all due praise. That is the
reason the Holy Prophet mentioned in his invocation, ma dhakarnaka haqqa
dhikrika ya Madhkur ("We did not Remember You as You Deserve to be
Remembered, O Allah"). The seeker cannot come to the presence of Allah in
his dhikr, and cannot manifest the Secrets and Attributes of Allah in his
dhikr, if he does not make dhikr with Allah's Support and with Allah's
Remembrance of him. As Bayazid said: "When I reached Him I saw that His
remembering of me preceded my remembrance of Him." The seeker cannot make
dhikr by himself. He must recognise that Allah is the one making Dhikr
through him.
"Nigah" means sight. It means that the seeker must watch his heart
and safeguard it by preventing bad thoughts from entering.
Bad inclinations keep the heart from joining with the Divine. It is
acknowledged in the Naqshbandiyya that for a seeker to safeguard his heart
from bad inclinations for fifteen minutes is a great achievement. For this
he would be considered a real Sufi.
Sufism is the power to safeguard the heart from bad thoughts and
protect it from low inclinations. Whoever accomplishes these two goals
will know his heart, and whoever knows his heart will know his Lord. The
Holy Prophet has said,
"Whoever knows himself knows His Lord."
One Sufi Shaikh said, "Because I safeguarded my heart for ten nights, my
heart has safeguarded me for twenty years."
Abu Bakr al-Qaittani said, "I was the guard at the door of my heart for
40 years, and I never opened it for anyone except Allah, Almighty and
Exalted, until my heart did not know anyone except Allah Almighty and
Exalted."
Abul Hassan al-Kharqani said, "It has been 40 years that Allah has been
looking at my heart and has seen no one except Himself. And there is no room
in my heart for other than Allah."
It means that the reciter of Dhikr safeguards his heart with negation and
affirmation in every breath without leaving the Presence of Allah Almighty
and Exalted.
It requires the seeker to keep his heart in Allah's Divine Presence
continuously.
This allows him to realize and manifest the Light of the Unique
Essence (anwar adh-dhat al-Ahadiyya) of God.
He then casts away three of the four different forms of thoughts: the
egoistic thoughts, the evil thoughts, and the angelic thoughts, keeping
and affirming solely the fourth form of thought, the haqqani or
truthful thoughts.
This will lead the seeker to the highest state of perfection by
discarding all his imaginings and embracing only the Reality which is the
Oneness of Allah, Almighty and Exalted.
It means to watch one's composure and check one's tendency to
heedlessness.
The seeker must know how much time he has spent in moving towards
spiritual maturity and must recognize at what place he has arrived in his
journey towards the Divine Presence.
The seeker must make progress with all his efforts.
He must spend all his time making his one and only goal the arrival at
the station of Divine love and Divine Presence.
He must become aware that in all his efforts and in all his actions
Allah witnesses the smallest detail.
The seeker must make an account of his actions and his intentions every
day and every night and analyze his actions each hour, each second, and each
moment.
If they are good, he thanks God for it. If they are bad, he must
repent and ask Allah's forgiveness.
Ya'qub al-Charki said that his shaikh, Ala'uddin al-Attar said,
"In the state of depression you must recite istighfar (asking
forgiveness) excessively, and in the state of elation, praise of Allah
excessively." And he said, "To take into
consideration these two states, contraction and expansion, is the meaning
of wuquf zamani."
Shah Naqshband (q) explained that state by saying, "You have to be aware
of yourself. If you were following the sharica then you
have to thank Allah, or else you must ask forgiveness."
What is important for the seeker in this state is to keep secure the
smallest period period of time. He has to stand guard on his self and judge
if he was in the Presence of Allah or if he was in the presence of his ego,
at every moment of his life.
Shah Naqshband (q) said, "You have to evaluate how you spend every
moment: with Presence or in Negligence."
This means that the seeker who is reciting dhikr must observe the
exact number of repetitions entailing the silent dhikr of the heart.
To keep an account of the dhikr is not for the sake of the account
itself, but is for the sake of securing the heart from bad thoughts and to
cause it to concentrate more in the effort to achieve the repetition
prescribed by the Shaikh as quickly as possible.
The pillar of dhikr through counting is to bring the heart into the
presence of the One who is mentioned in that dhikr and to keep counting, one
by one, in order to bring one's attention to the realization that everyone
is in need of that One whose Signs are appearing in every creation.
Shah Naqshband (q) said, "Observance of the
numbers in dhikr is the first step in the state of acquiring Heavenly
Knowledge (ilm ul-ladunni)."
This means that counting leads one to recognize that only One is
necessary for life. All mathematical equations are in need of the number
One. All creation is in need of the only One.
This means to direct the heart of the seeker towards the Divine Presence,
where he will not see other than his Beloved One. It means to experience His
Manifestation in all states. Ubaidullah al-Ahrar said, "The state of
Awareness of the Heart is the state of being present in the Divine Presenece
in such a way that you cannot look to anyone other than Him."
In such a state one concentrates the place of Dhikr inside the heart
because this is the center of power.
All thoughts and inspirations, good and bad, are felt and appear one
after another, circling and alternating, moving between light and dark, in
constant revolution, inside the heart.
Dhikr is required in order to control and reduce that turbulence of
the heart.
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,
who when he walked never used to look right or left, but used to look only
at his feet, moving steadfastly towards his destination. It is also the sign
of a high state when the seeker looks nowhere except towards his Lord. Like
one who intends to reach a destination quickly, so too the seeker of Allah's
Divine Presence is moving quickly, not looking to his right or his left, not
looking at the desires of this world, but looking only for the Divine
Presence.