Question:
Bismillah
ssalamu alaikum shaykh. I had a dream I met Shaykh Nazim Haqqani may Allah raise his degree. I asked him about tay al ard he smiled and said Allah several times and left
Could explain wa alaikum salaam.
Answer:
wa alaikum salaam,
Masha-Allah that is truly a blessed dream. You asking is as if Mawlana has informed you that the power of Tayy al-Makan (al-Ard) has been granted to you, only keep Dhikr ‘Allah Allah‘ to build that power in your heart. That is also related to a secret from Sultan al-Awliya, known as Sultan adh-Dhikr, and it involves moving the heart and tongue in heavenly manner to make full recitation of the Holy Quran in only a very short time.
Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, in his book Who are the Guides? writes:
A student once approached his shaykh, Sayyidinā Khalid al-Baghdadi ق, and asked permission for a group to go on Hajj (pilgrimage). Khalid al-Baghdadi, who was of the highest spiritual order, gave his permission and instructed them to look for the Mahdi while on the journey. The students completed the Hajj, but never saw the Messiah. However, they did encounter a group coming from Bombay who told tales of a great miracle worker in the mountains near their town. His miracles were said to be famous in that area because he could cure many illnesses and provide deep spiritual guidance.
This upset the student. He wondered, how could we have been with our shaykh for so many years and we are not able to perform any miracles? What kind of spiritual order is this?
When he returned from the Hajj, he went to Khalid al-Baghdadi ق and told of the man in India who could do great miracles. Incredibly, he asked his shaykh why they couldn’t do any miracles after so many decades in the Order. In many ways, even today, in the Naqshbandi Order we are still like children who want to play with toys, and we miss the meaning of the central mission.
Khalid al-Baghdadi ق was patient with that student and said he would get an answer that very night! After sundown, the shaykh retired to his quarters and folded time and space and, piercing through those veils, in an instant emerged in Bombay to visit the Hindu miracle worker.
In and of itself, this is a considerable miracle, a feat that we can’t understand, but one the awliyā can perform at will. For us, the soul is hopelessly locked in the body, like a bird in its cage. If only we knew how to unlock it, we could fly out the door! In the case of awliyāullāh, once free of this physical prison, their souls soar skyward. This advanced mobility involves a curious inversion technique. The suddenly liberated soul can then turn around and enclose the very body from whence it emerged in a special sort of time bubble, which lifts it to a dimension that crosses boundaries of ordinary temporal limitations. Provided with this vehicle, both body and soul (spirit) can then be transported instantaneously to a distant point.
When crew and passengers are carried across the globe in modern jetliners, a huge amount of energy is required. The jet fuel powers the engines and propels the craft through the sky. Without energy, the plane would sit motionless on the runway. This is the same principle involved as the soul, a form of energy, powers a flight to move matter, in this case, the body that would normally house it and weigh it down. For us, the soul will only escape our bodies at death, but for highly developed individuals, the soul is powerful enough to emerge and equip its body with wings and energy to propel it swiftly and silently through space and time.
And so it was that Khalid al-Baghdadi, having barely entered his own rooms that night, transported through space and walked up to the door of the guru’s house in Bombay. He didn’t need to knock—the door opened before him because his host had foreseen his arrival and greeted him, explaining that he had been waiting for him since he saw him talking to his students far away in Damascus. Not only that, he had ordered a Muslim lady to prepare a dinner for his guest. And so through telepathy, the Hindu guru heard the Muslim shaykh from afar and observed his approach.
Dinner was served while the two men sat opposite each other. The Hindu guru and Sayyidinā Khalid saw into each other’s hearts. After a short while, Sayyidinā Khalid looked up at his host and demanded, “Say shahāda, I believe Allah is the creator and Muhammad is the Messenger of God along with all other messengers!”
The guru remained silent and looked down at the floor for half an hour. Then he lifted his head and recited the shahāda, Ash-hādu an la ilāha illAllāh wa ash-hādu anna Muhammadan `abduhu wa Rasūluh.
Grandshaykh ق said, this was a very powerful guru with the power to reach through the universes but not farther. Allah I gives powers as he sees fit. As soon as he opened his heart to shahāda, Sayyidīnā Khalid ق opened the guru’s heart to a power that reaches beyond the created universe.
Although he already knew the answer, Sayyidinā Khalid asked his host why he had waited so long the recite shahāda.
Acknowledging he had found someone at a higher level than himself, the guru replied, “Oh my master, all my life I have been opposing my own wishes and desires. This has served me well on my path of discovery. At every turn, if I grow hungry, I resist eating, and if I have no hunger, then I eat. This creates a continuous tension which moves me forward. So just then, when you asked me to recite shahāda, I was struggling with my Self, because whenever I want do something, I consult with my Self and do the opposite. So I asked myself, ‘Would it be suitable for me to recite shahāda?’ The egos’ voice answered back that I would be crazy to start at the bottom of the ladder again, leaving the glorious heights of enlightenment I have already reached. Then I answered, arguing that I didn’t care about fame or reputation, so maybe I should recite shahāda. Then the voice answered back, saying everyone would think I was converting to Islam.”
So it went, back and forth. He was struggling with his ego, but in the end he finally decided to take shahāda.
Once again invoking the power of tayy, Sayyidinā Khalid ق left the guru and returned home to Damascus. The next day his students came and asked if he had found the answer.
He said, “Of course I did. I traveled there and found someone who was truly fighting his ego. He has sustained this battle for many years in a remarkably consistent manner. Moment by moment, he stops to question his every impulse and instinct, every desire and thought, every emotion and action. As a result, he has reached a very high spiritual station and is able to perform various kinds of miracles, those very feats you mentioned to me earlier. And so you see, my students, the reason you cannot do such miracles is because you have not really fought against yourselves in any meaningful way. Some of you haven’t even begun the task. As a result, the Hindu guru sitting there in his house in far off Bombay has attained a station far beyond yours, despite the fact that you have been in this Order for many years.”
And then, turning to the student who had impudently posed the question the night before, Sayyidīnā Khalid said, “I do hope this has clarified the matter of miracle-working for you.”
The guide of this level can clean and purify you through story, example and action, just as Sayyidīnā Khalid ق did for his pupils in the matter of the Hindu guru. The shaykhs in this Order work by various methods to deliver simultaneous impacts on several levels because they understand that different students learn in different ways. Some need candy, some need illustrations, others theory, and certain others need a sharp jolt.
Grandshaykh said in order to achieve and maintain this ability to clean his students, the Murshid at-Tasfīyyah practices advanced forms of devotion. Allah I has given them the ability to recite Allāh, Allāh, along with kalimāt at-tawhīd and ism ul-jalala 700,000 times in one hour!
The technique involves folding the tongue in a way that connects it to the innermost reaches of the heart. In this manner, the heart somehow recites the prayers directly; ordinary speeds of the spoken word are left behind. Similar to the folding of time and space, this folding of the tongue also brings things closer and creates a connection between the supplicant and the spiritual world. This internal ascent is invisible to us and brings the Murshid at-Tasfīyyah to places we can only imagine.
In the Naqshbandi Ţarīqah there are four stations of spiritual ascension, culminating with the station of murīd. Although the Murshid at-Tasfīyyah has been granted some of the highest powers in Sufism, compared to Murshid at-Tarbīyyah (the guide of upbringing, teaching and enlightenment) he is still a beginner who has not yet reached the level of murīd.
And Allah knows best.
Taher Siddiqui
