Question:

Dear sayyidi,

I have been thinking about the position of humans above angels. Regarding this high status of humans (especially our saints, qutbs), I have read in Islamic resources that angels, particularly Archangels (alayhimassalam), have multiple doppelgangers (multiple bodies), with their greatness and promixity to Allah, to perform actions which would be impossible otherwise (such as taking souls of people simultaneously, as Azrael aleyhissalam does). My question is: if, humans are higher than angels, and if they achieve spiritual perfection, can it be that they are given multiple bodies in Heaven, just as Archangels are given? (Thus they have countless families, since they have many spirit-bodies?) there are hadiths that recount angels with 40.000 heads (may again point to multiple bodies and being able to be present in many places simultaneously). please pray that I , my family, and friends follow Awliyaullah and the Mahdi when he comes da’iman. Ameen.

Answer:

Wa `alaykum salam,

Insha-Allah Shaykh Hisham Kabbani is praying for you.

This is related to the Reality of Scrolling (Haqiqatu ’t-tayy) that can be attained by the awliyaullah, and what awliyaullah achieve in this life could be granted to ordinary believers in the next life, insha-Allah. Allah (swt) has freed them from the hold of gravity that keeps the earthly body clinging to the earth. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim, said in suhbat of 5 Sept. 2011:

Shaykh Bayazid (q), from our masters, said to people, I just prayed Jumu`ah in 12,000 places. Now, there are some awliya who are in 70,000 places at the same time, seen just as they actually are! That representative is coming because that person is a holy one. To whom is he coming?

Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani has explained in his book,  Angels Unveiled:

Spiritual people use the angelic power as a path of discovery for different purposes. They use this power in the knowledge that it is special grant from God. He gives them a sacred and noble trust that has the potential to govern countless bodies other than their own. This ability is defined as “the angelic power in them.” These spiritual people are known in Islamic spirituality as abdal: “changed ones.” They can move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. They can live at one and the same time in the first and the second place. They can live in many other places as well and yet maintain the same appearance as their original self. This is called ubiquity. Famous abdal in Sufi history are al-Junayd, Abd al-Qadir Jilani, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Muhyiddin ibn Arabi, and Mansur al-Hallaj.

Sufi scholar-saints such as these, also known as knower-saints or gnostics (arif, pl. arifun), have confirmed that there is another world between that of human bodies on earth and that of angels, and have called that world the imaginal world. This imaginal world is more subtle than the earthly world and yet denser than the angelic world. This characteristic of the imaginal world allows the abdal to travel within that dimension in the way that we have mentioned.

The method used by these spiritual people can be described as a self-riddance of the trappings of gravity. Everything yearns for its origin and the body yearns for earth which is pulled by gravity. The spirit, however, yearns to the heavenly realm which pulls upwards. These abdal were capable of balancing the opposite elements earth/heaven, or upward/downward, within themselves in such a way that the element earth which once dominated over the other is now dominated by the other and follows it.

The intellect dominates the conscience to the extent that some have said that the conscience is in the prison of the mind. If the intellect is of the destructive type, that person will use knowledge and self-discovery to hurt instead of to heal. Laser beams can be used for destruction as well as healing, but they are the same rays in either case. If that intellect does not balance properly between right and wrong, then it will be using the knowledge it acquires in an inappropriate way. If, however, the conscience dominates and plays a greater role, it will at one point dominate over the mind and ensure that it is controlled by the yearning to do good. That is best for himself and for humanity at large, for that person will be constantly motivated to use his knowledge to help and to serve others.

This is the case in the body that imprisons the spirit: the person who can balance the two poles within will be qualified as a wise one. Further down the road, if that person can progress more in the heavenly direction, he can use his spirit to dominate the body and acquire those powers that cut through the fetters of gravity. This enables him to use the spirit to move the mass of the body, not only his own but those of others as well. For such a spirit, when it connects with its angelic power, will become a form of energy and light. These entities can move mass at higher speeds than the mind can conceive.

This is how these pious people known as saints or abdal were known to appear at any critical time and any place that they liked. Thus, they help people and teach them. The ubiquitous appearances of one’s person in many places are like reflected images of the same one body through the mirror of an angelic power. This mirror produces thousands upon thousands of pictures at the same time, except that those pictures are every bit as real as the original which is being reflected.

God will create an angel called al-Natiq, “the Uttering Angel,” out of His own dhikr (remembrance) of Himself for every one of these types of realized people. That angel is instructed to inhabit the heart of the pious servant of God. His duty is to continuously inform that servant of his duties and obligations in each twenty-four hour cycle, besides the known duties of worship. This link of information establishes a further possibility for the saint of reaching other human beings through the power of his heart.

Furthermore, God will enable him to hear the minutest cell in his body. The angel speaks to him and explains why God created it, what physical purpose it serves in the body, what can poison it, and what can heal it. Moreover, it will inform him how to heal himself from any disorder of his body, and enable him to heal others through his acquired angelic energy.

The saint’s angelic power thus enables him to converse freely with every cell in his body as if he were speaking to another person sitting in the same room. This ability will open for him the understanding that the human body to which is joined an angelic power is greater and even less fathomable than this entire universe. Indeed, each cell is a world unto itself. It is inhabited by all kinds of infinitesimally small spiritual laborers. Their function is to run the life support system of that cell. A factory needs all kinds of instruments and machines, labor and managers to keep it alive and protect it from any kind of error and destruction. In the same way, scientifically speaking, the cell has its own defense system against any invader from outside: that protection is produced by the tiny angelic staff whom God created for that purpose.

As the saint becomes more and more perceptive in his inner hearing and speaking, he will concentrate his entire power. He then places it in his heart exclusively of any other focal point. This process can be compared to the concentration of light which does not burn if scattered over the paper, but burns if reassembled into one ray under a magnifying glass. At that time the saint will be able to send that gathered angelic light out of his heart in order to reach any human being on this earth and any heavenly being above.

The continuous build-up of this angelic power in the saint’s heart allows him to witness heavenly sights and acquire heavenly knowledge. This continues until the day comes when an indescribable light appears in the horizon of his heart. This light expands the heart to an infinitesimal degree. It removes from it all the remaining veils that up to this point prevented it from reaching the realities of the heavenly world. Meanwhile, God orders the angels, each one in his state, duty, and position, to inform that pious individual of three things: the reason of his creation, his position in the divine scheme, and his duty within creation. Every single one of these angels will thereupon adorn that pious person. They will endow him with a kind of gift. At a certain point, he will himself become “dilated” which, in the language of mystics, means that he will be clad in a subtle body of light, the same light that characterizes angelic beings. That body is not visibly transparent to other human beings. Nevertheless, they can feel the light that emanates from the saint’s body and be attracted to him as a magnet attracts other elements.

When people are attracted to this knower-saint, however, he must not show that he is different from others and pretend to be higher than them. He must be an instrument of this angelic power. Being proud puts him in the same category as Satan. Although the latter possessed an angelic power he fell from heaven because of pride and that power was taken away from him. The saint must only use angelic power in a constructive way, for the happiness and benefit of human beings. He must do so without asking for anything in return from those he helps. Angels never ask anything for themselves, rather, they always ask for the sake of human beings.

Children have not been involved in the low desires that strip the heart of its angelic power. In fact, they are at the rank of saints although they themselves are unaware of it, much less their parents and relatives. The child that declares that he has visions and sights is telling the truth; whereas the parent who hears the child’s accounts sifts them through the grid of the mind and does not consider them factual. “I heard music,” “an angel came to me,” “people came and disappeared,” “they brought me gifts,” are frequent utterances of children who blurt out these statements as the event occurs. The child cannot control himself; however, the saint keeps all these events hidden from others.

An intermediary state of knowledge exists between that of children and knower-saints which may be called a “premature sainthood.” In that state many people experience visitations and sights and sounds which may be few and far in-between, or on the contrary frequent. These happenings seem discontinuous and even perhaps incoherent, like someone being addressed in a foreign language and struggling to understand. The reason is that those experiencing them have not achieved the state of purity that permits them to converse fluently with their angelic power. Like children, they cannot help revealing these experiences as soon as they occur or shortly thereafter in ways that may or may not make sense to them or to others.

The happiness that these retellers of angelic visitations feel in telling others of their experiences is like the happiness of a child who receives candy. A child will become happy with its candy and forget about a diamond. Nevertheless the goal remains the diamond. It is important for persons to always re-direct themselves towards that goal: the continuous connection of their heart with angelic power at every moment of their life.

Each human spirit evolves from the point when it was present and testified before God on the Day of promises, to the reality of earthly life then to the life of the grave then to eternal life. This evolution consists in changes from one image to another. The garment the spirit takes in the fourth month of its life in the womb is kept until death. Another dress is put on in the grave, which also deteriorates. Finally, the spirit puts on the body of the hereafter. This body changes to an angelic body at the time it enters among the angels, as we have already mentioned in relation to the Quranic verse:

“Enter thou My servants “[Holy Qur’an 89:29].

That angelic body will keep on changing, continuously and forever, from one excellent dress to one even more excellent, according to God’s infinite creation of the levels of Paradise. Each dress of paradise, when worn, opens a new level. When one sees this new level, he desires to attain it. He puts on this new garment by divine permission. And a resurrection from one level of Paradise to the next continues ad infinitum. This astonishing phenomenon shows the great extent of God’s power of creation.

In every period of evolution from one dress to another prior to Paradise the individual can understand his surroundings and in what state he is. He will be living in that very state and experiencing it but he cannot understand the other states. A person is virtually imprisoned in the state he is in and cannot see any other state. On the other hand, the individual who reaches the full state of sainthood can understand everything from beginning to end. That is what differentiates the ordinary individual from the saint. A saint has already acquired the subtle body of light which enables him to see the past, present and future in one brief moment. Indeed, he can attain the knowledge of the souls from the moment they stood in the divine presence to the day they came to this world, entered the grave, were resurrected and stood before God again, and entered Paradise. This reality is expressed in the following prophetic tradition in which one of the Companions of the Prophet was asked by the latter to give those present a glimpse of his angelic vision:

Harith ibn La`man said: “Once I went to the Prophet(s) and he asked me in what state I spent the day. I replied: “As a true believer.” Then the Prophet(s) asked me the state of my faith. I replied: “I see the Throne of God and the people of Paradise helping each other, and the people of hell lamenting in hell. I see in front of me eight heavens and seven hells as clear as idol-worshipers see their idols. I can recognize each individual just like a miller can recognize wheat from barley. That is, who is to go to Paradise, and who is to be found in Hell. In front of me people are like fish and ants. Shall I stay silent or continue?” The Prophet (s) told me to stop and say no more.” [Imam Abu Hanifah, al-Fiqh al-Akbar].

[Excerpts from the book,  Angels Unveiled by Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani].

Staff