Question:
Assalamo Alaikum,
Dear Shuyukh,
Please find this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxVCoBt5pJw (Naqshbandi saifi zikr Trance wajd in love of Allah).
I have a question as to why few people never feel anything like this and why some of them behave like this (in the video)? If this is ecstacy then why do not some people experience it? These are Naqshbandi brothers from Pakistan. I used to attend the gatherings but never ever felt anything. Is it because I am very dirty from batni point of view or what? Please advise.
Thank you very much. May ALLAH give our Master Moulana Shaykh Nazim and Moulana Shaykh Hisham a long and healthy life and increase their maqaam. salaam to all the shuyukh. Jazakallah! (please forgive for my lack of adab).
Answer:
`Alaykum as-Salam,
It is a state of intense emotion where overwhelming feelings of passionate love (`ishq) and longing (shawq) makes one lose all composure or tremble, weep uncontrollably or feel a burning inside.
This is why the early Masters forbade attendance of such events to certain people:
(i) They forbade over-sensitive people to attend the sama` (recital of spiritual poetry) – and that is their interpretation of the Prophetic hadith spoken to the camel drivers: Rifqan bil-qawarir i.e. Be gentle with the glass vessels. Scholars usually give the external meaning which is that the camel-driver should not go fast because women riders will be incommodated; however the Sufi masters said it means the camel drivers usually sing ‘hida‘ poetry as camels love that music. So Holy Prophet (upon him blessings and peace) was saying be careful and do not make that poetry too intense, or erotic, or loving because it can affect them tremendously. So the affective vulnerability is a good state but it is mostly a feminine state. The Rijal or Spiritual Men [whether actual men or women] in Tasawwuf are not seen in such states; rather they look like mountains or firmer, and it is the universes that are whirling around them, just as Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi said of Sayyidina Dawud: Allah Most High consoled him of being cut off from everything in dunya by making the mountains come to him and sing to him songs of Divine beauty. Mawlana Rumi said the Wali is like this, his physical ears are constantly hearing a Divine music springing from his own heart so that the poetry of men, as spiritual as it may be, is nothing he has not experienced first.
(ii) They also forbade people given to self-display or sensuality or other dunya states. However, sometimes the spontaneous feeling among brothers before their beloved Shaykh can produce such trances and they are sincere and forgiven.
As for those who feel the same feelings but do not move, or do not feel those specific feelings, as we indicated they are not necessarily in an inferior spiritual state, and may be in a much higher state. Expressing the inward state immediately betrays its exalted nature but sometimes they need to express something as their physical frames cannot carry those states. Hence, it is said that “the person of states even the moutains cannot carry him.” But the possessor of maqam [station] is above him many times.
The upshot is that we keep our gaze fixed on our Shaykh, on Prophet and on Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala. That is our path and not the movement of the spheres or the emotions of others, as pure or wonderful as they may be. And Allah knows best.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
