Reflections

The Second Matter

Worship is bound to the command of Allah and to His pleasure. In other words, worship is performed because Allah has commanded it, and its aim is to attain His good pleasure. Its true fruits and benefits are realised in the Hereafter.

Worldly benefits and fruits, however, do not conflict with servanthood so long as they are not the primary aim and arise of themselves without being deliberately sought. They may even serve as encouragement and motivation for the weak.

But if such fruits and benefits become the principal aim—or even part of the principal aim—of worship, awrād, or dhikr, then that worship is impaired. It may even cause an otherwise meritorious act of worship to become entirely fruitless and devoid of spiritual result.

Thus, those who are heedless of this truth recite the awrād of Shaykh Naqshbandī, which yield a hundred fruits and benefits, or the Jawshan al-Kabīr, which yields a thousand benefits, with the primary intention of obtaining some of those benefits. Yet they do not attain them, nor will they attain them, nor do they have the right to expect them.

For such benefits cannot be the primary purpose of those awrād, nor may the person reciting them make those benefits his chief aim. Rather, they are bestowed as gifts from Allah when the awrād are recited with sincere intention and solely for His sake.

If those benefits themselves are sought as the object, sincerity is impaired to some degree. It may even result in those awrād ceasing to count as worship and losing their spiritual value altogether.

It is true, however, that weak people need motivation and encouragement in order to persist in such beneficial awrād. If someone is encouraged by those benefits and then recites the awrād solely for Allah’s sake and for the Hereafter, there is no harm in this; indeed, it is acceptable.

Because this wisdom is not understood by many, large numbers of people fail to attain the benefits of such awrād transmitted by the aqtāb and the salaf-i sālihīn. As a result, they begin to doubt both the value of those awrād and the reliability of those who relate their benefits. Sometimes they even go so far as to deny their worth altogether.

The Third Matter

طُوبٰى لِمَنْ عَرَفَ حَدَّهُ وَلَمْ يَتَجَاوَزْ طَوْرَهُ

“Blessed is the one who knows his limits and does not overstep his station.”

From a fragment of glass, a drop of water, and a pool, all the way to the ocean; and from the moon to the planets, the sun is manifested in different mirrors. Each reflects the sun according to its own capacity and without exceeding its proper limits.

A drop of water, for example, reflects the sun according to its ability, but it cannot claim to reflect it as the sea does.

Likewise, among the ranks of the awliyā there are countless degrees corresponding to the diversity of the manifestations of the Names of Allah. Just as the sun appears in many different mirrors, every Name of Allah is manifested in different realms, from the heart to the Arsh.

The heart too is, in one sense, a small example of the Arsh, but it cannot claim that its relation to the Divine Names is equal to that of the Arsh.