Since the perfume spreads from flowers, whenever one of the sincerely devoted kept them company, his heart was enlightened and his breast expanded. Their followers multiplied, their hearts were illumined by the lights of Holiness,
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and they were far removed from self-centeredness. This led to the development of a sincere, worshipful, and mindful [Sufi] community.
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The mysteries were disclosed to them, so supernatural marvels and charismatic wonders manifested. People were transported from the murky darkness of fantasies to the radiant lights of certainties,
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so the numbers of Muslims seeking insights and sincere devotion increased day after day and year after year.
― Professor Shaykh Abd al-Karim
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📚
Shaikh Amin 'Ala ad-Din an-Naqshbandi, Sufism: A Wayfarer’s Guide to the Naqshbandi Way
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The ‘Sheikh al-Akbar’, Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi (d. 638 AH) says (in Chapter 178— ‘The Station of Love’—of his magnum opus, The Meccan Openings):
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‘Know—may God give you success—that love is a divine station, for He ascribed it to Himself, and called Himself ‘the Loving’ (Al-Wadud).... This station has four names:
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there is hubb (‘love’), which means its pure presence in the heart, purified from the turbidity of distractions, so that one seeks nothing and desires nothing from his beloved.
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Literalism may satisfy children, but the mature mind and the heart have rights which Islam, as a religion grounded in the radiant heart of the Prophet himself, has proved admirably able to satisfy.
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The inner reality, which is Prophecy, came to an end with his death, but the Prophet's wilaya, his spiritual rank, remains an inspiration to which Muslim attention is constantly called.
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For it is the Antichrist who sees with only one eye. An unbalanced preoccupation with either the outward or the inward aspect of religion may be expected in times of ignorance and sedition.
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We must also mention that every one of the one hundred and fourteen chapters of the Holy Qur’an begins with the sacred formula ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’ (‘BismiIllah Al-Rahman Al-Rahim’)
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except the ninth (Surat Al-Tawbah)—albeit that Islamic scholars point out that the ‘missing’ basmallah of Surat Al-Tawbah reappears in Surat Al-Naml wherein God says:
...And lo! it is: In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. (Al-Naml, 27:30)
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Thus the fact that practically every chapter in the Holy Qur’an begins with ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’, further in- dicates the connection between the Divine Name ‘God’ (‘Allah’)
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Our previous definition of love is confirmed by the etymological root of the word ‘hubb’ (‘love’), which comes from the word ‘habb’ (‘seed’) thus implying a seed falls into the ground, grows, then brings forth a new and beautiful plant.
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God makes this clear in the Holy Qur’an with His words:
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The likeness of those who expend their wealth in the way of God is as the likeness of a grain (‘habb’) that sprouts seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains; so God multiplies for whom He will;
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The Prophet was asked once what was the best cure for forgetfulness—or for what the Qur’an calls “rust on the heart”—and he said it was to think frequently of death and to remember God constantly.
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You see, if we forget how soon we shall have to die, and if we overlook the fact that everything around us is perishing before our eyes, then we are living in a fantasy world. It is only when we wake up to the truth that the perishable,
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once it is recognised as such, points towards the Imperishable, and things lost in time point towards the Timeless, that our vision pierces through surface appearances.
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