Lecture A

In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

SECTION OF COMMENTARY

Our author, spiritual master Hajji Bekir Sidki Visali (mal Allah exalt his mystery) was following the spiritual disposition of our great spiritual guides, ghaws-ul-wasileen, the qhutub of the wises, the crown of the lovers, the venerable HASAN HUSAMEDDIN USSAKI and muhyiddin ibn’ul arabi and he was the successor of both of them and authorized for spiritual guidance by both the two.

He used to guide usually and generally in accordance with the principles of the Ussaki dervish order. muhyiddin ibn’ul arabi, too, had his own path and known as EKBERI- SULTANI. Our master is known that he gave spiritual lessons to some of his disciples in both paths (dervish orders).

At the beginning of his religious speeches, he asks “WHY HAVE WE COME TO THIS WORLD AND WHAT IS THE REAL AIM OF OUR CREATION AS human beings AND BEING SENT TO THE WORLD?” After that he talks about the DEGREES OF TAWHID (THE UNITY OF GOD), and the subject then changes to the related other issues.

In a verse in the Qur’an, Allah (cc) decrees:

YOU, O PRUDENT PEOPLE, DRAW LESSONS

Let us look at the world and all creatures in the world to draw lessons from, as per the above command. We see that there is an order in the universe, away from incompleteness, the creatures are created in the best way, and each of them does their jobs without any objections. SOIL, WATER, FIRE AND AIR, the real BASIS of our material life do their allocated task in the divine order for billions of years. Every season certain degrees of temperature occur in its time, and the world completes its revolving around its axis in 24 hours, never late or before a second. This finding is valid for all creatures.

There is another matter that takes our attention. Innumerable creatures compete with each other in the service of human beings. Petroleum gives energy and also used in manufacturing of MORE THAN THIRTY products and is an indispensable object in our century. Even though we walk over the soil every day, thus humiliating it, it offers us food items abundantly. Without the oxygen of the air, we can survive only a maximum of three minutes. Water is, too, soft tempered, is in abundant quantities and generous as the other three mates i.e. soil, fire and air. The sheep, cattle and the fish meet our protein needs, vegetables and fruits provide minerals, vegetable oils and much more. human beings even do not thank to the above mentioned creatures for these bounties. What they only do is TO FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER IN SHARING this bounty. The personal hostility and envy of the individuals against each other and the warfare the countries engage in are all for the free offers of other creatures… The following sentence contains the summary of all moral admonitions mentioned above. ALL CREATURES SERVE THE human being AS PER THE ORDER THEY ARE GIVEN. FOR THAT REASON, human beings ARE THE MOST HONOURABLE AND VENERABLE OF THEM.

The first question –almost predestined- comes to my mind is this:

WHY WERE THE human beings CREATED?

A verse in the Qur’an says:

“I have not created mankind and jinn except to worship Me”. (51st surah, The Scatterers - Ath-Thariyat, verse 56) (Whenever we mention a verse of the Qur’an we will give first the number of the surah and then the number of the verse, for instance for above verse it is 51/56)

A hadith qudsi decrees as follows:

“I HAD BEEN a secret treasury, and created the beings to be known by them”

Inspired by this clear-cut evidence that is by the Qur’anic verse and hadith qutsi above, our venerable spiritual master venerable Visali classifies purpose of our creation as follows:

1-MORAL PURIFICATION
2-ACQUIRING PERFECTION

1-COGNIZANCE OF ALLAH
2-COGNIZANCE OF MESSENGER OF ALLAH
3-COGNIZANCE OF AFTERLIFE

Human being has the ability to realize these two ‘fard ayn’ creation purposes.(Fard ayn refers to individual obligations in Islam) The sublime Qur’an says:

“Allah charges no soul except to its capacity” (2/286)

To realize these two creation purposes by writing a COMMENTARY ON THE ANTHOLOGY OF VISALI, we have started writing it by expecting the help of Allah’s divine inspiration, the intercession of the messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and the spiritual supports of our great saints. (The help is from Allah).

Above the entry door of the TOMB of muhyiddin ibn’ul arabi the following word of the sheikh is written:

“EVERY CENTURY IS REMEMBERED BY REFERRAL TO THE NAME OF A GREAT PERSON WHO GREW UP IN THAT CENTURY. I WILL STAY THE SOLE GREAT PERSON OF ALL THE SUBSEQUENT CENTURIES”

1-MORAL PURIFICATION
In this context purifying means cleansing and reforming for better. MORAL PURIFICATION means adjusting and adaptation of the attitudes and behaviors of individuals to Islamic rules. The following hadith expresses this reality as such:

“GET AND STICK TO THE MORALITY OF ALLAH AND HIS MESSENGER”.

“Surely the soul incites to evil” (12/53)

The nafs (inner self, the ego, the soul, the psyche) incites to evil badly. This verse shows that human beings are characterized by bad morality from the birth.

A- The infection of the human by bad morality.

Our sublime sustainer decrees in His holy book:

'We belong to Allah and unto Him we shall return.' (1/156)

According to the Sufi people, the beginning of the existence of human being is the existence of ALLAH and they will return to His existence. There is no starting point of ALLAH’s existence. He is PAST ETERNAL. There is no end of His existence, hence IMMORTAL. Therefore, all of us as human beings from Adam to the last person from his offspring on earth are THE PASSENGERS OF THE ROAD FROM PAST ETERNITY TO EVERLASTING ETERNITY.

We can visualize our formula as this:

Travel of human
PAST ETERNITY ………………………………………EVERLASTING ETERNITY

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

For humankind that travels from past eternity to everlasting eternity for billions of years, it is impossible to know this travel with all details. However, we have the chance of getting satisfactory knowledge about the start, the end and certain stages of this travel through verses in the Qur’an, the hadith of the prophet (peace be upon him), the mystic knowledge the spiritual guides get via mystic discovery and observation, and also the science that our reason accepts as necessarily true. That is to say we have the chance of KNOWING OUR OWN ORIGIN and feeling satisfied with that truth in our hearts.

WHERE DOES YOUR PATH COME FROM?
WHERE IS YOUR HALTING STATION?
THOSE WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND
THEIR DEPARTURE POINTS AND DESTINATION ARE ANIMALS

Thus, the venerable Niyazi Misri mentions the importance of knowing our origins.

We will first focus on the road we had gone through before we were born to this world. To put it more correctly, we will try to walk on the ASCENSION (MI’RAJ) PATH.

1-BIRTH AND COMING TO THIS WORLD

We live in the world as a synthesis of body and the soul. We have no participation, no initiative, anything whatsoever we can call personally as ‘my role’ in the birth incident… It is not the baby itself who wishes to be born, who determines the conditions and skills being necessary in his or her life, providing the necessary materials for the baby.

The baby starts crying, the only thing it can do is to cry in order to adapt to the conditions of the world. It asks for its needs by crying. In reality, the baby does not own the act of crying, either. For crying the baby needs vocal cords. Vocal cords create voice by the help of the air. The baby finds the air ready in the minute he/she was born. In a way, the baby is a guest for the world and the world has got prepared for this guest, if not it has been fully mobilized for it. The baby’s body needs a temperature of 36 ºC which it gets through the oxygen of the air and the nutrition. All nutrition material in his diet is ready. He lives as luxurious as sultans with his mother’s breast-milk. To be frank, sultans can not live like that. The paid maids and servants of the sultan can not be as compassionate as the baby’s mother. So the baby is served and lives better than sultans. He starts enjoying wonderfully nutritious BREAST milk, his metabolism is already working. The world cares its guest very well.

It feeds the human being, makes him to drink without expecting recompense. Some unfaithful people even insult the world. On the other hand, the prophets, martyrs, people who do good deeds and saints all ate the sustenance of the world, a guesthouse. They accomplish the right to enter the paradise here in this world. The ones who are conscious of the hadith that THE WORLD IS THE ARABLE FIELD OF THE AFTERLIFE actually like the world.

On the other hand, another hadith says THE LOVE OF THE WORLD IS THE CAUSE OF ALL SINS. But this hadith does not require being against the world. What is criticized here is not the world itself, but not knowing the limits of love of the world and one’s loving the world more than he loves Allah. The world is, too, restless as a result of such a love. It hosts the human being willingly in obedience with God’s command. Allah’s commands are carried out in a second in all corners of the universe.

As per a quotation, the heavens and the earth had an argument about which one was more honourable and valuable in God’s eyes. The heavens said ‘the almighty enthronement, the seat of power (arsh), and the paradise belong to me’. The earth replied ‘Kaaba in Mecca, Al-Hajar al Aswad -the sacred black stone near Kaaba-, Masjid ul Aqsa and Arafat all belong to me. Upon this the heavens said I have BAYT UL MA’MUR (meaning the long-enduring –visited- house of worship, may also refer to the hearth of the believer, occurs in the surah 52, verse 4), and the earth replied. I have THE SHEIKH OF THE UNIVERSE; THE MOST HONOURABLE CREATURE AND THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH FOR THE HUMAN AND GENIE and consequently the earth won the race.

2- OUR LIFE BEFORE THE BIRTH

Our life before birth starts with a sperm and then goes through different biological phases, first becoming a FETUS, and finally becoming a BABY. This will be taken in two parts.
a) The formation of the body

At the beginning, the sperm of the father meets the feminine cell (the egg) and A SYNTHESIS CELL COMES OUT. With the nutrition it gets from the blood of the mother, the cell starts proliferating. From the very same cell, new cells emerge in different structures and to give the first shape of the fetus, bone cells, tissue cells and the like take their places within the framework of a perfect plan and program. They never interfere with each other, making the formation and continuation of the body happen in an esthetic and systematic way. The baby is now a fetus, a new synthesis in the sensual soul. (This is the commencing of the bodily life after the first forty days). A hadith was passed on by the venerable Abdullah Ibn-i Mas’ud (May Allah be please with him).

The creation of human is like this: In the first FORTY DAYS the cells are added up in his mother’s womb. Then in the second forty days he becomes an alaqah (leech, suspended thing and blood clot), then after another forty days he turns to be a mudghah (an embryonic lump / chewed substance). Then Allah sends down four angels who write his SUSTENANCE DURING HIS LIFETIME, HIS TIME OF DEATH, HIS DEEDS AND WHETHER HE WILL BE A WRETCHED OR HAPPY PERSON, and then they breathe into him of his spirit.

b) Passing of the soul to the body

Above in the section A, we talked about the first synthesis. Here another synthesis-combination comes out. Actually the syntheses are many. We only mention the syntheses concerning our life before the birth. Prof. A. Ozyacici says “The first nucleus of the physical structure (body) and the first signs of many organs appear and this merges with the soul as per His Eternal Knowledge. The destiny of the fetus in this synthesis is written by the angel in accordance with as designated in the eternal knowledge of Allah.

What is the reality, essential character, structure and essence of this merge between our physical body and spiritual, light and psychic structure…? This and similar kind of questions will be elaborated in a separate section of our book as far as we know, and especially as far as Allah informs us and up to the limits he permits to reveal.

3- OUR STATE BEFORE THE FORMATION OF THE SPERM

As you know, the question of how the sperm is created is easy to answer. It is produced in the testicle of men. The primary substances of the testicles come from the blood. On the other hand, the blood is nourished by some mixtures in the small intestine. Foods are of primarily foods from animals and originate from plants and vegetables. Namely foods from plants originate from fats, sugary articles and carbohydrates family. Foods from animals are MEAT, EGGS, MILK AND DAIRY PRODUCTS, hence the protein sources. Both foods from plants and foods from animals have minerals. In short these are the sources of our foods. The details of these are the job of the special science branches. Here there is no need to make it deeper. Our book only mentions the main points of the related subjects in order to enlighten our brothers and sisters who want to walk in spiritual roads, and intend to observe. We should keep in mind that we are on the route of ascension (Mi’raj).

4- OUR LIFE –STATE- BEFORE TRANSITION TO THE FOODS

We know that the foods we eat come from the soil and are made of the synthesis of the four elements namely water, air, fire and soil. Even though one may think animals do not originate from the soil, animals are mainly nourished from the plants. All plants grow in the soil. In the soil, WATER, AIR and FIRE combine with HEAT and as a result, plants come into existence and get ripen.

Our aim here is to indicate the basis of the formation of our own physical body, and determine the HALTING STATIONS our Al-NAFS An-NATIQAH (SOUL WITH RHETORIC TALENT, rational discerning soul), who is favored by the existence of God, stopped at while it has been coming to the world. We try to become isolated from our worldly life for a while and travel towards the wide phases of our origin. Here one should not say everybody knows these things.

A- SOIL

In the soil exist basic elements either in their pure form or in liquid form. Their number is above one hundred. These are (oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, iron etc) fundamental building stones of our body. It is said that BE AS SOIL IN MODESTY. The soil is really the symbol of the modesty. It offers all foods we eat for free, we walk on it and it never gets offended. We defecate on it, it does not object to this. It accepts our spit and mucus, too, never ceasing its service to us. In order to know the real value of its service thoroughly, as a test, can we make these humiliating things to one another?

B-AIR

We can not survive without breathing the air more than a couple of minutes. The heat of our body is obtained with oxygen of the air. It helps the plants pollinate, it sends the clouds for rain, and we can not count its benefits to human beings.

C-WATER

Allah Taala decrees about water this:

“We gave life to everything with water”. Is there any need to talk about the importance of the life?

D- FIRE
Every living being needs energy (heat) to survive. From the penguins in the poles, to the fish in aquariums, from the animals that sleep all winter under the ground to microscopic creatures, they need energy to survive and this energy comes from the Sun. On the other hand, the energy from the sun converts to the matter and kept in the world as ready and substitute energy resource. When a need arises, the matter turns back to energy form and meets the energy need. Our world, all stars in all galaxy systems and the matters they have are all great and potential energy resources. This is in reality is an indicator of the POWER ATTRIBUTE of Allah. This attribute does not fit into calculations; it is countless.

The sun sends down its light and heat to all members of the Sun family (World, Venus, Mars, and Moon etc) in a well-measured useful quantity. The creatures living in tropical areas and the ones in the poles get the energy in proportion to their actual need. You can not replace their natural environments. They probably die in halfway. Even if we achieve taking tropical creatures to the poles with the help of technology, they die there shortly.

The first point we should pay attention in the above mentioned information is that even though all their characteristics i.e. their types, colours, shapes etc are so different and diversified and they are innumerable, they all come from A SINGLE BEING. That single being is the Sun.

Likewise, all the bulbs, industrial motors and the like running with electricity, get their LIGHT AND POWER from the electric dynamo, but the source of all is a single one. What is more, among these some may play diametrically opposite roles from the one next to it. For instance, if you put a refrigerator and an electrical heater side by side, you witness an interesting fact. Even though their source is the same, one gives heat and the other coldness. In the light of what we were taught by our spiritual guides, from the information given above we understand that many goods, expressing a multiplicity, can get energy and power from a single being like electricity, or the Sun. If we had not found this information available for us, or if had been totally UNMINDFUL AND IGNORANT of it, we would have come to believe that the objects in their multiplicity had a supposedly independent existence, having its own strength and other characteristics. The reason is being that our eyes see in that way. Even we might have gone further, and accept what our physical eyes see as PURE TRUTH, and in order to defend it we would argue with people, engage in certain struggles and thus make our biggest mistake.

A man who was regarded as a great scholar one day was lost in deep thoughts. The people around him wondered about it and said to him YOU LOOK TOO PENSIVE, IT MUST BE AN IMPORTANT MATTER.. He replied “Yes, I have been thinking about this important matter…. I HAVE FOUND OUT THAT ONE THING THAT I HAD BEEN CONSIDERED SO FAR AS TRUE IS NOT TRUE, AND I HAVE BEEN THINKING THAT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ME IF ALL I KNOW IS LIKE THAT.

This is the moral of the story, but expresses a crucially important matter. May be several billions of human beings may have wrong information and ideas like that scholar about the structure of the UNIVERSE, ITS CREATION AND OPERATING?

Billions of people are unaware and ignorant of ISLAMIC TEACHING that declares the universe, the world and all creatures it has, the Solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy and its neighbor ANDROMEDA and other big galaxies and all they contain exist as a result of the creation of a SINGLE SUPER POWER, at THE DISPOSAL OF ALLAH TAALA. This issue is very important and will be dealt with in a separate paragraph while explaining the main purpose of ACQUIRING PERFECTION-COGNIZANCE OF ALLAH.

So far, we have learned that sperm is made out of the foods we eat and foods are composed of so called the four elements i.e. SOIL, WATER, AIR AND FIRE. Foods come to existence by composition of these four in certain and measured proportions and through chemical changes and combinations.

However, the job is not over here. The origin of human being is the light and goes back to far beyond the four elements, in other words our return to our origin by getting certitude through learning will continue up to the oneness, the first stage at which the venerable unity of Existence of God existed in past eternity, the stage which the venerable Muhyiddin Ibnu’l Arabi calls THE STAGE OF INDEFINITENESS.

5- Human being, HIS REALITY AND CAPABILITY

First we should know the origin and the beginnings of the human beings, the most honorable of the creatures. We will try to learn through the verses in the Qur’an, the hadith of the prophet and the inner inspirations of venerable spiritual guides. May Allah help us.

a) The origin of human- His advent from God’s existence By God’s deigning

Surah the Human (Al-Insan), verses 1-2 say:

“There surely came over man a period of time when he was a thing not worth mentioning.
Verily We created Man from a drop of mingled sperm, in order to try him: So We gave him (the gifts), of Hearing and Sight. ”

It is one of the most comprehensive verses (ayaat) giving information about the ORIGIN OF HUMAN, HIS REALITY AND FIRST CREATION revealed in the Qur’an. The Qur’an does not specify a date for the creation of human beings and within the structure of the universe his coming to the world. It only says AN IMMENSELY LONG TIME- PERIOD passed.

THERE HAS BEEN AN IMMENSELY LONG SPAN OF TIME BEFORE MAN (APPEARED).

The word DAHR means VERY LONG TIME, ETERNAL. It also means TIME AND PERIOD. Period is described in the dictionary as EACH PART OF THE DIVIDED TIME. (Abdullah YEGIN, M. Nihat OZON)

The verse says humans come to the world after his transition from a period to another period, from division to division until the ground has come into existence that enables him to fulfill his responsibilities with his BEST CONFORMATION.

Again the Qur’an informs us that:

1- The COMING of human to the World happens as descending to it. –Lowering-

2- Human evolves spiritually in their life in the world and reaches to the degree of perfect humanness, i.e. by passing over the degrees of descending one by one, his ascension (Mi’raj) takes place.

The messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) made 34 mi’rajs (the ascension) throughout his prophetship, 33 of which was SPIRITUAL ASCENSION i.e. made spiritually. Only one of these ascensions was made both PHYSICALLY and SPIRITUALLY. The ascension of the prophet as explained in the Surah Al Isra (the Night Journey) and the event of Mi’raj took place with the combination of the body and the soul. Our Visali Sultan told so.