Illustration from the ‘Marifet Name’, written by Ismail Hakki Erzurumi in 1756. It includes astronomy, mathematics, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, Islamic mysticism and Islamic subjects all brought together as an encyclopedic work. From the Bilgeoguz Turkish edition.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is treatise VI from Azizuddin Nasafi’s ‘Book of the Perfect Man’, Editions Fayard, Paris, 1984. Our English translation comes from Isabelle de Gastine’s French translation of the original Persian. From pages 94 to 101. Here is an exemplary text from a great sufi luminary, Azizuddin Nasafi-from the Akbarian lineage (Ibn Arabi’s silsile or lineage)-introducing the bare concepts of ground spiritual work. It is amazing to note, despite the idiosyncrasies behind cultural differences & customs, the impressive unity of all experiences and their reports, especially with groups that explore what professor Henri Corbin names, the ‘Imaginal World’. Here we have a detailed sufi exposition of such a ground work, and it is fascinating to see that it is very close to the experience the English Boehmists-such as John Pordage, Thomas Bromley and their entourage-have lived deeply, in their own creative expression. Unicity of all traditions…once we get beyond the threshold of divisions and external considerations! We added a note, introducing and translating the featured illustration from the ‘Marifet Name‘ by  Emir Abdülkadir İnanç. We express here our gratitude toward him.

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A group of dervishes, may God add to their numbers, ask to my frail person to write a treatise about the conditions of the forty day retreat, the rules of remembrance (dhikr) and the spiritual ascension of the sufis; they asked me also what is recommended to eat during the forty day retreat and in which quantity; what are the invocations to recite and how to recite them; finally, what is the ascension of the sufis? I have answered to their request and prayed All Mighty God to grant me help and assistance so that He keeps me from being misled and in error, because He is mighty and eager to grant what is asked. I will give to this treatise this title: ‘Of the rules of mystical retreat’. My success only depends on God; to him I surrender & seek protection.

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Of devotion

and rebellion

Know that the sufis honor, to the highest degree, three things: extasy, pilgrimage and ascension. Extasy is nothing else than rapture or ravishment; pilgrimage is sustained effort and ascension is absorbing munificence. Only the person who makes these three things an essential part of himself may become a master and guide.

O dervish! There are ten stations, from the first to the last rank of a human being. To each, there is extasy, pilgrimage and ascension. But to each, extasy, pilgrimage and ascension are different; to each devotion and rebellion are different. To discriminate between devotion and irreverence, between good and evil is a difficult task. This is why it has been said that to no avail the disciple may contest the master or contradict him. Many things at a certain level may be pious and are at another level irreverent and vice versa. For instance, before faith, therefore before knowledge, what ever the ignorant does, let it be eating, sleeping or desiring: all is irreverence. The rank, the level of faith being reached, therefore knowledge being attained, what ever the conscious person does, let it be eating, sleeping or desiring: all is devotion. Devotion has degrees. The ultimate degree is when All Mighty God becomes for the wayfarer the eyes, ears, hands and tongue; so that whatever he says is God’s words; whatever he does is God’s making; then may nobody opposes nor contradict him. The story of Khidr (Hızır) and Moses is the prefect illustration to this point. All Mighty God, according to the strength and intention of the pilgrim, changes a beautiful action into a fault and a fault into a beautiful action.

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Of the conditions of

the forty days retreat

Know that the first required condition is the presence of the sheykh, the master. The disciple will not enter the forty days retreat without the permission of the master and only in his presence. Every eight or ten days, the master will come visit him in the place of his retreat, so that at the view of the beauty of the master the disciple (murid) may receive an increased strength and a firmer endurance; and if some difficulties arise, he may ask the master about them.

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The second required condition is weather and location. Weather mustn’t be neither to cold neither to hot, but temperate. As for location, it must be away enough from people, so that the rumors of the outer world don’t reach the pilgrim and the songs of the pilgrim do not reach the outer world. The room is to be empty and dark; during these forty days, nobody will enter, except the master and a servant.

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The third required condition is personal corporeal cleanliness. The pilgrim must respect all the ablutions: at each hour of prayer, he will perform his ablutions; and while performing each new ablution, he will recite two prayer units as a token of gratitude.

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The fourth required condition is fasting.  During these forty days, the pilgrim will perform fasting.

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The fifth required condition is frugality. To eat little differs between individuals. It is up to the master to fix the pilgrim with a suitable and individualized regimen.

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The sixth required condition is silence. During these forty days, the pilgrim will talk to nobody, except the master and the servant.

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The seventh required condition is a watchful wake. Every night, the pilgrim will only sleep about two third of the time.

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The eighth required condition is discrimination between mental images. These are of four of a kind: divine, angelic, psychic and demonic. Each display recognizable signs.

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The ninth required condition is the rejection of all mental images. During these forty days, not one moment will the mind of the pilgrim be occupied by one of them. Even though, he would believe to recognize in one coming-in a divine vision, he will repel it at once because only his master’s guidance-which is in deed divine- must guide him. And if he cannot repel this vision, dream, remembrance or temptation that is coming from outside during the watchful wake, he will expose it to the discernment of the master, so that he may explain it and, therefore, lift this obstacle blocking his concentration.

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The tenth required condition is remembrance, the continuous incantation (dhikr). Beside the five mandatory prayers, the pilgrim will bother only with this litany: ‘There no God but Him!‘- ‘La Ilaha Ilalah!’. He will utter this invocation aloud; while doing this, he will strive to be present and he will know each time what he negates and what he affirms. This negation also has levels; the negation and affirmation of the beginner differs from the negation and affirmation of the person who has reached his aim.

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Of the rules

of remembrance

Know that remembrance (dhikr) is for the pilgrim like milk for the child. The incantation,‘There no God but Him!’- ‘la ilaha illallah!’, must be entered by the master into the pilgrim alike a graft upon a tree. Before performing it, the reciter will do another purification, a token of gratitude for this ablution, and then he will turn towards the qibla (Via-Hygeia note: mandatory indication of the direction to Mecca, essential to guaranty the validity of prayer; it is fixed in mosques by a niche, more or less ornate, the mihrab). Some say that during the invocation, one must have the legs crossed under, so to be more at ease. Others say that one must be kneeling, like for prayer, the posture being more respectful. Our master, as for him, was sitting on his crossed legs and his companions too. While pronouncing the incantation, the reciter will close his eyes, and the first couple of years, he will recite it aloud. It is only when the litany goes beyond the tongue and penetrate inside the heart of the reciter that then the pilgrim can allow himself to recite it in hushed voice; much time is needed to reach that point. It was said earlier that while remembering the reciter must strive to be present; to deny and affirm according to his rank and knowledge, while using such a litany. We will add that each time the pilgrim will pronounce ‘but Him‘, he will hit his spleen, which is on the left side, with the Alef of ‘Illa‘ (but), to the point of aching. While reciting in such a manner, his voice will be caught on the first days and to his side he will be feel a violent ache. But, soon the voice will blossom, the pain will be appeased and, without anymore failings nor aching, he will be able to recite aloud during a whole day and night. This is the sign that the litany has penetrated inside the pilgrim, that the heart has become the reciter. The experienced dervishes know, just by hearing someone’s ‘There no God but Him!’-‘la ilaha illallah!’, if his heart is truly the reciter. This inner litany, used as a reminder, a remembrance, has many beneficial properties that I can not confine here into writing. These words will surely be understood by any person who has devoted many years to this practice and who has felt all of these states-but not by the beginner, how could he? May then the disciple accept them with faith and hurries to get started, so that, in time, he may also feel them deep in him.

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Of the ascension

of the sufis

Know that for the prophets and the friends of God, there is before the natural death, another death: the voluntary death. From it, they die before dying. Everything deceased people see when they naturally die, they see it before. Facing these post-mortem states, they access, from the plane of noetic certitude, the plane of eidetic certitude. (Via-Hygeia note: eidetic: which concerns essences, abstracting from existence, relating to or denoting mental images having unusual vividness and detail, as if actually visible). The veil for us humans is the body. When the spirit exit the body, nothing stands before the diseased as a veil, a screen. The ascension of the prophets is of two sorts: one of the spirit without the body; the other one, of the spirit with the body. The ascension of the friends of God is unique in sort: of the spirit without the body.

These early consideration done, know now that our purpose here is not the ascension of the prophets, as it is well documented-but that of the sufis. We will try to warn and encourage the pilgrims so that they may not grow dull in their self-mortification and efforts, so that they do continuously wander along the way. Perhaps they will reach this bliss, blessed by this good fortune. After having being honored by the Face of God, there is no other greater felicity for the pilgrim before natural death than the confrontation with the post-mortem states, and the vision of the rank he will join after the separation with the body.

O Dervish! To see, in this life, the post-mortem states is no joke. If humans wouldn’t be so mindless, day and night, they would strive after this!

In order to bring us back to our point of discussion, know that the ascension of the sufis consists in that the spirit of the pilgrim, in a state of health and wake, exits the body of the pilgrim; that the states that will be revealed to him after death are shared in advance; know that he considers before him Paradise & Hell and sees the condition of the dwellers in both places; furthermore, know that he crosses from the level of the noetic certitude to the level of the eidetic certitude and everything that he knew until that time, now he sees it. The spirit of some rises up until the first heaven; the spirit of others, to the second and so on, until the Throne where the spirit of the Seal of the prophets reaches. Every spirit, once it has returned into the body, remembers everything it saw, and if he is in a lucid state is able to relate about it. But in reality, all are like drunk: they drank full cups of the wine of purity and their cupbearer was the divine Provider. The weakest cannot control themselves and indulge into noisy drunken tantrum, and neglect the religious customs. The strongest stay composed, even though they are fully intoxicated, and do not engage in drunken tantrum and do respect all mandatory behaviors. Only a person who has succeeded in the ascension, who has smelled that sweet aroma, will understand my words! Some spirits stay a day in the heavens; they go all around, then return to their bodies. Some stay two days, some three and some even more, ten, twenty, forty!

My master was telling that his spirit stayed thirteen days in the heavens before returning to his body, which, according to some witnesses, stayed thirteen days unconscious, as if it was dead. Another great master said that his spirit stayed twenty days in the heavens; another forty and everything he saw during that time remained engraved in his memory.

It has been said that everybody’s spirit can achieve ascension up until one’s initial rank and the the Seal of the prophets and the Seal of the friends of God, can reach until the Throne. Those consider ‘divine friendship’, the walayat, to a superior rank than the prophetic one, the nobwwat. We have exposed in details this controversy in the ‘Book of the unveiling of superior  realities‘. Those who wish to fathom upon this subject may read this book. For this family, the friends of God, the walayat is the esoteric part of the nobwwat, and divinity the esoteric part of the walayat. When the nobwwat splits like a crescent moon, the walayat who is like a sun appears. When, in turn, the walayat splits like a crescent moon, the sun of the divinity appears. The tracing of the letter noun is the graphic representation of my words.

Glory to God,

the Lord of the two world!

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Source

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A note about the featured illustration’s

description from the Huzur Turkish edition

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Introduction and English translation of the description list

by Emir Abdülkadir İnanç

This excerpt is from the Marifetname (Book of Divine Inspirations), by Ibrahim Hakkı Erzurumi. Here he describes the spiritual realms that lie behind the ordinary senses. The deeper realms are buried under the heavens, as understood in the medieval/hermetic cosmology, and the throne that overlooks them. The subtler conjoining realms include heaven, hell, the roads and pavements in between and more.

The Divine Realm Beyond Emptiness and Plenitude

1- Underground
2- The highest heaven
3- The station of those who carry the highest heaven
4- The end of the pillars of the highest heaven
5- The end of the pillars of the throne looking over the heavens
6- The realm of divine command
7- The Throne
8- Realm of Spirit
9- Realm of Angels
10- Israfil’s trumpet
11- The limit
12- Tuba Tree of Jannah (the Garden of Eden)
13- Pen
14- Preserved Tablet
15- Mountain of Gratitude
16- Doors of Jannah
17- The Wall of Arafat Arafat, where the descendants of the mad and the idolaters are
18- The pool of the Prophet (pbuh)
19- The road to Jannah
20- The thin bridge (As-Sirāt)
21- Uphill
22- Flat
23- Descent
24- End of the thin bridge
25- The doors of Gehenna (Hell)
26- Zaqqum tree, the poison of pride
27- Cauldron of Tar
28- Layers of Gehenna (Hell)
29- The pit of arousals
30- The Valley of Pity
31- The Sun
32- Mountain of Gratitude
33- The Grounds of Judgment
34– The station of the praised one
35– The pulpits of the Prophets
36- The stations of the Knowledgeable One (Alim)
37- The scale of deeds and actions
38- The records of deeds and actions
39- The thin bridge

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