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Kashf Al-Mahjub: The Revelation of the Veiled - An Early Persian Treatise on Sufism
O Lord, bestow on us mercy from Thyself, and provide for us a right course of action!
“To ask blessing” means “to commit all one’s affairs to God and to be saved from, the various sorts of contamination”.
“The believer’s intention is better than his performance.” Great is the power of intention, through which a man advances from one category to another without any external change.
A good intention, therefore, is preliminary to the due performance of every act.
Everyone makes pretensions, none attains to reality.
knowledge should not be separated from action.
Ḥátim al-Asamm said: “I have chosen four things to know, and have discarded all the knowledge in the world besides.” He was asked: “What are they?” “One,” he answered, “is this: I know that my daily bread is apportioned to me, and will neither be increased nor diminished; consequently I have ceased to seek to augment it. Secondly, I know that I owe to God a debt which no other person can pay instead of me; therefore I am occupied with paying it. Thirdly, I know that there is one pursuing me (i.e. Death) from whom I cannot escape; accordingly I have prepared myself to meet him. Fourthly, I know that God is observing me; therefore I am ashamed to do what I ought not”
There is a sect of heretics called Sophists (Súfisṭá’iyán), who believe that nothing can be known and that knowledge itself does not exist. I say to them: “You think that nothing can be known; is your opinion correct or not?” If they answer “It is correct”, they thereby affirm the reality of knowledge; and if they reply “It is not correct”, then to argue against an avowedly incorrect assertion is absurd.
“Knowledge is of three kinds—from God, with God, and of God.”
You must know enough to know that you do not know.
“True perception is to despair of attaining perception, But not to advance on the paths of the virtuous is polytheism.”
the dervish is a place over which something is passing, not a wayfarer following his own will.
The Prophet said, repeating the words thrice: “Thou knowest, therefore persevere.”]
renunciation is of two kinds: formal and essential. For example, if one renounces a pleasure, and finds pleasure in the renunciation, this is formal renunciation; but if the pleasure renounces him, then the pleasure is annihilated, and this case falls under the head of true contemplation (musháhadat).
“To-day Ṣúfiism is a name without a reality, but formerly it was a reality without a name,”
if you wish to show to the people that you belong to God, should your claim be true, you are guilty of ostentation; and should it be false, of hypocrisy. The Ṣúfís are too great to need a special garment for this purpose.
“A dervish must not have less than three things: first, he must know how to sew on a patch rightly; second, he must know how to listen rightly; third, he must know how to set his foot on the ground rightly.”
when anything has become habitual to the soul it soon grows natural, and when it has grown natural it becomes a veil.
The first year is devoted to service of the people, the second year to service of God, and the third year to watching over his own heart.
“He whose poverty is compulsory is more perfect than he whose poverty is voluntary; for if it be compulsory, he is the creature (ṣan‘at) of poverty, and if it be voluntary, poverty is his creature; and it is better that his actions should be free from any attempt to gain poverty for himself than that he should seek to acquire it by his own effort.”
“Do not let your wife and children be your chief cares; for if they be friends of God, God will look after His friends, and if they are enemies of God, why should you take care of God’s enemies?” This question is connected with the severance of the heart from all things save God, who keeps His servants in whatever state He willeth.
Thou dost never turn away the beggar, and no creature in earth or heaven can prevent the true believer who implores Thee from gaining access to Thy court.
“When God wishes a man well, He gives him insight into his faults.”
true solitary is not disturbed by society, but he who is preoccupied seeks in vain to acquire freedom from thought by secluding himself. In order to be cut off from mankind one must become intimate with God, and those who have become intimate with God are not hurt by intercourse with mankind.
“Keep watch over thy heart” (‘alayka bi-qalbika), i.e. “Guard thy heart from thoughts of ‘other’”.
my asceticism in this world is desire for the next world, and this is the quintessence of desire. How excellent is he who takes no thought of his own interest! so that his patience is for God’s sake, not for the saving of himself from Hell; and his asceticism is for God’s sake, not for the purpose of bringing himself into Paradise. This is the mark of true sincerity.”
“The deed that I love best is sincerity in doing,” because an action only becomes an action in virtue of its sincerity.
it is better to fulfil the duty which is owed to one’s mother than to make the pilgrimage. Return, therefore, and try to please her.”
When a man is overcome with love for the Agent, he attains to such a degree that in looking at His act he does not see the act but the Agent only and entirely, just as when one looks at a picture and sees only the painter.
“Practise what you have learned, for theory without practice is like a body without a spirit.” He who is content with learning alone is not learned, and the truly learned man is not content with learning alone.
There is no knowledge without action, since knowledge is the product of action, and is brought forth and developed and made profitable by the blessings of action.
the more one loves, the more one is obedient, and love is increased by true knowledge.
“A moment’s reflection is better than sixty years of devotion,”
“The sleep of the sage is an act of devotion and the wakefulness of the fool is a sin,”
Kun lilláh wa-illá lá takun, “Be God’s or be nothing,”
“O God, whatever punishment Thou mayst inflict upon me, do not punish me with the humiliation of being veiled from Thee,”
When Thy beauty is revealed to our hearts, we take no thought of affliction
“Lust is of three kinds—lust in eating, lust in speaking, and lust in looking. Guard thy food by trust in God, thy tongue by telling the truth, and thine eye by taking example (‘ibrat).”
It is not lust when thou receivest food from Him and eatest by His leave, or when thou speakest of Him by His leave, or when thou seest His actions by His leave.
Fear and hope are the two pillars of faith. It is impossible that anyone should fall into error through practising either of them. Those who fear engage in devotion through fear of separation (from God), and those who hope engage in it through hope of union (with God).
Therefore Man cannot properly take or leave anything; it is God who in His providence gives and takes away, and Man only takes what God has given or leaves what God has taken away.
“I left work and returned to it; then work left me and I never returned to it again,” because when anyone leaves a thing by one’s own act and effort, the leaving of it is no better than the taking of
the marvels of Divine action are in nothing manifested more clearly than in human hearts.
Let him be occupied with himself in order that he may see learning everywhere, and let him turn from himself to God in order that he may see gnosis everywhere. Let him seek learning and gnosis in himself, and let him demand practice and reality from himself.
“Those who regard things as determined by God turn to God in everything,”
“A thing can be explained only by what is more subtle than itself: there is nothing subtler than love: by what, then, shall love be explained
His biographers relate that for forty years he never slept; then he fell asleep and dreamed of God. “O Lord,” he cried, “I was seeking Thee in nightly vigils, but I have found Thee in sleep.” God answered: “O Sháh, you have found Me by means of those nightly vigils: if you had not sought Me there, you would not have found Me here.”
the heart is the seat of knowledge of God and is more venerable than the Ka‘ba, to which men turn in devotion. Men are ever looking towards the Ka‘ba, but God is ever looking towards the heart. Wherever the heart is, my Beloved is there; wherever His decree is, my desire is there; wherever the traces of my prophets1 are, the eyes of those whom I love are directed there.
“Anyone who is ignorant of the nature of servantship (‘ubúdiyyat) is yet more ignorant of the nature of lordship (rubúbiyyat),” i.e., whoever does not know the way to knowledge of himself does not know the way to knowledge of God, and whoever does not recognize the contamination of human qualities does not recognize the purity of the Divine attributes, inasmuch as the outward is connected with the inward, and he who claims to possess the former without the latter makes an absurd assertion. Knowledge of the nature of lordship depends on having right principles of servantship, and is not perfect without them.
“Presence (ḥuḍúr) is better than certainty (yaqín), because presence is an abiding state (waṭanát), whereas certainty is a transient one (khaṭarát),” i.e., presence makes its abode in the heart and does not admit forgetfulness, while certainty is a feeling that comes and goes: hence those who are “present” (ḥáḍirán) are in the sanctuary, and those who have certainty (múqinán) are only at the gate.
“At thy service” (labbayk),
On the other hand, when persons of true spirituality and insight have visions, they make no effort to describe them, and do not occupy themselves with self-admiration on that account, and are careless of praise and blame alike, and are undisturbed
“speaking tongues are the destruction of silent hearts”. Such expressions are entirely mischievous. Expression of the meaning of reality is futile. If the meaning exists it is not lost by expression, and if it is non-existent it is not created by expression. Expression only produces an unreal notion and leads the student mortally astray by causing him to imagine that the expression is the real meaning.
God never leaves the earth without a proof (ḥujjat) or the Moslem community without a saint, as the Apostle said: “One sect of my people shall continue in goodness and truth until the hour of the Resurrection.”
the name of dervish is applied to anyone whose heart subsists in the contemplation of God?’ i.e. those who contemplate God are rich in God» whereas dervishes (fuqará) are occupied with self-mortification.
“Ṣúfiism is the subsistence of the heart with God without any mediation.” This alludes to contemplation (musháhadat),
Whatever good or evil God creates, do not in any place or circumstance quarrel with His action or be aggrieved in thy heart.”
how wrong it must be to imitate a mere expression!
“Station” belongs to the category of acts, “state” to the category of gifts. Hence the man that has a “station” stands by his own self-mortification, whereas the man that has a “state” is dead to “self” and stands by a “state” which God creates in him.
“O God, show us things as they are,”
“When the morning-star of wine rises, The drunken and the sober are as one.”
one moment of this world is better than a thousand years of the next world, because this is the place of service (khidmat) and that is the place of proximity (qurbat), and proximity is gained by service.”
phlegm, blood, bile, and melancholy, which four humours correspond to the four elements of this world, viz. water, earth, air, and fire, while his soul (ján), his lower soul (nafs) and his body correspond to Paradise, Hell, and the place of Resurrection. Paradise is the effect of God’s satisfaction, and Hell is the result of His anger. Similarly, the spirit of the true believer reflects the peace of knowledge, and his lower soul the error which veils him from God. As, at the Resurrection, the believer must be released from Hell before he can reach Paradise and attain to real vision and pure love, so in this world he must escape from his lower soul before he can attain to real discipleship (irádat), of which the spirit is the principle, and to real proximity (to God) and gnosis.
“Those who strive to the utmost for Our sake, We will guide them into Our ways” (Kor. xxix,
The result hangs on predestined grace (‘ináyat), not on abundance of mortification. It is not the case that he who most exerts himself is the most secure, but that he who has most grace is nearest to God.
One says, “He who seeks shall find,” and the other says, “He who finds shall seek.” Seeking is the cause of finding, but it is no less true that finding is the cause of seeking.
Mortification will never turn a donkey into a horse or a horse into a donkey, because this involves a change of identity; and since mortification has not the power of transforming identity it cannot possibly be affirmed in the presence of God.
“trust in God is a term denoting your conduct towards God and your spiritual excellence in regard to relying on Him: if a man spends his whole life in remedying his spiritual nature, he will need another life for remedying his material nature, and his life will be lost before he has found a trace or vestige of God”.
Although a man has no power over what is vicious in his constitution, he can get an attribute changed by Divine aid and by resigning himself to God’s will and by divesting himself of his own power and strength. In reality, when he resigns himself, God protects him; and through God’s protection he comes nearer to annihilating the evil than he does through self-mortification, since flies are more easily driven away with an umbrella (mikanna) than with a fly-whisk (midhabba).
“The saint is annihilated in his own state and subsistent in the contemplation of the Truth: he cannot tell anything concerning himself, nor can he rest with anyone except God,”
to communicate one’s hidden state to another is to reveal the secret of the Beloved, which cannot be revealed except to the Beloved himself. Moreover, in contemplation it is impossible to regard aught except God:
“The saint hath no fear, because fear is the expectation either of some future calamity or of the eventual loss of some object of desire, whereas the saint is the son of his time (ibn waqtihi): he has no future that he should fear anything; and as he hath no fear so he hath no hope, since hope is the expectation either of gaining an object of desire or of being relieved from a misfortune, and this belongs to the future; nor does he grieve, because grief arises from the rigour of time, and. how should he feel grief who is in the radiance of satisfaction (riḍá) and the garden of concord (muwáfaqat)?”
Fear and hope and security and grief all refer to the interests of the lower soul, and when that is annihilated satisfaction (riḍá) becomes an attribute of Man, and when satisfaction has been attained his states become steadfast (mustaqím) in vision of the Author of states (muḥawwil), and his back is turned on all states. Then saintship is revealed to his heart and its meaning is made clear to his inmost thoughts.
“Do not covet anything in this world or the next, and devote thyself entirely to God, and turn to God with all thy heart.”
There is no “station” on the way to the Truth where any obligation of service is abolished.
thou hast busied thyself with correcting thy exterior for the sake of God’s creatures, hence thou art afraid of them; but it has been my business to correct my interior for God’s sake, hence His creatures are afraid of me.’”
Abraham, in the beginning of his state, looked on the sun and said: “This is my Lord,” and he looked on the moon and stars and said: “This is my Lord” (Kor. vi, 76–8), because his heart was overwhelmed by the Truth and he was united in the essence of union.
In annihilation there is no love or hate, and in subsistence there is no consciousness of union or separation. Some wrongly imagine that annihilation signifies loss of essence and destruction of personality, and that subsistence indicates the subsistence of God in Man; both these notions are absurd.
I have no knowledge either of them or of myself.” This is an excellent indication of “presence”.
faith is really the absorption of all human attributes in the search of God.
Real faith is trust in God.’”
outward and inward purification must go together; e.g., when a man washes his hands he must wash his heart clean of worldliness, and when he puts water in his mouth he must purify his mouth from the mention of other than God, and when he washes his face he must turn away from all familiar objects and turn towards God, and when he wipes his head he must resign his affairs to God, and when he washes his feet he must not form the intention of taking his stand on anything except according to the command of God.
They argue that the penitent is a lover of God, and the lover of God is in contemplation of God, and in contemplation it is wrong to remember sin, for remembrance of sin is a veil between God and those who contemplate Him.
“Do not let any thought of ostentation (they say) enter your heart, and worship God wherever you will.”
in the Kitáb-i Maḥabbat1 that God created the souls (dilhá) seven thousand years before the bodies and kept them in the station of proximity (qurb) and that he created the spirits (jánhá) seven thousand years before the souls and kept them in the degree of intimacy (uns), and that he created the hearts (sirrhá) seven thousand years before the spirits and kept them in the degree of union (waṣl), and revealed the epiphany of His beauty to the heart three hundred and sixty times every day and bestowed on it three hundred and sixty looks of grace, and He caused the spirits to hear the word of love and manifested three hundred and sixty exquisite favours of intimacy to the soul,
“Real love is neither diminished by unkindness nor increased by kindness and bounty,”
To learn and obtain knowledge is an essential obligation, and to profess one’s self independent of knowledge is mere infidelity.
the fast of David, which the Apostle called the best of fasts, i.e. they fasted one day and broke their fast the next day.
Once I came into the presence of Shaykh Aḥmad Bukhárí. He had a dish of sweetmeat (ḥalwá) before him, from which he was eating, and he made a sign to me that I should do the same. As is the way of young men, I answered (without consideration) that I was fasting. He asked why. I said: “In conformity with such and such a one.” He said: “It is not right for human beings to conform with human beings.” I was about to break my fast, but he said: “Since you wish to be quit of conformity with him, do not conform with me, for I too am a human being.”
“When you fast, let your ear fast and your eye and your tongue and your hand and every limb;”
Four of the senses have a particular locus, but the fifth, namely touch, is spread over the whole body.
To abstain only from food and drink is child’s play. One must abstain from idle pleasures and unlawful acts, not from eating lawful food.
he had tasted no food for eighty days and had not missed a single occasion of public worship.
had not missed a single occasion of public worship.
“I wonder at those who seek His temple in this world: why do not they seek contemplation of Him in their hearts? The temple they sometimes attain and sometimes miss, but contemplation they might enjoy always. If they are bound to visit a stone, which is looked at only once a year, surely they are more bound to visit the temple of the heart, where He may be seen three hundred and sixty times in a day and night.
Anyone who is absent from God at Mecca is in the same position as if he were absent from God in his own house, and anyone who is present with God in his own house is in the same position as if he were present with God at Mecca.
“O God, hide Paradise and Hell in Thy unseen places, that Thou mayest be worshipped disinterestedly.”
Our wishing is the greatest of the veils that hinder us from seeing God, because in love the existence of self-will is disobedience, and disobedience is a veil. When self-will vanishes in this world, contemplation is attained, and when contemplation is firmly established, there is no difference between this world and the next.
contemplation is an attribute of the heart (sirr)
not eat large mouthfuls, and should chew his food well and not make haste;
When he has finished eating, he should give praise to God and wash his hands.
The Apostle, whom God chose and whom He raised to the highest rank, did not force himself either to sleep or to wake.
speech is like wine: it intoxicates the mind, and those who begin to have a taste for it cannot abstain from it.
You should live in the present, and let no thought of the morrow enter your mind, else you will incur everlasting perdition. You should not make God a springe to catch alms, and you should not display piety in order that more alms may be given to you on account of your piety.
The evils of celibacy are two: (1) the neglect of an Apostolic custom, (2) the fostering of lust in the heart and the danger of falling into unlawful ways. The evils of marriage are also two: (1) the preoccupation of the mind with other than God, (2) the distraction of the body for the sake of sensual pleasure.
neither state (marriage or celibacy) should be regarded with predilection, in order that we may see what the decree of Divine providence will bring to light: if celibacy be our lot, we should strive to be chaste, and if marriage be our destiny, we should comply with the custom of the Apostle and strive to clear our hearts (of worldly anxieties).
Accordingly, a man is not ruined by marriage or by celibacy, but the mischief consists in asserting one’s will and in yielding to one’s desires.
the way of the elect is to see only the Causer, and not to see the cause.”
“O Jesus, hast thou no fear of being cut off (from God)?” and Jesus used to say, “O John, hast thou no hope of God’s mercy? Neither thy tears nor my smiles will change the eternal decree of God.”
I desire only that God should desire for me, and therein preserve me from the evil thereof and save me from the wickedness of my soul.
Ṣúfís do not intend to blame the man for having acquired knowledge, they blame him for neglecting the practice of religion, because the ‘álim depends on himself, but the ‘árif depends on his Lord.
the Law without the Truth is ostentation, and the Truth without the Law is hypocrisy.
Shaykh used to say that a novice without shurb is a stranger to (i.e. unacquainted with the duties of) the novitiate, and that a gnostic with shurb is a stranger to gnosis, because the novice must derive some pleasure (shurbí) from his actions in order that he may fulfil the obligations of a novice who is seeking God; but the gnostic ought not to feel such pleasure, lest he should be transported with that pleasure instead of with God: if he turn back to his lower soul he will not rest (with God).
because speech is a sort of pride and hearing is a sort of humility.
“Its lawfulness depends on circumstances and cannot be asserted absolutely: if audition produces a lawful effect on the mind, then it is lawful; it is unlawful if the effect is unlawful, and permissible if the effect is permissible.”
“O God, let us see things as they are.”
It is necessary that thy audition should be continuous and uninterrupted.” This saying is a token of the concentration of his thoughts in the field of love. When a man attains so high a degree as this he hears (spiritual truths) from every object in the universe.
“Give me wine to drink and tell me it is wine. Do not give it me in secret, when it can be given openly”
let my eye see it and my hand touch it and my palate taste it and my nose smell it: there yet remains one sense to be gratified, viz. my hearing: tell me, therefore, this is wine, that my ear may feel the same delight as my other senses.
wujúd is a thrill of emotion in contemplation of God, and emotion (ṭarab) cannot be reached by investigation (ṭalab).
the only finder is God.
Junayd said, “He who seeks shall find.” Shiblí cried, “No; he who finds shall seek.”
There are two ways: one of knowledge and one of action. Action without knowledge, although it may be good, is ignorant and imperfect, but knowledge, even if it be unaccompanied by action, is glorious and noble.
“without experience no knowledge.”
that He may preserve me both outwardly and inwardly from contamination, and I enjoin the readers of this book to hold it in due regard and to pray that the author may believe to the end and be vouchsafed the vision of God (in Paradise).