Wisdom of Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Iskandari: invocation without the heart's presence
Contents
Do not abandon invocation (dhikr) on the grounds that, while your tongue mentions God, your heart is not present.
For the complete absence of the mention of God would be graver than its mention without the heart’s participation.
Perhaps God will raise you from that distracted mention to mention with concentration; then to mention with the heart’s presence; and finally to mention with absence from all that is not the Mentioned.
‘And that is not difficult for God’ (Qur’an XIV, 20).
Extracts from the commentary by Ibn ’Ajiba1
Invocation is an essential pillar in the way of the people of God: it is the best of actions. God Most High says: ‘Remember Me, and I shall remember you’ (Qur’an II, 151). He also says: ‘You who believe, remember God with unceasing remembrance’ (Qur’an XXXIII, 41). Unceasing invocation is the means of never forgetting Him.
Ibn ’Abbas said: ‘God has imposed no obligation on His servants without setting a well-defined limit to it. He then admitted the excuses of those whose lapses are justified; except concerning dhikr: God set no limitation upon it. He says: “O you who believe! Invoke God abundantly!” (Qur’an XXXIII, 41) and: “When you have accomplished the prayer, invoke the name of God standing, sitting or lying on your sides” (Qur’an IV, 103).’
A man said: ‘O Messenger of God! The prescriptions of islam are too many for me. Teach me a single thing to which I can cling!’
‘Let your tongue remain continually steeped in the mention of God (dhikru Llah),’ he answered.
The Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) said: ‘If a man distributes his few dirhams and another invokes God, the one who invokes God is the better.’
He also said: ‘Shall I tell you of the best of your works, the purest in your Lord’s sight, the one that raises you to the highest degree and is more profitable to you than spending gold and silver, better still than meeting an enemy you would have to fight?’
‘Indeed, we want that!’
‘It is the invocation (dhikr) of God.’
The transmission of the shahada to ’Ali
’Ali said: I asked: ‘O Messenger of God! Which path is nearest to God, easiest for God’s servants and best in the sight of God Most High?’
’‘Ali,’ he answered, ‘you must invoke God constantly!’
‘But the whole world invokes God!’ said ’Ali.
The Prophet then said: ‘The last hour will not come as long as there are people on the face of this earth who say: “Allah, Allah”.’
‘And how should I remember Him, O Messenger of God?’
‘Close your eyes,’ he told him, ‘listen to me three times, then repeat the same thing and I shall listen to you.’ The Prophet said: ‘La ilaha illa Llah’ (there is no god but God) three times, eyes closed, then ’Ali said it in the same manner. He later taught it to Hasan al-Basri, who taught it to al-Habib al-’Ajami, who taught it to Da’ud al-Ta’i, who taught it to Ma’ruf al-Karkhi, who taught it to al-Sari, who taught it to al-Junayd; and this teaching was spread by the educating masters2.
Never forsaking the invocation
No one reaches God except by means of invocation. It is therefore the servant’s duty to set himself to it and strive at it whenever he has a moment to do so. Invocation makes sanctity (wilaya) evident, and it must be present at the beginning of the journey as at its end. He who has the invocation has the decree. He who forsakes it has withdrawn from the way! They have written:
Invocation is the finest of gates. You enter it for God
and He makes His spiritual breaths your guardian!
When one is annihilated in the Name (through invocation), one is annihilated in the Essence; and when one relaxes one’s annihilation in the Name, one relaxes the annihilation in the Essence. The aspirant to God must therefore cling to the remembrance of God at every instant and never abandon invocation by the tongue for the sole reason that the heart is not present to the invocation. He must invoke Him by the tongue even if his heart is absent from it. Neglect of invocation is worse than negligence within invocation, for when you neglect invocation you turn away from Him entirely, whereas invoking Him by the tongue is a certain manner of turning in His direction.
Through the invocation of God, the body adorns itself with obedience to Him. Through absence, the body may busy itself disobeying Him. One of them was asked: ‘What use is there in invoking by the tongue if the heart is absent from the invocation?’ He answered: ‘Thank God for being able to invoke Him with the tongue! If it were employed in absence, where would you be now?’
One must therefore cling to invocation by the tongue until God opens you to the invocation of the heart. ‘Perhaps God will raise you from an invocation made with negligence to one made with vigilance,’ that is, to the realisation of the meaning of the invocation as you practise it, then to invocation in the presence of the Invoked, or again to the visualisation of Him in the imagination, until the heart settles into the invocation and then is present to Him by the heart continually. This second degree is the invocation reserved for the elite. The first is the invocation of the commonality.
If you are constant in your practice of invocation, your constancy will raise you to an invocation in which you withdraw from all that is other than the Invoked, and your heart will be absorbed in the light. Perhaps the nearness of the light of the Invoked will become so strong that you will be drowned in the light, to enable you to withdraw from all that is other than the Invoked. At that moment it is the invoker who will be mentioned (by God), the aspirant who will be aspired, and the long-sought arrival who will make you arrive! ‘That, for God, is not difficult’: it is not impossible that it should come to pass. Thus the one who found himself in the lowest spheres can be raised to the highest spheres where the heart finds repose. The invocation then shifts towards the heart’s innermost core3. For the people of that station, invocation made by the tongue alone then becomes like an absence from God…
Shaykh al-Shadhili said on this subject: ‘The reality of invocation is to be cut off from the invocation by the Invoked, and to be cut off from everything save these words: “And remember the name of your Lord and devote yourself wholly to Him” (Qur’an LXXIII, 8).’ Al-Qushayri, for his part, said: ‘Invocation is the intermediate station between the invoker and the Invoked.’ In this sense it was said:
I have remembered You, without having forgotten You for a single instant!
The smallest part of invocation is that of the tongue.
Without ecstasy I would have gone mad with passion,
my heart beating wildly with passion!
When ecstasy showed me that You are near me,
I could see Your existence in all things.
To the One who is present, I spoke without words;
The One who is present, I saw without seeing!
In this station, the aspirant realises the act of worship of meditation upon the world: ‘Meditating for one hour is better than seventy years of acts of worship.’ That is why shaykh Abu al-’Abbas said of this station: ‘Every instant is the Night of Destiny,’ that is, every act of worship is multiplied4, despite its smallness, by the realisation of the sincerity contained within it, which no angel sees and records, which no devil sees and corrupts. One of them, thought to be al-Hallaj, said:
The hearts of the knowers of God have eyes that see
what those who look nevertheless do not see.
Their sunna is, in truth, the intimate converse of secrets
unperceived by the noble angel-scribes.
Their wings, bereft of feathers, fly
to the malakut5 of the Lord of the worlds.
I added two verses to it:
The hearts burn with the passion of ecstasy, languishing
for the jabarut6 of the One, of certain truth.
If you wish to set out, at dawn, for Him who holds the meaning,
then devote your spirit to it and pay no heed to us!
The heart lives by invocation and dies when invocation leaves it. This notion is found in the hadith: ‘The difference between the one who remembers God and the one who does not remember Him is like that of the living compared to the dead.’
Translation by Nawfal Mac N.
Further reading
Footnotes
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On the ‘wisdom sayings’ of Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah and their commentary by Ibn ’Ajiba, see the article recently published on soufisme.org. Ahmad Ibn ’Ajiba wrote his commentary on the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah under the title Iqaz al-himam wa sharh al-hikam. ↩
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Ibn ’Ajiba here describes the first links of the initiatic chain (silsila). ↩
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The ‘heart’s innermost depth’, receptacle of the divine lights. ↩
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The Night of Destiny, laylat al-qadr, is the night on which the Prophet received the Qur’anic Revelation. The descent of the Book is commemorated each year at the end of the month of Ramadan. It is, according to the Qur’an, ‘better than a thousand months’ (Qur’an XCVII, 3). ↩
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Malakut (sovereignty): the inner aspect of beings, constituted by the secrets of the intelligible realities. ↩
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Jabarut (omnipotence): the infinite ocean from which the sensible and the intelligible spring forth. ↩
Further reading
- Spiritual courtesy (adab) in the believers' relationship to the Prophet of God
- The Hikam of Ibn 'Ata' Allah, commented by Ibn 'Ajiba
- Les Hikam d'Ibn 'Atâ' Allâh (commentaire d'Ibn 'Ajîba)Hikam no. 1: not counting on one's works (Ibn 'Ata' Allah, commentary by Ibn 'Ajiba)
- Traits of Sufi humour: Shibli, Kharaqani and the others
