The Perfect Method Amongst the Millions of Wrong Ways
When is a person going to find peace within himself? That is the question. Yes, that is the thing that our sister has in her heart.
Rivers run until they reach oceans, struggling, running, until reaching an ocean or a sea; then its over, finished. Whoever asks to find peace within himself must also reach an ocean or a sea or at least a lake; it doesn’t matter, because a lake is also firm in its place. But everyone is moving and struggling. Therefore everyone is running here and there every day; they are struggling and running to and from morning to night and from night to morning.
There are two ways in which a person may find rest. One of them is through natural death. Until death a person struggles. When he dies his arms and legs are spread out and he is laid to rest and there is no more struggling. According to his station he has reached peace.
Yes his peace by natural death maybe only for his physical body as still he has not reached real peace in his Spirit. Therefore, we must ask for peace from both sides, for our physical bodies and our spiritual bodies. Our physical bodies will reach to peace by death, natural death. Then the body is going to be in peace, no more movement, no more struggling. But we must look also after our soul, whether it has reached peace or not, whether struggling is still going in the soul or or not.
For this reason, the Prophet Muhammad (sal) said, “Die before you die.” This is what makes a person to reach to spiritual peace and satisfaction, to true peace and satisfaction. Our physical body may die, but as yet we haven’t attained our spiritual peace.
Therefore, the one who is asking for real peace within himself must try the ways of those who have attained real peace in their spiritual bodies, and the Prophet’s advice to his nation, to ourselves, is to die before natural death comes upon us.
Only a few people may be equal in their bodily peace and spiritual peace because most people are destroying their spiritual peace by running after the physical body’s peace. It is impossible for a person, without reaching his spiritual peace, to reach to bodily peace until natural death comes. But even at the time of death there is no benefit at that time, because even if you find peace in your physical body your spiritual body is still struggling and suffering. Then, from the day of one’s death up to the Day of Resurrection, in your hayar barzakhi, the intermediate life between the eternal life and this world’s life, those troubles and struggles may still continue. Perhaps it may continue even on the Day of Resurrection, and it may be more than this also. One may be in hell, struggling and suffering for a period until he reaches to the Ocean that he was given in pre-eternity.
Therefore, the most important thing that we must know concerns our absolute peace and when and how is it going to be. Until you reach to that Ocean which Allah Almighty gave you in pre-eternity, you are going to struggle and suffer, and you may be in hell during this life and in the grave and on the Day of Resurrection, and then finally in hell itself also, because it is impossible to find peace without reaching your homeland in that Ocean. But then we are always still running and still struggling.
We give sufferings to ourselves because we use wrong methods to acquire peace or to reach peace. Sometimes scientists prepare a rocket to go up but it turns and falls back. Like this so many people are now using wrong methods, so that instead of going up, they come down – a crash landing, a falling back. Only some small fault, even a simple wrong thing, may do that. Therefore we must be very careful, when we use a method, as to whether it is perfect or not.
We are trying to give a perfect method to everyone who is asking to reach peace, to real peace, to real satisfaction because reaching to this peace and satisfaction is the destination of everybody. You may take a train from London up to Edinburgh and on your way there may be one hundred stations and at each station some people get out because everyone knows his destination. If you get out before Edinburgh you will not be satisfied, you will say, “Oh, we came to some other place. This is not our destination.” If you get struck and remain in that station, you are going to suffer forever because you have reached a wrong destination.
Therefore, we must know our destination, and then we must take a ticket to that station, not to a station before it nor after it. Both kinds of these people who lose their destinations, suffer here and in the hereafter. Therefore a person must do everything to save himself from arriving at the wrong station. He must do something or he must suffer long, in order to find a way to his original destination. It is therefore terrible and dangerous for a person not to look at his destination. He must look out for his destination and must use the right method to reach his destination otherwise he will not attain peace; he will never attain it.
In our time, people are using so many wrong methods. They do not understand, or they do not even know, where is the beginning and what is the end; just like a as a blind person does understand where he is or to where he is going.
Therefore guidance is necessary and the most important thing for a person throughout his life is to find a true guide. A true guide can be known when your soul is in peace and satisfaction with him.
That is the sign, the real sign: to feel peace and satisfaction with him in your heart. If you are still in doubt, hesitant, it means that something is wrong with that person and you must look for some other guide. If your heart is not in peace with his method, you must not follow that way. There are so many ways. You must try to find another guide and so on until you reach peace in your heart with that person. Then it should be all right for you.
Then this is the way to attain peace, to die before dying. This means that when you find a guide, you must be with him. You must not carry about a different personality from his but must agree to be one with him, one unit. You can’t carry about another personality from your guide’s; you must melt your personality in his personality and you must appear as himself. Then you will be all right.
Once a person came to a Grandsheikh and knocked at his door. The Grandsheikh asked,
“Who is there?”
“Ibrahim,” the man said. “It is I.”
“I, I, I, always saying I”, said the Grandsheikh
“I?” the Grandsheikh answered “My place is only for one, not for two. Go away.”
So that person had to go away. After one year however he tried again. He came and knocked at the door.
“Who is there?” the grandsheikh asked.
“You, you,” he answered this time
“As you said, “You,” you may now come in.” replied the Grandsheikh.
Therefore, the first condition for a person who is asking to reach real peace is that he must give himself, all that he is carrying, to put it into his guide. His guide can take it and carry it. When you are going to be in your guide, that is the way to reach to your destination.
Consider an airplane. It may hold one hundred or two hundred or even three hundred passengers, but when it flies you can see only one jet plane. You do not see the three hundred persons inside it; you can see only that it is a plane, flying. The plane takes all those people into itself, finished. Therefore, when you take a guide to your destination, you can be in him; you can give yourself upto him. Your selfhood must be given up. You must consider yourself as a drop and when it reaches the Ocean there is no more drop – finished. You leave being that drop and you become the Ocean.
That is peace. When that drop falls into the Ocean, can you take it out, can you find it? Finished; it is all Ocean. Therefore, peace is not to be found without leaving your drop in that ocean. And your guide may be a lake or he may be a sea, but they all run into Oceans, also. That is important. When we say, “Die before you die,” this is the meaning of how can one die before his natural death
“Is the one who was dead and then We brought him back to life, and made for him a light with which to walk among men, like the one who is in darkness from which he cannot emerge?” Quran 6:122.
You give your personality to your guide; yes, you throw your personality into your guide’s personality, and then you say, “I am no longer in existence,” finished. When you look at your guide, you see yourself in him and when he looks at you, he looks at himself, and we – we reached our spiritual peace.
You may find it during your short lifetime in this life. But if you do not use true, correct methods and you go wrong, you will always go far away from peace. Instead of running toward Oceans, you will be running toward deserts.
Therefore, anyone who thinks about peace and happiness and satisfaction and pleasure and endless enjoyment must look after his spiritual life’s peace, and this is impossible for a person if he does not find an Ocean and run into it. To do this is so hard because our egos are always too proud to surrender. This is the most difficult proposition that can be made to our nafs; the most difficult thing for the nafs is to put its personality aside and agree to be with another’s. It holds onto its personality very strongly and it never likes to lose it.
Thus, we are fighting. Between our souls and our egos a fight is taking place. Our souls wanting to reach that Ocean and our egos saying, “No!” It is like a bottle containing water, which is thrown into the ocean. The water wants to reach the ocean but the bottle prevents it. Our nafs is just like that bottle, not agreeing to be broken in order to be nothing, and not wanting to let that water go to the ocean. This is the quarrel and fight that goes on between our soul and nafs. The one, who is successful in defeating his ego and making it agree to take the same personality of his guide, is the happy one and has reached to final peace – real peace, eternal peace, eternal happiness and eternal existence.
We take enjoyment from our existence. The greatest grant of our Lord to us is existence. But true existence may be gained only when we give up our false existence or being. If we give up our fani, transitory, temporary existence, we may acquire permanent existence. Inasmuch as we hold on to it strongly, not agreeing to give it up, it is difficult to reach the permanent and eternal existence.
Therefore we must try to reach our destination, and the one who reaches his destination has truly reached real existence, eternal existence. You must give this life in return for eternal life. Give this life in exchange for eternal existence. To the extent that we hold onto this temporary existence, true existence leaves us. Then natural death takes that temporary existence from us. But it may still be a long way for us yet to travel, a way of suffering, to reach eternal existence – through the grave and the Day of Resurrection or in hell so that we may reach the ultimate existence. But if you agree here, during this life, to use true methods that come from our Lord to His servants, it is the easiest and most simple way to reach real peace.
We are living during a time in which there are hundreds and thousands, may be millions, of ways, but they are altogether wrong ways. The ways of suffering. These are perhaps ways that are taking people to a wrong destination and taking them to wrong stations and saying, “This is yours.” When that person takes out his address book and looks it is the wrong destination. In our time there are millions of wrong ways.
Therefore, the one who is asking seriously about his destination must be serious concerning his guide and his guidance, or his life is going to be full of sufferings. And those sufferings will continue after he leaves his physical body because such sufferings belong to our souls and the soul is going to suffer because it has not reached to its Ocean.
Until one reaches it, he must pass through so many wrong channels or wrong courses. Finally, this is so important for anyone who is not drunk. Since people now in our time are mostly drunk – not only by drinking liquor and wine, but most of them are drinking and are going to be drunk on this world’s life, for this temporary life’s works and deeds and problems and troubles. Problems of livelihood particularly make people preoccupied with heavy conditions, and then they are like drunk people, with no time to look after themselves because they are struggling, they are fighting; no time for millions to ask for a guide. Thus, up to the end, their troubles continue, and when they die their bodily struggle is finished, their physical bodies are in peace, but not yet their souls.
Their souls cannot reach their peace and happiness. Therefore their troubles and sufferings continue after death, also, until they reach to their true destinations in the Divine Presence.
Allah knows best how a person may reach his destination after death. When a person sees that he embarked at a wrong station he shall run this way and that in order to find a way to get out, but it is not that easy. Therefore, take your care as much as you can during this life if you are not drunken ones; if you are drunk, you can’t take care, you can’t look after anything. You may ask from your Lord. “O my Lord, I am asking from You. I am asking a guide to reach You, the Ocean of Oceans. I am asking for You”.
Ask from Your Lord sincerely. When you ask sincerely, he may send to you one of His beloved servants to take you to your destination.