The Second of six Discourses on Safar,
26th July 2008,
The Jumu’a Mosque of Cape Town, South Africa
We are continuing our theme from our last meeting, the theme of Safar, on the journey, on travel. Now we are looking at a very deep matter of one of the great unveilings that are in the Qur’an, for people who look into these matters and take the Qur’an seriously. We are looking at the Safar of Allah’s Times, and the Safar of men.
Firstly we shall look at Surat al-A’raf (7:143):
When Musa came to Our appointed time
and his Lord spoke to him,
he said, “My Lord, show me Yourself so that I may look at You!”
He said, “You will not see Me, but look at the mountain.
If it remains firm in its place, then you will see Me.”
But when His Lord manifested Himself to the mountain,
He crushed it flat
and Musa fell unconscious to the ground.
When he regained consciousness he said, “Glory be to You!
I make Tawba to You and I am the first of the Muminun!”
Here we come on something which you must reflect on very deeply – and it does not mean in any way that we are going to lose the understanding of Tawhid that we, as Sufis, already have. Nothing can be associated with Allah. Is this not the foundational statement of Tawhid? “La sharikalak.” – “Nothing connected to You.” But we find that Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, uses the Qur’an in very important moments, He refers to “Our appointed time”. So:
“When Musa came to Our appointed time.”
Also, we find in the Qur’an that Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, sometimes says, “We,” as opposed to, “I,” and this is because He is referring to the Essence of His Being, of His Self.
So He says, “We,” – “When Musa came to OUR appointed time,” so Musa is in the world, in the realm of the world’s time, and now he comes to a meeting which is “Our appointed time.” Allah’s time is not measured time. The time of Allah is one of the secrets of Allah. Here, we have a meeting of two measurements of time. There is the time of the universe and there is the time that Allah specifies to Himself – the time that He has chosen. You must understand that when the slave is truly the slave, then he lives under this knowledge. Look at Surat Ta Ha (20:6-8):
Everything in the heavens and everything on the earth
and everything in between them
and everything under the ground
belongs to Him.
Though you speak out loud,
He knows your secrets
and what is even more concealed.
Allah, there is no god but Him.
The Most Beautiful Names are His.
What we are seeing is that the human creature is tuned to this Divine Reality which is so utterly, uncompromisingly absolute and sublime and magnificent, and here is the human creature tuned to One, of Whom you could say, “Everything in the heavens and everything on the earth and everything in between them and everything under the ground belongs to Him.” The human creature is faced with this Divine Reality which is totally overwhelming.
While the slave is obedient in awaiting Allah’s time, his ardour and desire are already there. As the fire smoulders under the stones, awaiting the breath of wind to awaken it, Allah restrains his beloved slave to be ready for His time. In other words, the human creature is trying to tune his time in the world – his world-time – to be ready for that point at which Allah’s time breaks into this world of existence. We look again at Surat Ta Ha (20:83-84):
“Why have you hurried on ahead of your people, Musa?”
He said, “They are following in my tracks.
I have hurried on ahead to You, My Lord,
to gain Your good pleasure.”
Allah asks: “Why have you hurried on ahead of your people, Musa?” – Why are you anticipating what I have already set up? Musa is out of tune with what Allah has already decreed. Allah is asking, “Why are you rushing to it?” This is the nature of man – not the bad man or the ignorant man, but this is the man of knowledge – but he wants, and what he wants He tells us: “They are following in my tracks. I have hurried on ahead to You, My Lord,” so Sayyiduna Musa is hurrying to this moment and Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, is cautioning him and keeping him the slave, keeping him obedient, and therefore He is actually slowing him down! In the in-time world of events he was not ready.
“Why have you hurried on ahead of your people, Musa?”
He said, “They are following in my tracks.
I have hurried on ahead to You, My Lord,
to gain Your good pleasure.”
Allah’s power, which He reveals to us in the Qur’an, is held between two times. There are the times He has fixed by His Rububiyyat, the movements of the creation: its weather, its locations, the DNA of the human creature. This is the time of existence, of the creation. There is another set of times which are His, fixed by Him, and they are hidden between the Qadr and the Qadaa. They are hidden because they are the moment of the destiny: when the point comes of Allah’s, not interfering, but manifesting Tajaliyyat of light, when He has decreed it. So he finds His prophet, which He set up for this highest of knowledges, running ahead of himself to get to it! And He, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, says, “No! You have to be there ‘in time’ for this meeting. You cannot anticipate this meeting because you are the helpless slave and you have to know that in order to experience what I have ready for you.”
Now, again in Surat Ta Ha, we go to Ayat 114:
High exalted be Allah, the King, the Real!
Do not rush ahead with the Qur‘an before its revelation to you is complete,
and say: “My Lord, increase me in knowledge.”
Here we see in the Qur’an Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, having this same way of dealing with another of his Prophets – the greatest and the last of His Prophets, telling Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam: “Do not rush ahead with the Qur’an.” Do you see what we are seeing? What we found with Sayyiduna Musa, we now find with Sayyiduna Muhammad, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam – Allah is saying, “Steady! Wait! Do not rush until it is the right time.”
High exalted be Allah, the King, the Real!
Do not rush ahead with the Qur’an before its revelation to you is complete,
and say: “My Lord, increase me in knowledge.”
Here, Allah reveals to mankind how He, Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala grooms His chosen ones so that they learn this Adab of the highest elite – to connect the natural time to the time of destiny. Our ‘Ulama say: “Allah educated Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam,” and people object to that as if to say, “It is not good manners to say that about Rasul,” sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. They do not understand that it is on this level. Allah’s teaching Rasul, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is a matter of refining his actions so that he has the highest Ma‘rifa of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala.
Now we look at Surat Al-An‘am (6:2-3):
It is He who created you from clay and then decreed a fixed term,
and another fixed term is specified with Him.
Yet you still have doubts!
He is Allah in the heavens and in the earth.
He knows what you keep secret and what you make public
and He knows what you earn.
“And then decreed a fixed term.” This is the first ‘time’. What we might call the ‘in-time’ time. The time of the universe, the time of everything under the ‘Arsh.
“And another fixed term is specified with Him.” So there are two times. Allah is saying it openly here in the Qur’an. There are two times. “And another fixed term is specified with Him.”
It is He who created you from clay and then decreed a fixed term,
and another fixed term is specified with Him.
Yet you still have doubts!
He is Allah in the heavens and in the earth.
He knows what you keep secret and what you make public
and He knows what you earn.
“He is Allah in the heavens and in the earth.” So He is Allah in the visible world of measured time, and in the heavens He is also Allah in the Ghayb, destining and decreeing from beyond space and time. “He knows what you keep secret and what you make public and He knows what you earn.” Look how Allah puts the most ordinary mundane thing of existence and puts it under this Command of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. Thus this high, high knowledge is totally linked to knowing what you earn. In other words, your whole existence is locked into the knowledge of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala.
This secret time is again revealed to us in the story of Sayyiduna Musa, in Surat al-A‘raf (7:142-143):
We set aside thirty nights for Musa
and then completed them with ten,
so the appointed time of his Lord was forty nights in all.
Musa said to his brother Harun, “Be my Khalif among my people.
Keep order and do not follow the way of the corrupters.”
When Musa came to Our appointed time
and his Lord spoke to him,
he said, “My Lord, show me Yourself so that I may look at You!”
He said, “You will not see Me, but look at the mountain.
If it remains firm in its place, then you will see Me.”
But when His Lord manifested Himself to the mountain,
He crushed it flat
and Musa fell unconscious to the ground.
When he regained consciousness he said, “Glory be to You!
I make Tawba to You and I am the first of the Muminun!”
That last phrase, “I am the first of the Muminun,” is Sayyiduna Musa’s taking on the empowerment of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, as the Prophet of his time: “I am the first of the Muminun – I am the Messenger of Allah.” Musa accepts this destiny.
We set aside thirty nights for Musa
and then completed them with ten,
so the appointed time of his Lord was forty nights in all.
Again, see how Allah has divided this into two. It is His time, but He has divided it into two. He has distinguished the last ten nights from the earlier thirty nights. In that sense we see that the last ten represent the hidden time of Ma‘rifa. It is all a time with his Lord, but you could say it is the meeting with the Act and the Sifat – the Attributes, and the final ten nights represent the encounter with the Dhat, the Essence, the Tajaliyyat adh-Dhat and the Fana’ of existence which comes in the amazing explanation of Allah’s showing Himself to the mountain.
Thus, firstly Musa hears his Lord speak to him, then his desire awakens in him a hastening of his, Musa’s time, and he asks for the vision of his Lord. In that sense also, he goes ahead in a way which is still not the correct Adab. His yearning and love are still not the correct Adab. Then the record of what happened is in Allah’s time, outside of, or, more correctly, beyond the space-time of the universe.
When Musa came to Our appointed time
and his Lord spoke to him,
he said, “My Lord, show me Yourself so that I may look at You!”
He said, “You will not see Me, but look at the mountain.
If it remains firm in its place, then you will see Me.”
But when His Lord manifested Himself to the mountain,
He crushed it flat
and Musa fell unconscious to the ground.
When he regained consciousness he said, “Glory be to You!
I make Tawba to You and I am the first of the Muminun!”
We find in Ibn Hanbal, in his Kitab al-Zuhud, this Hadith:
The Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said:
“The one who worships Allah sincerely for forty Subh prayers,
there appears from his Lord wisdom from his heart to his tongue.”
So from his Nabawiyyat, Rasulullah, under his dispensation, tells the people that he who reaches this level of adoration of Him, there will appear from their Lord wisdom that will come from his heart to his tongue. This is a very big secret revealed by Rasulullah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.
Before the Tajalli of Allah on the mountain, the mountain travels by Allah until its form disintegrates and disappears. The mountain is gone, but the dust remains.
Now we look at Surat al-Hashr (59:21):
If We Had sent down this Qur‘an onto a mountain,
you would have seen it humbled,
crushed to pieces out of fear of Allah.
We make such examples for people so that hopefully they will reflect.
So you see what we are arriving at here. It is overwhelming when you connect it to the prior Ayat about Sayyiduna Musa.
So the secret of Ikhlas is that in the Mukhlis the first determined time, the universal time of Allah is, we could say, not synchronised – because the other is not measurable – but that that time becomes identical with Allah’s time. And, as you know, nothing can be associated with it, it is Allah’s way of expressing it so that we can understand. So the two journeys become one event.
This term, Safar, is used because it comes from unveiling. We have been talking all this time about Safar as ‘journey’, but Safar is an unveiling. “Usfiru” is “He unveils.” One says of the woman, “She unveils herself” – “Safarat an-Wajiha” – she unveils her face. What we are saying is that this Safar, this movement is itself the unveiling of the Majesty and Power of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. Let us look at Surat al-Muddaththir (74:32-37):
No indeed! By the moon
and the night when it withdraws
and the dawn when it grows bright,
it truly is one of the greatest of all things,
a warning to human beings:
for any of you who want to go forward
or hang back.
“By the moon and the night when it withdraws.” So, when the created forms of the existent world withdraw and:
You see it is the term, Safar. It is really, “And the dawn when it unveils itself.” What we are seeing is the meeting of these two times. The creational time which is darkness and solid covers over, then the Subh unveils itself – the Tajalliyat of light from Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala. It is the cross-over of these two things which are only divided by the Barzakh which sets everything between Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, and His creation.
We can conclude from this that for this unveiling of Allah, subhanahu wa ta‘ala, the Mumin has to be prepared. His preparation is to recognise that that moment comes into the in-time when he has submitted to the realities of the in-time. He is not rushing forward any more than he is pulling back. This allows us to deduce from this that if man ignores his Hal – if a man is ignorant of the states he is passing through – he ignores his Waqt, he ignores the time that he is living in, in that instant. If he does not know his state, he does not know the moment that he is living in.
If man ignores his Waqt, he ignores his Nafs. He ignores himself. If man ignores his Nafs, then man ignores his Rabb. While it is not a Hadith, the great Sufis say it and the great ‘Alim, ar-Razi, who was almost a rationalist, quoted it often – the famous saying:
He who knows his self, knows his Lord.
