BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Question: You said that it is important to remember experience rather than information, how does one do that?

BismillahirRahmanirRahim. Yeah, what are you going to experience now? There are so many steps that you need to take before you experience. You cannot just jump into the experience. What happens if you just jump into the experience? You’ll get the wrong experience, or you get a very damaging experience.

You want to go on a vacation, ‘let’s go on a vacation.’ ‘Yeah, let’s go on a vacation!’ You cannot just get up and go, unless of course you are very very rich and all you need is one card and a phone call and everyone is going to arrange everything for you. Spiritually there are those kinds of people also, but they have a very strong connection and they have cut off every other connection to this world. That time wherever they go there are others on the way serving them, of course. But there’s a very very heavy price to pay for that. and they don’t do that just to go on a vacation anyway, they don’t do it for their own souls too, for their own salvation, for them to achieve a higher station. They don’t. They do it for the work that is ahead that Allah swt has put in this world to continue the mission of the Prophet (asws), because the story has not finish yet. It has not finished.

You are coming here, you are trying to be good, good. But those are just the beginning steps. Sahaba e-Kiram they came to the Prophet, they took Shahadat, they became good, that is just the beginning. Prophet (asws) had a mission. Can you imagine the Sahabi saying, ‘okay, this is all that I want from you Ya Rasulullah. Just to take Shahadat, just to be a good person, and now, eh you are doing all these things? You are going to all these battles? Eh it’s okay, it’s not me yani. I’m a peaceful tolerant one, yani, I’m loving. I stay here and you fight.’ There are those who did that to the earlier Prophet. Not of this nation. Because now, you start falling in love. Not with yourself, you fall in love with that one that is there that is in front of you, that is showing you the Creator of love. And once you fall in love, what do you have to do with what you want? It is what that one wants.

That is the meaning of a servant. It’s not about what you want. It’s about what your beloved wants. You don’t even care for your name. You care what the beloved calls you. That is servanthood. Now when you start doing that, that is a very long journey here to make. Because now you look with the eyes of the beloved and you see completely something else. It’s not you. You understand? When you have a Murshid, a Sheykh in front of you, you have an idea what it is. When you don’t, you are just imagining. You can do zikr, you can read up all this things but it is just an imagination to you because you have not taste it, you have not experience. You understand?

Why are we following a Murshid? Why are we following the Prophet (asws)? Because it brings us to Allah. We cannot bring ourselves to Allah. If we can bring ourselves to Allah, Allah will not send one single Prophet to this world. Allah will not send one single Prophet, Allah swt will just send the Quran into each and everyone of us. He did not. The Divine protocol is, our Kalimah is La ilaha ilallah Muhammadur Rasulullah. You cancel out Muhammadur Rasulullah, which the whole world is trying to do now, they say, ‘ just do La ilaha ilallah according to whatever your ilah is.’

‘Whatever your ilah is, what are you? You are like this, following your ego make translation of Allah’s words according to that.’

‘What are you? Your political idea is this, make translation of Quran according to that.’

‘What are you? Your agenda is this, make translation of Quran according to that. Reach to Allah by yourself. Prophet, put him aside.’

This will destroy your religion. You have no religion. Then your religion will become like those of the ahle Kitab who were earlier. They have Allah. They have tauhid. But they don’t follow their Prophet of Allah. At least they were honest enough to kill their Prophet. We are dishonoring now our Prophet (asws) by putting him aside. Let me not use hard words, to say that we kill our Prophet (asws). But there are so many Muslims who are doing that today. Everyone is rushing now to make a translation to the Quran, a new meaning of the Quran, according to their own nafs. And thousands are following. Because it fits to their nafs. It did not use to be like this. The people of the other nations, they did like this, thousands of version of the Bible, every denomination has, every year has, it’s a big booming business. They are doing the same, of course Prophet (asws) says, ‘my nation in the ahir Zaman will follow step by step the Jews, and the Christians.’

So how are you now going to experience that? Like I said, step by step, you have to. You want to go on a trip, first you have to see whether you can afford it or not, basically, correct? You want, you really want to go, you love to go, but if you don’t have (money), you cannot afford it, you cannot go. Meaning you have to pay. The journey back to Allah swt does not demand your money. But it demands payment. What is that payment? That payment is your ego. That payment is that which separates you from your Lord. That payment is that which you have to make the nafsu amara into a nafsu mutma’in. The one who is riding you, your ego, you must ride it like a Buraq to meet your Lord.’

So in order to experience that, first there is a payment. Then how much more of the analogy can we go on? Oh we can go on forever. You have to find a travel agency. Not someone who is going to cheat you, but who is going to sell you the ticket properly, and who is going to tell you, ‘I have my man there, he’s going to take you there.’ Correct? Then you have to, especially if you go on a long trip, you have to have a physical checkup. You have to have your clothes, you have to have this, this..There’s a lot of preparation before you actually embark on this experience. In the spiritual way, similar. You cannot just jump. You cannot just jump. Even if you say, ‘I’m saying La ilaha ilallah and everything disappeared,’ okay, that’s where you are. Never think for an instance that that is all that there is.

I am not relying on my Shahadat. I’m relying on the Shahadat of my Sheykh. He is relying on the Shahadat of his Sheykh. We are relying on the Shahadat of our Prophet (asws). If you are just going to rely on your Shahadat, on the one hand you say, ‘ashadua’la ilaha ilallah,’ then I’m going to ask you, which of us has witness Allah? Which of us? Witness Allah, Zahir and batin, for us to say that we have witness Allah. Which of us has witness the Prophet (asws), at least? None. And who taught us our Shahadat, anyway? Who taught us our Shahadat? When we came out as babies, we were taught the Shahadat? Don’t play games and to say, ‘no, no, we are all Muslims da, da,da,’ No, who taught us to give the Shahadat? Don’t say, ‘oh, I learn it from a book and this.’ Who taught us the Shahadat? You think this is coming from you? Coming from me? That we are doing our own research here and there, and we are coming up with faith? Allah swt has always brought faith from the highest station through His Prophet and His friends to this lower station for us. There is always a chain. It’s not from thin air that you collect and you put. Do you understand?

So now, to experience this you need to go to that one who has the key. People of zikr are people who say, ‘I’m trying with my Islam. I’m trying with my Iman. Now I want to try to taste the Ihsan.’ They will run like all those ones, for example, Salman al-Farisi, and all those other ones, who had learn religion, who had learn faith, now they are coming to the Prophet (asws) and they say, ‘we want to taste this Ya Rasulullah.’ Like Abu Dzar, like Abu Hurairah, like all those other ones. Now they say, ‘we want to taste Ya Rasulullah.’ They found a Murshid, they found the Prophet, they found a guide. And that sunnat, that tradition continues up till today. And you are not going to be able to taste if you don’t submit. It cannot. You are not able to taste if you don’t make the payment.

In about forty days, fifty days, sixty days, we are going to enter into the time that is the most important time, in reality, of Islam. Which is Qurban. Why is it the most important? Because it is the final act, in the final pillar of our faith, of Hajj, to come and to make the sacrifice, correct? If you don’t make the sacrifice, is your Hajj accepted? No.If you don’t make your Hajj, your religion is accepted but it is not complete. Because your five pillars. Does Allah need the blood of that camel or that cow or that goat or that sheep? What is that sacrifice mean? Nobody looks for meaning these days anyway. They only look to how to do it properly. When you throw the jamarat what does that mean? So many people are saying, ‘I’m throwing at sheytan.’ How can you throw at sheytan? Sheytan is there? No. Hazreti Ibrahim (as), Ismail (as), yes, they threw at sheytan. What are you doing? They threw at sheytan because sheytan was not in them. Have you thrown away the sheytan from inside of you? Do you even know that he exist inside of you? What, you think this religion is magic, auzubillahi minashaitanir rajim and it’s gone just like that?

We see in this month of Ramazan, sheytan is locked up but this world in this month of Ramazan became more and more cruel everyday. Why is that? Again people blaming sheytan, but Allah swt clearly He says: Sheytan it is coming from the inns and the jinns. Maybe from the race of the jinns they are already locked up, but inns, humans who became sheytan, they are not locked up. They are still running around. So the whole key again is the inside. If you don’t understand what is inside, how can you protect? How can you protect yourself and others? You are throwing that but you become more sheytanic throwing it. Some people they get so passionate, they start throwing their shoes, their things, their handbags, everything they are throwing. So this is when very very heavy spiritual practices it becomes just like a ritual. When it is so available to everyone, it becomes just like a ritual. When there’s a price tagged to it, it becomes a ritual. When it becomes a vacation, anyone they are so bored, they have gone to Europe, they have gone to India, they have gone to China now let’s do what? Let’s go to Umrah so that we can boast and brag to our friends we went to Umrah. Same way we say, we went to Nice, we went to this, we went to that, ‘oh I went to Medina,’ same thing, but it’s coming from what? It is coming from pride. They are doing that. That is when then it started, it becomes just a ritual and that ritual becomes empty and it will backfire on you. It will backfire. Instead of it cleaning you, it will make you dirtier.

The prayer, we’ve just finished the praying. The prayer is protecting you from evil actions and cleaning you up. Yet Yazid’s army they were praying before they killed Hz Hussein and his family and they said, ‘quickly we must kill the grandchildren of the Holy Prophet (asws), otherwise we are going to miss Zuhr.’ They were praying. So how are you going to now understand this?

Rituals, the actions, if you don’t understand the meaning, not only it becomes empty, if it’s empty it’s okay, but wrong meanings are going to come into it, nafsani meaning is going to come into it, sheytanic understanding is going to come into it, that time you do it and it will destroy you. So Qurban is going to come. Yes, what is that Qurban? It is the Qurban of our ego. The way that animal sacrificing itself for us, Allah does not want anything from us except for us to come back to Him, to return to Him as He created us. How did He create us? In Ahsani Taqweem, in the most perfect form. And for us to return, not to Him, just to return to Jannat, we have to be in Ahsani Taqweem. You think Ahsani Taqweem, the return to perfection, it is so easy? When Holy Prophet (asws) himself said, hidden shirk, the shirk that is the biggest sin, and what he fears is his nation in the ahir Zaman that they will have hidden shirk that they don’t even know. And he says, hidden shirk, it is more difficult to detect than a black on a black rock, on the darkest part of the night.

So for fourteen hundred years, from the Sahabi e-Kiram onward to the Tabi’in Tabi’in, and to Evliyaullah continuing, they concentrate on that, how to get rid of the hidden shirk, how to get rid of the ilahs, how to say, La ilaha ilallah, and how to experience saying La ilaha and to put ilallah. Murshid will guide you to that. A mirror. You understand? That time, step by step they will start preparing you. Because if you just jump into it, big trouble you are going to be. Huge trouble. You have all the money, you’ve done everything, you have all the credit and you give it to a charlatan, you give it to someone who is going to fool you with the money, a travel agency they just take the money and they don’t give you nothing, you are in trouble too.

So this is a journey back to our Lord Allah swt. It is not that easy for those who are going to return the way that the Prophet and the companions and the Evliyaullah they return to Allah swt, how serious they take it. Those who wants to return that way, they will take that seriously. Those who don’t take it seriously, they will return to their Lord, but they will return to their Lord in a way that even sheytan is going to return to his Lord. That time we are going to be in big trouble. Everyone of us, like Maulana Rumi is saying, ‘yes that time they will understand that moss is going to grow from the deepest part of hell.’ Meaning, every man eventually they will reach to Paradise, but how we get there? Some will get there fast, some will take their time, some they have to clean, some they have clean themselves in this world, so it’s easy. Some they have to be clean in the grave. Some they have to stay in the fire, fire have to clean them, some for thousands of years, some for longer than that. This is not to be scoffed at.

The fire in Hell, Evliyaullah they are saying, one drop of the fire of hell is dipped into the Ocean of Rahmat seventy times, and what has cooled down is given to this world and that is the hottest temperature physically that is in this world coming from that. The thing is, we don’t take our religion too seriously. We don’t take Allah, we don’t take our Prophet seriously. We don’t take hell seriously. We don’t take the grave seriously. We should, insya’Allah because these are the things that give us perspective, it wakes us up, it makes us to balance living in this world. WaminAllahu Taufiq. Fatiha. SelamAleykum warahmatullah.

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
10 Shawwal 1437
July 14, 2016.