Personal Protection: When Faced with something or an Energy that is unpleasant... Naqshbandi Authorized Protection: First And Most Important : Evilness Can not Look to the Face of the Sultan al-Awliya. So Proudly Display His Pictures Over Beds, Living Room, Dinning Room, Entrances to home, Cars :
Power of Darood or Salawat on Prophet Muhammad (s): Burns away evilness , because Sayedena Muhammad (s) Promise that for every Praise and Prayer on Me I will be present to you to return the greetings. This Light of Sayedena Muhammad (s) Burns away evilness.
This is a spiritually significant Emblem, that shows ones connection to the DivineKingdom. Followers of Sultan Awliya Muhammad Nazim Haqqani should proudly display this Taweez or Similar to this . On Ones Self, family members personal property and homes, on the window right corner of each window .
The Levels of Sufi Meditation Muraqabah/Sufi Meditation Step by Step
Level One: Meeting the Shaykh/Mentor in the Realm of the Spirit The goal of the first level of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation is to imagine yourself in the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor, to give him greetings, to converse with him, and to build a relationship with him on a spiritual level. After proceeding through the aforementioned preparatory steps, visualize yourself in the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor. The operative word here is “visualize.” Visualizing is not the same as imagining. When we imagine something, we create a fictional illusion in our mind. What we are concerned with here is reality, and you must know that the follower is truly in the continual presence of the Shaykh/Mentor, on the plane of the spirit. So visualize that reality, projecting it onto the screen of your mind. Keep your eyes closed. ! ! ! ! ! See the Shaykh/Mentor through the eye of the heart. Do not look for his face. Instead, concentrate on his aura, his spiritual form. When you begin to perceive the Shaykh/Mentor’s presence, give him greetings. It is important to maintain proper manners with the Shaykh/Mentor during Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, behaving exactly as you would if you were in the Shaykh/Mentor’s physical presence. Sit still, maintaining a position of respect—if it is not too difficult for you, kneel. If this is too difficult, then sit cross-legged. Remain fully conscious, fully awake, and fully aware of your connection with the Shaykh/Mentor. ! ! ! ! At this point, you may allow your soul to converse with the Shaykh/Mentor. In so doing you define, build, and strengthen your relationship with his reality. Follow what the Shaykh/Mentor reveals to your heart about spiritual matters. However, with regard to worldly matters, any inspiration you receive through muraqabah/Sufi Meditation should be confirmed with the Shaykh/Mentor before you act on it.
Level Two: Connecting Your Heart with the Heart of the Shaykh/Mentor After mastering the first level of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, your next goal is to build a spiritual connection between your heart and the Shaykh/Mentor’s. To accomplish this, begin as before and visualize yourself in his presence. After greeting the Shaykh/Mentor, ask permission to connect your heart to his light and his heart to your light. Imagine a ray of light extending from the Shaykh/Mentor’s heart to your heart and another extending from your heart to the Shaykh/Mentor’s. This creates a powerful spiritual connection. Once this connection is established, recite your daily dhikr, taking care to maintain the connection between your heart and the Shaykh/Mentor’s throughout (See the Appendix for details of the daily awrad and an explanation of its secrets). Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings Once a Day : • Make fresh wudu and pray 2 raka’. • 3x Shahada [ Kalimatu Shahadah (3 times): Ashhadu an la ilaha illa-lah, wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasulu-lah] • 100-200x Istighfar [Astaghfirul lahal ‘Atheem wa atubu ilayh ] • 3x Surah Ikhlas [Qul huwa Allahu ahadun Allahu alssamadu Lam yalid walam yooladu Walam yakun lahu kufuwan ahadun ] • Fatiha (read fatiha)] • Minimum 200x seeking support and presence of Mawlana Shaykh (Q): “Madad ya Sayyidi, Madadul-Haq Ya Mawlana Shaykh Nazim Haqqani ” Repeating Dhikr Level Three: Controlling the Breath The goal of this exercise is to practice conscious breathing. According to GrandShaykh/Mentor ‘Abdul Khaliq Ghujdawani ق: The most important mission for the seeker in this Order is to safeguard his breath, and he who cannot safeguard his breath, it would be said of him, “he lost himself.” The name Allah, which encompasses the ninety-nine Names and Attributes, consists of four letters, alif (ا), lam (ل), lam (ل), and hah (ه): للها. The people of Sufism say that the absolute unseen Essence of God is expressed by the last letter, hah (ه). Shah Naqshband ق said: This Order is built on breath. So it is a must for everyone to safeguard his breath in the time of his inhalation and exhalation, and further, to safeguard his breath in the interval between the inhalation and exhalation. Dhikr is flowing in the body of every single living creature by the necessity of its breath—even without will—as a sign of obedience, which is part of its creation. Through its breathing, the sound of the letter hah of the Divine Name Allah is made with every exhalation and inhalation, and it is a sign of the Unseen Essence serving to emphasize the Uniqueness of God. Therefore, it is necessary to be present with that breathing in order to realize the Essence of the Creator. Safeguarding your breath from Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings heedlessness will lead you to complete Presence, and complete Presence will lead you to complete Vision, and complete Vision will lead you to complete Manifestation of God’s ninety-nine Names and Attributes. God leads you to the Manifestation of His ninety-nine Names and Attributes and all His other Attributes, because it is said, “God’s Attributes are as numerous as the breaths of human beings.” It must be known by everyone that securing the breath from heedlessness is difficult for seekers. Therefore, we must safeguard it by seeking forgiveness. Seeking forgiveness will purify it and sanctify our breath and prepare us for the Real Manifestation of God everywhere. To perform this meditation, prepare as you would for any other form of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation. Take special care during ablution to ensure that your hands are clean. Make your meditation space as dark as possible. ! ! ! ! ! ! Play a recording of Quranic recitation, prayers on the Prophet ÿ, dhikr, or some other soothing sound. Take care to perform even the smallest details of this form of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, because they are the foundation of your meditation. Assume a kneeling position or sit cross-legged in the “Lotus Position.” Close your eyes and mouth. Clench your teeth together—gently, not hard—and keep your tongue pressed firmly against the roof of your mouth. Inhale, then hold your breath to slow your heart rate and breathing. Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings The hands carry tremendous secrets, and their position in this exercise is important. You will begin to unlock the secrets of the hands in this meditation. God placed Divine Codes on our hands—these are activated by rubbing them together (See page Error! Bookmark not defined. et seq.). The hands can also function like satellite dishes, receiving Divine Energies and other emanations. Position your hands so that the tip of the thumb is touching the tip of the index finger, with the other fingers extended straight. This forms the shape of the word Allah in Arabic script. Now pay attention to your breathing. Breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. When you breathe in through your nose, say, Hu-Allah. ! ! ! Exhale through your mouth, saying Hu. As you breathe in, imagine white light entering through your heart. When you breathe out, imagine black energy being expelled from your mouth. When we exhale, the carbon monoxide that leaves our bodies contains negative energy from our bad actions. Therefore the Prophet ÿ said, "When you drink (water), do not breathe in Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings the vessel.”1 When you visualize this bad energy leaving your body, these bad actions are being purged from your soul. GrandShaykh/Mentor Abdul Khaliq Ghujdawani ق said: The wise seeker must safeguard his breath from heedlessness, coming in and going out, thereby keeping his heart always in the Divine Presence; and he must revive his breath with worship and servitude and dispatch this worship to His Lord full of life, for every breath which is inhaled and exhaled with Presence is alive and connected with the Divine Presence. Every breath inhaled and exhaled with heedlessness is dead, disconnected from the Divine Presence. Keep repeating Ya Sayyidi, Ya Mawlana Shaykh/Mentor, Madad Ya Sahibu’l-waqt while holding your index finger and thumb together gently and trying to feel your pulse. It is important to feel your own heart beating and make sure it is in tune with your breathing. Hear your heart beating, Allah, Allah. Remember that each of us is surrounded by a field of energy. You are receiving emanations of Divine Energy. Level Four: Dressing Yourself in the Light of the Shaykh/Mentor Enter the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor, then ask him to dress you in his light; to dress you in the divine dress that God has placed on him. Imagine the Shaykh/Mentor’s heart over your heart, his beard over your face. When you are dressed in the light of the Shaykh/Mentor, it is as though you are wearing a favorite cloak of his. Keep repeating Madad Ya Sahibu’l-waqt, Madad Ya Sahibu’l-waqt. Remember, the Shaykh/Mentor is with the Prophet ÿ. The Shaykh/Mentor is in the Divine Presence. He is one of those who died before they died. The masters of this Order say we do not truly live until we die. We die by killing our desires. If we do this, then in every waking moment we will find ourselves in the presence of Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ. But we are not yet at that station, and so we must attach ourselves to someone who is. By maintaining the Shaykh/Mentor’s light upon us and by continuing to see support by repeating Madad Ya Sahibu’l-waqt throughout the day, we can maintain our connection with the Prophet ÿ and the Divine Presence. Consider the difference that this can make in our prayers. When we call Allahu Akbar, we must recognize that our prayer is of no importance to God. It is only important to us. We have an understanding of God, but we do not know His Reality. Nothing can occupy space with Him. Nothing can occupy that place except God. The only servant who truly understands that is the Prophet Muhammad ÿ. Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net 1 Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings We cannot connect directly to Prophet ÿ. We need a means, even if it is indirect, of connecting with God, and therefore we have to maintain our connection with our Shaykh/Mentor who is connected to the Prophet ÿ, who is connected with God. With this chain of connection, our prayer may mean something. And the same is true for dhikr or any other form of worship. Visualize yourself being dressed with the light of the Shaykh/Mentor, the light of his form. Imagine that your weak and deficient light bulb is suddenly being filled with his brilliant light. We are full of holes, so we cannot contain the light that enters into us and concentrate it. But the Shaykh/Mentor’s light is as bright as a laser. It is focused. And, as such, it is capable of transmitting enormous amounts of information. Today, God has taught mankind to use lasers to beam data from one place to another. He is revealing this technology in order to show us that information is transmitted by light. This is the meaning of the term Naqshbandi. It refers to the ability to burn information into your heart and soul with light, just as a laser can burn data onto a compact disc. ! ! ! ! ! ! As you visualize yourself being dressed in the light of the Shaykh/Mentor, as you imagine his light filling you, pay attention to your breathing. Breathe in through your nose and, as you do, say Allah silently in your heart. Then breathe out through your mouth and, as you do, say Hu. As you do this, remain conscious of your heartbeat and maintain your connection with your Shaykh/Mentor, asking him to send more and more light into you. That light will come and cauterize your deficiencies. Doctors used to use hot knives to sear the flesh they cut in order to stop the flow of blood, creating very strong scar tissue. The light of the Shaykh/Mentor has a similar effect upon the spiritual body. When we sin and fail to ask God for forgiveness, those sins become like barnacles or calluses on our souls. That is why the Prophet ÿ used to say, “I see the scabs of devils.” The Shaykh/Mentor’s light can burn away these impurities. The light of the Shaykh/Mentor contains the light of his Shaykh/Mentor, which contains the light of the Prophet ÿ. That is why it is so powerful. Of course, our egos resist this purification. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to perform muraqabah/Sufi Meditation. Another is that, in muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings we are forced to examine ourselves and confront our mistakes and bad deeds head on. We are faced with the truth about ourselves. During muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, the Shaykh/Mentor may ask you, “Why did you do this?” or “Why did you say that?” He may ask you to explain your actions, to examine your motivations and real intentions. In muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, there is no hiding from the truth. Truth is coming and falsehood is vanishing. And we are not always happy with what we see. Indeed, the ego will be very happy with its old station. It has no need to become a slave of the truth or a servant of the Prophet ÿ. It has no need for such accounting. But we do, if we hope to advance upon the Path of Righteousness. We must practice muraqabah/Sufi Meditation each night, reflecting upon our actions, and taking our due of praise or criticism from our Shaykh/Mentor; without such self-examination, we may spend our whole lives heedless of our bad actions. If you can face such scrutiny, if you can break through the barriers thrown up by your ego to prevent this light from shinning in to the dark recesses of your soul, then whole oceans of knowledge and understanding will open up for you. Level Five: Carrying the Dress of the Shaykh/Mentor To carry the dress of the Shaykh: 3 levels of continuous struggle Keep His Love {Muhabat} , Keep His Presence { Hudur} Execute His Will upon our selves {Annilation or Fana} After we have built a strong connection between our heart and the heart of the Shaykh/Mentor, the goal becomes to maintain that spiritual connection—not just in muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, but throughout the day. There are three levels to this struggle: keeping the love for the Shaykh/Mentor, keeping his presence, and making the Shaykh/Mentor’s will our will. This final level is that Station of Annihilation. To accomplish this, you must wear the light of the Shaykh/Mentor and, from this point forward, imagine that you are always cloaked in that spiritual raiment. You must not eat, drink, pray, perform dhikr, or do anything else without imagining the Shaykh/Mentor’s image upon you. Your love for the Shaykh/Mentor will mix with his presence, and this will open the door to annihilation in him. The more you can remain mindful of this spiritual dress, the more that you can remember to visualize it upon yourself throughout the day, the faster your progress towards that station will be and the more complete your annihilation in the Shaykh/Mentor will become. Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings Once you have annihilated yourself in the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor, he will annihilate you in the presence of the Holy Messenger of God, Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ. Then you must keep the love of the Prophet ÿ in your heart, just as you kept your love for the Shaykh/Mentor. You must keep yourself in the presence of the Prophet ÿ, just as you kept yourself in the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor. And you must make the Prophet’s ÿ will your will, just as you executed the will of the Shaykh/Mentor upon yourself. This will lead you to the Divine Presence, to a station of being, yet being without existence—a clear vessel for whoever wishes to fill your being from God’s Divine Kingdom. In this state of Oneness with Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ, you gradually assimilate and understand his knowledge through passion, longing, and love. Duration of Muraqabah/Sufi Meditation Initially, you may begin the practice of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation for short intervals of five to fifteen minutes, and gradually work towards longer sessions. With practice, these sessions may extend for hours at a time. What is most important, however, is that you maintain a consistent practice, as this is the only way to gain any lasting benefit. It is better and wiser to perform muraqabah/Sufi Meditation for a short time each day without omission than to be sporadic in your discipline and the practice thereof. If one applies a small amount of effort consistently, this will yield tremendous progress over time. Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings Prophetic Muraqabah/Sufi Meditation Once the seeker has mastered the basic practice of muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, he may move on to more advanced spiritual practices. In Prophetic Muraqabah/Sufi Meditation, the seeker tries to build a personal relationship with the Prophet ÿ. To perform this exercise, you will need a cassette or compact disc recording of blessings on the Prophet ÿ. Begin by dressing yourself with the light of the Shaykh/Mentor. That is the first step for all of the more advanced forms of meditation. Close your eyes and visualize yourself in the presence of the Shaykh/Mentor, dressed in his light. Then begin playing the recorded blessings. As you listen to the recorded blessings, you must know that the Prophet ÿ is within you. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! We all know that Satan is with us, always trying to ensnare us in his traps and whispering his lies in our ears. But Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ is with us, too, and God gave more power to Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ than He did to Satan. Our sultan is Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ. So, as we believe in the presence of evil, we must believe in the even more powerful presence of his goodness. In this meditation, you focus on that Prophetic presence within you. You must know it, feel it, see it, and you must say, “I am weak, I am poor, and Sayyidina Muhammad ÿ is everything. Gaze upon me! Accept me to be in front of your Holy Grave! I am asking for your love, for your forgiveness, for your guidance, and for faith. That love you have for God, if you give me one drop of it I will drown! If you do not open your door, they are going to destroy me! They are going to rip apart my faith! They are going to rip apart my family! Please, open your door!” You must pound on that door, the door of the Prophet ÿ. And, when that door opens, you must place your head on the Prophet’s ÿ lap. Know that you are in his spiritual presence. Dress yourself in that holy presence and go into that holy heart, the Heart of Muhammad. Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Sufi Meditation and Muraqaba Naqshbandi Teachings Naqshbandi Muhibeen www.nurmuhammad.com As-Sayed Nurjan MirAhmadi nurmir@att.net Conclusion To climb the mountain, the seeker must journey from the lower world to the Divine Presence. He or she must travel from the ego’s world of sensual reality to the soul’s world of Divine reality. To make progress on this journey, we must bring into our heart the picture of the Shaykh/Mentor, as it is the most powerful means of detaching ourselves from the hold of the senses. The Shaykh/Mentor becomes, in our hearts, the mirror of the Absolute Essence. If we are successful in this, we reach the state of self-effacement—absence from the world of the senses. To the degree that this state increases in us, our attachment to the world of the senses will weaken and disappear, and we will come into the Station of the Absolute Void—not sensing anything other than God. The highest degree of this station is called Annihilation. Thus, Shah Naqshband ق said: The shortest path to our goal, which is God, Almighty and Exalted, is for God to lift the veil from the Essence of the Face of His Oneness that appears in all creation. He does this with the State of Erasure and Annihilation in His Absolute Oneness, until His Majestic Essence dawns upon and eliminates the consciousness of anything other than Him. This is the end of the Journey of Seeking God and the beginning of another Journey. At the end of the Journey of Seeking and the State of Attraction comes the State of Self-Effacement and Annihilation. This is the goal of all mankind as, God mentioned in the Quran: I did not create Jinn and Mankind except to worship Me. (51:56)
A’udhu bi-wajhi-llahil-karim wa bi-kalimati-llahi-t-tammat-allati la yujawizuhunna barrun wa la fajir, min sharri ma yanzilu min-as-sama’i wa ma ya’ruju fiha wa min sharri ma yakhruju minha wa min fitan-il-layli wa-n-nahari wa min tawariq-il-layli wa-n-nahari illa tariqan yatruku bi-khayrin, ya Rahman!
(I seek refuge in the gracious nature of my Lord Allah, and in the perfection of the Divine Word which neither the righteous nor the transgressor is able to breach, from the evil which descends from the sky and that which rises up to it; and from the evil which comes forth from the sky; and from the tribulations of the night and the day, and from all the calamities of night and day, except for those that result in benefit, oh Lord of Mercy!)
“When this Du’a was recited, the fire of this Ifrit died down and the creature ceased to exist.
Introduction: What Are Angels?
Angels are the hope of humanity. They are the source of light
and the energy of creation. They are the beacons for every seeker,
the oasis in every desert,
the waves in every ocean,
the spring of every river,
the crystal in every diamond. They are
the dew from heaven on every leaf. They are
the life in every drop of blood in animate beings,
the motion behind every living cell. They are
the driving force of constellations
and galaxies.
They are the stars
and suns
and moons in every firmament.
The universes swim in their orbits. They are the superpowers known
by all traditions, beliefs,
and philosophies.
It is universally known, based on these sources, that God created the angels to carry out His orders and transmit the messages that pertain to human beings. Angels are honored, subtle beings created from light who serve their Lord. They exemplify the qualities of perfection, obedience, and dedication. They can take any form they like at any time and place. They carry unlimited miraculous powers through which they can reach anyone in the blink of an eye to help and to heal, to serve and to console, to love and to be loved.
Angels take any form they wish in the physical world. As crystal water takes the form of the cup in which it is poured, angels can take the form of any creation which they visit. They do not retain their full original form of light when they are sent to human beings: "Say: If there were in the earth angels walking secure, We had sent down for them from heaven an angel [without change] as messenger" (17:95). Angels can come as birds, as human beings, or as a form of light like a rainbow adorning the sky. They have a mind and a heart, but no will and no desire other than to serve and obey God. They are never too proud to obey Him.
Angels worship day and night without fatigue. They do not need to sleep, as their eyes never tire. They know no heedlessness. Their attention never wavers. Their food is glorification of God, their drink is to sanctify and to magnify Him. Their intimacy is in calling their Lord through hymning and singing His praise. Their enjoyment is to serve Him. They are devoid of any and all physiological restraints. They suffer no mood-changes.
Angels inhabit Paradise and the seven heavens. They worship more than human beings because they came before them and they have greater and more powerful faculties than they. They are more pious than human beings because they are innocent and unable to fall into mistakes or wrongdoings. They never ask forgiveness for themselves but always for human beings. This shows us how much they care for us and to what extent God created them to look after us. God made them our guardians because a guardian is more perfect than the one he guards.
Angels are more knowledgeable than human beings. The teacher, again, is better than the student. Their knowledge is of two kinds: intellectual and traditional."Intellectual" means here: "of the essence of reality" or "of the heart." "Traditional" means: "revealed and translated down from above."
Intellectual knowledge is a must, such as knowledge about God and His attributes. It is impossible for angels, the prophets, and pious people to fail to possess it. They have no excuse in failing to know it. The knowledge that is not obligatory is the way in which God has created the wonders of creation, such as knowledge of the Throne, of the Pen, of Paradise, Hell and Heavens. In addition there is the knowledge of the different kinds of angels, human beings, the inhabitants of the earth on the ground, under the ground, in the air, and under the sea. In the latter kind of knowledge angels are undoubtedly more versed than human beings. This is because they were created long before them: angels accompanied the entire process of creation of the universes as well as that of human beings. They are also more familiar with that knowledge because of their God-given vision and hearing. But such knowledge is only attainable to those who have purified their heart and vision among human beings.
As for traditional knowledge, it is the prophetic knowledge that cannot be known by human beings without benefit of revelation. Only angels are able to bring that kind of knowledge to them. They were indeed the intermediary between God and human beings in that respect. Furthermore, it is possible that they are the continuous intermediaries of the events of the Last Day, after having been those of past and present events up to the Last Prophet, Muhammad, Peace be upon him. They are knowledgeable in the traditions that particularly regard them and with which God has entrusted them. That is the reason why angels are far more knowledgeable than human beings and carry six kinds of perfect attributes:
·They are messengers from the divine presence;
·are noble in God's sight;
·They have been empowered by God with a power rendering them capable of pure obedience;
·are well-regarded and firmly established in the Divine Presence;
·They are obeyed in the earthly world;
·are trustworthy in receiving, keeping, and delivering the revelation.
The perfect state of human beings can no doubt never be achieved until the angelic power is linked with it. By God's permission, angels monopolize that angelic power which enlightens any human individual that connects with it. The perfection of human beings, therefore, depends on the capacity to annihilate the human soul in the crucible of the angels. The conclusion of this process is described in the Koranic verse: "Thou soul in complete rest and satisfaction! Return unto thy Lord, accepted and accepting! Enter thou among my servants (angels), and enter thou my Garden!" (89:27-30)
According to that verse, God causes the spirit of human beings to enter the throng of the angels first, then Paradise. A condition of entering Paradise is to receive angelic greetings and revelation, at which time one enters it as a spirit endowed with angelic attributes. God then makes of such spirits messengers for His continuous creations; they are granted the happiness of living in Paradise and enjoying the sight of their Lord. God made the greetings of angels necessary for human beings when their spirits enter into the angelic power. This is to elevate them to a higher state and produce for them a great happiness. Therefore, without the heavenly input of angels, the spirit of human beings cannot reach everlasting happiness.
The contribution of the angels to human happiness is derived from their perfection. Angels are free from any kind of anger, illusion, imagination, or delusion. This characteristic gives them the power to be in the divine presence and under God's divine light. It is because of these shortcomings that human beings are prevented from being in the divine presence. Because perfection resides only in the state of reaching the divine presence, only angels can properly be said to have the attribute of perfection among created beings.
The spiritual dimensions of angels have different aspects.
·The angel is a sublime luminescence.
·His knowledge is perfect and complete because he knows the secret of the unseen and
·is acquainted with the hidden secrets of creation.
·His knowledge is real, active, and continuous.
·The action of the angel is genuine because angels are committed to serve and their commitment is perfectly carried through.
Angels inhabit the seven moving planets, the polestar, and all the fixed stars of every other galaxy.
§Orbits are like their bodies whose hearts are the planets.
§The movements of these planets in their orbits is the principle of the changes on this planet earth.
§The movements of angels in this universe has an influence on the states of human beings on this earth.
§From the movements of these angels, by God's order, the connection is made between the movements of galaxies.
§The transmission of signals even millions of light-years away from us affect the states of human nature.
§The heavenly world thus always holds sway over the earthly world.
God created the sun from the angelic light. It allows this world to see everything of the material objects that were previously wrapped in darkness. Without that light of the sun nothing can be seen.
The latter always shines and reflects on the moon like a mirror so that it appears like a shining body. In the same way human beings, though they are inscribed by an angelic power, darken themselves through the oppression of their ego. Never theless, they are in a position to be always shining, and shining far more radiantly than the moon.
The moon possesses nothing of the light of the sun by itself; it only reflects at best. The main power belongs to the sun. Similarly, God has placed and organized in every orbit of the heavens, skies, galaxies, planets, and Paradises a creation differing from one orbit to another. They act like mirrors that reflect the light of the angels from the divine presence.
These celestial phenomena extend that angelic light, mirror-like, for the benefit of human beings and other creations. That light is "made subject" (musakhkhara) to whatever is needed by creation. That light is the source of the angelic power, the very angelic power itself. Indeed, it is the substance of goodness and benefits every place of creation.
As the angels move in the divine presence, their lights move in and upon the orbits which God created to be governed by them. Angelic powers affect the movements and contents of these orbits. Since these orbits reflect angelic lights upon earth, we see how human beings can in turn be affected by the movements of orbits in their lives. Angelic lights also affect feelings, moods, manners, and actions.
The elements and qualities of human beings and other created objects on earth vary according to their respective distances from the sources of angelic power. Hence we find differences between human beings, even though their bodies are similar. This is because they differ in respect to their connections with angels. The differences are not really in bodies but in the human beings' spiritual attributes and characteristics.
Human beings carry from childhood either the characteristics of goodness and holiness, or those of evil and wrongdoing. That is a very real picture of the spiritual "dress" of human beings and their hierarchies: one receives an angelic power while the other does not. This is what makes one better than the other, just as diamonds excel emeralds, which are better than sapphire, which is better than rubies. All these are rare jewels but they vary in exellence. For all these jewels are more precious than gold. Gold is more precious than silver and silver is more precious than iron. The latter ends up as scrap while the others are always kept as valuable elements.
Light is better than darkness. The transparent is better than the opaque. The subtle is better than the dense. The enlightened person is better than the one in darkness. The beautiful is better than the ugly. The one calling to goodness is better than the one calling to evil. The shy, courageous, generous, patient one is better than the one who carries hatred, enmity, darkness, evil, greed, and stinginess. All the above-mentioned characteristics depend on the nearness or farness of their respective bearers to the sources of angelic power.
Therefore, in this world the human spirit is a sign pointing dimly to the perfection of the higher world. It is like the light of the candle in relation to the light of the sun, or a small drop in relation to the ocean. Angelic light is the means of visibility of light on earth, both material and spiritual. We know about the sun from its rays. Similarly, we know about God from the creations of the heavens and the earth, the perception of which is brought about by the shining of angelic light upon them and their expression through revelation by that light. There is no darkness for us deeper than the non-existence of angelic light. There is no light of God more expressive for us than the angelic light. The appearance of each single thing is the result of this light, just as the existence of each thing proceeds from its existence. In this way God preserves creation through the light of the angels.
Human beings are themselves like a veil or eclipse of the angelic light. That is, they eclipse the angelic light which eclipses the light of God. Thus you can see the attributes of the Creator through His wonderful creations. This is the meaning of the Prophet's saying: "Think of the creations of God. Do not think of His essence."
The spirits of human beings can be described as atoms inside the heavenly world and their bodies as the houses of their spirits. Now, the house has a state and the inhabitant of the house has a state distinct from the first state.
·It is clear to us that the inhabitant is more honorable than the house, for the greatness of the house depends on its inhabitant. { What makes Kabbah is Muhammad {S}}
·These human spirits are an actual part of the angelic spirits.
·That is why the condition of entry into Paradise for the soul of a dying person is that it be accepted into the angelic realm first, as we have said. That is also why the human spirit is qualified to receive transmission from the angelic powers, as the satellite dish is made to receive transmission from the main station.
·To the extent that these individuals are connected to the angelic powers, they become undoubtedly more and more important to other human beings on earth. However, human bodies remain a compound of many different elements mixed together. The bodies of angels, on the other hand, are only made of light from the divine presence. It is important to know that this difference never goes away in the material world. That is why the angels prefer to support the spirits of the bodies of prophets. For the prophetic spirits have elevated their bodily receptacles to the point where they acquire all manners of gnosis and spiritual states. These in turn enable them to become beacons of light spreading heavenly gifts and carrying God's message to His creation. All these relations between angels and prophets, saints and pious people, obtain by God's will and His permission.
Angels are honored because of their knowledge and status as inhabitants of Paradise and recipients of God's satisfaction. They always look at their Lord and seeing nothing but their Lord. As we said previously, the inhabitant is more important than the body it inhabits. This is evident in the fact that the Prophets are more precious than their mothers, although they inhabited their mothers' wombs. The status goes to the prophets, not to their mothers, because of the prophets' greater connection to the angelic powers. As an illustration we may say that the spirit of Jesus is better than his mother's body, and similarly that the spirit of the Messenger of God (Muhammad) is better than his mother's body.
When God created creation, He said: "Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, the Beneficent; with Whom none can converse. On the day when the angels and the Spirit stand arrayed, they speak not, saving him whom the Beneficent alloweth and who speaketh right." (78:37-38) God shows in these words that the angels are from among His greatest creations. They stand second to him and they are His messengers of revelation sent to His prophets. He has honored them by letting them reveal the astounding knowledge in two ways: spiritually and phenomenally. He reveals it spiritually by letting prophets bring such knowledge in heavenly books and thereby guide others to the faith and honorable manners characteristic of the servants of God. He reveals it phenomenally by inspiring the hearts of humankind to investigate and discover the visible world and accumulate empirical data. Hence, they achieve the most sophisticated technology that can possibly be reached by them in every given century.
This opens another window into understanding the role of angels among human beings. Scientists are actually using the energies that radiate from the angels on this earth to build up technological knowledge. By use of angelic energy they achieve a perfect mode of living: educating, helping, and healing those in need.
Spiritual people use the angelic power as a path of discovery for different purposes. They use this power in the knowledge that it is special grant from God.
·He gives them a sacred and noble trust that has the potential to govern countless bodies other than their own.
·This ability is defined as " the angelic power in them." These spiritual people are known in Islamic spirituality as abdal: "changed ones."
·They can move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. They can live at one and the same time in the first and the second place.
·They can live in many other places as well and yet maintainn the same appearance as their original self. This is called ubiquity.
Sufi scholar-saints such as these, also known as knower-saints or gnostics (`arif, pl. `arifun), have confirmed that there is another world between that of human bodies on earth and that of angels, and have called that world the imaginal world. This imaginal world is more subtle than the earthly world and yet denser than the angelic world. This characteristic of the imaginal world allows the abdal to travel within that dimension in the way that we have mentioned.
The method used by these spiritual people can be described as a self-riddance of the trappings of gravity. Everything yearns for its origin and the body yearns for earth which is pulled by gravity. The spirit, however, yearns to the heavenly realm which pulls upwards. These abdal were capable of balancing the opposite elements earth/heaven, or upward/downward, within themselves in such a way that the element earth which once dominated over the other is now dominated by the other and follows it.
The intellect dominates the conscience to the extent that some have said that the conscience is in the prison of the mind. If the intellect is of the destructive type, that person will use knowledge and self-discovery to hurt instead of to heal. Laser beams can be used for destruction as well as healing, but they are the same rays in either case. If that intellect does not balance properly between right and wrong, then it will be using the knowledge it acquires in an inappropriate way. If, however, the conscience dominates and plays a greater role, it will at one point dominate over the mind and ensure that it is controlled by the yearning to do good. That is best for himself and for humanity at large, for that person will be constantly motivated to use his knowledge to help and to serve others.
·This is the case in the body that imprisons the spirit: the person who can balance the two poles within will be qualified as a wise one.
·Further down the road, if that person can progress more in the heavenly direction, he can use his spirit to dominate the body and acquire those powers that cut through the fetters of gravity.
·This enables him to use the spirit to move the mass of the body, not only his own but those of others as well. For such a spirit, when it connects with its angelic power, will become a form of energy and light.
·These entities can move mass at higher speeds than the mind can conceive.
·This is how these pious people known as saints or abdal were known to appear at any critical time and any place that they liked.
·Thus, they help people and teach them. The ubiquitous appearances of one's person in many places are like reflected images of the same one body through the mirror of an angelic power.
·This mirror produces thousands upon thousands of pictures at the same time, except that those pictures are every bit as real as the original which is being reflected. {similar to Facsimile machine}
God will create an angel called al-Natiq, " the Uttering Angel," out of His own dhikr (remembrance) of Himself for every one of these types of realized people.
·That angel is instructed to inhabit the heart of the pious servant of God.
·His duty is to continuously inform that servant of his duties and obligations in each twenty-four hour cycle, besides the known duties of worship.
·This link of information establishes a further possibility for the saint of reaching other human beings through the power of his heart.
·Furthermore, God will enable him to hear the minutest cell in his body.
·The angel speaks to him and explains why God created it, what physical purpose it serves in the body, what can poison it, and what can heal it. Moreover, it will inform him how to heal himself from any disorder of his body, and enable him to heal others through his acquired angelic energy.
·The saint's angelic power thus enables him to converse freely with every cell in his body as if he were speaking to another person sitting in the same room. This ability will open for him the understanding that the human body to which is joined an angelic power is greater and even less fathomable than this entire universe.
·Indeed, each cell is a world unto itself. It is inhabited by all kinds of infinitesimally small spiritual laborers. Their function is to run the life support system of that cell. A factory needs all kinds of instruments and machines, labor and managers to keep it alive and protect it from any kind of error and destruction. In the same way, scientifically speaking, the cell has its own defense system against any invader from outside: that protection is produced by the tiny angelic staff whom God created for that purpose.
As the saint becomes more and more perceptive in his inner hearing and speaking, he will concentrate his entire power. He then places it in his heart exclusively of any other focal point. This process can be compared to the concentration of light which does not burn if scattered over the paper, but burns if reassembled into one ray under a magnifying glass.
·At that time the saint will be able to send that gathered angelic light out of his heart in order to reach any human being on this earth and any heavenly being above.
·The continuous build-up of this angelic power in the saint's heart allows him to witness heavenly sights and acquire heavenly knowledge.
·This continues until the day comes when an indescribable light appears in the horizon of his heart.
·This light expands the heart to an infinitesimal degree. It removes from it all the remaining veils that up to this point prevented it from reaching the realities of the heavenly world.
·Meanwhile, God orders the angels, each one in his state, duty, and position, to inform that pious individual of three things:
othe reason of his creation,
ohis position in the divine scheme, and
ohis duty within creation.
oEvery single one of these angels will thereupon adorn that pious person. They will endow him with a kind of gift. At a certain point, he will himself become "dilated" which, in the language of mystics, means that he will be clad in a subtle body of light, the same light that characterizes angelic beings. That body is not visibly transparent to other human beings. Nevertheless, they can feel the light that emanates from the saint's body and be attracted to him as a magnet attracts other elements.
When people are attracted to this Knower-saint, however, he must not show that he is different from others and pretend to be higher than them. He must be an instrument of this angelic power. Being proud puts him in the same category as Satan. Although the latter possesed an angelic power he fell from heaven because of pride and that power was taken away from him. The saint must only use angelic power in a constructive way, for the happiness and benefit of human beings. He must do so without asking for anything in return from those he helps. Angels never ask anything for themselves, rather, they always ask for the sake of human beings.
Children have not been involved in the low desires that strip the heart of its angelic power. In fact, they are at the rank of saints although they themselves are unaware of it, much less their parents and relatives. The child that declares that he has visions and sights is telling the truth;
whereas the parent who hears the child's accounts sifts them through the grid of the mind and does not consider them factual. "I heard music," "an angel came to me," "people came and disappeared," "they brought me gifts," are frequent utterances of children who blurt out these statements as the event occurs. The child cannot control himself, however, the saint keeps all these events hidden from others.
An intermediary state of knowledge exists between that of children and knower-saints which may be called a "premature sainthood." In that state many people experience visitations and sights and sounds which may be few and far in-between, or on the contrary frequent. These happenings seem discontinuous and even perhaps incoherent, like someone being addressed in a foreign language and struggling to understand.
The reason is that those experiencing them have not achieved the state of purity that permits them to converse fluently with their angelic power. Like children, they cannot help revealing these experiences as soon as they occur or shortly thereafter in ways that may or may not make sense to them or to others.
The happiness that these retellers of angelic visitations feel in telling others of their experiences is like the happiness of a child who receive candy. A child will become happy with its candy and forget about a diamond. Nevertheless the goal remains the diamond. It is important for persons to always re-direct themselves towards that goal: the continuous connection of their heart with angelic power at every moment of their life.
Each human spirit evolves from the point when it was present and testified before God on the Day of promises, to the reality of earthly life then to the life of the grave then to eternal life. This evolution consists in changes from one image to another.
The garment the spirit takes in the fourth month of its life in the womb is kept until death{ 4 Hijab Rahma Subhan Rafi al Ala}. Another dress is put on in the grave, which also deteriorates. Finally, the spirit puts on the body of the hereafter. This body changes to an angelic body at the time it enters among the angels, as we have already mentioned in relation to the Koranic verse "Enter thou My servants."
That angelic body will keep on changing, continuously and forever, from one excellent dress to one even more excellent, according to God's infinite creation of the levels of Paradise. Each dress of paradise, when worn, opens a new level. When one sees this new level, he desires to attain it. He puts on this new garment by divine permission. And a resurrection from one level of Paradise to the next continues ad infinitum. This astonishing phenomenon shows the great extent of God's power of creation.
In every period of evolution from one dress to another prior to Paradise the individual can understand his surroundings and in what state he is. He will be living in that very state and experiencing it but he cannot understand the other states. A person is virtually imprisoned in the state he is in and cannot see any other state.
·On the other hand, the individual who reaches the full state of sainthood can understand everything from beginning to end.
·That is what differentiates the ordinary individual from the saint.
·A saint has already acquired the subtle body of light which enables him to see the past, present and future in one brief moment.
·Indeed, he can attain the knowledge of the souls from the moment they stood in the divine presence to the day they came to this world, entered the grave, were resurrected and stood before God again, and entered Paradise.
·This reality is expressed in the following prophetic tradition in which one of the Companions of the Prophet was asked by the latter to give those present a glimpse of his angelic vision:
Harith ibn La`man said: "Once I went to the Prophet and he asked me in what state I spent the day. I replied : "As a true believer." Then the Prophet asked me the state of my faith. I replied: "I see the throne of God and the people of Paradise helping each other, and the people of hell lamenting in hell. I see in front of me eight heavens and seven hells as clear as idol-worshipers see their idols. I can recognize each individual just like a miller can recognize wheat from barley. That is, who is to go to paradise, and who is to be found in hell. In front of me people are like fish and ants. Shall I stay silent or continue?" The Prophet told me to stop and say no more." [Abu Hanifah, "al-Fiqh al-Akbar"].
One of these accomplished saints in more recent times said:
"I met an angel standing on the shore of a vast ocean. I saluted him, and the angel replied: 'Wa alaykum al-salam wa rahmat Allah.' Then the angel asked me by my name, 'O So-and-So, how is your shaykh, the master of abdal?' and he named him. I answered him by giving him good news about my shaykh, then I asked him how he knew him. He expressed surprise and answered: 'Do you think we do not know him? Everyone in our realm knows and respects him. When God elevated him to his rank He informed everyone in His creation, all the angels and every single creation on earth, that that person had reached the station of I love him, and I want everyone to love him also. Therefore, every stone, tree, animal, angel and jinn love him.' I said: 'There are some people on earth who want to kill him because they are jealous of his angelic knowledge and power.' The angel said: 'It is impossible that anyone can kill the one whom God loves and has raised to an angelic power.'"
"The angel continued:
'Your master can hear and see the image of every created object in this universe. In this universe, there is nothing but these created reflections. They represent angels, human beings, and every element, living and non-living; and all of them are praising their Lord. All creation, except human beings who did not reach the state of angelic vision, are given a knowledge that enable them to hear each other's praising and hymning in whatever orbit of space or existence they move. Everyone praises his Lord with his own attributes and in the words of his own language. God gives everyone the understanding of the other's language but not the permission to use it. He has to use his own language.'"
"I interrupted the angel:
- 'Even the inanimate elements can understand the praising of others?'
- 'Yes, even they can understand. A stone is inanimate to human eyes but it is a living and praising creation. Haven't you heard of those who heard the stones praising God in the presence of the Prophet and his Companion-saints?'" { Atomic Form is Living and in Resonance}
"He continued:
'We angels have been created out of divine light, and we have been greatly honored! Yet we both admire and pity you, human beings, because you have been created in God's image. Haven't you heard the saying of the Prophet: 'God created Adam after his likeness'? We understand this to mean that human beings have been elevated to a rank where He honored them by allowing them to reflect His image. This honor has raised human beings to a very high level. That is why God said in the Holy Koran: 'Verily We have honored human beings, and We have carried them over the earth and over the sea' (17:70). These two bodies, earth and the ocean, here represent the external knowledge and the internal."
"Such honoring of human beings is chiefly represented by their face, and the head is the true center of gravity of human beings.
For you cannot say that the perfect place denoted by the word 'likeness,' in God's creation of human beings, consists in this or that limb of the body, as they are all the same from one person to another. But every one has a different face and there lies God's likeness.
That is why the Prophet scolded the man who struck another on the face and forbade the striking of the face of human beings, even in battle."
"When God wants to manifest Himself, He looks at His creation. His first attention goes to human beings because they resemble him. Those who resemble Him the most among them, are the saints; hence the Prophet said of them: 'They remind you of God.' We angels may speak to prophets alone, except for saints."
"We also pity you because human beings are unwilling to open themselves to attract the angelic power by which they reach the state of heavenly knowledge that is their inheritance. That makes us appear in your human form in varying shapes and degrees of light, in different places and to different ages of human life, to remind you that you have been honored with an angelic power and a divine likeness. Keep the likeness! Use the angelic power! It shall elevate you to that luminous station without which God said: 'Verily, those for whom God did not appoint light, they will never inherit light!' (24:40) and He said: 'Light upon light!' (24:35)
declaring that the light of the heart's vision must be connected with the light of angelic power, ensuring success and guidance to all human beings. That light shall then appear over the entire human realm like a rising sun and a rising moon over all of creation, without ever setting. The light of this power, at that time, will make every individual like a moon, that is, a heavenly body that will reflect the original light for the rest of creation. By this light, this world will be preserved, the love of nature will rule the earth, and everyone will live in peace and love, swimming in the ocean of angelic beauty and harmony."
The angel spoke this, then he gave me the angelic greeting of peace and left.
Belief in the Angels
34:40: "And on the day when He will gather them all together, He will say unto the angels: Did these worship you?"
43:53: "Why, then, have armlets of gold not been set upon him, or angels sent along with him?"
It is said that the word "angel"
·comes from the Latin "angelus," which is borrowed from the Greek "angelos."
·In Arabic the word is "malak" or "malaak," plural "malaa'ikat."
·The Arabic root verb "alaka," which means "to give a message," confirms the angel's etymological connection to the function of Messenger of God in the semitic languages.
·The existence of angels is one of the pillars of belief in most religious traditions and that is the case in Islam also. God mentions the angels in the Holy Koran in more than ninety different places. They also occupy prominent places in the narrations of the Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him, and the many accounts of saints and the pious men and women of the recent past and present. The following pages are an all-too-brief selection of some of the accounts and explanations that have reached us from those three sources.
The Koran says (2:285): "The Messenger believeth in that which hath been revealed unto him from his Lord and so do the believers. Each one believeth in God and His angels and His scriptures and His messengers - We make no distinction between any of His messengers - and they say: We hear, and we obey. Grant us Thy forgiveness, our Lord. Unto Thee is the journeying." God thus orders every person to believe in His angels as an obligation parallel to that of believing in Himself, His Books, and His Messengers.
The Angels of Koran
4:166: "But God Himself testifieth concerning that which He hath revealed unto thee; in His knowledge hath He revealed it; and the Angels also testify. And God is sufficient witness."
God has created a tree in the seventh heaven, on each leaf of which is found one letter of the Holy Koran. Every leaf is a throne carved from a precious stone, and every letter is represented by an angel sitting on that throne. Every angel is the key to a different endless ocean of knowledge, which has no beginning and no end. In every ocean there is a complete universe with its own unique creation. The diver into these oceans is the Archangel Gabriel. It was he who brought to the Prophet the pearls of those oceans when he appeared to him and said three times: "Read!" To this command the Prophet, Peace be upon him, each time answered: "What am I to read?" and Gabriel said:
Read: In the name of thy Lord who createth,
Createth man from a clot.
Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
Who teacheth by the pen,
Teacheth man that which he knew not. (96:1-5)
·At that time the Archangel brought to the Prophet two green pieces of cloth from heaven, one of which was decorated with all kinds of precious stones from the earth, and the other with precious elements from heaven.
·He opened the first cloth and told the Prophet to sit on it, and he handed him the second one and told him to open it.
·When he opened it, he received the Holy Koran with words of light, and the secret of that tree in the seventh Heaven was revealed to him.
·Whoever reads the Holy Koran with sincerity and piety is enabled to enter these oceans of knowledge and light.
·The Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him, saw a tablet made of rare pearls under the Throne of God and another tablet of emerald.
·Upon the first was the first chapter, Surat al-Fatihat, which consists of seven verses, and upon the second the entire Koran. He asked the Archangel Gabriel, "What is the reward of one who reads the Fatiha?"
·Gabriel said, "The seven doors of hell will be closed for him, and the seven doors of paradise will be opened for him."
·The Prophet said: "What is the reward of the one who recites the whole Koran?" Gabriel replied: "For every letter that he reads God will create an angel that will plant a tree for him in paradise."
· Then the Prophet saw a triple light radiating in three directions, and he asked what it was. Gabriel said: "One of them is the light of the Verse of the Throne (2:255), the second is the Chapter Ya Seen" (Chapter 36), and the third is the Chapter of Oneness (Chapter 112).
·The Prophet asked: "What is the reward of one who reads the Verse of the Throne?" Gabriel replied: "God said: It is My attribute, and whoever recites it shall look at Me on Judgment Day without veil."
·The Prophet then asked: "What is the reward for one who reads the Chapter Ya Seen The answer came from God: "It consists of eighty verses, and whoever reads it will receive eighty mercies: twenty angels will bring him twenty mercies in his life, twenty more angels will bring him twenty mercies at his death, twenty more, twenty mercies in his grave, and twenty others, twenty mercies on Judgment Day."
·The Prophet said: "What is the reward for reading the Chapter of Oneness?" The answer came: "The angels will give him to drink from the four heavenly rivers that are mentioned in the Holy Koran: the river of pure crystal water, the river of milk, the river of wine, and the river of honey."
The Angel That Carries the Whale That Carries Creation
3: 190-191: "Lo! In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the difference of night and day are signs of His sovereignty for those possessed of understanding, such as remember God, standing, sitting, and reclining, and consider the creation of the heavens and the earth, and say: Our Lord! Thou createdst not this in vain."
·In the beginning God Almighty in His majesty created a huge jewel of green peridot.
·No one but He knows its size.
·Then the Lord trained His gaze onto that jewel and looked on it with a glance of awe.
·Under the influence of God's gaze, this jewel became liquid and began to undulate.
·It turned into a sea and began to boil and churn and was moved from its depths.
·As it boiled, it began to evaporate, and steam rose up from it.
·This vapor continued to rise, and below it remained a thickening, coagulated, precious mass.
·From the layers of vapor the Lord of the worlds created the seven heavens, and from the remaining primordial mass he created seven layers which He then made into the seven earths.
·The thickness of each of the layers of heaven and earth was five hundred thousand light-years, and as for the space separating each of them from the next only God knows it as He said:
"Have not the unbelievers then beheld
that the heavens and the earth
were a mass all sown up,
and then we unstitched them
and of water fashioned every living thing?
Will they not believe?" (21:30)
·After creating the heavens and the earth, God created a great angel.
·Between his eyebrows there is a distance of five hundred light-years.
·He has two wings decorated with great constellations. They spread their lights like flickering fires over his majestic shoulders.
·One wing represents the East, the other the West. The angel was ordered to bend down his neck.
·With both his arms he lifted up the whole of creation spanning the East and the West.
·He carried this burden until he came to rest right beneath the divine Throne. There he will remain until Judgment Day.
·When he lifted his burden, the angel saw that his feet remained suspended in mid-air. God then ordered the angels to bring from the highest Paradise a stone of red ruby.
·This heavenly rock was placed beneath the angel's feet so that he found a place for his feet.
·Now this red ruby remained suspended in mid-air.
·So the Lord brought an enormous ox which had seventy-thousand legs from Paradise.
·This ox { Taurus}was so huge that its horns reached from the highest heaven to the foot of the divine Throne.
·It was immeasurably greater in size than the angel carrying the heavens and the earth.
·The angels placed the red ruby stone between the horns of the ox where it was firmly grounded; except there was nothing to support the feet of the ox.
·God, therefore, fashioned a dome-shaped vessel; its breadth was a distance of seven hundred thousand light-years.
·The angels placed this vessel beneath the feet of the ox.
·The ox now stood firm. But the vessel was left hanging in the air. From the perfection of
·His divine power, God created a whale by the name of Lutia.
·He then ordered the angels to place the vessel on its back, and the angels obeyed.
·By the will of God, the vessel stood fast. Now only the whale remained in the air.
·So God created an angel more beautiful than the new crescent moon. Half of it is fire and half snow. Its constant prayer is: "By the Lord who has made this fire cohabit in peace with this snow, may God bless and forgive His human beings."
·Thus God made the angel that carries the universes stand on top of the red ruby, placed on top of the ox that rested on the dome-shaped vessel that sat on the whale Lutia who swam in the palm of the angel of opposites like a ring lost in the midst of a great desert.
Angels and the Creation of Adam
2:31-33: "And He taught Adam all the names, then showed them to the angels, saying: Inform Me of the names of these, if ye are truthful. They said: Be glorified! We have no knowledge save what Thou hast taught us. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower, the Wise. He said: O Adam! Inform them of their names..."
2:34: "And when We said unto the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Adam, they fell prostrate, all save Iblis. He demurred through pride, and so became a disbeliever."
7:11: "And We created you, then fashioned you, then told the angels: Fall ye prostrate before Adam! And they fell prostrate, all save Iblis, who was not of those who make prostration."
15:28-31: "And remember when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am creating a mortal out of potter's clay of black mud altered. So, when I have made him and breathed into him of My spirit, do ye fall down, prostrating yourselves unto him. So the angels fell prostrate, all of them together save Iblis. He refused to be among the prostrate."
17:61: "And when We said unto the angels: Fall down prostrate before Adam and they fell prostrate all save Iblis, he said: Shall I fall prostrate before that which Thou hast created of clay?"
18:50: "And remember when We said unto the angels: Fall prostrate before Adam and they fell prostrate, all save Iblis. He was of the Jinn, so he rebelled against his Lord's command."
20:116: "And when We said unto the angels: Fall prostrate before Adam, they fell prostrate all save Iblis; he refused."
38:71-73: "When thy Lord said unto the angels: lo! I am about to create a mortal out of mire, and when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My spirit, then fall down before him prostrate, the angels fell down prostrate, every one."
God taught Adam the names of everything in creation: the inner nature and the outer, qualities and quantities, and the secret of all existence. It is by virtue of this knowledge that He elevated him to a state of purity and perfected him to reach the divine knowledge from which angels derive the nectar of their own knowledge. God thus enabled Adam to teach and inform the angels, although he was created after them.
·These verses point to the essence of the human condition, whereby human beings can reach a station where they command angelic power.
·They teach us that angels can take the form of human beings, and that human beings can purify themselves to the point of carrying angelic attributes.
God has placed the angels at the service of His beloved creation, and caused them to appear to mankind and help them. This is symbolized by their prostration to Adam. It was Adam whom God chose as His viceroy on earth and not the angels. "And had We willed We could have set among you angels to be viceroys in the earth" (43:60). Many stories illustrate this angelic service to humankind in the following pages.
It is related that when Adam approached death he assembled his children and he told them that he desired to taste of the fruit of Paradise again. All his children went in search of such fruit. The angels knew that Adam was going to die. They received his children with heavenly shrouds in their hands and water from the rivers of Paradise for Adam's final ablution. Adam's children were surprised. "How did you know that our father was ill?" The angels replied: "What are you looking for?" The children answered that their father was sick and that he desired a fruit of Paradise. "Perhaps that will heal him," they said. The angels told them: "O children of Adam! Paradise was created for you. We are but the caretakers of that place for you. How can the owners ask permission from the caretakers? But if you wish to enter it again, you have to come back to the divine presence and reclaim your angelic reality as before." "How can we do that?" asked the children of Adam. The angels replied: "You have to long earnestly to meet your Lord, and he will teach you the way back to Him." "And then?" asked the children of Adam. The angels said, "Then, you have to enter through the door of death."
Adam died, the angels came down and buried him themselves, showing his children the manner of this ritual and teaching it to them for the first time. After that, the sun and the moon were eclipsed for seven days and seven nights.
Noah's Angelic Light
23:24: "But the chieftains of his (Noah's) folk, who disbelieved, said: This is only a mortal like you who would make himself superior to you. Had God willed, He surely could have sent down angels. We heard not of this in the case of our fathers of old."
Noah was born with the light of prophets on his forehead. God created that light before Adam and He caused it to pass from one generation of prophets to the next until the Seal of Prophets, Muhammad.
·After he received the prophecy Noah preached for nine hundred years. The angelic light in him shone forth and even the animals and stones were praising God when they saw him.
·Yet Noah's people were so stubborn that he succeeded in calling only eighty persons to the true faith, among them three of his sons.
·In the end Noah was fed up and he asked God to be relieved from the task of constantly calling in vain. God accepted Noah's request and decided to send the Great Flood as a trial for human beings. When the command came for Noah to build the ark, he asked for instructions and God sent him Gabriel to teach him how to build it.
·Gabriel ordered the angels of safety to collect the best timber for a ship to resist the Waters of Wrath.
·The angels brought Noah a pile of wood and timber from the cedar-trees of Lebanon which were later used to build the Temple of Solomon.
They placed the wood in front him. The pile was so great that from whatever point of Noah's country one looked at it, that pile always seemed to cover the sky above one's head. Noah took one splinter of that
·pile and from it began to build a huge ark.
Never before had a ship been built in that country.
·Noah's country did not meet the sea or any other great body of water.
·His people scoffed at him, saying: "A ship in the middle of a plain!" and: "How should there be a flood in this country which hasn't even seen rain in so many years?"
·Gabriel instructed Noah how to piece together the hull of the ship with one hundred and twenty-four thousand planks.
·On each of these planks was inscribed the name of one of the one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets who were to appear from the beginning of creation to the end of times, starting with Adam.
·God created an angel to safeguard and insure the soundness of each plank even after it had been incorporated into the ship. This was done to show that God protects his creation with his beloved ones among the angels and the prophets.
·God places within creation itself the causes and effects of salvation and the road to Paradise. God saves His beloved servants time and again with the arks of salvation brought by the angels. In times of disasters, plights, wars, famines, and great depressions, angels never fail until today to bring help and relief for those who ask. The following story illustrates this.
Abraham's Honored Guests
51:24: "Hath the story of Abraham's honored guests reached thee (O Muhammad)?"
Abraham's nickname was: "Father of guests" because he was so hospitable. Because of his great hospitality, God always sent him an angel to keep company with him, so that Abraham would not have to sit and eat alone.
·One time God sent Abraham three angels to bring him news of a son, although he and his wife were quite old. It is said that the three angels who visited Abraham are called "honored" because Abraham, the Intimate Friend of God, served them himself.
·It is also said that they are called this because the guest of an honorable person is himself honorable.
·God blessed the lands of the entire Middle East with great angelic presence and light.
·He caused all the prophets and saints who are mentioned in His revealed Scriptures and traditions to be born there.
·God made them visit and bless the various locations that He caused to bathe in perpetual angelic light, such as Mecca, Madina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Sinai, Yemen, and the mountains of the Lebanon.
·God brought Abraham to Syria and called it: "The land which we have blessed for the benefit of the worlds" (21:72).
Then God ordered the angel of the shade to descend and make Abraham's stay a comfortable one. The angel of the shade came down and caused a huge garden to sprout instantly in the midst of the fire. A green meadow appeared in the midst of which there was a pleasant pond filled with fish and swans from Paradise. Their scales and feathers shone like silk and reflected all the colors of creation. Servants were attending Abraham, who was found under the cool shade of a willow-tree surrounded with delicious fruits and dainty dishes, and the angels engaged him in a divine conversation, during which they revealed to him the secrets of their stations and the powers God had endowed them with, giving him everything. At that time those who were outside looking in, began to wish that they, too, would be thrown into that fire with Abraham.
Even his father, who previously disbelieved in him, said: "O Abraham, what a wonderful Lord your Lord is!" And his mother actually went into the fire escorted by the angels, hugged Abraham and came back out without being harmed. No-one else could approach it without feeling an intense scorching heat.
The fire burnt uncontrollably for forty days. But Abraham's garden only increased in verdure and kept expanding with the constant visitations and blessings of the angels. At that time, Abraham's fire was the most blessed spot on the entire surface of the earth, as God looked upon it with the highest favor. He ordered all the angels of creation to pay at least one visit to His Friend Abraham.
Jonah's Angelic Whale
37:139-144: "And lo! Jonah verily was of those sent to warn when he fled unto the laden ship, and then drew lots and was of those rejected; and the whale swallowed him while he was blameworthy; and had he not been one of those who glorify God he would have tarried in its belly till the day when they are raised."
·God sent Jonah to the people of Nineveh in Iraq.
·He called them to God's message but they refused to listen to him.
·He was calling them night and day to no avail. Instead they harmed him and cursed him at every turn. This lasted for a long time.
·Jonah was unable to bear this situation any longer. He began to threaten them: "I am going to ask my Lord to send you a severe punishment which has never been seen before; to destroy your cities and burn your gardens; to make you barren and end your line." He then left them.
·Slowly, his people began to feel the approach of punishment in their daily life. They began to realize that they had made a big mistake.
·God is the Most Merciful; for at every moment in this world he will show His greatness and cause people to observe Him through many signs. He will do this by sending angels in order to direct the sincere, and, indeed, anyone who asks for guidance, to the light of happiness in life.
·God sent the people of Jonah the angels of Mercy and the angels of Safety in order to inspire their hearts to do good, and guide them to safety through the destruction that was descending on their heads.
·Abraham was protected from Nimrod's fire by the intervention of the angel of snow and the angel of peace. In the immense heat of this great fire where he had been thrown, surrounded by great destruction from above, from below, and from every side, Abraham was saved and protected. This was a message from God to tell His people: "I can save whomever I wish from any harm, whenever I like, no matter how bad their situation is."
·Jonah was angrily moving away from his people. They regretted what they had done to their prophet. Men, women, children, old people, and even the animals, both tame and wild, were heard and seen crying out, each in his own particular language. It was a tremendous event, and everyone asked for mercy and for the angels' intercession.
God Most Merciful, Most Powerful, and Most Beneficent took away the destruction and saved them through his angels from this great havoc. Meantime, Jonah boarded a ship and took to sea. A big storm broke, and the ship was being torn apart and about to sink. The crew decided to draw lots and throw out one passenger as an expiation for the sin which was bringing death upon their heads. When they drew Jonah's lot, they loathed to throw him because he was the prophet, so they drew lots again. Every time, however, his lot kept coming out.
In the end Jonah threw himself over board, and a great green whale came from the bottom of the ocean and swallowed him.
·An angel appeared before the whale and instructed her not to crush Jonah but to keep him safe in her stomach.
·At that moment Jonah spoke to the angel and asked for his advice, saying: "Give me the glad tidings from your Lord.
·How did God teach you the knowledge of the Unseen?"
·"Because I don't commit sin," said the angel.
·Jonah said: "Advise me." The angel replied: "Be patient and not full of anger, for you are full of anger against your nation right now.
·Be a person who gives benefit, not harm -- for you were praying your Lord to destroy your people for harming you.
·Don't be happy with your pride and arrogance.
·Don't humiliate your nation with their sins, because you also have mistakes."
Inside the stomach of the green whale, Jonah went into prostration and said: "O God, I prostrated for you in a place where no-one before has prostrated.
·O God, you have drowned me in the oceans of hope, and
·caused me to forget the day of my death.
·O Lord, you are the possessor of my heart and of my secret.
·I am the drowned one, so catch me by the hand and save me.
·Relieve me with Your perfection and inspire me with Your love!
·Let the angels of mercy reach down to me and pull me,
·O You who accept the prayers of the needy in the darkness of punishment.
·O the unveiler and remover of difficulties and harm,
·here I am coming to You and adoring You. Do not keep me from Your presence. Forgive me."
God ordered the angel to move the whale through the farthest oceans of the world and take her to the saltiest, or most concentrated and deepest depths of the seas.
·There Jonah began to hear the praising of all whales, all fish, all corals and all creatures of the depths. Nothing remained except they praised God and lauded Him, and Jonah was praising Him also.
·[God created a saint whom he endowed with such great powers of praising and remembering that he did not need to eat or sleep.
·Instead, he spent all his time praying to God, chanting his praise, and making intercession for other human beings.
·God placed him in a room at the bottom of the ocean.
·There he perpetuated God's praise unhindered for hundred of years.
·When that saint died the angels brought him before God Who asked him: "O my beloved servant, shall I reward you according to your deeds or according to My forgiveness?"
·He replied: "O my Lord, according to my deeds, since you have granted that they consist solely in Your praise."
· The angels placed the saint's deeds on one side of the scale and on the other side they placed God's generosity to that saint.
·God's generosity weighed heavier, and the saint fell prostrate and speechless, begging for God's forgiveness.]
The angel inspired Jonah to say: "O God, Most Exalted, no-one can thank You nor worship You as You deserve to be thanked and worshipped. You know the secrets and the deepest knowledge, You unveil everything hidden from Your servants, You know every slight matter in this world and the next, and accept the prayer from every creation, forgive me and accept me in Your presence as Your humble servant."
God revealed to Jonah the following: "And mention the Lord of the Whale Dhul-Nun, when he went off in anger and deemed that We had no power over him, but he cried out in the darkness, saying: There is no God save Thee. Be Thou glorified! Lo! I have been a wrongdoer. Then We heard his prayer and saved him from the anguish. Thus We save believers" (21:87-88).
Then God ordered the whale to throw Jonah out onto the sea-shore, and ordered the angel to tell Jonah: "This is God's mercy. He can send it on anyone He likes, even in the midst of the greatest destruction and the surest death, far from any help." Thus did God save Jonah, and the following story illustrates how God saves His people from the grip of destruction even against the greatest odds.
This verse shows the miraculous power of angels and their superlative ability to act upon the physical realm.
·They carried the Ark of the Covenant in front of Saul's army and the relics which the family of Moses and Aaron left behind.
·Angels were carrying the Ark of the Covenant because it was very important for humanity.
·It contained one of the heavenly Books, the Torah, in its original form. When God ordered Moses to write the Torah, He said: "O Moses! you have to write it on tablets of gold."
·When Moses asked where he would find such a metal, God sent him the Archangel Gabriel and ninety-nine other angels.
·Each one represented an attribute of God and they taught Moses one hundred and twenty-four thousand words.
·With every word Moses was elevated to a higher level.
·At every level Moses saw light coming to him from the Divine Presence and dressing him, until he reached a state of purity similar to the transparency of crystal water.
·This caused every on-looker at Moses to see nothing but light.
·At that moment, Gabriel ordered the ninety-nine angels to adorn him with the attributes and powers that each was carrying.
·Moses wore a veil to cover the intense light which emanated from him and caused others to faint if they looked at him.
·Then Gabriel poured into Moses' heart the heavenly knowledge meant to be consigned in the tablets.
·He taught him the chemistry of gold.
·Moses in turn taught his sister one-third of this chemistry,
·Joshua another third, and Saul the last third.
·Then he wrote the Torah on the gold he manufactured. All the while the angels stood by him and taught him how to write and adorn that heavenly book.
Then God created a four-winged angel and ordered him to keep company with Moses and be the guardian of the Ark.
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