Islam

A Visit with Dr. Asad Ali

"Welcome, welcome! Peace upon you," he says as he kisses Kabir and then me. His face is as bright as I remembered it. His voice is full with the vigor of life. He smiles broadly when he sees us and he is filled with delight as he introduces us. The living room is filled with people. I recognize the faces of my dear friends and devoted students of Dr. Ali. There is Dr. Ali Himdan, the talented calligraphic artist, and there is Ramadan who is Dr. Ali's nephew. I look around and see the room is as it was seven years ago. The windows are covered with green drapes, and the walls are adorned with Quranic verses and pictures of the sanctuaries of the Prophet and his family. The room is filled with books neatly arranged on shelves with the title of volumes colorfully written across the books' bindings. The furniture is the same simple chairs and couches with Damascene patterned cushions. We have entered into the presence of our master, our living Mawlana.

The Most Beautiful Names of Allah

Asma al-Husna -- The Most Beautiful Names of God, published by Threshold Society.

The Qur’an on the Divine Names

The Qur'an on the Divine Names; from Asma al-Husna -- The Most Beautiful Names of God, published by Threshold Society.

Space, Cyberspace, and the Spaceless

The recognition is beginning to dawn that we are on the threshold (there's that word again) of a major change in human life. It's even being talked about on the evening news. Thirty years ago we might have thought that this change would come about through a revolution in consciousness. People would begin to wake up! To some extent we have woken up. At the beginning of this millenium we -- and I mean the population of this whole world -- are more conscious of and sensitive to issues of gender, race, human rights, and ecology. At the same time, we seem to have created a frantic pace of life for ourselves and sometimes it seems that the developed world has slipped into the trance of materialism. The purpose of life is to have fun, right?

Passages from the Qur’an

SAY: We believe in God and that which was revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ismail, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the Prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and unto Him we surrender Qur'an 2:136

The Path of Completion

A spirituality adequate to the times we live in must first of all be centered in the reality of human completion itself. If it is based instead on any partial version of humanness, it will be insufficient. No matter what is sought to supplement this insufficiency, if the starting point is less than human wholeness, the result will only be distorted version of humanness. Sufism can be considered a path of completion in two important senses: First, it is a way that proceeds from and leads to human completion, the Completed Human Being (Insani Kamil). Second, it is a complete way that uses every possible effective means to orchestrate the transformation of a human being. Both of these facts--the completeness of the method and the completeness of the result--are of the highest significance.

The Heart: Threshold Between Two Worlds

Anyone who has probed the inner life to a certain extent, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise, is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the heart of human consciousness something else, something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist--an outer world and the mystery of the inner world--but that the human being is suspended between them--as a space in which both meet. It is as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds. Anyone who has explored this inwardness to a certain degree will know that it holds a great beauty and power. In fact, to be unaware of this mystery of inwardness is to be incomplete.

The Conversations (Maqalat) of Shams of Tabriz

The Truth is the Kadim, the Ancient One; He is the being who has no beginning. Where can the one who is "created afterwards" find the one who has no beginning? How can he understand Him? Where is the soul and the great God that has created everything? It is that power that is within you, by means of which you move and attain liberation. It is the soul, but what is it when you have placed the soul underneath your arm?

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The Sobriety That Surpasses Intoxication

Veterans of the Psychedelic Revolution of the 1960's might recall with pathos the battles waged against the conventional consciousness of the day. The enemy, as they saw it, was the self-righteous state of mind which believed it had a monopoly on reality and which at the same time had a shadow side of cruelty and insanity. Tens of millions of volunteers opened up their synapses, let the uncensored truth into consciousness, and saw for themselves that most of modern life looked patently insane when seen against the backdrop of nature and eternity. For all its misguided power, they saw conventional consciousness as naively ridiculous. And they considered altering one's state of consciousness as a way of cleansing the unrealities of social conditioning. Such an approach was not only revolutionary, it may have been an evolutionary necessity. Perhaps it allowed enough people to see the disastrous fate society was hurtling toward and to begin to change that direction.

Sustaining Presence in Zhikr

In order that these practices should not become too mechanical, I sometimes suggest that a student begin with a clear intention to recite 100 of any zhikr with full presence. If you find yourself at some point having lost presence for more than one La illaha il Allah, for instance, begin again from the beginning. It is good to have tesbih beads for this exercise. Don't worry if you blank out for a second or two. Noone's concentration is perfect. But if you find yourself counting beads and you know that you have not been present for one or more beads, then start again.