Shaikh Ahmad al-'Alawi 1905


His spiritual heritage and legacy are encaptured in the book 'Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century" by Martin Lings .

LAILA - Sheikh Ahmad Alawi

A beautiful poem about spiritual awakening, by Sheikh Ahmad Alawi in
“Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century” by Martin Lings

LAILA

Full near I came unto where dwelleth
Laila, when I heard her call.
That voice, would I might ever hear it!
She favoured me, and drew me to her,
Took me in, into her precinct,
With discourse intimate addressed me.
She sat me by her, then came closer,
Raised the cloak that hid her from me,
Made me marvel to distraction,
Bewildered me with all her beauty.
She took me and amazed me,
And hid me in her inmost self,
Until I thought that she was I,
And my life she took as ransome.
She changed me and transfigured me,
And marked me with her special sign,
Pressed me to her, put me from her,
Named me as she is named.
Having slain and crumbled me,
She steeped the fragments in her blood.
Then, after my death, she raised me:
My star shines in her firmament.
Where is my life, and where my body,
Where my wilful soul? From her
The truth of these shone out to me,
Secrets that had been hidden from me.
Mine eyes have never seen but her:
To naught else can they testify.
All meanings in her are comprised.
Glory be to her Creator

Thou that beauty wouldst describe,
Here is something of her brightness.
Take it from me. It is my art.
Think it not idle vanity.
My Heart lied not when it divulged
The secret of my meeting her.
If nearness unto her effaceth,
I still subsist in her subsistence.

1 p. 22. Laila, a woman's name meaning 'night',
here represents the Divine Essence.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Martin Lings

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Martin Lings

Sema - Human Being in the Universal Movement

Sema - Human Being in the Universal Movement: "Sema is part of the inspiration of Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (1207- 1273) as well as of Turkish custom, history, beliefs and culture.
From a scientific viewpoint we witness that contemporary science definitely confirms that the fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. There is no object, no being which does not revolve and the shared similarity among beings is the revolution of the electrons, protons and neutrons in the atoms, which constitute the structure of each of them. As a consequence of this similarity, everything revolves and man carries on his live, his very existence by means of the revolution in the atoms, structural stones of his body, by the revolution of his blood, by his coming from the earth and return to it, by his revolving with earth itself."

With deep gratitude and acknowledgment to Deepak Chopra.

A New Phase in Human Development. This is an important time in the development of humanity as it appears to stagger from one calamity to another and as it endeavours to progresses solely in the names of science and materialism. Humanity has an awesome responsibility. Jonas Salk, said "We are in a new phase of our evolution., The Darwinian evolution, as we have known it is perhaps over, as far as, we are concerned as a human species.” He said, “the new criteria for fitness has to be wisdom (rather than knowledge). Evolution will see wisdom as the criterion for fitness. We are in the midst of a phase of our evolution that can only be called the evolution of consciousness, and ultimately, the evolution of consciousness of consciousness.”

Mechanistic View of the World We are very confident of our science, and we are very confident that science has all the solutions to our problems. Yet, we need to question the very validity of the scientific method in order to obtain a glimpse of the total truth. For at least the last 200 years, science has been entrenched in a completely and totally mechanistic world view.

The rational view states that we live in a physical universe, and that we are physical machines that have learned how to manufacture thoughts, that our self awareness or consciousness is the apparent by-product of matter, of bio-chemistry, of molecular-biology. That if you believe in God or if you are moved by poetry and music, it is just the dance of molecules. That the human body is an anatomical structure which manufactures thought. This model has become so strongly entrenched in our world view that it literally guides the way we think, in everything that we do. This mechanistic world view comes from the notion that our perception is the crucial test of reality, that if we can see something, if we can touch it, if we can observe it, if we can hear it, if we can experience it through our senses then, it must be real. And that our senses, in fact, give us an accurate picture of the world. When even common sense tells us that this is not true. Our senses tell us that the earth is flat. Nobody believes that any more. The senses tell us that this ground we are standing on is stationery, and we know that it is spinning at dizzying speeds and moving through outer space at thousands of miles per hour. The senses tell us how things of a certain texture look, feel, and have a certain colour, and certain shape and we tend to think that this is the intrinsic nature of the objects of our perception. In fact, it is only a response of the observer.

What is Reality The great Sufi poet Rumi was asked, "Who are you?" He said "If you try to and label me and confine me with your words, you will starve yourself, of yourself. Try and nail me down in a box of cold words, that box will be a coffin because I do not know who I am. I am an astounding, lucid confusion." But then, he said something very remarkable. "I am your own voice echoing off the walls of God." That was nearly a thousand years ago, suggesting something we are just beginning to understand today, is that, in fact, this physical universe despite its enormity, despite its hugeness and materiality, may, in fact be a response of the observer. A great scientist, Sir John Eckels, once said "I want you to know that there are no colours in the real world, that there are not textures in the real world, there are no fragrances in the real world, no beauty and no ugliness. Out there beyond the limits of our perception apparatus is a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup, and we are the magicians, we transform that through our sensor into material reality." This is a fact of physiology not some metaphysical, mystical, philosophical, eastern speculation. A honey bee looking at a flower doesn't see the same flower that you and I see because it doesn't even have the receptors for the usual wavelengths of light that we respond to. A honey bee looking at a flower because it response to ultraviolet, can see honey from a distance but doesn't see the flower. that we see. A snake experiences its world through infra-red radiation reception which means nothing to you and me. A bat knows it as the echo of ultra sound. So what is the real shape of the world, what is the real texture of it? The answer seems to depend on who is looking, and what kinds of questions they are asking themselves, and where they are making the observation from, and a whole host of other things that are completely and totally in the realm of consciousness. Today we have a new model, new because it fits in with our current notions of reality and at the same time, it is ancient. We have the opportunity to bring together scientific insight and ancient wisdom. to understand reality.

Unity of Creation The human body is not a frozen anatomical structure but actually a river of energy and information that is constantly renewing itself in every second of your existence. The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus said "You cannot step into the same river twice because new water is always flowing in.” The river is the perfect example of the illusion of perception. And so too, you cannot step into the same flesh and bones twice because in every moment of your existence you are stepping into a new body. In fact the physical body you are using now is not the one you used yesterday. You can look at a number of physiological processes to see how literally true that is.

If you will just look at the similar act of breathing, with every breath that you breath in, you breath in ten to the power of twenty-two atoms of the universe. That is an astronomical amount of raw material that comes into your body from everywhere else in this universe. With each breath that you breath out, you are breathing out ten to the power of twenty-two atoms that have their origin in every cell in your body and literally breathing out bits and pieces of your heart, kidney and brain tissue, and technically speaking, we are all intimately sharing our organs with each other all the time. This is a fact of physiology. The great American poet Walt Whitman, once said in the Song of Myself., "Every atom belongs to you as well belongs to me," This is not a poetic metaphor any more. You can do mathematical calculations based on radioactive isotopes studies, and prove without a shadow of doubt to a scientist, that right now in your physical body, you have a least a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ or Buddha or Muhammad or even Sadam Hussein, or anyone else you want to think about. In just the last three weeks, a quadrillion atoms have circulated through your body that have gone through the body of every other living species on this planet. Talk about being connected! Think of being a tree in Africa, a squirrel in Siberia, a peasant in China; and right this moment, you have in your body at least a quadrillion atoms that were not circulating there about three weeks ago. In about one year, you replace about ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in your body: A new liver every six weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every five days, even the DNA which holds the memories of millions of years of evolutionary time. The actual raw material, the carbon, the oxygen, the hydrogen, the nitrogen, comes and goes every six weeks like migratory birds. So in about one year or a little, more you replace your entire body to the last atom. Which raises an interesting dilemma, if you think you are your physical body then which one are you talking about? William Blake said, "We are led to believe a lie when we see with and not through the eye." But see the human body, as it really is, not through the artefact of sensory perception, you would see that 99.9999% of it is mostly empty space, and the .0001% of it that appears to be material is actually, also empty space. This whole thing is made out of nothing. As you go beyond the pseudo of molecules you enter a sub-atomic clouds, go beyond the cloud, you end up with a hand full of nothing.

The great Sufi poet Rumi, once again, said "We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust."

The essential stuff of the universe is non-stuff. But it is not just ordinary non-stuff; it may be thinking non-stuff, because as it interacts with its own self, it creates all that we consider form and phenomena. And thought, does not necessarily mean linguistically structured verbally elite thought that speaks to us in word. Thought, means impulses of energy and information. What is a thought, if not energy and information?
We have a thinking body and it is part of a thinking universe. There are some very fascinating pieces of data that have emerged in the last few years to give us some good evidence of validity of this whole hypothesis. The average human thinks about 60,000 thoughts a day which is not surprising. What is disconcerting is the fact that 90% of the thoughts you have today, are the same ones you had yesterday. We are the victims of our own memories, we are bundles of conditioned reflexes and nerves that are constantly being triggered by people and circumstance into very predictable outcomes of behaviour. We say we are free when we are at the mercy of every passer by on the street. There is a great saying from an ancient tradition in India of yogis. (A yogi is a person who is seeking to unify the experience of body, mind, soul and spirit and environment as one continuum of consciousness.) It says, if you want to create a new body, you have to step out of the river of conditioning and memory, and see the world, as if, for the first time. If you can step out of the river of your own conditioning, and see the world as if for the first time, then there is a potential opportunity to create a new perception of the human body, and more importantly a new perception of the world.

Baha’u’llah the founder prophet of the Baha’i Faith, wrote about the process of stepping out of ones own conditioning to create a new body and a new understanding of oneself a new view the world. "(Spiritual) knowledge, will awaken the heart, the soul, and the spirit from the slumber of heedlessness. Then will the manifold favours and outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind. He will contemplate the manifest signs of the universe, and will penetrate the hidden mysteries of the soul."

The Power of Love
A study published in the Journal of Science, scientists were looking at the metabolism of cholesterol in rabbits. They were feeding rabbits diets that were extremely high in cholesterol. To their amazement, they found there was one group of rabbits that did not get the high cholesterol levels or the hardening of the arteries despite being fed the same toxic diet. After a lot of investigation, they discovered that the only difference between these rabbits and the ones that were getting the high cholesterol, was that the technician who was feeding these rabbits. Instead of just throwing the food at them, he would take them out of their cages, he would pet them, cuddle them, and kiss them, and then he would feed them the same toxic food. Now because of this new experience, you can call it love or if you do not like that word, you can call it the flow of information, these rabbits transferred the cholesterol into a completely different metabolic path. Love made the critical difference between life and death from the number one killer in our civilisation. A few years ago, a study from the University of Miami School of Medicine was looking at premature infants and their ability to live or thrive. These infants were born at 30 weeks, and the investigators took one group of premature infants put them in little cribs which had a hole in them and through those cribs the investigator would reach in and stroke the baby three times a day for 5 minutes. Those babies that received tactile kinetic stimulation for approximately 5 minutes, 3 times a day gained an average of 49% more weight per day fed on exactly the same formula. It turns out that when you lovingly touch somebody, it seems that you stimulate the secretion of growth factors and growth hormones and some wonderful, powerful healing chemicals in your system. Therefore, we have a scientific explanation, if you want one. But this still doesn't get away from the fact that the flow of consciousness is transforming itself into these phenomena. While this might sound simplistic, by touching one other a little more, we may begin to understand the meaning of love and to see the world in a different context.

Once in awhile, we can have a special experience, when we slip out of time bound awareness all together as, when a person says the beauty of the mountain was breathtaking, time stood still. What is that experience, when we transcend time, when even breath comes to a standstill because both breath and time as we experience it are the movement of thought that separates the observer from the observed. A moment when the seer and the scenery become one, where the lover and the beloved become one, where the observer and the observed become one, or when the creator and the created become one. This experience can only be called unity consciousness, because there is no separation. We have gone beyond the ego and entered a domain of our awareness where we experience universality. And in that domain of experience, there is no time because it is infinite, unbounded, eternal, awesome, grand, beautiful. We need to be aware of these experiences because they make us one with one another. This knowledge allows understanding that you and I are not only made up of the same stuff, but we are the same being in different disguises. And when we know this, only then will we know love, because love is not an emotion, love is not a sentiment, love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.

Again, Rumi said it so beautifully, "Wherever you go, if you want to solve the problems of the world, wherever you go, whatever you do, wherever you are, be a lover, and be a passionate lover, and then you will have possessed love, and then you will be a lover in death, you will be a lover in the tomb, you will be a lover on the day of resurrection, a lover in paradise, and a lover forever. And if you have not known love, if you have not been a passionate lover, then count not your life as having been lived. On the day of reckoning, it will not be counted." In the West, what we generally call love is mostly feeling, not a power. This feeling can be delicious, even ecstatic. There are many things that the power of real love can do that feelings cannot. When love and spirit are brought together, their power can accomplish anything. Then love, power, and spirit are one. Modern-day Sufi, Reshad Field wrote If you have not loved all then you have not loved at all There has never been a Prophet; (Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Mohammad or Baha'u'llah) who did not bring a message of love. The power of their messages has always been awesome, with the potential to change the world. Unfortunately, we fail to accept their messages of love, and thus reject the possibility our divine status. This really is an important time in the development of humankind. It is the dawning of a new era, a new phase in the evolution of the consciousness of humankind. This is a time of awareness of our true spiritual potential, opening the doors to a new perception of reality. So how can change and improvements be implemented unless individuals are first open to a new way of thinking, seeing the big picture that is detached from self and empowered with love.

Edited by Robert Abrahams