in their understanding and that is also
very interesting and one of the things
that even Tamia rahim allah said was
that when muslims go astray they go
astray like the jews go astray or like
the christians go astray in other words
he was reck
and articulating archetypal deviancy
that when you deviate you deviate as a
deviation it doesn't matter whether
you're what tradition you're coming from
they are forms of deviancy now the other
aspect of trying to put religion into a
frame of understanding is that it is a
process that when the phenomenon of
religion enters into the world either as
a restorative event which happened with
the Jewish prophets who would come like
John the Baptist is within Judaic
tradition and we also recognize Jesus
are they said I'm as being in that
tradition but then you have radical
breaks within religious tradition and
one of them obviously is Islam Islam
makes a radical departure from Judaism
and Christianity in in the same way that
Christianity made radical departure from
Judaism so you have a continuity but
then at certain periods in history you
have these breaks and those breaks need
to be understood also when they occur if
you asked for instance the Sahaba about
the law on whom if you asked them what
was happening to them they would not I
don't believe that they would explain it
in the way that we would explain it now
in other words the terms the frames of
references that they would use would not
be ours and that occurs because of a
distance when you are experiencing the
world without mediary in this immediate
sense that is very different from
somebody who is looking at a phenomenon
from outside of it because of that
historical distance and you will have
different understandings based on the
time and the place that you're coming
from so we as a people now will
understand the Islamic tradition in ways
that are different from people a hundred
years ago or two hundred years ago we
cannot deny the the historic reality of
where we were born of the circumstances
even factors like socioeconomic factors
have influenced its Abu Hanifa Delano
the fact that he is a non-arab will
influence his Medhat and if you don't
recognize that when you study it about
certain rulings that he gave and there
are rulings that I feel more comfortable
even though I'm a monarchy I feel more
comfortable with Omaha NEFA as an agony
as Anan era and so you can deny that and
you can say that's not true but I think
that you do it to your detriment because
you're not recognizing the enriching
element that that provides as people
have gifts and when they come into Islam
they bring their gifts with them every
people have gifts and those gifts are
not the same
Allah distributes his gifts differently
amongst people and one of the new CDF
manzano said he said that you have to
know the wisdom of diversity and when
you go to a land you have to understand
that those people are not the same as
the land that you are coming from that
they have differences that we have
universals that we share every human
being shares them but we also have
particulars and if you lose sight of one
without the other and this is one of the
big debates in Islam between the
philosophers and the theologians because
the philosophers said god only knows the
universals the philosopher said god only
knows universals the theologian said no
God knows the universal and the
particular if you ignore the particular
than you do so it will have tragic
consequences and so each people that
came into Islam brought with them gifts
the Persians in particular brought
extraordinary gifts into Islam the
Hellenic tradition also gave
extraordinary gifts and that came
through the Byzantine influence you can
see a clear difference between scholars
that are writing in the pre Hellenistic
period and the scholars that are writing
in the post Hellenistic period you can
win
the way that knowledge becomes
classified the logical structuring of
their thought all of these things you
can see was a direct influence on
intellectual gifts that were introduced
into the community and so these are part
of the enrichment and the process of
understanding who we are what we believe
and what our religion is and that is why
the argument that there's no knowledge
except the Salif period this argument
that we accept only this one period of
time and after that it's everybody goes
astray that argument is denying
something so elemental to our human
experience and that is the increase of
knowledge in our own lives our own
evolution as we grow and come to know
more and also the gifts that Allah
subhana WA Ta'ala has given peoples and
times and places that to live in Cordoba
in the 9th century must have been just
an extraordinary experience and what
they knew and what they were thinking
about what they were discussing to deny
all of that as somehow being innovative
or unnecessary or extraneous is I think
to really throw a gift of Allah subhana
WA Ta'ala away and so what I would like
to look at now is in a sense an attempt
to understand how we frame our
experience and how that relates to creed
now every religion is founded upon
direct experience of our loss of
Mohammed Anna now that does not
necessarily negate the mediary of the
angel but what I'm talking about direct
experience is that it is not a rational
cognitive process that what happens to
prophets who have this direct experience
of the Newman already angelic realm and
that is a direct experience in other
words if we all went outside
right now and we could see from one
horizon to the other horizon and as far
up in the sky as we could look the angel
jibreel and all of us saw that together
how would that affect our practice as
Muslims see if I just told you that that
the prophet sallallaahu sanim saw the
entire horizon the celestial sphere fill
up with an angelic being and that was
his experience now the interesting thing
about experiences experience is not a
logical proposition you cannot prove or
disprove experience you can discuss it
you can interpret it but you cannot say
it's true or its false experience is
real for the one experiencing it what
then is the challenge is to determine
whether or not that experience has an
objective reality or a subjective
reality in other words is that
experience a true experience or is it
somehow something that's happening to
this individual as a type of psychosis
because we have people now that speak to
God directly they hear God we have
people living today that literally will
tell you and they're not lying you can't
say they're lying because these people
are in delusional states and they have
auditory hallucinations and sometimes
also they actually see things and these
things are very real to them now one of
the interesting things about Catholic
the Catholic Church and I find this
really fascinating because this is 4th
century doctrine the Catholic Church
determined how to differentiate between
a true divine experience and this
relates to prophets and saints and
between a demonic experience because
they to believe in the demonic realm
like we do the way they differentiate is
that a demonic experience is always
accompanied with an expansion of the
self
in other words it's a very exciting and
joyful experience and it is followed
with despair and a true spiritual
experience is exactly the opposite
the initial experience is incredible
constriction and fear and dread and it
is followed with a sense of expansion
and joy this is in their doctrine this
is actually doctrinal in Catholic
tradition now if we look at the
experience of the prophet sallallaahu
them if we look at the experience of
Moses Moosa
that's half Moses when he had this
experience was filled with fear
Ibrahim also the Prophet Muhammad this
is consistent with what we see in the
Quran and also what the Christians and
the Jews understand within their
traditions is that this religious
experience is overwhelming incapacitates
the self and I personally believe that
the Prophet SAW Allah today was Saddam
went into a state of shock because if
you look at the description of his
initial experience as if a physician and
I worked in a trauma center and had to
study that just how to identify people
in different stages of shock that if a
physician looks at the descriptions of
what happened to him she was in a state
of shock now one of the most interesting
things to me about his state was because
of the vastness of his soul and even
payment Jozy rahim allah said that the
soul of the prophet is bigger than this
cosmos in kita barua that he actually
says that the prophet saw I am the
magnanimity of his soul the vastness of
his soul is beyond our comprehension
that one of the things that is so
extraordinary about his presence of mind
is despite the fact that he was going
through the physical and autonomic
nervous systems experience of shock his
mind was completely present which is
absent in a normal human being when they
go into shock they lose the ability to
think and the proof for me in that is
what he said to his wife Zam balloonism
me Tony
Zen me known
wrap me up now we know that patients who
are given shock that the first thing one
of the first things you do is you wrap
them up you're actually told to wrap
them to cover them up to create some
containment because part of shock is a
loss of self it's when the outward and
the inward crash there's just a massive
crash that occurs and so the experience
of psychic integrity of the sole being
the self being whole is shattered
because something has forced itself in
on the soul and so the prophet sallal
itis in him whatever happened to him in
that cave and one of the extraordinary
things about that was the actual squeeze
that gibreel gave to the Prophet and
there were three squeezes and the
prophets Eliza times what it's reported
is that he used County attendeth he used
to go and do this thing called tendeth
and to head north in the Arabic language
if you look almost always the common
errors put next to it to AB good but if
you look at the word hint-hint
is actually shirk and tendeth is to
remove oneself to general is to final
form in Arabic one of the purposes of it
in morphology is to avoid something so
tahajud is to avoid sleep who Jude is
sleep to Kenda to Hamel that's actually
from tequila but to Gen nope is to avoid
nearness to somebody
the Djemba and to handle is to avoid
ship the Prophet Sawa's Emmet is the
early stage of his life he was going to
the cave in order to remove himself from
the exterior world of all of these forms
and go into a place at night and do what
he was doing and it was it was a
horrific practice it was a practice of
those people probably akin to what we
would call today meditation that he was
in a contemplative state his desire was
the desire to empty out forms because
the soul has to be emptied of forms
before it can have knowledge of the one
who has no phone
because forms will impinge on that
understanding and so what gibreel
according to some of our scholars like a
moment Hanabi says that the squeezing
was actually squeezing any remnant out
of his soul from the world from his
historical circumstances because he was
going to be filled with three vessels he
was going to be filled with Iman Islam
and yes son and so there had to be a
complete emptying out in order and this
is one of the things that the Sahaba
said about the problem that we used to
the Prophet used to empty us of jahiliya
and fill us with Islam and so Islam is
an emptying before it's a filling and
this is called Thalia Thalia the people
of the science say Italia to test milk
Italia that the emptying out it must
precede the ornaments in other words you
have to be stripped of the ugly before
you can be ornamented with the beautiful
and so this is this is at the essence of
the religious experience is this
emptying out of the world and being
filled with a sense of the numinous
obviously is what occurs to the prophets
Allah ISM now his second of these
experiences he has many experiences but
obviously that first experience which is
a para the second experience I mean he
has the experience as a child but we're
talking about the prophetic experience a
lot it was said of the second experience
is the istra and the mirage now this is
another deep spiritual experience and
this is the inner Hedra that is also
related to the outer Hedorah and even
payment Oh see I wrote a book called the
two he dies because a lot of people
think that he Jonah is a physical
movement and the prophets Lyceum negated
that when he said that the real mahadji
is the one who makes his era from what
Allah has prohibited him and Allah has
pre
from everything other than himself so
this experience that the prophet
sallallaahu a do synonym has if you look
at the quranic description it says
Misaka Misaka while Madhava his vision
did not deviate now we have to
understand this in the context of what
was happening to him what was happening
to him was he was moving through the
seven heavens and that means that he was
being given unveilings of the unseen
world he was literally being given
unveilings of the unseen world now if we
had unveilings right now if we had if
allah removed this veil from us we would
probably the vast majority of us would
go into a state of insanity quite
literally because we could not take it
we know now in our material sciences
that we are seeing less than a billionth
of the material stimuli at any given
moment in other words when I look out in
this room I'm actually seeing less than
a billionth of what is materially there
to stimulate my senses
so my spectrum like that extraordinary
and it's one of my favorite metaphors
because it's such an extraordinary
metaphor visible light is a very small
spectrum on the electromagnetic spectrum
you have infrared and then you have the
ultra violet light so it goes up and it
goes down and the waves get smaller and
longer depending on which way you're
going well there is a very small
spectrum within that electromagnetic
continuum that we call visible light and
that is what we see now that is the
material world that's what we've
identified that's not dealing yet with
the hyb that's actually not right
because the vibe we do not have access
to it in the same way that we have
access to the material world we also
know that in the sense that this is the
the dominant theory now is that the
overwhelming majority
the universe is dark matter in other
words 95% of the universe the physical
universe is actually not even perceived
by us so what we actually when we look
out there and one of the interesting
things that caused this is it when they
began to look out and see stars
everywhere just it just goes on and on
and on a question came why isn't the
night sky as light as the day sky
because if light travels and all these
lights are out there the whole heavens
are filled with just orbs of light
why aren't they filling up the night sky
in the same way because we only see
about two-and-a-half to three thousand
stars on a really clear moonless night
why isn't it All Stars and what they
realize is that only some stars are
penetrating and actually going it's a
visitation which is very interesting
because the Quran says was some at UWE
thought oh well madaraka mubarak an edge
will happen the night and the night
visitor and the star is a night visitor
which indicates that the light of the
star is moving it's a journey and when
it gets here it is like a night visitor
quite literally so the Quran describes
stars as night visitors and then it says
what will convey to you what this night
visitor is it says anism without the
piercing star now the pub is to put a
hole through Pearl and so the stars that
are actually reaching us are like that
they are the ones that penetrate all of
this extraordinary celestial light so
what we know about the seen world is
incredibly small and yet the unseen
world we have no knowledge of now I want
to look other than what we've been told
and those are called the Summoner yet
what we're told now I want to look just
at the essaouira and this idea that his
vision did not deviate if you were
traveling through the unseen realm and
all of this unveiling was occurring you
were seeing all of this extraordinary
unveiling why wouldn't your vision be
looking at all of that in other words
wouldn't you be distracted and that
again goes back to the heart of the
profits Eliza time who had only one
concern that night and that was to visit
his Lord he was on a journey to God and
he was not interested in the particular
because if you know God you know
everything like the poets at kilometer
hawawa mowjood and fee that ELA
everything you desire exist in God so if
you have God you have your heart's
desire and everybody else I mean
everything that human beings are running
around out there looking for is
ultimately that's what it is it's
nothing else everybody's looking for the
same thing they are looking for their
heart's desire and that is why Imam of
junaid once passed by a man who was
about to get his he was a thief a
brigand fought their buddy up he was
about to get his head chopped off and he
greeted him and one of the students with
him he said you know why would you greet
a man like that and he said any man that
will give his life for his desire I
respect in other words that sacrifice
that's somebody that's taking life very
seriously and that's why I actually in
some ways I have a soft spot in my heart
for atheists and I'll tell you why I've
never met an atheist that didn't take
God seriously and yet I've met so many
people in my life that are not atheists
that just don't take God seriously but
I've yet to meet an atheist that does
not take God very seriously they're
bothered by it
it's they're troubled by it they read
books about it it ends up being a topic
of discussion with them because that's
how serious they take it and one of the
seven deadly sins
in Christianity and they're certainly
deadly in Islam as well and it's to me
it's the most interesting one it's
called sloth a sadya in Latin and this
sin most people think of it as laziness
but it's not laziness in Catholic
tradition sloth was spiritual
lassitude it was that you did not take
your salvation seriously that you
literally squandered your time on earth
and did not take your life seriously and
that is why the vast majority of us are
in a slothful state even if we're
spending all of our time working if we
are not thinking deeply about where
we're going what happens then we're in a
slothful state we're spiritually lazy
and lazy people are uninspiring people
they're uninspired people and they're
held in contempt by even other lazy
people so if we look at this experience
of the asana and the mirage it's an
extraordinary experience because this is
direct witnessing but look at the
preparation that took place before that
that is not how Islam began is it it
began with gibreel it began with the
intermediary and then it was 13 years of
persecution and the thief is the
experience that precedes the Islam which
is the lowest point of the prophets life
on earth according to the prophet saw
him he said to Aisha the worst time I
had was at the hands of your people
the peeve that was the worst experience
that he'd had total state of humiliation
the children threw rocks at him salawatu
out he was sent him and then he was
offered this opportunity for revenge and
he didn't take it and his reason was the
children so he expressed not only his
ultimate humanity but just his
extraordinary magnanimity in a moment
when many many people would have in fact
most people and certainly most mail
would have wanted revenge and he did not
and so he's followed on the way back and
then the jinn is another element because
they become Muslim so introduction also
into this other world and then
ultimately the astronomer Raj when he
comes back from that experience the
prophet sallallaahu said him now is
ready to move to the next phase which is
to be in the world
because the world is no longer a threat
to him as a distraction he now sees
reality as it is and this is what his
prayer to Allah subhanAllah data was
show me things as they truly are show me
things as they are so he was given this
extraordinary gift of seeing things as
they truly are and when he comes back to
the world he is able to be in the world
in a way in which the world is no longer
going to be not only a distraction to
him between him and his Lord he will not
miss perceive the world and this is
called right understanding and this is
also in all of the world religions
there's an understanding or a first
principle that everything begins with
right understanding that we must
perceive the world correctly because our
lack of perception our misperception of
the world is what causes us pain I mean
this is very interesting and it's a
motif that's very dominant in the
Buddhist tradition is this idea of your
suffering comes from a lack of
understanding of the nature of the world
because suffering is related to desire
at what we call in in Arabic what the
Quran calls buggy and buggy which means
desire also means oppression which is so
to me that is so fascinating that the
word for desire and the word for
oppression are the same in Arabic so
freedom from desire
Budhia the freedom from desires when you
make your desire right desire in other
words you have a right understanding of
what you should want then the challenge
is to make what you should want what you
want because it's one thing to know what
you should want it's another thing to
want that thing because there are plenty
of people that are smoking that want
good
they know I should want to stop smoking
and they will also say I want to stop
smoking but really what they're saying
is I should want to stop smoking and
then they get to a point where they do
want to stop smoking and then the
struggle begins knowing what you should
want and knowing what you want are not
the same and most of us don't even know
what we should want and that is a big
problem once we know what we should want
then it's how do we get to wanting what
we should want and once you want that
thing and want comes from a word which
means to be impoverished which is
related to this idea of Iftikhar which
is the definition of humanity creation
in arabic is and wolfs Takuto in allah
it is the one that wants is in want of
our lawsuit on Owatonna that is the
definition of creation the definition of
the creator is the one free of want and
most of neon it cool free of want has no
want has no need and so this idea of
knowing what we should want and then
wanting that thing the prophet
sallallaahu saddam when he comes back he
goes to medina and then the experience
is translated into practice and this is
the next phase is how do we translate
our experience of the divine a direct
experience into the world and this is
how he becomes the model for Humanity
because he Halabi alakina he took on the
divine qualities of these ethical
qualities that God that Allah subhana WA
Ta'ala has described himself with so if
you look now just in terms of what
happens this experience happens and
there's a story of the devil was walking
with one of his disciples and there was
a man in front of him who stumbles on
something and he picks it up and
suddenly you see this illumination
around this person the disciple asked
the devil what what just happened he
said he just stumbled on to the truth
and he says why aren't you
and he says I'll get him to organize it
tomorrow so this is where we move now
into the realm of how do we organize the
experience how do we schema ties it how
do we put it into a Creed there is an
incredible danger in that and it's in a
sense it's the decline of religion and
yet at the same time there's an absolute
necessity for it and that's why our
scholars had to do it I think they
realized its danger and that's where you
get their great hesitation with this
process because I really believe and I
want to show you historically what
happens and why it came to this
extraordinary culmination that I don't
see in any other religious tradition
none I really don't I'm not an expert on
comparative religions or religion that
was my university major but I can't say
that I'm an expert by any means I don't
know the languages that are necessary
look at the primary sources but in the
overall presentations and and educated
summaries of the religions that that
I've looked at I've never seen anything
that comes close to this and that's why
I want to look at it when you look at
religion ultimately religion is
experience and then that experience
enters into propositions the experience
has become propositions I believe that
as you head to a la ilaha illa-llah one
of the beauties for me of our creedal
formula is that it is not just a
testimony because Shahada means to
testify
it also means witness and that's why I
believe that the beauty of islam is that
it has enabled the proposition to be
experienced also it will not be
experienced for everybody but we can say
their Shahada in two ways we can say
ashhadu a la ilaha illallah in other
words i see that there is no god but
allah subhan allah tala or we can say i
testify that that arabic word holds both
those meanings so it's not just
experience it experiences they
but there's also the creedal formula now
I personally believe that the Sahaba and
certainly The Messenger of Allah were in
that first understanding not all of them
that's what I believe I believe that
they were not saying I testified they
were saying I see I am witnessing I am
experiencing the truth of la la la la
and that is that is the difference
between them and the vast majority of
the rest of us and that is why they're
such an extraordinary community and I
think Abu Bakr is after the prophets
Allah isn't the greatest witness he has
the greatest experience of that and
that's why he never he never falters he
never wavers he never has any hesitation
because he was in a state of witnessing
and it had a hadith is probably another
excellent example of that
careful spot a spot that your husband
won't mean and haha he said how have you
woken up is a Hassan hadith how have you
woken up
he said I've woken up a true believer in
other words something happened to him in
which he went from am open to a Mortman
- he's qualifying his state of Iman that
there is a qualitative difference
between my state of Iman this morning
than other mornings and the prophets
Eliza time said think about what you're
saying because every reality has a proof
what is the proof of your reality and
then he gives the description that I am
experiencing Jenna as if it's right here
and I can hear people moaning from the
agony of Hell he was in a state of
experience and the prophets Eliza time
said our ofte fellows them you have
madatha you have true knowledge now so
hold tight to it because you can lose
that hold tight to it now if you look at
what happens one of the extraordinary
things about our tradition is always in
the time of greatest need you can see
providence the providential care
that has been in this religion and
Providence it comes from similar to
provide it's that God gives you what you
need when you need it that is Providence
and and we can see Providence in our
tradition if you look at it I'll give
you an example at the point in which it
was absolutely necessary to codify the
sacred law these four Imams emerge same
time the basic same time one didn't come
a hundred years after the others they
were students of each other with the
exception of Amida man Hongbin they were
benefiting from each other I'm at the
Mohammed is a student of Imam Shafi an
imam Shafter he takes from ahmed
obviously he then is a student of omaha
even Maddock through that because the
chain is is there so these men all
appear at this same time now the other
extraordinary period is the time of the
Credo formation and the time also of the
spiritual knowledge and I want to show
how all of these three come together in
a unique and extraordinary human being
and why that to me is one of the proofs
of Islam the three men who give us a
cradle understand and I'm not going to
go into and it's interesting it's
fascinating to go into a lot of the
historical the more tizzy light and what
happens with walls so they've been a
thaw and Nizam and all these different
and also the helada age I mean there's
some really interesting characters that
show up and cause a lot of trouble but
generally one of the most common
problems in religious tradition is what
is known as the reason tradition
dichotomy we call it upon 1 upon the
akan and knockin dichotomy that most
religious traditions in fact all of the
world traditions have a problem in
resolving this essential split which is
how do we get tradition to conform to
reason or reason to conform to - to
tradition now in Islam there's an early
which is the Mozilla who are the
rationalists they take this Hellenistic
tradition and this is essentially what
philosophy is because theology is
divided into two broad demarcations
natural theology which is the theology
of reason and revealed theology which is
the theology of tradition these are two
within systematized religion these are
the two ways of looking at the
philosophers are the people that are
interested in natural philosophy they're
not interested in revealed philosophy
now the first two early philosophers in
the third century are al-kindi and al
farabi and both of them attempted to
create a rational basis for tradition
and this is a deep-seated interest in
the West and something that the Muslims
abandoned largely with the exception of
the Shia tradition the Sunni Muslims
abandoned this pursuit the Christians
did not and it led to real problems
later on for Christians especially the
Catholic Church because of Saint Thomas
Aquinas when the Hellenistic ideas about
God and about the idea of the cosmos
being eternal coexistent with God and
that what God was was God was the
cybernetic force in the university was
the unifying factor he was on that
molded chaos so the Greeks had this idea
of cosmos and chaos that the high Allah
or the Haila was this eternal substance
and what happens is that there's a
unmoved mover that's affecting all of
this and these ideas came into Islam and
caused a lot of problems early on in the
third century
well they move on they have their own
strain and those are called Muslim
philosophers and they're an interesting
lot and they're brilliant and they have
a massive impact on the West they have a
much greater impact on the West than
they do on the Muslims I mean really
they alter the Western civilization
completely I mean Western civilization
takes a sharp turn as a result
particularly of arrow ease or even
Lucien who is ultimately a student of
even Cina
a student of an Farabi who's a student
of AK Indian thought so what you had
that strain those are the natural
theologians and the five proofs of the
existence of God that are so famous in
the west from st. Thomas Aquinas are and
I've seen edgar myers shows exactly
where he got them from al farabi and he
puts a side-by-side st. Thomas's Latin
version and the Arabic version and the
translation you can see that he's it'