However, in this age, the person who encounters the sentence “He who knows his nafs knows his Lord” immediately opens Sufi books, sees the nafs emmah and its attributes and says, “I have learned. Let’s take an adjective for example. Let’s go through arrogance. The jahri school of Sufis says that there is arrogance in the nafs-i emmara. In this context, we encounter many definitions.
These are definitions such as arrogance, self-righteousness, superiority, ego. If we examine these definitions, we see that they do not exactly match the definition of arrogance in our own inner world. We see that the written documents and information about these definitions of arrogance do not have a counterpart in our inner world, but they have a counterpart in the world we live in.
As we said, people talk about an inner world that is formed by their outer world. For example, in love, you see that there is a concept that people create with information and schools outside themselves. But you will say this is not me, in fact a person created by law is in love with someone created by morality, and in fact law and morality are in love with each other. There is no law in the inner world!
The answer to the question of what I am is essentially there. I am like a dog; in terms of what I love. I think I am a little bit like a cat. I say that just because you give me some treats, you are not going to be my Lord, because my Lord is one. In fact, Arifs say that when a person looks into the mirror of Allah Almighty’s nature, he sees his own reflection. When I say my own essence, my own being, and when I ask what arrogance is, I never have an answer from my own essence. Even if I say that this, that, this book or that book or that person describes arrogance like this, this definition does not belong to me. It does not belong to me because it is not something I have experienced.
For example, in stomach disease, without examination and analysis, the doctor does not give a definition. For example, reflux, its equivalent in person ‘a’ and person ‘b’ is completely different, you need to look at thousands of parameters to define reflux. We cannot get a definition by asking over the phone.
When I take the suggestion that ‘arrogance is conceptually seeing oneself as superior to others’, when I say that I should not see myself as superior to others, it may be useful, but one day when I encounter other information that will undermine this, for example, the believer is holy, clean, even if he has kebair sins, the believer is pure, but the polytheist is dirty. So how can I not consider myself superior to the polytheist? There is a power that has bestowed this quality on me. Is there arrogance here, and if so, how do we explain it?
When a Companion met the Prophet, knowing that he was unclean, he ran away from him, wondering how I could shake hands with him being unclean. When the Prophet understood this concern, he smiled at him, saying, “No, the believer is clean, pure.
What is dignity and what is arrogance, and how to distinguish them? These are all conceptually belonging to the outside world, they are taught knowledge attached to you, they do not belong to you.
Islamic Sufism in particular puts this knowledge, which we call self-knowledge, at the center of life. It says, “Who am I?” If you are dragged into a search for a biography that you can create in yourself in the face of the question of who I am, even if you have sunk to the bottom of sin, this is the kind of person that Allah deals with. If you have added the sentence “I am searching” at the end of this biography you have created, it means that you will encounter God even if you are an atheist.
Because God Almighty has great affection for this type of human being, whoever and whatever they are. If I answer the question of who or what I am by giving an example of myself, I have studied in a classical madrasah, I have received diplomas from 5 different Sufi schools, I have had masters, I have finished philosophy school, I have a huge library, I am a person who tries to read and live. With these parameters, this biography may have a meaning in the eyes of the servants, but it has no meaning in His eyes!
Because in His eyes, it does not matter how many ijazahs, disciples or students or scholars or even luminaries this person has. Even if it is a special rank, at the end of the day, if I sincerely add this aspect at the end of this biography and say; “I am at the bottom of ignorance, my Lord, I want to know, find and be you”, I can have a value.
A person who knows what he is not also has the knowledge of what he is, and this is also valuable. In the sight of Allah Almighty. In a biography like this, a person who owns 2 holdings, is a tax record holder, employs many people and lives a very sweet life, none of them have any value in His sight.
We said that the knowledge of existence is the knowledge that will not go with you. If we write on a blackboard what will not go with you, for example, your parent has gone or you will go before your child, no one will go with you. Allah, whom you believe in, says, “Not even your mother will be with you on the Day of Reckoning, she will run away from you that day. The only thing you can take with you is the knowledge of your own essence, His knowledge, realization and how far you have come in this life in “becoming”.
The level of becoming; even what you believe in, if it can be measured by research, is actually not faith. At this point we only have a wishful thinking. There are clear statements in the Qur’an about this;
‘(O believers!) Or do you think that you will enter Paradise until the like of what happened to those who came before you happens to you? Poverty and distress touched them so much that the Prophet and the believers with him said, ‘When will the help of Allah come? Know well that Allah’s help is near.” (Al-Baqarah, 2/214)
“Do you think that you will not be tested, when the flesh of those before you was separated from their bones by iron, and they did not turn back for a moment?” We are not there. The faith mentioned here is a faith that has been verified, a faith that has been internalized like the union of water with soil. We are not here. We are thinking about tomorrow.
One day when the Prophet (pbuh) came to Bilal Habeshi when he was sick, he saw him saving dates in a bag and asked him what these were. Bilal (r.a) replied; “O Rasulullah, I was full today, but I saved these for tomorrow.” Upon this, the Prophet (pbuh) got very angry, saying, “What kind of faith is this!”.
We are far away from such faith and tawakkul. We do not claim this either. If there were 10 people with such faith in the world, it would be a leap forward. The followers of the prophets in their time had this kind of faith. While we have dilemmas even in faith, unfortunately, we have nothing in terms of what we can take with us. Some narrations say, “Even if we memorize the entire Qur’an, if we enter Paradise, it can only benefit us in the ranks there.”
For example, the narration says, “A hafiz is an Ahlullah, but he is also an Amil.” But the main thing is that if this person is practicing with 6,000 verses, he is already a saint. He has to practice in order to be an Ahlullah. Ibn Sina was a hafiz, a hafiz with 7 qiraat, but there are about 20 issues about Ibn Sina that others, including F. al-Razi and al-Ghazali, technically say are blasphemous. Saddam Hussein was also a hafiz, for example.
So this is not what is meant by hafiz. Because being a hafiz is about being able to discover the Qur’an in your own circle and put it into practice. In Islamic history, for example, Ibn Arabi is the Shaykh al-lekbar for his lovers, but we know that Ibn Arabi was not a very scholarly person. He is not even a scholarly person, and I appreciated one of my students for discovering this. Because he has never read any scholarly book from beginning to end. But as far as we know, he has 500-odd works. Because self-knowledge is essentially God-knowledge, and God-knowledge is self-knowledge. Beyond the grave, anyone who is close to these two knowledge at the level of comprehension is under the assurance of Allah about what they do not know. That is why Bayazid Bestami (ra) says: “You get knowledge from the dead, we get it from the one who never dies and is alive, that is, Allah.”
Know that you cannot take any knowledge that has nothing to do with the self. It is all temporary and need-based. No matter how many holdings you have, you cannot take it. Not even philosophical, architectural, medical or engineering knowledge. It will all stay here. These sciences are tool sciences. Fiqh is a tool science. But all of them, including Arabic hadith, theology, tafsir, will stay here. But how can you take it with you? You can take your medical knowledge. How?
If out of all this knowledge you have built a value in the center of the self and a value in the center of the existence of the creator and you have built a work, then only these utilized works will be permanent. Then you have a story in the grave… What is not permanent has no value.
(Recorded and compiled from Ahmet Turan Esin’s conversation)
