The Holy Prophet (sws) used to pray: “ Allahumma, la takilni ila nafsi tarfataini…Oh Lord, don’t leave me in the hands of my ego for even the blink of an eye.” If you are with your ego, it cuts you off from others, and then you are alone with the ego. To feel and think that you are alone makes you depressive; it destroys the personality, and you are in a helpless situation. Loneliness is the beginning of difficulties and suffering, physically and spiritually. If you are alone, you are unable to think clearly and realize the needs of other people. And if you are speaking to people, and you are not with your Shaykh, then you are like a blind man throwing stones, unable to reach your target. Therefore you must ask: “ Oh my Shaykh, I am asking to be with you. You are with me, but I am not with you. I will try to be with you.” If these two currents meet, the power will run. The more you are able to concentrate on his being with you, the more power reaches you from his side. If you are wholly with him, then he is in you, and you are your own Shaykh. That is the meaning of being with your Shaykh… His power will surround you as much as you are with him, and then you should reach to unlimited power, because the Shaykh is connected to the Prophet, and the Prophet is in the Divine Presence. Be with your Shaykh, and you will lose neither power, knowledge, wisdom, patience, nor your life, because everything is with him. You are never alone, not even in deserts or on seas, even if you were the only human being Aon earth. You will be most powerful among people; and even if the whole of mankind was coming against you, you wouldn’t fear, because you are connected to the real power station. If anyone was to touch you, he would fall down. The fact that this power exists makes our life easy and safe. There is no need to fear if we concentrate on our Shaykh. But if we forget him, hopelessness and depression, suffering and fear may come to us. Therefore take him with you, wherever you are going. Then he will lead and guide you in everything. Then you will understand what it means to be with the Prophet, to be with Allah. You will experience Fana…you will vanish, and He will appear in you. Those are the people about whom the Prophet said: “When you look to them, you look to Allah.” If you are with your Shaykh, Shaitan will never conquer your heart. He can’t enter because your Shaykh is there with you.
One of Shaykh Sharafuddin’s disciples, who is 120 years of age and lives in Bursa, Eskici Ali Usta, reported, “My Shaykh was a wondrous Shaykh. Once when I was a young man, I was in Istanbul, and I had just taken initiation in the order from Shaykh Sharafuddin. I met one of my friends from Daghestan but he was stubborn and didn’t believe in Sufism. I thought that I would speak to him and soften his heart and tell him of my Shaykh’s miraculous powers. Instead, he was able to convince me and change my beliefs. I put my beads on the wall and stopped making dhikr. Almost immediately, I was overcome by my desires and twice I committed major sins.” After one week, I went to Sirkici and I saw the Shaykh on the way. He was also walking in that district, on his way to Rashadiya. When I saw him coming from one side, Iran to the other side to try to avoid him. When I hid myself on the other road, I felt a hand on my back and the Shaykh addressing me, ‘Where are you going, O Ali?’ I returned with him and on the way I was thinking, ‘I cannot hide myself from the Shaykh anymore and the Shaykh cannot bring me back anymore.” “We continued until we met someone named Husein Effendi. The Shaykh told me, ‘When you first came to me I looked at you, and I saw bad character in you. Everyone has good character mixed with bad character. When you took initiation all the bad actions you had done previously I changed into good actions. Except two, sexual desire and anger. Last week we removed from you those two bad characters, desire and anger.’ When he mentioned these two things, I knew he had been sitting with me seeing my sexual desire and my anger, and I began to cry and cry and cry. As I was crying,Shaykh Sharafuddin began speaking with that person Huseyyin in a language that I had never heard before, even though I was from Daghestan and I know all the languages of my area. Later I found out that Shaykh Sharafuddin was speaking in syriac, a very rare language. “After two hours of crying, he said, ‘Enough crying! Allah has forgiven you and the Prophet has forgiven you.’ I said, ‘O my Shaykh, have you really forgiven me? Has the Prophet forgiven me?Has Allah forgiven me? Have the open-eyed Shaykhs really forgiven me? I thought I was doing something all by myself, but now I have found that all of you are seeing me.’ He said, ‘O my son, we are servants at the door of the Prophet and the door of Allah. Whatever we ask of them, they accept as we are in their presence and we are One.’ I said, ‘As a good gesture from my side, since I have been forgiven, what is the proper way to give thanks to Allah and to honor you and the Prophet ? By celebrating mawlid (Prophet ‘s Birthday), or donating a lamb, or some other charity?’ He said, ‘What we want from you is only this: that you keep constant in the dhikr of the Naqshbandi Order.’ This is what happened to me with Shaykh Sharafuddin.”
Six Powers of the Khwajagaan Masters:
Khwaja Shaykh Muhammed Nazim Haqqani says, “Only he who abandons the covetousness of this life and the next will be given pleasure that no one can imagine. A murid becomes eligible for these powers when he becomes free of his ego’s tyranny. When they are granted, he is a free man, forever free from the limitations of time and space. Time and space are illusions which now bind us. When we are free they are at our command.
- The Power of Attraction
The Power of Attraction is the power which enabled the saintly advisor of King Soloman to bring the throne of the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem from Yeman in the same time it takes for an eye to blink, or less (Holy Quran, Chapter 34). This is the power that enables one to draw anything to himself. Inanimate objects are the easiest, people the most difficult.
- The Power of Emanation
The Power of Emanation or Outpouring is the Power to be the means for the transfer of the experience of the Divine Presence to the murid. It is all embracing light that overflows the brim which these Divine favors the brim of the vessel. The Holy Prophet is the vessel in which these Divine favors are poured and, as they are without end, they flow from his heart, to the hearts of Saints and from theirs to those of murids.
- The Power of Connection
The Power of Connection is the power to connect at all times to this chain of transmission of Divine power and favors. For Saints it is the intimate knowledge of the Prophet’s realities and those of the chain of Shaykhs leading to him. For those who are yet aspiring to that station it is the daily invocation of the names of those Grandshayks leading up to the Holy Prophet. In our time, the time when the advent of Imam al Mahdi is anticipated, many more people will have access to this power than ever before.
- The Power of Alignment
The Power of Alignment enables the Shaykh to turn his heart towards the hearts of his murids at any given time, and to turn their hearts towards their destinations. If he can’t do this then it is meaningless to say that he is a Shaykh. The first step is in his turning the heart of the murid towards his own; after this it will be possible to turn it onwards.
- The Power of Guidance
The Power of Guidance is the power to lead one on his way to his destination once he has been turned toward the direction through the Power of Alignment. For example, if you arrive at Heathrow Airport it is not enough, you must be lead or given directions to arrive at your specific destination in London. Therefore, being turned in the direction is only the first step, the door of the maze; you must be helped on through it.
- The Power of ‘Folding-Space’
The Power of ‘Folding-Space’ is the power to travel at will anywhere in the Universe without actually traveling the distance, but rather by “rolling it up” like a parchment. Such a thing is unattainable except for those who have subdued the physical body absolutely. Presently our souls are encased in our physical bodies. The secret of this power is that, by bringing the physical body under control it becomes encased in the spiritual body, and the movement of the spiritual body is not cumbersome like that of this body. What is the speed of a donkey compared to the speed of Light? The speed of light is like a donkey compared to the speed of the spiritual body. (Mercy Oceans’ Lovestream: Shaykh Nazim Al-Qubrusi)
Six Stars of The Naqshbandi Golden Chain
These great figures were:
- Abu Bakr as-Siddiq
- Abu Bakr as-Siddiq (r), who succeeds the Prophet (s) in his knowledge and in his role of guiding the Muslim community. Allah said in the Holy Qur’an “He was the second of two in the cave, and he said to his friend: ’do not be sad, for God is with us’” [9:40]. Of him the Prophet (s) said, “If I had taken to myself a beloved friend, I would have taken Abu Bakr as my beloved friend; but he is my brother and my companion.”
- Salman al-Farisi
- His origin was Isfahan in Persia and he was the one who advised the Muslims to dig a trench in the battle of Ahzab. After the Muslims seized al-Mada’in, the capital city of Persia, he was made Prince and governor of that city and remained there until his death.
- Jafar as-Sadiq
- A descendant of the Prophet (s) on his father’s side and of Abu Bakr (r) on his mother’s, he rejected all positions of honor in favor of retreat and spiritual learning and practice. He was called “The Inheritor of the Prophetic Station (Maqam an-Nubuwwa) and the Inheritor of the Truthful Station (Maqam as-Siddiqiyya).
- Bayazid Tayfur al-Bistami
- Bayazid made a detailed study of the statutes of Islamic law(sharica) and practiced a strict regimen of self-denial. All his life he was assiduous in the practice of his religious obligations. He urged his students (murids) to put their efforts in the hands of God and he encouraged them to accept a sincere and pure doctrine of tawhid, knowledge of the Oneness of God. This doctrine, he said, imposes five obligations on the sincere:
- To keep obligations according to the Qur’an and Sunnah;
- To always speak the truth.
- To keep the heart free from hatred.
- To avoid forbidden food (haram).
- To shun innovation (bid`a).
- Bayazid said that the ultimate goal of the Sufis is to know God in this world, to reach His Divine Presence, and to see Him in the Hereafter. To that effect he added: “There are special servants of Allah who, if Allah veiled them from His vision in Paradise, would have implored Him to bring them out of Paradise as the inhabitants of the Fire implore Him to escape from Hell.”
- Bayazid made a detailed study of the statutes of Islamic law(sharica) and practiced a strict regimen of self-denial. All his life he was assiduous in the practice of his religious obligations. He urged his students (murids) to put their efforts in the hands of God and he encouraged them to accept a sincere and pure doctrine of tawhid, knowledge of the Oneness of God. This doctrine, he said, imposes five obligations on the sincere:
- Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani
- He was born in the village of Ghujdawan, near Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan. He was raised and buried there. He studied Qur’an and the Islamic sciences of both external and internal knowledge until he reached a high station of purity. He then traveled to Damascus where he established a school from which many students graduated and went on to become masters of fiqh and hadith as well as spirituality in their time, both in the regions of Central Asia and in the Middle East.
- Abdul Khaliq continued the work of his predecessors by formulating the dhikr (remembrance of God) passed down from the Prophet (s) according to the Sunnah. In his letters he set down the code of conduct (adab) that the students of the Naqshbandiyya were expected to follow.
- Muhammad Baha’uddin Uwaysi al-Bukhari
- Also known as Shah Naqshband–the Imam of the tariqat.
- In this constellation, we come finally to Muhammad Bahauddan Uways al-Bukhari, known as Shah Naqshband, the Imam of the Naqshbandi Tariqat without peer. He was born in the year 1317 C.E. in the village of Qasr al-cArifan, near Bukhara. After he mastered the sharicah sciences at the tender age of 18, he kept company with the Shaikh Muhammad Baba as-Samasi, who was an authority in hadith in Central Asia. After the latter’s death, he followed Shaikh Amir Kulal who continued and perfected his training in the external and the internal knowledge.
How they carried the Tariqaah
The venerable Mevlana Shaykh Muhammed Nazim al-Haqqani said, “There are forty one Tariqat’s, forty springing from the heart of Imam ‘Ali, and one, the Naqshbandiyya Order, coming from Abu Bakr As Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with them. The Prophet had 124,000 Companions. Who was the grand companion? It was Abu Bakr. The Prophet said, “The whole of what Allah entrusted to me on the Night Journey, I put in the heart of Abu Bakr”. This is well known among real Tariqat Shaykhs. They respect the Naqshbandi Order as the first one. Real Shaykhs, not those giving titles to themselves. All the great Shaykhs, Jilani, Rumi, Darqawi, Rifa’i, they were knowing the real station of the (spiritual geneology of the) Naqshbandi Order. Now, if a person is in one of these Tariqats, they may take Tariqat Naqshbandiyya and remain free to follow those exercises or the Naqshbandiyya exercises…The chain of Shaykhs ends in one. Our GrandShaykh is the last link in the Golden Chain and he is holding that position…
For Naqshbandi Shaykhs, we are waiting for them to renew their baiyah with us or else they are only putting titles on themselves. Al Mahdi (AS) and his seven grand wazirs, forty Khalifas, ninety-nine counting those forty who are next to the wazirs and three hundred and thirteen Grand Murshids are all in the Naqshbandi Tariqat.
In this time, there is no power for other Tariqats to carry people all the way to the ultimate goal (the beholding of God). All are invited to renew baiyah to our GrandShaykh and they may observe their improvement. In our time, there may be one thousand Naqshbandi Shaykhs, but one GrandShaykh. Bringing them together, who will be the leader? If bringing 124,000 Sahaaba together, who is leader? Abu Bakr.
Each Shaykh must appoint one Grand Deputy. Mevlana Khalid Baghdadi appointed Shaykh Ismail but so many Naqshbandi Orders lost him in their silsila and lost also the secret of our GrandShaykh. Now so many Naqshbandi Shaykhs in Damascus, Aleppo and Homs cannot find a successor. Except for our GrandShaykh, no one has appointed a Deputy. This is because we have Shaykh Ismail in our Silsila”.
Global footprint
Global map of the place of rest of all grandshaykhs
(The final map will be much better and will show the cities also)