Muhsin Fani

“ Let it be recommended to watch by night as much as possible; never to show violent enmity towards any man; and to beware of making one’s bosom the prison-house of rancour; should it nevertheless take place from the infirmity of human nature, let it soon be stifled: for, in the interior of our soul resides the true agent, the unparallelled God, and raises tumultuous strife for the sake of provoking the investigation of truth.
A governor should disdain laughing and joking: he should always be informed of every occurrence by spies ”

“ He was desirous to perform the pilgrimage, but he was then too young for it, so it was postponed until he attained the truth of his religion. The words of God Almighty are:
“Verily, I am near to mankind, nearer than their own necks; there is no separation between me and mankind; and I am one with mankind; but mankind know it not: nor can a man attain the knowledge of me, unless by the means of the assiduous perusal of the sacred volume, and not by much travel of the feet; but he may attain the knowledge of me by ardent meditation, and, by obedience, a man becomes perfect.” ”

“ To unite the soul with the body is as much as to drive Adam from heaven; to long for the body is to bear the commands of Eva; and to perform bad actions is to eat of the forbidden tree; anger is the serpent; lust is the peacock. They hold that Iblis represents the power of imagination which guides us, and the sensual influence which denies the knowledge of words and things consentient with reason, and contends with the power of reason ”

“ Another evil attending submission to an incomprehensible doctrine is that, whatever the intellect possesses and offers by its ingenuity, turns to no instruction and advantage of mankind, whilst the prophet himself has said:
‘God imposes upon a man no more than he can bear.’
“And whatever the understanding does not comprise within the extent of reason, the truth of this remains hidden; and to assent thereto is silliness; because the doctrine of other wise men may be of a higher value than the tradition or the book of that prophet. ”

“ To view the nature of God with the eye of the heart, and to see him face to face in every mansion and on every side, with the light of the intellect, and to cause no injury to the creatures of the All-Just: this is the business of mârifat, “true knowledge.”
To know the All-Just, and to perceive and comprehend the sound of the tasbíh, “rosary:” this is the business of kurbet, “proximity to God.” ”

“ When in an elemental matter, the energy conjoins in such a manner that by it an exuberance results in the composition of the mineral form; then it may happen that it assumes such a superior aptness as to invest itself with a vegetable guise; when its faculty and fitness gains a further increase, then the animal vest adapts itself to a suitable shape, and becomes worthy, that the elemental matter, fitted for the dignity of a human constitution, converges to such an excellence as to manifest itself in the perfection of mankind. ”

“ Let him attend to the beating of the kettle-drum at the rising of that luminary which bestows light upon the world; and at midnight, which is properly the beginning of sunrise, and during the progress of the great majestic light from station to station, let him order small and great guns to be fired, so that all men be called up to offer thanks to God. ”

“ I wished to proceed on the footsteps of brutishness, and compared it to wine, the power of which is seducing, clouding, and ignorance-increasing, like passion and lust, and wine is the darkener of the two other powers. And he compared nature to water, because from it is derived the support and stability of a person, and man depends upon the temperament of the agents which act in the body ”

“ When my intelligence found access to the knowledge of unity, I considered and investigated the parts, and from this study the rational soul derived such enjoyment, that all the powers of brutishness and nature desisted from their action, and such an immersion into unity manifested itself, that there remained no consideration for the science relative to substance and bodies. ”

“ None except God, the all-mighty, is the wish of the godly man, that is, whatever the godly undertakes, the object of his wish in it is God; for instance, he takes some food, that he may be able to perform the service of God; performs that service, that he may not be slack and deficient in his duties to God; desires a wife, that he may give existence to a virtuous son, worshipper of God; pays veneration to the lights of the stars, because they are near God the all-just; and abandons himself to sleep, that his soul may ascend to the upper world. ”

“ Prayers of the pious, salutations of the saints, sacrifice for the holy spirits of the prophets and apostles, blessing and peace be upon our prophet and upon them! who are the guides of the roads, those who walk before us on the ways, parts of the whole. ”

“ Besides, the prophet trusted also to God’s knowledge, for he is all knowledge, and the knowledge of him is the theme of prayers to his being without letters and sound, and not by reason: he himself is his own ornament; he himself is his eloquence. ”

“ As the marks of good and bad actions of mankind are determined, so every body shares accordingly pleasure or pain. Words or deeds, one by one, being revealed and described, establish conviction; so that disavowal becomes impossible. This is the office of two recorders, the one of whom stands to the right and the other to the left; whatever of one’s speeches and actions is praise-worthy, this is called “angelic;” and whatever is blameable is named “satanic.” This is what the prophet of Arabia said: “From goodness arises an Angel, from badness a Satan.” ”

“ I acquired such a knowledge of his purity and of his beneficence, as no living being can comprehend with his sense: for he may have a clear perception of bodies, and observe forms and images; a substance endowed with a memorial intelligence conceives ideas; but the self-existent, necessary Being is out of this category, and cannot be understood by sense, imagination, and memorial power; in his majesty there is no motion, because motion is a change of existence; but the self-existent necessary Being is such as to be the mover of all things. ”

“ But the creed of the Hakím Dostur was, that the prophets of the Persians, Hindus, Yonans, 211 Turks, and Arabs, and such people, were promoting the establishment of a sort of knowledge and of some sorts of sciences; the philosophers, exerting themselves by the aid of the reasoning faculty, become founders of theoretical schools, and also lend their assistance with respect to theology. The scope of an Hakím is, that his reason may direct its laborious efforts towards all quarters, and, inasmuch as may be in its power, to bear a resemblance to the Lord God, the self-existent Being. ”

“ Seventy thousand angels were always going out and in to worship. In entering it, Jabrííl gave the precedence to the prophet; they arrived at a golden veil, which the angel touched. Here the Angels sang: “There is no God but God; and from behind the veil the voice of God answered: “I am God, and no God exists but me.” The Angels added: “Muhammed is the prophet of God;” and God confirmed it by the words: “My servants say the truth; I have sent Muhammed as my apostle.” Now, Muhammed was raised up by angelic hands; Jabrííl remained behind. ”

“ If thou hast well conceived the sense of the heavenly and terrestrial, know that mankind has four nishá, “stages,” [213] in like manner as the blasts of the trumpet are four times repeated: because death and life have four periods. In the first stage, man is living under the form of a thing; but, with respect to qualities and reason, he is a dead thing. In the second stage, under the form of mind, he is a living thing, but, with respect to qualities and reason, a dead thing. ”

“ Borák, the vehicle of devotion, is like an image of prayer; the saddle and bridle represent the ready mind and the perfect union of religion. The members of Borák, of precious jewels, typify purity, candor, affection, submission, humility, and perfect love of God, rejecting all other desire except that tending towards the supreme Being in prayer. The restiveness of Borak, and the aid given by Jabríil in mounting Borák present a similitude of the reluctance of the human mind to the wisdom of its knowledge of God, and Jabríil figures the science of divinity. ”

“ But Mulla Sultan, although he acknowledged his high rank of excellence, never adhered to him. And Hakím Kámrán said: “What is not understood, becomes a subject of dispute.” Thus Mulla Sultán followed with intense application the study of the soul, and the chain of demonstrations relative to it, but he said: “I am not able to understand its nature, and am, in that respect, like a parrot.” Among the able disciples of Hakím Kámrán was Hakím Mershed, who passed through all degrees of science before him, and possessed his entire confidence. ”

“ God is the world in its universality, but in its particularity mutable conformably with the whole, as it has been stated in the doctrine of the Yezdánían. They maintain, the work of God is according to his will; he does; if he wills not, he does not; but a good work is conformable to his nature: because all his attributes are perfection, in which sense they draw necessary conclusions with regard to the nature of God. ”

“ After him, Míyán Ahdad, the son of Omar Shaikh, the son of Báyezíd, who is known among the illustrious persons by the name of Ahdád, sat on the throne of authority. He was just, and an adherer to rule; he kept himself thoroughly firm in the precepts of his august predecessor; he never intended to amass wealth, but gave every one the due reward of his labor; the fifth part of the wealth which was collected from the wars against the infidels he deposited in the public storehouse, and it served to reward the meritorious warriors. ”

“ But now, whence can we know that your prophet is true?” The Muselman said: “From his miracles, one of which is the dividing of the moon.” [56] The Nazarene observed upon this: “If the dividing of the moon has taken place, the inhabitants of the world must have seen it, and the recorders of extraordinary things in all countries, and the historians of all nations would have written it down with the pen of truth. Now none, except Muselmans, give any information of it.” ”

“ Know, men attached to exterior evidence said, that whatever is commonly believed of the last judgment, and what is connected with the soul of the world, implies nothing else but that, from the time when the Almighty God brought forth out of nothingness into existence, the heavens, the stars, the material bodies, the three kingdoms of nature, and the essences, the duration of the world shall extend to that period when he will again plunge the whole into non-existence, and this shall be “the other world.” ”

“ You seem not to know that the irrational cannot be the creator of the rational; that the one, uncompounded, is incompatible with division, and that plurality of the self-existent one is absurd. Finally, by the worship of a mean object, no perfection can accrue to the noble. ”

“ Besides, those who acknowledge an ascent without a limit, if in the pure being and true essence of the glorious and most high God, who is exempt and free from ascent and descent, color, odor, outwardness and inwardness, increase and decrease, they admit a progression, it must also be admissible in the existence of a Súfi professing the unity of God. And if they do not admit a gradation of progress in God, then they ought not to admit it in the professor of the divine unity, who in the exalted state of purity and holiness became united with him. ”

“ He was ignorant, and acquired some knowledge by becoming the disciple of one among the sages of India, until he was freed from his body; in the form of Krishna he was addicted to lust and deceit, of which you yourselves tell many stories. You state, that in this incarnation there was little of the wisdom of a supreme God, and much of the corporeal matter of Krishna: thus you compel mankind, who, capable of justice, are superior to all sorts of animals, to worship a boar or a tortoise! ”