The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship

From The Golden Words of a Sufi Sheikh, Word#465.

A disciple asked his sheikh, “O my sheikh, my true sheikh, in which religion can the connection between man and God be established?”

The sheikh replied, “Son, in a town many roads and paths meet at the marketplace, enabling the people of the countryside to come to the supermarket and buy all kinds of things. People come to buy what they need and then they return to their homes. No one stays in the marketplace.

“Like that, many paths and many religions lead to the marketplace of the world. Religions are paths. People go to the marketplace
of the world, buy what they want, and then go back to their houses of arrogance, karma, and mäyä; tärahan, singhan, and süran (the three sons of mäyä); obsession, hatred, miserliness, attachment, fanaticism, envy, intoxicants, lust, theft, murder, and falsehood. They buy what they want in the world market, then return to where they were before.

“In the marketplace they buy the teachings of the seventeen puränas, the sixty-four kinds of worldly knowledge, the sixty-four sexual games, the four religions, the six horoscopes, and the ninetysix energies. Then they return to the place of birth, the place in which they were conceived. They put the things they bought into the place of birth and give them form. Man cannot become man-God following any of these paths, nor can he become a perfected man, an insän kämil. You must think about this.

“You asked in which religion can man and God be connected, did you not? Adam and Eve (A.S.) are our original father and mother. In Tamil they are called Ïswaran and Ïswari; in Arabic they are called Adam and Hawwä’. They are the original mother and father of all mankind. Everyone belongs to the one family of mankind. The Creator of the family is also one. He is God. He is the one God who is the Father of all creation.

“O son, man is one family. There is one God. But mind and desire buy the rejected things of the world and then go back to the seventeen houses mentioned before. There the fighting begins because of ‘mine’, ‘yours’, and ‘who is greater than I’? My son, these seventeen try to rule the world. Their qualities obscure the connection between man and God.

“If you understand this with wisdom, you will see the performers in the marketplace acting out their murders and sins in the dark ignorance of torpor and mäyä. Cut off this ignorance with wisdom. Cut off the hypnotizing religions and the bigotry which separates one man from another. If you dispel them with wisdom, if you act with God’s qualities and actions, if you act with equality and compassion, if you regard other lives as you regard your own life, if you do selfless duty, you will see the connection between man and God. This is the good way, the religion of gnänam, the religion of grace, the religion of the Ruler of grace.

“Understand this with wisdom, O my son. Then you will understand your Father, the one family, your true prayer, the state you must attain, and the station you must occupy. If you pray with true understanding in the same way God does, throwing away what is wrong and taking only what is right, that is the straight path. You will see one family and one God. You will know that He alone is worthy of worship, and you will say, ‘Lä iläha, there is nothing other than You.’ Then with the true feeling that flows from a melting heart, you will reach that place.”

M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen