Faruk Dilaver - Secret Garden

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SECRET GARDEN by Faruk DİLAVER

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introduction In this book you, our precious readers, will find the aim of our creation, the reason why we live, material-spiritual experiences that we must take heed during our life, death as not being annihilated and decayed in the earth but as a birth and salvation, and a passage to attain to meet with the Almighty Creator, our aim of creation as knowing and becoming aware of the Creator, and seeking and finding Him with endless love throughout our whole life, the significance of love and being union with Him, details of being purified and becoming mature by liberating the self from base desires, contributions of love, understanding and patience to our happiness in a form of sincere discourses given in a plain language through true stories we experienced and legendry stories of great masters.

We intend to share findings of our seeking for many years and show the TRUE FACE OF LIFE to you as much as we are able to see now.

Anyone who reads this book will attain to awareness rather than knowledge and thus reach to the pleasure of living.

Being aware of his unhappiness due to countless unimportant things that he is occupied with in this temporary world, he abandons his fears and attains to peace and happiness with love, understanding and tolerance.

Faruk Dilaver

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 What is life about? What have I done, what am I leaving behind? Where am I going to, why was I born? Is it possible that one is born to die? Given that all that is created and all human beings die, there must be some meaning to creation‟s living... Ever since we came into this world, we have lived a life that is both bitter and sweet. It is uncertain how much longer and in what way we will live. Let us stop and think at least once in this passing journey of life. Before death stops us, before it ties us up, let us reflect on what we have understood from the life that we have lived so far. Have we come into this world just to exist? If we have come into this world just to exist, or to acquire possessions, then death will take all our possessions as well as our existence away. It will certainly catch us. We cannot find happiness by forgetting the fact of death. Those who seek happiness by forgetting death suffer greatly when they remember it on the occasion of an illness or of old age. Those who accept the fact of death and don‟t see life as a joke, those who abandon their body for love before death takes it away, reach eternal happiness. Like Rumi, they see death as a blessed day and they yearn for it. We did not come into this world just to nourish the body. No matter how well we nourish it, in the end it too will become dust. Let us take good care of this body and use it in beneficial ways. First, let us understand why we were created. Then, let us search for our Creator. Let us obey His commands, which He has made known through his messengers. Otherwise, we will live a life that is dissatisfied, discontented, and unhappy, and slowly we will destroy ourselves. The biggest issue man faces is entering this world and leaving it. Why did we come to this world, from where, and what will our end be? Our goal is to find the purpose of living. We were born; now we are dying. Given that we will die, why are we born? I had a car accident fifteen years ago; I came to the edge of death and asked myself: “What is life? What have I done; what am I leaving behind? I‟m going all alone. Then why was I born?” All that is created and human beings die. Is it possible that one is born to die? There must be a meaning to man‟s existence. God was a hidden treasure in eternity. He wanted to be known. For that purpose he loved himself. A light came into existence from that love. He called that light “My Muhammad!” He created all the universes and mankind from that love. He sent man down to Earth as His deputy. For those whom He loved among them, He became the eye with which they see, the mouth with which they speak, the ear with which they hear, the hand with which they hold. He called them “My friends, My beloveds.” They are the kamil (perfect, mature) people who are the beloveds of God; they are the deputies of God on earth representing Him. They have adopted the beautiful manners of God. God is manifest on their faces with His attributes. They are the heirs of the Prophet. God makes His beautiful attributes known through them. Because God created man to be known. He presented His beautiful attributes to others through His believers.

4 This is why God created man. The purpose of the creation of man and his life is to know God, to see the beauty of God at least once during this short span. God first introduced His beautiful attributes and manners to the world of humans through His prophets. Some adopted the manners they saw in the prophets and became their heirs, lovers of God, the places of manifestation of the beautiful attributes of God, and became the means to know God. These people are the beloved servants of God; they are His friends. Through the mirrors of their and the prophets‟ hearts, the beauty of God is seen. One who doesn‟t think about the Creator throughout his life, one who doesn‟t search and know Him, spends his whole life in vain, eating, drinking, having pleasure or suffering, and one day he passes away. To pass away, to decay and disappear in dust, is not salvation. This is the destiny of the body but man is not just a body of flesh and bones, he is a spiritual being. He doesn‟t cease to exist by death; he is accountable for what he did throughout his life. May God help him; otherwise it is very difficult. Let us be hopeful. God is looking for reasons to forgive more than to punish. Let us just not neglect, for the sake of God, obeying His commands and doing charity. Death is the soul‟s leaving the body. If you can free yourself from the captivity of the body before death takes life away, then you will reach the secret of “dying before death” and will reach the understanding that death is the greatest pleasure. What binds you to the body is the attachment to worldly pleasures. Break those bonds. Truth cannot be seen before leaving the prison of the body. Free yourselves from the captivity of feelings like hatred, ambition, and lust, and embark on the path to being human. Most of us are unhappy, constantly complaining of our troubles. Troubles are remedies for man. If you take troubles as your pleasure, they cease to be troubles. Your life is being spent for this world; you are wearing yourself out for the sake of this world. See how your faces have wrinkled and your hair is turning white. All for this world! Why aren‟t you wearing yourself out for eternity, fulfilling what is expected from life? In the end, we will be called to account for how we spent ourselves. We have embraced this world as if we will never die! We can‟t take our hands off it. We have forgotten that we will die tomorrow. We have turned this world into a hell for ourselves with fires of ambition, hate, and hatred. We are burning without having to wait for death. The troubles, the distresses that fall upon us, put us in hell while we are still in this world. We don‟t give ourselves a chance to be in heaven. We mind the smallest things for hours and lose sleep over them. If we truly believed everything is from God, we wouldn‟t be so worried about illnesses, we wouldn‟t grieve for hours over a small thing someone has said. We have turned this life into a hell for ourselves even before we die. Why shouldn‟t we live a peaceful life like heaven instead of hell? Let us believe in destiny, let us have faith in God, let us know God. Because God has created us to know Him. This worldly life is short, you know. Then what is this rush of yours? What are the things you want to do, what are the things you can‟t finish? Don‟t look at what you can‟t do, look at yourselves; everyday you are growing older, everyday you are wearing out. Slowly, slowly you are expiring. When we worship God, we say we will see its fruits after death; when we do an act of kindness, we say it will be recognized after death; when we do evil, we say nothing happens

5 in this world anyway and we will account for it afterwards; we will go to the Hajj when we are close to death, start doing our daily prayers, and then all will be forgiven. We have found the easy way! Do we really have the time to grow old? The younger you are, the closer you are to God. Know this moment as your youth. Don‟t be left behind even by one step; look towards the future with hope. Because the younger you are, the easier it is to turn to the truth. As the proverb says, “A tree will bend while it is young.” Man does not fall in love after seventy. If we are to love the Creator, let us love Him while we are young. Of the sound waves in the air, we call those we hear “manifest” and those we don‟t “hidden”. In reality, there is no such distinction. The beings of different dimensions are also like that. We call “hidden” what we don‟t see and “manifest” what we do. Those who see the manifest and the hidden as one know all existence as one due to the oneness of the Creator. In order to be close to the Creator, we must find the most perfect being of creation. The most perfect creation is the human, and the most perfect being of mankind is Muhammad Mustafa. Let us study his life and manners well and try to imitate him because he is the ultimate station of humanity. He is the most perfect, the ultimate example we can imitate. If we adopt his manners, worship God as he did, live as he did, then we will have intimacy with God as he did, and we will reach God as he did. When we feel curious about something, we want to learn about it constantly; but we learn in order to tell others. We buy and sell, but we don‟t benefit ourselves. We only take and give. Our job is to take and give. We are like the salesperson at a florist. We don‟t even think of smelling the flowers we sell and reaching their essence. We have been infected with a disease of knowing and speaking about everything. We only speak but we do not live. Why don‟t we also try to tell by living? If we don‟t feel the echo of what we say by mouth in our hearts, that is not prayer. If we went in front of a rock and shouted “God!”, even that would echo. Are our hearts harder than that rock that they do not echo? Perhaps it is not the fault of the heart. Perhaps we are unable to convey our voice to the heart. We cannot make our voice heard across this distance of one hand span, from our mouth to the ear. If you cannot hear your own self, how can you expect others to hear you? We don‟t think about hearing something ourselves; instead we always think about making others hear it. We don‟t hear what we say. We cannot make others hear something that we cannot make heard by our own ears. We don‟t sweat and no tears come from our eyes because we don‟t live what we say. We cannot find the true path if we deceive ourselves. Let us be sincere to our inner selves. Let us listen to the voice coming from our hearts. Let us hear our own selves first. One‟s inner ear opens first to the voice of his own heart. One who does not hear himself, one who does not know himself cannot know his Lord. It is nice to feel the inspirations that come to the heart; but every inspiration may not be divine. It is hard to distinguish what comes to the heart. Therefore, let us first seek refuge in God about these inspirations, and then check them against our Book and the sunnah (the sayings and practices of Prophet Muhammad). Do you think sohbat (preaching, companionship) is easy? It is not. It passes through so many curtains and so many sieves before being brought to the benefit of us all. May God

6 protect all of us from speaking according to our own self-interests. May He make us from those who have hearts that receive inspirations from God for God. God bestows His sohbat upon the servant He wishes. Sheikh AbdalQadir Jilani‟s son, who had been educated on tasawwuf for many years, one day said to his mother: “Tell my father that I would also like to say something to the people in the mosque and let them benefit from the knowledge I have learned.” The mother said to Sheikh Jilani: “Our son has studied for so many years. Give him a chance,” and asked for permission. Sheikh Jilani agreed: “Alright then, today I‟ll go shopping and he can talk and preach to people in my place.” His son rejoiced at this decision. He went to the mosque, sat in the chair, and started speaking from the text he had prepared. Even though he spoke on very subtle points which he thought had hardly been heard before, he noticed that nobody was interested. After a while, he saw that everybody in the mosque was sleeping and thought to himself: “I‟ve put so much effort into this, worked on it for days, and yet nobody is paying any attention.” At that moment, Sheikh Jilani came in. A movement of awakening occurred among the people. His son immediately got down from the chair and said: “Please father, I was unable to give anything to these people, you talk to them please.” The holy man sat in the chair: “My children, today I went to the marketplace as my son was talking to you. I bought three eggs. I gave them to his mother. She put the pan on the fire, it became heated. She poured oil into it, „jisss!‟ ” and everybody was awakened. “Then she hit two eggs against each other and broke them into the pan, „josss!..‟ ” At that moment, according to tradition, seven of those who were listening died. This incident illustrates beautifully that the real essence of sohbat is not just information but that there is something else being given in those words. There are books everywhere, filled with information. But there is also another kind of knowledge, another kind of science, which is the very truth itself. We call it the ilm al-ladunni (the divine knowledge, the knowledge from the presence of God). No matter how much we read, no matter how much we learn, we cannot acquire that knowledge. Acquiring that knowledge takes a special education. They don‟t put that knowledge in every container. In order for them to put it in, the container must have been cleansed and silvered. Let us go to sohbat not just to learn knowledge but also to feel and live. Let your outer vision cease, let your hearts awaken. Let us see what is there in the depths. Give up the heights. Don‟t seek after reaching the heights and acquiring positions. Whatever there is, it is in the depths, in the lowlands, in being small. If the outer eye closes, the inner eye opens. At the moment our outer vision is lost at a point, a spiritual channel opens. Then the eye no longer sees the point it was looking at. Another eye starts seeing. Let us calm down a little and grow more still and quiet; let our outer vision be lost at a point, let our hearts awaken, let us see awake dreams.

7 When listening to the sohbat, let us open the ear of our hearts. Let us take what is in it for us, knowingly or unknowingly. Let us take a breath from that atmosphere. If you put an uncharged wire next to a wire with a current, the same current becomes induced in the uncharged wire. It has this quality while it is a piece of wire; why shouldn‟t we also have the quality of being affected by the magnetic field around induced by the current passing through one of us? Why shouldn‟t we benefit from the spiritual fields of each other? This is a technique of communication. For this reason, sohbat gives a lot to people who are aware of it, if they know to keep quiet. If they don‟t, there is neither the speaker nor any listeners of the sohbat. That is, sohbat is made by the listener. And those who listen to the listener also benefit. God created the body of man from earth, water, fire, and air. The body of Adam was made by angels but God made his face with His own hand of power. For that reason, Prophet Muhammad says: “Don‟t hit the face!” This literally means not to slap the face, and allegorically means not to hit anybody‟s face by pointing out their faults. A student of a wise man to whom he had given great effort reached spiritual maturity and his inner eye opened. When he looked at the Book of Destiny, he saw that his master was destined for hell. Having panicked and thinking “How could have I been the student of such a person?” he went to his master: “Master, you are destined for hell!” he said. His master responded: “Son, we have been seeing it there for forty years, but we haven‟t lost hope in God.” Although the master had been seeing that in the Book of Destiny for forty years, he hadn‟t lost hope in God and continued enlightening people. What a perseverance, what a patience! If he had died at that moment, he would have gone to hell. While the student was thinking, “Can anyone reach perfection with such a rebel? It means I had all the virtue and made all the effort!” his master told him to look at the Book again. When he looked, the student saw that the status of his master had changed and that he had been raised to a greatly exalted status. He asked for forgiveness with great regret and was bound to his master in such a way that they wouldn‟t be separated again. A few days ago, I ran into a friend of mine whom I hadn‟t seen for many years. He had a daughter in seventh grade. She was a stutterer. Her friends teased her every day. The girl, who became totally unable to mix with people, swallowed a box of pills. So she ended her life for being teased excessively. Unfortunately, making fun of people with defects and leading them into depression starts at a very early age. Do we ever teach our children that it is wrong to humiliate people by their defects? More importantly, do we tell them, “It is extremely bad to make fun of people with defects!”? By humiliating people for their faults at the smallest occasion, one can neither live spiritually nor can make others live spiritually. Don‟t shame people; explain things with beauty. Shaming someone doesn‟t make you any wiser. Humiliating someone doesn‟t make you any greater. God breathed of His spirit into Adam. When Adam‟s head received life, he looked towards the feet of his body of clay. Then life spread through his whole body. God gathered all the angels and told them to bow down to Adam. We don‟t comprehend this event. Let us

8 begin to open our eyes to the truth from this point. The human is such an exalted being that all angels bow down to him. But an angel named Azazil, teacher of the angels, refused to follow God‟s order, saying “I won‟t bow down to that piece of clay. I was created from fire and I‟m a superior being.” For this reason, God labeled him “satan” and assigned him to be against humankind until the Judgment Day. Satan deceived Adam and Eve in heaven. He made them eat a fruit although they were ordered to abstain from it. They were then sent from heaven to earth for disobeying the command. The first to disobey was the angel named Azazil, and the second was our father Adam and our mother Eve. But Adam and Eve were forgiven due to their deep regret. The angel Azazil that we call “satan” was a very learned angel. He was the teacher of the angels. Despite the fact that he was so learned, he did not obey the command of God and fell into heedlessness. O you who rely on your knowledge, you cannot know more than Azazil! If you rely on what you know, you will also join those who disobey. Don‟t rely on your knowledge, but seek refuge in God and obey the command. O you who deal with sciences! First find your own place in science and see how powerless, how helpless, how small you are. What is it to you how big or small others are? This doesn‟t make you any better. Seeing them as small doesn‟t make you any greater. If you think and act like that, you will be a traveler on the wrong path. Let us be vigilant against satan, who constantly struggles against us and intercepts us throughout our lives; and let us take care of our eyes, ears, and tongue in order to achieve success on the path to God. Let us free our minds from the captivity of self-interest. Let us seek refuge in God with a pure mind and a pure heart. We say that we are on the path to God; but we forget that God is all-seeing, we cannot free our minds from self-interest. One cannot make any progress on the path to God before leaving the captivity of money and lust. People are certainly tested on this path with interest and lust. In order to pass these two tests, don‟t ever forget God and seek refuge in Him. Those who can free themselves from these two join those whom God loves. The hidden secrets of the truth are opened to them. Let us struggle with our selves, with our nafs, in order to be freed from these. Let us cleanse ourselves of negative qualities. One who does not discipline the nafs (the self) cannot reach anywhere, cannot become a mature person. The disciplining of the nafs is an internal training that is done completely on one's own. Our Blessed Prophet, when returning from a battle, told his companions, “Now we are leaving the lesser jihad and going to the greater jihad; and that is our jihad against the nafs.” In the struggle with the nafs, what is needed before all is a clean heart. In order to achieve that, we must wash our blood so that the heart functions well. When the fuel of the car is contaminated, the engine cannot work properly. We must protect our blood from getting contaminated first by eating what is halal (lawful and pure). Then, we must wash it by breathing the Beautiful Names of God. Just as the air we breathe in cleans the blood, if we breathe that air in with the Beautiful Names, we will have cleaned our blood spiritually.

9 We say “heart”; there is the physical heart that we know, and there is also the spiritual heart which we call gonul. Purification takes place both physically and spiritually. The purified heart nourishes the organs and won‟t cause them to fall ill and fail. The struggle with the nafs starts first by knowing it. We must know what it is, what it desires, and what it likes. First, we must know the duality within ourselves. We must be separated into two. We must be able to separate our spiritual side and our side that is full of bodily desires and pleasures. What the nafs desires are: To be liked, fame, pride, hatred, jealousy, arrogance, and all kinds of bodily pleasures. The nafs that contains these negative attributes is called the nafs alammara (the commanding self). If one starts fighting the nafs al-ammara and removes the negative attributes slowly, he passes to the nafs al-lawwama (the blaming self). The nafs blames itself, realizes its mistakes, condemns itself, and feels regret. If this state continues, mistakes decrease and the nafs starts feeling love. The nafs, as it is freed from the negative attributes and useless desires, starts feeling love towards God and all the beings God has created. This causes an intimacy to occur within him, and some inspirations come to his heart. He feels intimacy from the inspirations and rises to the level of nafs al-mulhimah (the inspired self). After that, one passes to the nafs al-mutmainna (the contented self), whose faith has matured and whose soul has found tranquility and satisfaction in the heart. The nafs finds peace and satisfaction in its inner world, and the heart‟s eye and ear opens. The nafs at that level opens its eyes to the truth and starts seeing the realities. Then that person has joined to those whom we call awliya (friends of God). After the nafs al-mutmainna, there is the nafs al-radiyah (the well-pleased self). This nafs is pleased with God and all His decisions and the inflictions from Him. Afterwards, there are the nafs al-mardiyyah (the pleasing self) and the nafs al-safiya (the pure self). Let us find and read these topics from the books of tasawwuf. We are very fond of learning, we learn as much as we can; but we don‟t apply what we have learned. We increase our responsibility every day. If we hadn‟t learned anything, if we had been a lone shepherd in the mountains, we would realize that all we see around us has an owner, all these events have an administrator, and we would bow in His presence with respect. That shepherd who doesn‟t know anything may have more faith than us. No one has ever read any books nor spoken any words of spirituality to him. We know so much and what do we do? Can we bow down before God with a heart as pure as that shepherd‟s and with the awareness of what we are doing? This is the least a person of intelligence should feel while living in this world. He will look around, look into the sky, feel the presence of a Creator, and bow down to Him with respect. Sometimes he will feel love towards Him and sometimes awe. The first condition for being a seeker of God is adab (manners, courtesy, respect). As the elders say, “Be in control of your hands, tongue, and lust.” As you embark on the path to God, you will obey His commands and will also grow beautiful with your adab. God loves the beautiful. The servant whom God regards as beautiful is beautiful with adab. No matter how much you work on your appearance before the mirror, a make-up with adab is needed to appear beautiful to God. How nice it is to enter the presence of God with adab while one is still in the spring of his or her youth and beauty.

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 God created man to be known. In order to know God, first it is necessary to know man. Do we really know man? We don‟t have to go very far. Let us know ourselves first...

Most people are half-conscious because their intellect works separately from their hearts. They can be called intelligent but not wise. One who has a sound mind and a sound heart is a wise person. The mind that cannot communicate with its heart is a half mind. Most of its decisions are interest oriented; it cannot be oriented towards mercy. It is good at calculating; but it cannot feel, it cannot see far. God created man to be known. In order to know God, first it is necessary to know man. Do we really know man? We don‟t have to go very far. Let us know ourselves first. We must know ourselves not only by looking at our outer appearances in the mirror but by looking at our inner worlds. We will know by our feelings, senses, knowledge. If you see yourself as a being that just eats, sleeps, and reproduces, then unfortunately, you don‟t know man. All these qualities are present in animals as well. The difference between us and animals is our intellect, comprehension, and reason. So we must use our intellect. By using our intellect, we must understand this difference and find out why we have come to this world. Since he is different from the other creatures on earth, man must live differently. Man of our age uses his mind to make more money and to live a better life. He desires consuming the best, possessing the best, and living in luxurious houses, in order to show off extravagantly. He strives to do the best of what the other creatures do. And he says this is a matter of taste. Through various conditionings, he captivates himself to eating, drinking, sleeping, and reproducing. Out of the fear of not being able to have something someday, he saves money, buys property, and makes investments. Other creatures don‟t have such worries, because they don‟t have a mind and thoughts. They instinctively eat when they find and seek when they cannot. O man who has wisdom! You have come to this world to be different from other creatures. Your life must be different from theirs, because you are the most honorable, the most dignified of creation. If you notice, all of creation is given to your service and is serving you. But what are you serving? Eating, drinking, and lust? When one feels that he will die someday, he starts thinking. The person who feels that he will die starts searching for the meaning of why he was born. If man was able to find the answer to this question on his own, there wouldn‟t be a need for God to choose and send His messengers to warn the people. God sent messengers from His own presence in order to inform us why we were born.

11 Life passes quickly; death catches man fast. God is just; He gives opportunities to people. First, He gives them intellect and makes them search. Then, He sends His messengers and says, “This is the truth you could not find.” Through his intellect, man appreciates God‟s works of art but cannot find Him. He looks into the sky, at the stars, and says, “This cannot happen by chance.” Just as he would know when he sees a baby that the baby must have a mother and father, he says, when he looks into the skies, “This must have a creator, an owner.” He meditates on how the skies, mountains, and plains came into existence, and reaches the awareness that they were not created by chance. But he cannot reach the creator through his intellect. Even an unlettered, unlearned man thinks, observes, and finds the existence of the Creator by his intellect. How about people like us who read and learn something new every day? We are responsible for practicing what we know. We compete in learning; but we don‟t put much effort into practicing. Let us not forget that learning more while not practicing what we know increases our responsibility. Let us work hard to apply what we have learned. How aware are we of what we have learned? Someone may be saying beautiful things, but he may not be aware of what he is saying. Maybe he knows, but he is not aware. Maybe he is aware, but he is not living. One who has never been to Istanbul in his life may read a book on the city or listen to someone who has been there and be able to talk about it as if he traveled there. A woman brought her child to Sheikh AbdalQadir Jilani once: “O my master, I cannot keep this boy from eating too much candy. Please pray that he may be cured from this illness.” Sheikh Jilani responded: “Bring this boy again forty days later; God willing he will be cured.” Although the woman told him that she had come from far away, Sheikh Jilani told her to come forty days later. The poor woman left and came back forty days later with the child. Sheikh Jilani told the boy: “Son, don‟t eat candies any more, alright?” The child said okay. Then the mother couldn‟t help but ask: “Was this all you were going to do? Why didn‟t you say this forty days ago?” Then Sheikh Jilani told her: “When you were here forty days ago, I had just eaten honey. Honey has sugar in it. How could I tell this boy not to eat candies then? I haven‟t eaten anything sweet for the last forty days in order to be able to say this.” Think about it. In order to tell the child not to eat candy, Sheikh Jilani doesn‟t eat anything sweet for forty days. This is why his words were influential. When he forbade something from others, he first forbade it to himself. These people don‟t forbid others what they haven‟t forbidden themselves. On the path that goes to the divine love, one must first have tolerance. One who is not tolerant cannot love anyone. Neither can he fall into physical love, nor can he reach the divine love. When he attempts to love someone, he starts finding faults with that person. He makes the love of the other person die even before it was born.

12 Love starts with tolerance. If you don‟t have tolerance, you can neither love nor be loved. Those who have tolerance feel sympathy towards others; sympathy is a feeling of intimacy. But those who don‟t have tolerance feel antipathy. Every person God has created can be loved. If you know how to love, each person certainly has a side to be loved. When sympathy spreads to all sections of the society, everyone starts loving each other, and peace becomes established in society. When those who feel antipathy increase, peace becomes disrupted. If antipathy becomes strong in someone, hatred takes place. Hatred is a repulsive emotion. Just like love gives intimacy, hatred separates. Don‟t hate anyone. If you hate someone, you will start seeing others with hatred too. Don‟t let hatred enter into your world. Don‟t hate even those who have done the utmost evil to you. The cure for hatred and antipathy is mercy. Feel mercy for that person‟s lack of love, his being unable to taste love. One day, on my way back from the Friday prayer, I experienced a different state. I became almost paralyzed. I started loving everyone on the streets. We were driving slowly in the car. My sense of love and compassion towards people surged, and I started looking at all of them with love. Most of the people passing by also looked at me carefully as if they had felt my love. Later, the same condition continued when I got out of the car and started walking. I was walking loving everyone. Those who felt my love, each one of them, looked into my eyes while they were passing by. While this was going on, people started greeting me. They didn‟t know why they were greeting me. If they did not know, who did know? Who is the one aware, who feels our love? I reached my destination greeting people. If you asked me who I met or who I recognized, I could not recognize anyone except for One! As love increases, intimacy increases. It increases so much that the lover starts to exist in the beloved. People who love each other very much resemble each other unknowingly. Their attitudes and their behaviors become similar, and they start feeling the same thing at the same time. They become like copies of each other. The person whose physical love increases greatly starts knowing the divine love if he acquires a little comprehension and knowledge. He loves the flowers, birds, and mountains, and he seeks the one who created them. He looks into the sky in amazement. Stars become his friends and the moon his confidant. The night dances in the full moon. Some fall in love with the sunrise, some with the sunset. Fall in love; fall in love consciously, with whatever it may be. When your love reaches its climax, don‟t forget one thing! If you are not loving for God, your love will not be lasting. If you love someone for God, God also becomes a partner in your love. But this is not like a third person interfering between two people. God watches Himself from Himself between the two people, admires Himself from Himself, loves Himself from Himself. The greatest admiration of God is for Himself. God wants to know Himself most. God, who wants to know Himself, created man and the universe out of His love. He has been keeping the universe in motion with love, attraction, and rapture. The soul yearns for its origin. This is the secret of love! God has said “I wanted to be known and created man. I breathed of my spirit into him!” Therefore, there is yearning in man‟s essence. Everything desires to reunite with its origin. Man also desires to unite with his Creator who is his essence.

13 If you find Haqq1 on a face, you will be seen on a thousand faces. That face will have given birth to you; it will be a mother to you. Look into that face so that you lose yourself in it; get lost and find your origin. This will be your spiritual birth. Once you have achieved this second birth, you will always be alive. You will see yourself in people and in other things. That is, you will see the reflections of your essence. This is the image of Haqq. Don‟t ever forget the one who gave you that face, who gave birth to you from the heart! Those who have the essence and potential of love within them but who don‟t fall in love cannot find peace and tranquility in their lives. In real love, nothing is expected in return from the beloved. He is loved unconditionally. Should he obey everything you say, should he always praise you, should he always treat you kindly? This is not love! Your essence is the essence of love; but society has made you uneasy. You have become sensitive to everything. This is not your fault. You have become this way due to close contact with certain kinds of people. Friends of God purify you from these things. A friend of God annihilates your bad habits; he cleanses and purifies you. He awakens your heart with his gaze, which is full of love and compassion. He desires your soul to be purified. He wants to make you a mirror in which he can see himself. A person who does not see himself this way cannot be in the station of irshad (guiding others to the right way). To be called a murshid (spiritual guide), a person must first have received a mission from God, and he must have prepared at least one such mirror and have seen himself in it. The definition of “beautiful” varies according to time and society. People see as beautiful whatever society defines as beautiful. Everyone paints his own picture of what is beautiful himself. The definition of beauty is changing constantly these days. Beauty has moved from the face to other places. Love has decreased, pleasure has increased. One does not take pleasure from what is seen as beautiful; one falls in love with it. There is no pleasure taking in love. As love increases, pleasure decreases. There is intimacy in love. In the end, the lover becomes so close to the beloved that he becomes only his beloved, he sees himself as the beloved. No pleasure can reach the level of this feeling. Look at the face of the person you want to love. Humans are loved by their faces. Notice that lust is not felt towards the face. We went to visit a friend of ours. His son was also present in our conversation; but he objected to whatever we said. He depressed us quite a bit. “Both you and my father are talking vainly. You don‟t even look right. You shouldn‟t be talking about religion and spirituality.” He was emitting hatred. I struggled inside myself to love him but I failed. I left the room to make wudu (ritual ablution). When I returned, the same situation continued; I couldn‟t even drink a cup of tea. I started praying in my heart, “O God, please let me love this servant of yours!” At some point, he smiled at me a little. I saw his teeth for the first time; he had extremely beautiful teeth. Then I loved his teeth. At the same moment, his behavior changed and he started acting politely. He walked us to our car when we were leaving. A few days later he came to our office saying, “I missed you; I cannot stand it anymore.” We had a good conversation and agreed on many things; so we became good friends.

1

“The Truth”; one of the beautiful names of God. God is known and seen through this name.

14 Don‟t try to tell anything to someone you don‟t love; it won‟t work! Don‟t bother yourself thinking, “I will speak to him about spirituality; I will teach him the truths.” First know and love him, then tell. You cannot resent someone you truly love. If his faults and mistakes are disturbing you, then your love has not matured. If your love matures, nothing he does will disturb you. Love that person as you love yourself. Are you disturbed by yourself? Another‟s smell may disturb you, but your own does not. If you love another person as you love yourself, you won‟t be disturbed by him. God‟s Messenger once said: “One who does not love me more than he loves himself has not attained full faith.” You may say that you haven‟t had the chance to love God‟s Messenger since you have never seen him. If you cannot see him, then love his heirs. Love the friends of God who have adopted his manners. If you cannot see such people either, then love the people you see for the sake of God. Most of us feel sorry when we make a mistake; we feel regret in the presence of God and weep. We criticize and condemn our nafs (self). When this condition starts recurring frequently, we are at the station of nafs al-lawwama (the blaming self). We feel ashamed before God and weep. We say, “O my Lord, I cannot keep my promises, I have bad habits, I make mistakes even if I regret them; O God, please help me, please rescue me from this situation!” and feel deeply sad. This condition intensifies to such a degree that it spreads to our whole lives. We regret constantly. This feeling of remorse takes us towards an intimacy with God. We become cleansed of those bad habits unknowingly. Then a deep love starts to flourish inside us towards friends of God, God Himself, and His Messenger. Our quietness increases, our noisy states disappear; we grow more still and tranquil. To grow still is not to become pacified. A stream that runs with noise is usually not deep. It is not strong; one cannot generate power from it. Water must first be accumulated behind a dam and then made into a reservoir. There is power in tranquil water. People always talk about growing and rising in spirituality, but the path to rising passes through dwindling. We cannot rise without growing small. We will grow so small that we will become like a newborn baby. Gaws Azam AbdalQadir Jilani once made a decision to fast for forty days and not to break his fast until someone from God came and put some food or drink in his mouth. This state continued for days. His nafs became such that a voice like a baby inside him started crying “I‟m hungry!” Why was it crying like a baby? We must notice this. This is the state of purity. The nafs in purity was crying. It was saying “O Gaws, you are showing coyness to God, but I cannot stand it anymore!” Those who were passing by heard that cry. They saw a man exhausted from hunger and immediately brought some food. Again, he did not touch the food. Risking death, he said, “I will not eat until someone puts it in my mouth.” What a coyness, what a delight is this? That food dried out; the fast went on. In the end, God assigned Khizr to the task and said, “Go and put water in the mouth of my servant AbdalQadir, break his fast.” Khizr, the trainer of the awliya (friends of God), came and put water in his mouth.

15 “Alhamdulillah (praise be to God), my Lord responded to my coyness,” he said. After breaking his fast he asked, “Who are you?” and Khizr replied “I‟m Khizr.” At times of tranquility and quietness, words drop into our hearts one by one. Meanings come drop by drop to the heart which is still, clear, and purified. We call this intuition or the sixth sense. It would be better to call it an inspiration coming to the heart. A name comes; then we meet that name a couple of days or a couple of months later. Then sentences come. Afterwards, a long sohbat comes. Even an ordinary letter has the sender‟s name on it. These inspirations also come with their identities. When you get an inspiration from an unknown source, don‟t ever implement it without precaution. When we feel uncertain about these inspirations coming to our hearts, let us do the prayer of Gaws Azam AbdalQadir Jilani: “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billahil aliyyil azim.” (In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. There is no power or strength except through God, the exalted, the magnificent.) If that inspiration is demonic, it will stop; if it is divine, it will continue. When we experience a condition or when a vision comes, let us immediately recite this prayer. This will help us distinguish its origin and will also protect us. The nafs that has reached this state is called nafs al-mulhimah (the inspired self). The nafs that has received inspiration corrects itself. It lives uprightly as it was commanded. After that, it becomes nafs al-mutmainna (the contented self). The events at this level are more special. Henceforth that person is called a wali (a friend of God). His inner eye has been opened. He can see the trans-material. There are two kinds of seeing and hearing. One is hearing with the ear of the body, the other is hearing with the ear of the soul. Reaching the true meaning directly by the physical ear and eye is called mushahadah (seeing, witnessing), which is something very difficult and heavy. It is to see all the beings in the trans-material realm with a naked eye without any filters. On the other hand, the eye of irfan (deeper knowledge) sees through filters. It filters what it receives and allows in only those that are needed. This is similar to seeing awake dreams. Sometimes, we doze off while sitting and see things as if in a dream. The closer you are to wakefulness, the closer your dream is to the truth. Let your sleep be not very deep, but instead rather light. Let us sleep as if we are awake, then our dreams will more clearly reflect reality. The state between sleep and wakefulness is called yaqaza. Be there and find it, between sleep and wakefulness, between existence and nonexistence, between the beautiful and the ugly, between day and night. Find it in between whatever it may be. Find it together. When you find and catch something there in between, you start seeing awake dreams. What you see then is not a dream but the truth, the reality. But it is your reality. Don‟t ever say that that reality is for everyone. Don‟t attribute what you see to everyone. You will also be tested with what you see. You already know most of the things we are speaking about. You may even know better than we do. We are giving you what you don‟t know together with what you already know. The package, the knowledge is the same; but within it there is what comes to you from us, which we have sensed and experienced.

16 I ask you, “Where are you?” You say, “I am here” and show your body. Are you really the body? Are we really the body or what is inside it? If so, then what is the difference between the dead and the alive? Let us do some math: Living person – Body = What? Then we are not just the body. I like one master‟s saying very much: “If they cut the body in two from the middle, will what you call „I‟ be also divided into two?” Will what you call “I” be halved and feel itself as a half? Perhaps it may feel the body as a half, but what you call “I” is a whole. It neither decreases nor increases. Hence, what you call “I” is not the body. If it is the body, you are ruined. You won‟t separate from it; you will be buried alive and will be ruined! Let us not be one of those people of the grave. You are thinking of yourself as the body and do not know how to separate from it. You are going with it when they bury it. Separate and save yourself! Why would you go into the grave with the body? Given that we are on the path of God, let us learn how to separate from the body when the time comes. Those who are stuck to the body remain in the world of the grave. They are also of two kinds: the people of paradise and the people of hell. The people of paradise wait in pleasure while seeing scenes from the paradise. The people of hell wait while smelling the scents of hell and seeing nightmares. Flesh and bones are buried, but souls remain among us. They continue to live in another dimension, a different kind of life. And they do it freely, until the Day of Judgment. That world is called the world of barzah (the intermediate realm). How should we leave this body? May someone pull us out of it with love so that we may be freed. May he take us from us; may he take the soul from the body. May he be our Azrail (the angel of death). Whoever becomes Azrail before he dies, we hope that Azrail will come in his appearance when he is dying. Look so lovingly that he will take you instantly. If you look with a deep love, you will see yourself in the face of the person you are looking at. When you say, “I”, you will say, “You!” Once you are freed from this body, you will start leaving it often. You will go wherever you want and see places that you have never heard of. This is how “dying before death” occurs. We are the ones who are really dead. We are in these graves of bodies. We are all in graves; one hand is tied to the other hand, arm to the arm, and foot to the foot. We are carrying this bag of flesh and bones on our backs. We cannot go where we think of; we have become captive to these weights.

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 Rumi saw that the secret of the universe is revolution. He reached the secret meaning of the Earth‟s revolution both around itself and around the Sun. He found the truth of revolution. At that moment he stood up and started whirling around himself... One who does not make dawran (revolution) in his own world of tasawwuf cannot reach the truth. Man goes to truth through dawran. You should complete your cycle. You only make dawr (a periodic remembrance) for the dead but not for the alive. In fact, it is necessary to do the dawr of the alive. Recall the first time you went to the door of spirituality with excitement. Over time, excitement decreases and we grow familiar. Familiarity veils. Let us return to the beginning in feeling and excitement; let us refresh ourselves. You celebrate your birthday and wedding anniversary in order to feel the excitement of the first day you were born and the day you were married. Beginnings are very meaningful. Go back, remember your first feelings, and continue from where you left off. Don‟t lose your first excitement. Refresh yourselves or you will become stale. You don‟t really desire God but instead the opening of your inner eye. You don‟t desire Him but instead the skills. Let us not lose our first motivation. Let us complete our cycle. When Yunus Emre, was leaving the dergah (dervish monastery) of Tapduk Emre, he thought to himself, “I have served this place for so many years, and in the end I got beaten. Let me ask the master for permission to leave.” He left, and on the road he met two dervishes. They became friends and decided to continue on the road together. As they walked, they got hungry. One of the dervishes said a prayer and a tray of meals came from God. They ate and resumed their journey. After walking some more, they got hungry again. This time the second dervish said a prayer and again a tray of meals came. After eating and then walking quite a long distance, they turned to Yunus Emre, “Okay, now it‟s your turn.” Yunus thought, “For whoever‟s name these friends asked for, let me ask in the name of the same person.” This time a tray twice as big came. The dervishes asked in astonishment: “How did this happen?” “I prayed that may the meal come in the name of the person whomever these dear friends were mentioning in their prayers. Whose name did you give?” “We gave the name of a man who is of a great spiritual station, Yunus Emre.” That is, one came for Yunus himself, and one for asking for that name. At the time, Yunus did not know who he was. Do you know yourselves? What if you have matured? Then don‟t say that you haven‟t matured; that may be a denial. We wish that our inner eyes of kashf (discovery) would be opened, but ninety nine percent of us would go insane if that happened. The eye of the heart is the eye of irfan (deeper knowledge). It has filters. What is seen by the eye of irfan is not seen by the eye of discovery. The eye of irfan sees the whole world; the eye of mushahadah (witnessing) sees only where it looks.

18 No one who wants to become a wali (friend of God) can become one. This is because when you want to become a wali, you want to be something. Being a wali is not the goal. Wali means a beloved, a servant of God. You will be both a beloved, and also a servant. To become a beloved, you must first be a servant and then love God deeply. We don‟t know how to love God. Loving God according to our criteria is very difficult. You have seen His arts; you have believed in the unseen. You should then obey the commands brought by Muhammad Mustafa. You cannot be a servant of God without obeying His commands. You should then love God deeply. From eye to eye, essence to essence, you should love Him. Having said to love from eye to eye, Veysel (Uwais al) Qarani fell into my heart. His real name was Uwais. He was born in the village of Qarn in Yemen. He never saw our Blessed Prophet. This was a blessed man who attained faith at an early age through inspiration without seeing or knowing. At the same time, our Prophet, who had never seen nor heard of Uwais said, “I feel the scent of the Rahman from Yemen!” and “The best of those who are following me is a man named Uwais. Pass him my wish that he may pray for you. He has a mother who is ill. There is a white area on his body.” The words of God‟s Messenger describe very well what a blessed man Uwais al-Qarani was. May God make his prayers always with us, and may He forgive us for Uwais‟ sake. Qarn was a poor village, and the poorest of that village were Uwais and his mother. He had lost his father at a very young age just like the Messenger of God. The people of the village were worshipping idols just like the people of Mecca. Uwais‟ mother was given the good news in a dream while she was pregnant with Uwais. In that dream she saw a big star and several smaller stars rotating around it. His father also had a dream in which a rose tree was rooted on his chest and on each branch there were many red roses that people were coming one by one to smell. When Uwais was just a little child, his mother‟s legs were paralyzed. Uwais was taking care of his mother and, at the same time, working hard to support the family. He had felt by inspiration that the idols his fellow villagers worshipped were useless and he objected to them. For that reason, his relationship with the villagers was tense. He had to endure heavy insults at times. The villagers who wanted to get rid of him gave him the job of shepherding the camels. It was during these hard times that Uwais gave his allegiance to the Prophet and was honored with faith. Over time, having acquired a deep knowledge of all the obligations of Islam, he became a mature person, and a beloved of God and His Messenger. We always walk with our heads at the top. When we make sajdah (bowing down, prostration), the heart is elevated and the head lowered to the floor. This is the secret of sajdah. The source of knowledge is in the heart. We get blood from the heart to nourish our brains; why can‟t we nourish our minds with the meanings from the heart? We are fed through the eyes and ears. That is, we are fed from people and not from God. For this reason, if you are seeking the truth, don‟t believe everything you see and hear; believe your heart and what you receive from it. Life is revolution. Without revolution, there is no life. Time is revolution. Without revolution, there is no time.

19 One revolution of the Earth around its axis makes one Earth day. One revolution of the Sun around its axis makes one Sun day. Time has various sorts. Day has various sorts. Which one should we follow: Earth day, Uranus day, Jupiter day, or electron day? One revolution of the electron around itself is one electron day. Outwardly, time is relative. There is no absolute unit of time. In truth, there is only one time: the time of God, the Creator. And that time is the moment. The moment is not dependent on revolution. The truth is in the moment. The truth is in death. One who does not understand death cannot understand the truth. Death is the point where life ceases. The mystery is in this. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that one must die before death. And, in order to die before death, one must abandon himself. If we notice, time is of two sorts: One is the time formed by the revolution of an entity around itself and the other is the time formed by an entity‟s revolution around a main axis. The time formed by an entity‟s revolution around itself is the lesser time; the one formed by its revolution around another axis is the greater time. An entity that cannot revolve around itself cannot revolve around another axis. First, we need to revolve around ourselves and find the axis within ourselves. One who cannot find his own axis cannot find the main axis. The force that makes the electron revolve around the nucleus is the same force that makes the electron revolve around itself. The force that makes the Earth revolve around itself is the same force that makes it revolve around the Sun. The gravitational attraction of the Sun makes the Earth travel on its orbit. What draws the Earth‟s path is the attraction of the Sun. That force draws the orbit as an ellipse. If it had drawn the orbit as an exact circle, there would be no climates. The orbit is drawn as an ellipse so that climates exist. We have said that one who doesn‟t have his lesser time cannot have his greater time. This is what they call “time within time”. Some events happen in atomic time. That is, all is settled in one revolution of the electron. Would you like your matter to be done in an electron day, in an Earth day, or in a galaxy day? In which time will this job be done? The Divine Will chooses the time it wishes, or completes everything in a moment if it chooses to do so. In a dream, I was told that a job would be completed tomorrow; it was done two and a half years later. According to which type of day was that tomorrow? If you cannot make sajdah in yourself, you cannot make sajdah in truth. The truth of sajdah is the union of who makes it and to whom it is made. If you can reach the truth of sajdah, you will know who the One you are making sajdah to is. In fact, sajdah is to fill the vessel of the brain from the well of the heart. When the blood moves to the brain, an expansion in the brain takes place. Stay for a while in sajdah so that your container may expand, both physically and innerly. Nothing has its manifest and hidden sides different. The manifest is the shadow of the hidden. We ourselves are in shadows, so we think of the truth as a shadow. We see the shadowy side; shadows are not seen within a shadow. One cannot see his own shadow when he is sitting in the shadow of a tree. You need to go out of the shadow into the sun so that you can see your own shadow. Mawlana Jalaladdin Rumi saw that the secret of the universe is revolution. He reached the secret meaning of the Earth‟s revolution both around itself and around the Sun. He found the truth of revolution. At that moment he stood up and started whirling around himself.

20 What he received through one hand, he gave through the other. When he started whirling, he found his own axis. After that, he found the main axis, and he turned around the main axis. That is the truth of the universe: “One point, one revolution, one time!” The secret of universe is a point; the secret of time is revolution. Without point, there is no revolution; without revolution there is no time. Hazrat Ali once said: “The secret of the Qur'an is in the Fatiha; the secret of the Fatiha is in Bismillah; the secret of Bismillah is in the letter „B‟ at its beginning; and the secret of the letter „B‟ is at the dot under it. And that dot is me!” There is time within time. There is being within being. Within an apple, there is an apple tree. And there is so much more. Everyone knows this but cannot reach the awareness of it. We are people of the Earth. When the Earth turns its back to the Sun, it is nighttime. We should say, “The day has risen; the day has set.” Why do we say “The Sun has set”? Some people speak, but do not know what they say. God speaks to people in three ways: In the first one, the speaker is aware, but the listener is not. In the second, the listener is aware, but the speaker is not. In the third, neither the speaker nor the listener is aware. Let me give an example: One day we were driving in the car and the time for zuhr (noon) prayer was almost finished; it was almost the time for the asr (late afternoon) prayer. One of the children playing on the street ran towards us and called, “The time for prayer is running out!” The child was unaware of what he did. He ran back and continued playing with his friends. There is the channel of people, and there is the channel of God. Whichever one you tune to, you hear that one. It is not necessarily told directly to you; two friends may tell something to each other and then you will get the message.

 God says, “For my servant I love, I become his eye with which he sees, his ear with which he hears, his hand with which he holds.” Those are the people whom He calls “my friends, my beloved.” To seek and find the beloved servants of God and to be present in their sohbat is the greatest blessing, the greatest wisdom we will experience in this passing life. Those who believe that even a dust particle does not fly randomly and that where it will settle is calculated find the truth. However, this must not be merely an accepting of a statement but a belief from the heart. Chance must be eliminated. We didn‟t meet by chance.

21 We once met at a certain time, and today we are meeting again. The plans were made earlier for those who met in the past and are meeting again today. In the descriptions by some spiritual masters, the sea is talked about as God, and in others it is the sun. Those who talk about the sea as God have reached the unity of God in the cycle of water, but they have not given any news on the sun. What is the cycle of water? When the sun‟s rays hit the sea, the water heats and evaporates, and it starts rising. It rises into the sky and is then called a cloud. Some of these clouds, which rose from the same sea, are charged with positive electricity and some with negative. Then the positively and the negatively charged clouds start traveling in the sky, and at every occasion the negatives push each other and so do the positives. As the clouds with the same charge separate, the negatives find the positives and the positives find the negatives. They attract each other at their first encounter as soon as they approach one another and what we call lightning occurs. The lightning is absorbed by the earth; otherwise both clouds would be destroyed by the electric charge. To avoid this, the lightning formed between the clouds is attracted downwards. Then the clouds separate and resume their journeys. Water, earth, sun, and air; these are the four poles. Air is the desires. What makes people move is their desires. Sun heats the water, and the water turns into vapor. Water rises above the air, above the desires. Water rises into the heavens by air. Why does the positive and the negative electricity occur? Let the answer to this question be our motion, our desire, and let it raise us. Then the clouds, by the blowing of the air, that is, by the wind, wander in the sky. Which way they will go was planned in advance. The clouds thunder with the joy and excitement of uniting. Lightnings occurs; the earth attracts the lightning. Then a tranquility, a quietness comes and the clouds weep. Tears from these clouds of love become a mercy for the earth and the earth absorbs that mercy. Plants emerge from the earth; earth gives birth to its children. Earth is satisfied with mercy; some drops of mercy unite on the surface and say, “Let‟s go to the sea!” Drops come together and form a stream. Streams turn into rivers and unite with the sea. Water completes its cycle. The cause of all this movement of nature is the sun. What heats the water, burns the water, increases the desire, is the sun. The sun, which is everywhere, but which is not seen. The sun, which is the cause of all that happens. Without the sun, there wouldn‟t be the cycle of water, nor the circulation of air, nor the winds. There would be neither life, nor night, nor day. There would be no change; without change, there would be no life. Do beings have colors? Where do all the colors really belong to? Why are there no colors in the dark? Where there is no sun, there are no colors either. All the colors belong to the sun. The sunlight hits all beings, and it appears differently from each of them. What is manifest everywhere are, in fact, the colors of the sunlight. Your black eyebrow, white hair, green eye, are all from the sun. This is unity in multiplicity. Those colors are formed by separation; but if you unite them all, light occurs.

22 If you can free yourself from the differences of the matter, you will see everyone‟s face without colors. That is, sometimes you look at someone‟s face and it gets blurry; it is that appearance... You should unite all colors at one point and you will get rid of the colors. If we take the spirit as the essence, we are dead. If we take the body as the essence, we are alive. When we were born into this world, our bodies obtained their freedom but our souls became imprisoned in the grave of the body. In regard to the spirit, we are currently in the grave, dead; we have entered into the grave and are waiting for the moment when the spirit will leave the body and be free. Would the spirit ever wish to come back once it leaves the body and is born? You have been born from the womb of your mother, but you cannot manage to be born from yourself. Every birth needs a midwife. For the birth of the spirit, a midwife without hands and feet is needed. A midwife with attraction. One who takes you from yourself with his attraction. We must look at the spiritual masters with a receiving eye. A receiving eye is an eye which gets what it looks at. To look with a receiving eye is to see the person one is looking at as himself; it is to look by losing oneself. To lose oneself means to tune to the channel of God. What attracts the spirit is in fact the attraction of God. And this is found with the friends of God. Before the time comes, birth cannot happen, the spirit cannot leave the body. Every birth has its time; if the birth starts before it is due, a miscarriage occurs. To be able to feel the inspirations coming to the heart, it is necessary to obey the commands. Vision does not open before the hearing opens. If a visitor of ours comes calling from the door, we first hear him and then we see him. One who does not listen to his heart, one who does not tie his ear to his heart, cannot hear what comes to his heart. One who is unable to descend the distance of one hand span between the ear and the heart cannot reach heaven. And we are trying to rise to the seven layers of heaven! Here are your seven layers, a road of one hand span. To pass those seven layers, you need to be freed from the five senses and the six directions. As you descend, you rise. Our heart is below and our mind is one span above it. This mind always thinks of rising. It doesn‟t think of going down even once. If it had gone down... It doesn‟t know that one can rise to the highest heaven by the heart. Listen to your heart; fix your eyes at a point and look into your heart. One cannot see and hear through the heart until the eyes are lost at a point. And one who does not see by his heart does not have his truth. A clean blood is needed to see by one‟s heart. The heart which has unclean blood works like an engine which has contaminated fuel. It malfunctions. Blood gets contaminated by eating haram (impure, unlawful) food, looking at what is forbidden, and seeking wealth through unlawful means. Let us wash our blood by eating what is halal (lawful and pure) and breathing in the Beautiful Names of the Creator. When our Prophet was raised to the heavens (miraj), Gabriel had to leave him at a certain point; he couldn‟t continue farther.

23 The believer lives the miraj in his prayer, if he can abandon the world. And the mind of the believer is his Gabriel. When one has left the mind, there are no memories. Those who see Haqq2, those who reach Haqq, have no memories. They ask how they will feel the pleasure of the Divine Beauty they will see. There can be no mention of pleasure once one sees the Divine Beauty. Everything can be learned but not Haqq; only the road that goes to Him can be learned. At the end of the road, He can be heard and seen, but He cannot be learned. Haqq cannot be described; He can only be distinguished. Distinction does not take place in shape; that is, the shape does not change, but a transformation takes place. In fact, what changes is your looking and perception. You are the one who changes. He is manifest openly, but we cannot see. If a bottle is shaken, one can distinguish the bottle and the water in it. God says, “For my servant I love, I become his eye with which he sees, his ear with which he hears, his hand with which he holds.” Those are the people whom He calls “my friends, my beloved.” To seek and find the beloved servants of God and to be present in their sohbat (companionship, lecture) is the greatest blessing, the greatest wisdom we will experience in this passing life. If we seek sincerely, if we wish with good intentions, if we look with yearning from the bottom of our hearts, we see a distinction which has no shape, no colors, and no description. Our hearts know, our hearts recognize it. We shouldn‟t wait for death. If all were to be known after death, why would God say, “I created human in order to be known”; let us think on it a little. We have talked for quite a while now on why we came to this world, why we were created. God who wanted to be known created the human. If there is being known, then there is also knowing. And in between knowing and being known, there is God. Both are within the human being. Both the known and the knower are in human... Human is the place of manifestation of God. Spiritual pleasures occur as a result of practice. Salah (prayer) first feels difficult and gives distress. If we continue praying with insistence, we get rewarded with a spiritual pleasure from God. But after a while that pleasure also ceases; we perform the salah because it is our duty, and we become happy by being in the presence of God. Do you have pride and conceit? Do you enjoy being praised? Do you lie when you feel in a difficult situation? Do you enjoy gossip? Do you eat things that are haram (unlawful to eat, or obtained through unlawful means)? Do you think, “let me pocket this” where no one can see you? Do you like causing rifts among people? Are you lazy? Do you believe and have faith in God? Do you love God? Do you do what he wishes? We must ask these questions to ourselves, and according to the answers given and the diseases identified, we must struggle against our nafs (self) and discipline it. We need to become mature humans. There is no such thing as the dead. They wander around in the cemetery and in the intermediate realm (barzah). Can someone who wanders around be called dead? They are more alive than you and me; we are the dead! They are free; they can be anywhere they

2

“The Truth”; one of the beautiful names of God. God is known and seen through this name.

24 want. There is no time and distance for them. They can instantly be in a place they imagine and desire while we are walking around with this coffin of body. Only with as much power as we have in our feet, or as far as a vehicle can take us, can we go. Let us not go into the grave alive. Let us wake up while we are in this world. Let us not think that we are these bodies. The body is our mount. Let us learn how to get off of it. Will you also die when the horse you ride dies? Let us not call “I” to our animal bodies. Let us be aware of our souls. Let us liberate ourselves from the captivity of the body. Let us leave the bodily pleasures when we want to. One of the strongest of them is the desire to eat and drink. We do not fast for no good reason; fasting is an instrument to free us from this addiction. Sometimes we may lose control and make mistakes. Then let us say “astaghfirullah” (I seek forgiveness from God) immediately. Let us beg forgiveness without delay. Let us not be late in repenting. And one day let us repent and make a pledge not to repent again. Then we will become a servant who errs less and wakes up before he errs. There are people who don‟t realize their mistake even after they have made it. The heart of such a servant has turned stone-like and closed, and his feelings have died. Only if he meets somebody who will shake him and say, “Stop! What are you doing?” can he realize the mistake he has made. Then there are those who realize their mistake while making it and stop immediately. In our struggle with the nafs, let us try to be those who wake up before making a mistake. Islam has five pillars, which we have known well since our childhood. The first is to utter the shahadah (“witnessing” to the unity of God and Muhammad‟s being his messenger; the fundamental statement of faith). When did we last say the shahadah to bear witness from the heart and make a fresh start? Or, are we sitting idly thinking that we are Muslim by birth? Let us bear witness every once in a while. Let us reach the awareness of shahadah. Let us be free from customs and traditions and say the shahadah with faith. Let us become Muslims willingly. Don‟t be afraid; the past will not be wasted. Let us become Muslim each time again. Let us refresh ourselves; let us not become stale. “Because I saw my Haqq and became acquainted with Haqq, Wherever I looked at Haqq is all that is always seen.” There are no veils on Haqq; Haqq is open! The veil is on our eyes. The veil is our worldly desires. Nothing can veil Haqq.

 Irfan is the intellect above

intellect. This intellect can be reached through the heart. If you can acquire irfan, you can understand and comprehend what the mind cannot. You can sense the unknown and feel the unfelt.

25 Find such a pleasure that it will protect you from harmful pleasures that take you captive. That pleasure is to love God, to cherish a sincere love of God. How will this love occur out of nothing? How will we love a being that we do not see or know, one we cannot even imagine? The easiest way for this to happen is to find someone who has fallen in love with God and to love him. But then how to love that lover of God, how to reach the truth of loving him, you also don‟t know. In the end, it is understood that if he does not come to you, you cannot reach him. How does he come to you? By teaching his pleasures to you. Then seeds are planted in the field of friendship, loyalty and faithfulness. With tears of yearning, crops start to flourish. You become lost in the companionship of infinite love. Then you realize the real face, the truth of the friend. May God make us all from those who sense the path of the truth with their eyes and hearts, and those who reach the friend without any conditions. Otherwise, you cannot reach anywhere by finding faults with the friend. What about the faults he sees in you? There is conceit, there is envy, there is hypocrisy, there is jealousy, there is backbiting, there is addiction to self-interest, and there is so much more! The friend of God drains this quagmire of bad habits with love, compliments, and advice. You cannot understand this. A friend of God was selling oil on the streets, calling, “Yağ, yağ!” Then it rained.3 Without knowing the intentions involved in an event, you cannot understand its true nature. These are subtle issues. When we don‟t understand something, the best is to keep quite and not to comment too much on it. And, after reaching the awareness of an event and living it, it is another heedlessness to fall away from that awareness and start criticizing. Companionship of people continues while there is a benefit or pleasure to be shared. But the friendship of the friend of God continues without any such relations. Even if you forget him, he does not forget you. At a time when you think there is no interest left, he appears by your side. He does not do this in order to give you a good opinion of him. He does it because of his regard of loving God together if only for a moment. You may get angry at something he did which you think was wrong; you may think negatively of him; you may object to him! At the same moment, he prays that your unjust opposition may not return back to you. Whether you love or not, whether you understand or not, if you had even a bit of relationship with him, that relationship does not die; it lives eternally. Mind is the one and only god of those who disbelieve. That is because they deny by trusting their minds. But, then, what is the guarantee of the mind? Who will protect it? When the mind fluctuates a little, man has terrible accidents, changes completely, and becomes a different being. Who will mend this mind? Who will put it in its place? Who protects the mind; who is its lord? Is it another mind? We are not against the mind, but we are against the mind‟s declaring itself a god. Man needs the mind to put his life in order and to know his Creator. Man cannot live without the mind. The events that transcend the mind are affairs of the heart. The mind cannot reach those. It gets perplexed, breaks down, and is ruined. Mind cannot deny the afterlife. Because there was life taking before birth, and there is life giving during death. Does this life, this soul vanish? Does something that exists vanish? 3

“Yağ” in Turkish means both oil and rain.

26 The societies advanced in science and technology will also understand this one day. To try to go by the mind to a place that can be reached only by the heart resembles trying to set out on the ocean with a small boat instead of a ship. You sink, drown, and are lost! Besides the mind, there is also irfan (the deeper knowledge). Irfan is the intellect above intellect. This intellect can be reached through the heart. If you can acquire irfan, you can understand and comprehend what the mind cannot. You can sense the unknown and feel the unfelt. There is, you know, what they call the sixth sense; irfan is like a very strong and continuous form of the sixth sense. Let us strive to connect the mind to the heart, going down through the jugular vein. Then we will have acquired irfan. Otherwise, the mind works only towards pleasure and self-interest. What is the truth? Due to our not knowing the truth, arguments take place, families break up, and children suffer. Hatred takes lives. The desire for revenge surges like mountains and descends onto society like a nightmare. Everyone has truth according to himself. Whatever subject is being discussed, everyone comes with a truth of his own and insists on it. A wife says to his husband, “my truth,” and the husband says to his wife, “my truth”. Two different truths clash on one subject and cause turmoil. A struggle to be the right one starts. At the end of this struggle, either one of the sides gives up his truth or the struggle ends with a fight. Instead of fighting, consulting someone whose experience and opinions are respected yields better results in solving the dispute. It is wrong to break up families for the sake of false truths. All these false truths are produced by different minds. Why are we producing so many different truths given that we say minds think alike? Let us think about the meaning of this carefully. In order to facilitate our understanding of this, we instead say, “The path to the mind passes through the heart.” Indeed, every mind has a truth. First, we need to listen to the truth of other minds without being too insistent on our own, and we need to identify the positive and negative aspects in it by connecting our minds to our hearts, and distinguish the truth from falsehood. One who achieves this finds the real truth. May God help us all reach the secret of the truth of the truth. May He distance us from those who follow falsehood. May he increase the number of those who acknowledge the truth as the truth in our society. It is very difficult to sense the truth of the truth. To achieve this, we must not be restricted by traditions, customs, habits, and all kinds of prejudices. And, to be able to do this, we need to look by connecting our eyes to our hearts. The wounds of our society are deep. Daughter-in-law, son-in-law, mother-in-law, and father-in-law are all boiling in a pot. People are falling into this boiling pot as soon as they get married. Homes and families are burning in fires. This is a system of prejudices. It is due to this system that young people are caught up in anxiety even before they are married. If not influenced by prejudices, perhaps they would also love those people very much, they would get along very well, and their family structures would not be negatively affected by these kinship relations. You say, “It came to my mind.” Do you ever think from where it has come to your mind? You also need to distinguish first whether it came to your mind or to your heart. Did it come divinely or demonically?

27 O you who want to learn God! You may learn His works of art, you may learn His attributes, but how can you learn Him? No matter how much you hear and learn about the beloved, learning is different, loving is different, and seeing is different. If you fall in love with that beloved and burn with His yearning, perhaps He may have mercy and lift the veil a little and show His beauty, even if for only a short while. What you hear and learn of that beloved only increases your desire to see. And seeing happens by faith, by intention. One whose faith has not matured cannot set his intention right. Until the intention has been set right, one cannot transcend the shapes. Until one has transcended the shapes, one cannot distinguish the Divine Beauty. There is no meaning left in our lives. There is no meaning left in songs. A lot of talking is being done, but words are weak and speeches are meaningless. People have become unable to express what they mean. There is no meaning in conversations. Empty talk is plentiful, laughter is plentiful; everyone has pinned their hopes on forgetting reality. People have become captive to eating, drinking, and amusing themselves. No meaning is left in life. People are after earning money during the day and having fun at night. There is no environment to meditate on one‟s own self, to give meaning to what one is doing. If he does not have some accident or an illness, he will have no time to give meaning to the life. Is it really necessary to have an accident or illness to reach the awareness of where one has come from and where he is going? While we are in good health, before we fall into trouble or depression, let us spare at least a few minutes a day and contemplate what we are doing and what we need to do. Let us contemplate how we are living our lives and how we are spending our days. Let us give meaning to our lives. Let us not be slaves to a meaningless life. If there is no meaning left in life, there is no peace left, health gets lost, and accidents and troubles increase. Many people deal with tasawwuf according to various methods and try to make progress towards a certain destination. As years pass and one does not reach where he wanted despite his efforts, he starts slowly losing his first excitement. He gets disappointed, thinking, “I couldn‟t find anything, I couldn‟t be anything.” Some even break all relations with tasawwuf. The only reason for this is to expect something in return while traveling on this path. What do you want? This path is the path of God! If one does not expect anything, any extraordinary events or conditions, if the target is only to be on this path, to feel love towards God, then one becomes neither bored nor disappointed. The biggest blessing for you becomes being on the path of God and loving God. What else do you want? Do you want to fly like a bird or swim like a fish? Abandon these kinds of attributes and all kinds of spiritual stations; wish only the intimacy of God. Aim to love God unconditionally until the end of your life, even if you don‟t feel or see anything. This grace should suffice for you. We came to this world by wearing bodies in our mothers‟ wombs. We have lived our lives according to various purposes. In the end, we will take the body off and give it to the earth. We will go back to where we came from with the soul that is our real being. We have believed, just like we know our own existence, that the spiritual being of ours has not come from nothingness and will not vanish into nothingness. We cannot remember anything about that place we came from, because our brains did not exist then. Memory is related to the brain. We cannot remember the times when the brain did not exist. Accept without any doubt that life existed before you wore your body. One

28 day we will go there without a body again. That is, we will abandon our bodies of flesh and bones and go with our spiritual bodies. There we will be called to account for how we have lived in this world. Some would like to live comfortably in this world by denying that judgment day. Just to comfort themselves, they deny the afterlife and deceive themselves. If they accept its existence, then they will have to ask themselves what it is like and will be unable to answer that question. In order to learn love, we need to love a being that is tangible, that is visible. This is the easiest way of loving. It is not even necessary that this being we love be a human. It can be a bird, a cat, or a lamb. The person who has in some way learned loving starts slowly loving all beings and always seeing the beautiful sides of them. His love spreads to all creation. Like Yunus Emre, he loves all creation through his love of the Creator, without separating the beautiful and the ugly. Everyone falls in love, but the hateful and the skeptics cannot. Regardless of whether the person is right or wrong in his hate, love never flourishes where there is hate. Also, a skeptical person cannot love anyone, nor fall in love. This is because he can never be sure that he is loved. Even if he is loved with the greatest of all loves, he does not believe that he is loved and cannot appreciate being loved. If he does not doubt anything else, he doubts himself, thinking, “Why does he love me so much; do I deserve it?” Would you believe it, the hardest thing for a lover is to see his love being doubted! This kills the lover! When in trouble or need, we pray to our Lord and we wait awhile for the acceptance of our prayer. If it happens, we rejoice; if not we grieve. We make negative comments, and sometimes we rebel unknowingly. We say, “Why were our prayers not accepted?” It is called a prayer! Lord accepts if He approves, or He doesn‟t accept if He does not approve. Beware! Let us not fall away from God because our prayers are not being accepted! It would be a grave mistake. Let us also not fall into the mistake of thinking, “Lord does not accept my prayers anyway!” Our duty is to pray and wait. We cannot resent God for not accepting a prayer. Whether He accepts our prayers or not, let us say, “There must be a wisdom in this,” and not decrease our love for God. Let us not love God for self-interest. We do not become a true slave and obey the Divine Decree; instead, we always try to understand. We always intervene in everything that happens and say, “Why did it not happen like this?” and rebel. That is, we take measures and do not show faith in the Divine Decree. This is intervening in God‟s business. People are sometimes joyful and sometimes depressed. But they don‟t know the reason for this most of the time. When joyful, they tolerate everyone and show love and compassion. When depressed, their patience decreases. They break hearts over the smallest incident and make people around them resentful. They don‟t think of seeking refuge in God at all. What is needed is to stand between joy and depression, neither to rejoice at joy, nor to be sad at trouble, but to remain in balance. Don‟t think that this is monotony. Remaining in the same balance is the best condition to see the manifestations around us. If a friend of God gives you advice, do what he says exactly but do not insist others to do the same. It may be advice special to you, rather than a general rule. For instance, he may have recommended that you perform a small amount of regular worship in order to become

29 accustomed to practicing regularly. If you think that this is the right and the complete way and insist others to do the same, you will have made a mistake. Why does the love on the path of God flare in one breath and then reduce into a small flame and extinguish once the initial excitement is gone? Why does it expire? How can we remain fresh? How can we renew ourselves without getting tired, bored, worn out, and without giving up? What do we expect from friendship? If it is a temporary benefit, when the benefit ends, the friendship will also end with it. The person who becomes interested in spirituality due to some events at the beginning expects certain things afterwards, conditions himself to seeing certain things. By making great efforts towards this end for a while, he makes his senses reach a peak. Then seeing that his initial expectations are not realized, he slowly starts losing hope and his efforts decrease. In the end, feeling no pleasure from his practices and thinking “I‟ve tried for so long, and what happened?” he gets bored and starts returning to his old lifestyle. Let us enter the path of God without benefit; let us love God without benefit! Let us not forget even for a split second that to complete our lives on this path without getting bored and to die with faith is the greatest blessing. They asked Farhat4, “Do you really believe you will be able to dig through this mountain, pass water to the other side and unite with Shereen? Do you think your lifetime will suffice for that?” “Even if I cannot, I will die on this path!” he responded. Let us know the determination to complete our lives on this path as the greatest benefit. Do you love God? This is the greatest blessing; He made you love Him, His beloveds, and His Messenger. Don‟t expect anything else; otherwise, you will get bored soon. O man who walks this earth with pride! Do you ever consider that there are small creatures like ants on the roads, fields, and meadows you walk? Are you aware how many lives you take with every step you take? Do you live with that awareness? Or, do you feel no need to consider these and still think that your prayers are not being answered? First, determine what kind of person you want to be on the path of spirituality; then find such people and take company with them. Whomever you meet often, you become like them. Whatever taste you make your tongue accustomed to, that is what is delicious to you. If that taste is bitter, you like bitter. If that taste is sour, you like sour. If you have wisdom, accustom your tongue to eating bitter and talking sweet. May God join us to His servants whom He sees as righteous and whom He approves. May he make us from those who complete their lives on the path of God without getting tired, falling into expectations, or being jealous of others, and those who give their last breath with faith. At the moment you start resenting and criticizing the friend of God or the spiritual master with whom you have learned for the sake of God, the alarm bells start ringing. It gets harder for you to benefit from him. You must repent as soon as possible and seek forgiveness from God. Because you don‟t know what he thinks and what he wishes for you while you criticize him. 4

A legendary hero who had to dug a tunnel through a huge mountain to bring water to the city on the other side in order to unite with his beloved Shereen there.

30 Let us learn very well how to control our tongues. A wrong word that comes out of the mouth does not come back; it causes unrest in society and confuses hearts of the believers. Let us not damage others‟ faith while we try to criticize someone. Or else we will bear their responsibility. Why does God not expose and shame people for their smallest mistake? This is because one of His attributes is Sattar (the Veiler [of sins and faults]). Stop shaming people and backbiting them, whether you are right or wrong. Train your nafs (self) in this way. Otherwise, you will lose both materially and spiritually. There must be those among us who gave their hearts to a master, to a friend of God. Some transgress and deny the other masters. They say, “Only my master is true.” Of course, that is so for you; if you don‟t believe in him, you cannot benefit. But have you ever considered what the responsibility of denying others, knowingly or unknowingly, is? Don‟t have prejudices against people who have spent their lives on this path before you learn even the „t‟ of tasawwuf. Everyone on the spiritual path says, “My master is the greatest!” Alright then, how many greatest can there be? At least remember this and don‟t deny the real Greatest. Don‟t try to take on falcons and eagles while you are a fledgling. May God make us from His servants who know their limits. Tasawwuf is the spirit of Islam. Tasawwuf is the science of approaching and uniting with God, by obeying the commands of God and following the practices of our Prophet sincerely, adopting his manners, disciplining the nafs on this path, and completing the process of spiritual development . It is necessary to learn Islam before learning tasawwuf. We have graduated from various schools and universities by learning various sciences, but we have not completed even the elementary school of the religion in which we believe. While we are at the university level in worldly sciences, we are not even at the elementary school level in the spiritual science. We have been unable to find the balance between the material and the spiritual sciences. Let us first raise the knowledge of the religion we believe in to the level of knowledge we have about the worldly sciences. Let us close the gap between the two cultures by reading well-selected books. Then we will have balanced the matter and the spirit. We learn the nature of our religion and its rules to be followed from the books we read. Especially from the hadith and the sunnah (the sayings and the practices of the Prophet) we can understand how the Blessed Prophet practiced; but we cannot know his internal state. We cannot feel the awe he was feeling. At this point, we need to find people who live like him and who have assimilated his manners, and we need to practice with them, so that our state may also become like theirs. Tasawwuf is the science of practice that has been transferred from our Blessed Prophet to this day from generation to generation, from state to state. This spiritual legacy has reached our time by being transferred from the eye to the heart, from the heart to the eye. The model human in tasawwuf is our Master, who is the Pride of the Universe, Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa. Whatever he did, however he practiced, that needs to be done. This is a path of heritage. In tasawwuf, spiritual progress is learned by disciplining and through the stations of the nafs. One advances on the path of becoming a true human and approaches God by these trainings. What is at the end of this path is to unite with Haqq, which we call

31 vuslat. This is the most honorable purpose of living: to be freed from the imprisonment of the body, to leave this cage, and to reach the Creator before death! That is, to die before death. How delightful death is known only by those who die before death. And how painful death is understood, when the time comes, by those who have firmly embraced the body and call it “I”.

 Let us understand Yunus Emre well, fill ourselves with his love, and spread messages of love to societies in need of love...

Humanity is in a state of hatred. Desire for revenge is shedding blood every day. People have fallen into depressions for lack of hope and love. The path of loving and being loved has been clogged; everyone is seeking the apostles of love in the society who will bring them peace. Biological illnesses are treated by medical doctors; but people are looking for humans with a heart like that of Yunus Emre who will take away their depressions, bring peace to their hearts, and share their troubles. Therefore, let us understand Yunus Emre well, fill ourselves with his love, and spread messages of love to societies in need of love. Let us work towards friendship and peace. The person who seeks the truth and God in this world can find God only in His beloved. Because He becomes manifest in a person whom He calls “My beloved.” He is seen, known, and heard from him. God becomes manifest with His names and attributes in him. At each of these manifestations, the beloved servant experiences different conditions; he listens to the Almighty Lord and talks with Him. He talked to Abdal Kareem Jili, who was one of those beloved, as follows: “You are my beloved! You are whom I love! You are the desired one! You are my face among my servants... You are the most sought after... You are my secret among secrets... You are my light among lights! You are my beauty!.. You are my perfection!.. You are my name!.. You are my quality!.. You are my attribute!.. Approach my witnessing (mushahadah), don‟t stay away. You are the essence of the universe... Oh my beloved, approach!.. Oh my beloved, rise!.. Oh my beloved, I wanted you for my attributes, I created you for myself. Don‟t wish anyone but me, don‟t desire anyone but me... Oh my beloved, at all the scents, smell me...

32 Oh my beloved, at all the food, eat me... Oh my beloved, at everything you touch, touch me... Oh my beloved, you are what is meant by me!” We love all humanity in the name of those who love creation for the Creator. Therefore, we accept it as a supreme ideal that the real happiness is to live with the awareness that loving is the most beautiful way, believing is the most beautiful solution, and it is a holy duty to guide and serve humanity with these qualities. We believe that Yunus Emre has not died and new Yunuses come to bring peace to the world with each passing day. Mawlana Jalaladdin Rumi and Yunus Emre... These two lovers of God have left us several works. When we read these works, we reach the same point. How did these two high-hearted men say the same things? As Rumi was traveling towards the ultimate point of learning, Yunus was working in the forest to find straight woods. What was it that led them to the same conclusion? Let us think on this a bit and find the union of realities. Let us study our Book, the fard (religious obligations), and the sunnah (the practices of the Prophet), and learn the facts of our religion. Let us not believe as we live, but live as we believe. Let us not bring new rules according to our own understanding. We don‟t take care while walking on the streets, riding the bus, talking with someone, doing shopping, or sitting with people. We keep muddying this heart, which is a mirror for the truth. Then we complain that we don‟t feel any inspirations or see any helpful dreams. If you take mirror covered with dust and soot, can you see anything before you wipe it clean? No matter how long you stand in front of it, you cannot see your own face. What must be done? First the mirror must be made wet, and then wiped dry and made to shine. The human heart is also like that. Initially it is like pure and clear water. If you look at it in the night, you can see the reflection of the moon and the stars. But once it is muddied, you cannot see anything. We don‟t treat and purify the pool of the heart. We keep listening to everything harmful. We muddy the pool of the heart. Then we complain that we cannot do our prayers in khushu (awareness of the heart). There is no purification without taking care of oneself, and there is no khushu without purification. The moon does not rise on the pool that is muddy! Obey the commands as much as you can. Don‟t deny what you cannot do. Try adapting to the commands of God and the practices of the Prophet slowly. Stay away from wrong behavior. Make an effort to purify your heart and receive helpful inspirations. And this can only be achieved by keeping away from lust, from haram (what is forbidden), and from places with a negative magnetic field. All people who meet in this world have something to take from each other. Whatever kind of mood and spiritual state they are in, they have something of that kind to take. Some take joy and love, while others take sorrow and grief. Some take love and friendship, while others take hatred, malice, and lust. They take it from the hand, from the tongue. And especially from the eye; whatever is taken is taken from the eye. For whatever reason, people usually are not aware of what is taken from the eye. Those that are taken or given from the eye are emotional and spiritual. They affect one‟s personality directly, and affect his structure fundamentally. Hence it is necessary to feel and identify the gazes of the eyes very well. It is

33 necessary to avoid harmful gazes and to win the friendship of gazes that look with divine love. The eye is open, it looks everywhere. We cannot walk with a closed eye either! Then how can we protect ourselves from looking at what is forbidden? The look is corrupted by the intention. Let us improve our inner controls and maintain a pure intention. Let us be a looking blind who looks but does not see towards haram (what is forbidden); let us maintain a fast of the eye. With love and tolerance let us be a uniting factor in the society, not a dividing one. Let us love all creation for the Creator‟s sake. Let us work for the unity of our nation and humanity. Adam, who was the first human, was created from a mixture of clay and water. Spirit from the Creator was breathed into this first body which was made by the divine power. People take their nutrition either by eating plants grown from earth or by eating animals that were fed by eating these plants. In the end, man sustains his life by eating earth in some form. We people possess a body which is essentially earth. One day, this body returns back to earth, and the earth eats it. This is the story of the body which is earth in essence. Where does the being you call “I” which is not material go? It is not from earth so it would not go back to it. Everything goes back to where it came from. Then the spirit, which is from God, will go back to God. See the destiny of the gazelle with such a beautiful eye! It has knowingly walked into the trap of a hunter of the truth. It is sharing the truths with him. Do we love God? Of course we believe and love Him. Then why don‟t we fulfill what He has asked from us lovingly? Doesn‟t man fulfill what his beloved asks from him with all his heart despite any kinds of difficulties? There is a fire within me; the fire of yearning is burning my inside. Love is yearning. One who does not have yearning does not have love either. We are yearning for such a beloved that He is always by us. Let us not think of the Lord, who is nearer to us than our jugular vein, as distant. We always seek Him in the heavens, in the infinite depths of the sky; we think that He is distant. Those who tell us about Him, for whatever reason, have always directed us towards the far; they have not accustomed us to nearness! Let us know Him near. Yearning for the near is better than yearning for the far. Let us yearn for who is nearer to us than ourselves. Let us burn with the yearning of reaching him. Perhaps a new day may rise and bring us the good news of uniting. With the lights of that rising, our eyes and hearts may open and we may start seeing the truth of the face of the beloved among us which has always been in the open. We have grown accustomed to what we have seen around us since the day we were born. Everything has become ordinary. We have started seeing even the extraordinary as ordinary. Our eyes have become unable to perceive the distinction. Custom blindness! The proximity blindness made us not see what is clearly in the open. There is no such thing as hiding; there is only being unable to see. There is looking blindness; we look, but we don‟t see. What will we do now, while that beloved is clearly in the open? How will we, with these shy looks, free ourselves from the captivity of the shapes and see Him? O God, help us! Make us from those who look as Yunus did.

34 O you who claim to understand the state of the lover! So you were a lover once? Which love are you talking about? The power of material love is very weak. It is all until you reach the beloved. Yearning ends fast. Love also goes with it. Many fall into depression from the sorrow of not uniting with the beloved and attempt suicide. Some do unimaginably crazy things. Later they unite, and then lose all the interest in the relationship. They become unable to stand the other, sometimes get into intense arguments, and find the solution in divorce. What happened to our love? Do we have no regard for the past? Where is the beloved whom we would die for? What happened now? Has her skin wrinkled? Has her shine gone? Is this love? Love is spiritual. It is not an affair of self-interest or pride. If you have loved once, have regard for the love and be faithful. Be faithful to your love so that I may tell you about the divine love. If you are not faithful to your material love, how will you be faithful to the love of God? If you are an unfaithful lover like that, don‟t stain the name of love. Have a sound mind and heart; mend the heart of that person whom you would once die for. Recall those days of yearning of the past with pure emotions. Learn to get along well and then I can tell you about the real love. Don‟t force yourself to experience any spiritual conditions. Don‟t confuse the mind unnecessarily. What is meant by losing and transcending oneself is not trusting oneself. What is needed is to trust God and His friends. When this is achieved fully, the person will have believed not in himself but in God and will have transcended himself. A certain condition becomes unwillingly manifest in people who achieve this such that they speak the truth and make the truths heard without being aware of it. This condition may sometimes be experienced lightly and sometimes intensely; but what is meant by losing oneself is not the biological fainting we know. The biggest weakness of people who deal with spirituality is to try to appear as a mystery, as someone who has a deep understanding of others, to dream by himself and to get into illusions by these dreams. Such conditions occur by forcing oneself before growing completely mature. The desire to live what one has read and heard, the desire to see the unseen, puts such people under pressure. They cannot in any way free themselves from the captivity of illusions, vain thoughts and interpretations. When talking about spirituality they use puzzling words. No one understands anything from what they say. As the meeting continues, minds get confused. A depressing atmosphere covers the place instead of peace. If you wish to keep your mind healthy and your spirituality balanced, avoid being a mysterious person. Stay away from such behavior. Prefer calmness and plainness on the spiritual path. Don‟t act as if you understand something which you actually don‟t. When you don‟t understand such people who speak puzzlingly, advise them to speak with clarity and simplicity; tell them you cannot understand otherwise. Let us not interpret dreams extravagantly either. Extravagant interpretation of dreams also damages the person‟s spiritual balance. What is really important is to reach the dimension of spiritual purity and clarity and to see dreams that don‟t need interpretation. And the best of it is to see awake dreams. What a great happiness it is to receive unexpected new openings, that is awake dreams, in the dimension of divine love without thinking or

35 fantasizing. May God protect us from the desire to know the unknown, see the unseen. Let us seek refuge in the Creator from these kinds of mistakes. Let loving God and being close to Him be our greatest aim. Let us remember Yunus. Let us be simple and unpretentious as he was. Let us not be after seeing or hearing anything. Let us obey the commands of God and the practices of the Prophet, and let us be near to those who are full of love and friendship.

 There are many roads that take

people to God. Some of the guides start construction from the roof and go down to the fundamentals, while some start from the fundamentals and go up to the roof. It depends on the style of the guide. Let us first obey the five articles of Islam, the six articles of faith, the commands of the Qur‟an, and the practices of our Prophet, and let us beautify our manners. We have all passed our years of childhood and youth in various ways. Today we have united around the same goal. Yunus Emre, whom we are great admirers of, left Tapduk Emre thinking that he couldn‟t become anything and then learned what he was from the dervishes he met on the road. Yunus Emre never became a sheikh nor a sultan. He had no pretensions or assertions in his life. Let us first grow conscious on the path of Yunus Emre and learn loving, grow mature, serve people, and work towards unity and harmony. Sun, water, earth, night: these are the poles of morality. Sun is light; it illuminates. All eyes see by the sun. This illumination does not discriminate the good, bad, ugly, or beautiful. It illuminates every medium without discrimination. Night happens by the sun‟s hiding. Vapor and clouds occur by the sun‟s heating the water and it rains. Earth also takes its share from this blessing; and so much more does the sun cause! It makes plants green, improves people‟s health, and gives life to every being. Night is a veil. It hides errors, mistakes, and faults. Water is mercy; it falls from the sky. To earth, stones, rocks... It does not discriminate; it falls everywhere. Water is the blood of earth. Water is the life of earth! We wash and clean the dust and rust with water. We refresh ourselves with water. Earth is a source of wisdom and grace. It gives plants, fruits, and vegetables. It always gives. We dirty it by putting dung on it; again it gives. Earth is humility; earth is generosity.

36 One with good morals obeys commands easily. Only God determines how each person will start on the road to God. God gives the highest ranks to whom he wishes, and lowers him if he wishes. One who does not have tolerance cannot have his religion mature. No one can look down upon someone who spills one teardrop for God, even if he is a sinner. Everyone has a right to believe in God. Let us not interfere with God‟s business, but recommend what is beautiful. Let us tell the truth, but not force anyone. Let us not look down upon someone for not practicing. We will be ashamed for that; God will put us to shame. Let us be cautious and tolerant; let us make it easier not harder. Let us be a servant to the Qur‟an. Let us make our manners resemble that of our Blessed Prophet, who is the model human being. He is the one whom God created to make Himself known. God said, “I was a hidden treasure, I created humankind in order to be known. Human is my secret, I‟m human‟s secret.” What is meant by “human” here is the perfect human (insan-i kamil) who has been purified and has matured. Let us also try to become perfect humans. Unless God bestows it, it is very difficult; but if He does, then it is very easy. Then you obtain such a heart that even you yourself cannot recognize yourself. Why are we created? Have we come to this world just to eat, drink, and sleep? We have come here to know God. To know God is the greatest honor for us. We have not come here to nourish the body. Animals also have bodies. We, in addition, possess mind and reason. What makes us the most honorable of the created is our mind. We rule by that mind. The most honorable of the created is human. And the most honorable of humankind is our Blessed Prophet, the Pride of the Universe. He is “the Mercy to the Worlds.” Let us be a human whom he loves. Let us be a human in order to know God. Let us be a slave, and not think of any ranks or positions before God. Let us not cause any discord and unrest. Let us not be proud of our knowledge. Everyone has a value in the sight of God. Let us not interfere in God‟s business. The decree is God‟s. Let us warn sincerely those who make mistakes without hurting them. There is no need to argue; let us be cautious. Let us tell the truth, let us not call people to account, nor interfere with the divine decree. There are many roads that take people to God. Some of the guides start construction from the roof and go down to the fundamentals, while some start from the fundamentals and go up to the roof. It depends on the style of the guide. Let us first obey the five articles of Islam, the six articles of faith, the commands of the Qur‟an, and the practices of our Prophet, and let us beautify our manners. Don‟t go to a spiritual person to test him; seek refuge in God and then go. Seek refuge so that if the person you visit is a charlatan, God may protect you. The friend of God is found by those who seek sincerely. I sought and found them by the help of God in every city I went, thanks to God. Put the love of God into your heart. Leave the love of this world outside. See, God has created water for us to drink Him. He created the foods for us to eat Him. He created the flowers for us to smell Him. He created the birds for us to listen to Him. Then, what do you expect from this life? How do you live, what do you live for?

37 It is certain that this world is not eternal. There is a going towards a strange end. We have erected high-rises, skyscrapers onto a huge globe that is rotating at a great speed. Enormous earthquakes occur through a tiny movement of this globe! If the slightest slip, slightest slowdown happened in its rotation, everything would be ruined. It has been rotating at the same speed, with the same angle. What is the guarantee of this order? We have been spending our breath in order to save you from yourself. We are preparing you for those whom you will save. Let us not be lazy. Have one foot at the other end of the world and one foot here. Speak, write, but don‟t be lazy. Spend effort to mature and make others mature. Work hard to take and give. The giving hand is superior to the taking hand. Don‟t stop; spread what you have received. Our Prophet did not approve of praising a companion (sahabi) in the presence of another great companion. We go to visit a friend of God. Each of us understands him as we like. Understanding what we would like instead of what he is trying to say does not take us anywhere. We praise another blessed person in the presence of that one. Then we backbite, we say that he was disturbed, and make mischief. The word transforms you; it brings change from the inside to the outside. The word that does not change you is vain talk. It is a pity if we do not change! How will we know that we have changed? We will obey the command, we will grow calm and tranquil, and our manners will become right. If you listen to the word that does not change you even for fifty years, you will have listened in vain. If you don‟t believe and expect, you cannot see. First you must believe and expect. The Creator said, “I am as My servant believes and expects Me to be.” The Divine Beauty cannot be seen without believing and expecting. Let us be universal. Let us look into the universe. Let us not have a narrow religion. Our religion is broad. We are from those who understand the religion broadly. Let your eyes see the distinction. What is the distinction? There is also the distinction of the distinction! What will take you to the truth is the distinction. You find the distinction by comparison. Let your eyes see the distinction. Let your heart feel the distinction. Life is a reproof. This happened to the child, that happened to the husband, you got stuck in the mud, you lost money, you had money stolen... Money has become the god! In the past, idols were stones, now it is paper. And the mind has become the goddess. The goddess of mind is in love with the god, that is money! On the US dollar, it says, “In God we trust.” So that people should not worship money. Various manifestations occur in spiritual greats. Their human side, their altering styles should not mislead you. A new manifestation may occur anytime. A different distinction may occur on that face. Notice the addressing style. The easiest sign for you to read is the addressing style. If he speaks like Haqq5, tremble; if he speaks like Prophet, obey; if he speaks like a master, listen; if he speaks like a servant, take example. 5

“The Truth”; one of the beautiful names of God. God is known and seen through this name.

38 From one mouth, a servant speaks, a friend of Haqq speaks, Prophet speaks, and Haqq speaks. “Humble Yunus does not speak from his own self Haqq has given His lesson to our tongue.” Y. Emre Don‟t get tired of seeking remedy. Ask, wish, but don‟t complain. Say, “Help, o God!” One who smells roses cannot smell dung. One who is addicted to rose scent cannot be a dung beetle. If your nafs is not disciplined, you cannot feel the scent of the angels. Even if you do, you don‟t find it pleasant. In fact, their scent is excellent. Due to our ego, we find our own smell pleasant. Of course, in fact, not everybody‟s smell is pleasant! Today the family, the house of mother and father, is changing; children are changing; the old families remain no more! Even if some remain, parents cannot raise their children as they would like to. There are side effects which destroy all they try to give in a moment. These take the children from their families and ruin them. They make the children illmannered, immoral. A small child, before he gets to know himself, starts smoking and using drugs. These things now start in middle school. They get much more complex in high school. Things much worse than what we guess happen, things that cannot be imagined! I saw young girls, each of them with a red rose in her hand! These are blood flowers! She gives that rose to someone, and another one comes, stabs and kills him! High schools are full of school gangs. Where did these trends come from? They came from harmful publications and harmful movies. Once a dervish set off from his home, traveled long distances, and passed many countries. He was walking barefoot. He reached the door of his master on a cold, snowy day. They told it to the master. “Send him away,” he responded. “Sir, he will die, it‟s very cold!” “Send him away; did I invite him?” In fact, in a dream he had said to that dervish, “Come, my son!” The dervish had a test, a hard test. At the door, they told the dervish that the master did not accept him and to go to another door. The dervish said, “Is there any other door?” and lay down at the threshold. Snow covered the door until morning. When they started shoveling the snow in the morning, they noticed something hitting the shovel. Then they saw that the dervish had not left and was lying there frozen. They told the master immediately. “He is apparently dead” they said. “Take him in! Clean him, wash him! Oh my dear, my God has sent me one,” said the master, and removed the thorns in the feet of this humble visitor one by one with his own hands and teeth. The dervish got well and stayed there for a while. Then the master passed away and, according to his will, the dervish took his place. Let us wish a testless test. Is there such a submission to be found in us? It is hard to be a dervish; let us first be human and obey God.

39 Let us abandon all kinds of being and reach nothingness like Yunus. May God not let us be away from what we have found. Be a vessel for water. If you are to be broken, let it be on the way to water. Whether we become joyful or sad, we are on the way to water, thanks to God! We are on the way of Yunus. We are in the footsteps of the strangers. We are in between the past and the future. We are looking from between the past and the future. Don‟t wait for their deaths to understand the friends of God; have companionship, have exchange. Don‟t examine your relationships with them according to your mind. Don‟t evaluate it according to its outward shape. They, in order not to break people‟s hearts, take the cup of wine, and it turns into milk as they drink. If you try to prove God to someone, you will make him faithless. Therefore, they don‟t prove but bring evidences. Faith is to acknowledge that one does not see the unseen. If everything is opened, then which unseen will we have faith for? A master once said: “Instead of the voice of the nightingale singing vainly, the voice of the crow saying God is more pleasant.” But even more pleasant is the voice of the nightingale saying God. The time to revive has come. There was a simit-man6 when I was a child: “You seek, seek, but cannot find this simit-man. I bring it to your feet and you still hesitate,” he used to say. Once I told him: “I want to buy one!” I was about seventeen. He looked, and said, “You have time. You will buy the simit later, from Ankara.” There are simit-men, there are other ordinary people; we are not aware of who are among us. What is simit? “O” is zero. What else is it? It is Him7. First you will become zero, that is, nothing; then you will find Him. It is easy to give taste to the tongue. How will we give taste to the heart? The heart feels, lives, experiences, but then it shies away. It is afraid to become addicted to the wine of love, to the sohbats. This wine is different; it does not cause harm. This wine is drunk through the eyes. It does not make people ugly; it makes them pleased and beautiful. Don‟t trust your youth. Don‟t say that you will do it when you grow old; don‟t fossilize. This is for those looking for miracles. Friend of God does not have dementia. He remembers many years back. His memories are from the heart. He closes his eyes and knows from the heart. How many satellites does the Earth have? How many satellites does the Sun have? The Earth has one and the Sun has nine satellites. Be a satellite! Satellite means one that follows. If you follow, you will become a satellite! If you feel an intimacy which you cannot understand, wait until you do. You will understand one day. Don‟t quit! It is the prize of your coming to the world! My master is such a great master that He arranged my bricks. My body built itself. He taught my cells how to construct my body. Then he put me into it and sent me to the world. 6 7

Simit is an O-shaped, bagel-like bread in Turkey. “Him” in Turkish is “O”.

40 Why does a baby cry? He sees that he has been taken from an infinite freedom into a cabin. He will stay in this prison his whole life; this is why he is crying. How is he crying? Huwa (Him), huwa, huwa!.. He wants to get out but cannot. A life is spent this way. An Azrail (angel of death) is needed to get out of this body. This Azrail must be an attractive Azrail so that he may pull you out with his attraction; he may make you taste the delight of real freedom. Let us be from those who are born not only from their mothers‟ wombs but also from the heart of a man. Let us die before death; let us see Haqq with Haqq.

 Wherever the manners of God are, He will be manifest there. Whichever servant has adopted the manners of God, God will be manifest in him. Enter into paradise also in this world; live the paradise here. Your job, your spouse, and your faith must be in harmony so that you will enter into paradise. You will reach the happiness of harmony and agreement. There will be unity; there will be no “me vs. you” left. To become one from two is unity! The formation of the child... Two cells‟ becoming one cell... That single cell then multiplies by division. How is the body formed by itself, who is its master? Which hand is arranging the cells? We speak from the mouth, we have exchange from the eye. Rumi has said, “Such a moment came that my body became an eye, and my eyes became hands.” The fire of regret burns those who have something to take from spirituality. Yunus Emre was burned that he did not choose the breath instead of wheat. The friendship of God makes one quit harmful pleasures. It gives such a pleasure. Ah, how wonderful it would be to reach it! Our needle fluctuates at some events, but, thanks to God, it does not deviate. If someone is trying to prove himself, to make others accept him, nothing can be taken from him. Spiritual people do not try to prove themselves; they tell people about God, they acquaint people with God. We keep enumerating the names of God, but do we ever think on their meanings? Let us have an eye which sees attributes. God must first be seen from His attributes. Veiler of faults, merciful, compassionate, generous... Let us first learn the attributes of God consciously. Let us learn His manners. Wherever the manners of God are, He will be manifest there. Whichever servant has adopted the manners of God, God will be manifest in him. God who is the master of treasures, the richest of the rich, the compassionate, the merciful, is next to his opposite, the weakest of the weak, one who has his servitude as his pride. The opposite of God is servitude and nothingness. No sultan sits on the throne with his servant. That greatness is God‟s alone. He sits on the same throne as His servant. The servant adopts the

41 manners of God by his attribute of powerlessness, his identity of nothingness, and his dress of nullity. The servant takes off his worldly clothes, rids himself of the world, and wears the beautiful attributes of God. Servant means someone in love with God. Also, God loves His beautiful servant. In Miraj, the Supreme Creator asked, “O my Messenger, what did you bring to me which I don‟t have?” “O Lord, what is it that you don‟t have? You are the master of everything. I brought you my nothingness,” said the Messenger of God. “O God! We have been entrapped in a pit in Canaan. Take us out to the daylight. We have lost Joseph in Canaan country. Make us find Joseph, o Lord!” Joseph is the soul; Canaan is the body. Character is living, practicing, and behaving. If they had not watched the Messenger, the religion of the companions (sahabah) would not be complete. If he had not come down to earth, from whom would they take example? Man cannot practice just by reading; he needs to see and watch. Don‟t examine what is happening! God does not have faults. If you do examine it, you will have committed the greatest fault. If your mind cannot accept, you cannot eat a grape from the branch of a plum tree. Come, eat a grape from a plum branch! This is possible physically too. You pierce the plum branch, you pass the grape branch through it, and plaster it with earth. You will have grafted it and will eat a grape from a plum branch. Every person has his own spiritual qualities and pleasures from his creation. This is his character and the way he is created. He takes the same knowledge, receives the same education, but his way and character remain different. They say that there should be no one between God and His servant. Why? If there were no such necessity, prophets would not be sent. Actually, there is no such gap anyway! Life is nourished with spiritual blessing (fayz). Fayz rains continuously onto creation. Fayz is the Muhammadan light. Fayz rains from the realm of Malakut to the realm of Jabarut, and from the realm of Jabarut onto creation. If it rained directly onto us, we would be ruined. You may think of it similarly to the sun‟s rays reaching the earth if there were no atmosphere or ozone layer. Then what would our situation be? If someone says something bad to you, don‟t answer him immediately. If you do, the other person gets provoked and says it again. If you keep silent, his conscience will speak and complain in your place. Don‟t immediately take your revenge. Be the oppressed. If you retreat, God will settle the account with him. He created Adam to be known. He created Eve from Adam to have them multiply. We can see a walnut tree. There is also a walnut tree within a walnut; we cannot see that. Is the fruit of a walnut tree not a walnut tree? Also the fruit of the universe is Adam! We are trying to watch it from the outside. How will we see it? Let us look inside ourselves and see it there. The universe is inside us!.. Do you think the world is very big? It is said by scientists that the earth would be as big as a fist if the empty spaces within each atom could be compressed. Our Blessed Prophet pointed to this fact when he said, “Even if they put the whole world into my one hand ...”

42 Our real home is not this body, which is a bag of flesh and bones. Our home is God. We have forgotten our home! We live as if we will never separate from the flesh and bones. Everyone will complete his term and leave the body. Let us not be heedless. People around us, people in front of us are going one by one, but we cannot attribute it to ourselves. Let us live with the awareness of this fact. This is not pain; it is not feeling any pain from troubles or distresses. We need to reach the awareness of the truth in order to be relieved from all kinds of troubles. Power and strength is God‟s alone; we have no superiority over each other, one side of us is human. Let us be aware of our weakness so that we may find the strength and power. Both strength and power come to the weak and the powerless. There is nothing which we cannot give and take, which we cannot share. Let us love for God. Let us not be an aimless crowd but a select community, let us be conscious. Let us be in unity and harmony. When someone says something wrong, let us observe our regard for God. If he has a defect, let us not speak behind him but warn him with kindness. Let us always talk of goodness. Everyone‟s character, everyone‟s service is different. Let us maintain a good intentions and not speak with prejudice. Causing discord in the society and rifts among people is very bad, wherever that may be. Beware of breaking hearts; but if there is a responsibility, intervene with kindness. In the past, people used to retire into seclusion in monasteries and seek maturity. Now they grow mature among people. Don‟t escape from people. Change by listening to what is being told. Implement the recommendations regularly, without delay. If you do it as you please, you cannot benefit. Suppose you got ill and went to a doctor and the doctor gave you some medicine and said, “You should finish the medicine in the box.” Would you take that medicine as you please or as the doctor prescribed? When you see that you are getting well and you feel good, you stop taking the medicine. Some time passes, the illness recurs, and you go to the doctor again. But now that medicine doesn‟t help because the body has developed immunity; so another medicine is prescribed. Spiritual maturity is also like this. We need to obey the recommendations so that we can make progress. Let us change; let us not stay where we are. Let us get well as soon as possible so that we can move on to curing other diseases we have. Let us be sensitive and follow the recommendations. As a wise man said, “Remove everything else from your heart, so that God may manifest Sultan does not settle in the palace, before the house is built completely!” “Move all other than the beloved out of your heart so that God may manifest there. Before your heart is made completely, God will not settle in there!” Be aware of what comes in and out of your heart. House, car, various sorts of belongings, and so much more!.. Immediately say “Astaghfirullah” and move them out, or else you will worship whatever has entered your heart. If you are not aware of what comes in and out of your heart, you cannot go to God, you cannot be a man of heart. “I don‟t fit into the universe, but I fit into the heart of my faithful servant,” says God! Let us be in control of what comes in and out of our hearts. Let us not turn our hearts into a place of passage. While your heart is full of worldly stuff, how can you invite God into there? Taking

43 something into your heart is different from loving it. You know what they call looking with a receiving eye; that is to take into the heart. If we were told that we had only one week left in life, what would we do? We would forget everything; we would do sajdah without eating or drinking. So, let us live without losing that sense. As the journey nears, man certainly feels it. Let us not grow demented; those who do cannot distinguish, they only fear. Let us not fossilize. Let us think that death can come any moment. It does not discriminate between the young and the old. Don‟t say, “I have many years ahead.” How can you guarantee that? It is a matter of one moment. Death is passing right under our noses. We smell death every moment. Is there life without God? People‟s seeing is the seeing of God; that is the attribute of basar (all-seeing). God sees through all eyes. God sees within people. He lives in everyone with His attribute. Your seeing is God‟s attribute; there is no seeing without God. When you look with yourself, you see “partially”; when you look with God, you see “wholly”. If you join the whole, you will see wholly, you will hear wholly. Don‟t be fooled by the world you live in. Don‟t follow your nafs. Nafs is contentious; it sets people against each other by all kinds of tricks. If everybody can see his nafs, there will be no arguments, no restlessness. Let us be in control of our nafs, not eat haram (what is forbidden), not be a slave to lust, and not have an eye on others‟ possessions. There is an ambition within us; the ambition to be right. Let us abandon this contention, this ambition. When we get angry, we act unjustly and we become unjust. Let us seek our rights without getting angry. When you get angry, you make the other person get angry too. If you cannot manage to remain calm, you cannot manage to control your nafs either. Don‟t take sides with your nafs; threaten it, say that you will deprive it of food, of sleep; then your nafs will become afraid and listen to you. God is sattar (veiler); He covers faults and mistakes. Let us also not shame people with their faults, let us not reveal their mistakes. Let us adopt the manners of God. If we had told everyone their faults at our first meeting, we wouldn‟t be together today. Those who are willing to hear their faults are commendable. May they come forward to this arena! Your mother and father may have made mistakes throughout their lives. Ask them, would they like to see you make the same mistakes? There is experience in spirituality. Choose the easy way; don‟t enter a path that is too thorny. Take lessons from the experiences of the seniors. If a poor stranger knocks on the door of your heart while you are on your way, don‟t pass him by. If you feel that he is in need, go help him. The stranger doesn‟t expect anything from anyone but God. “Did you bring what was entrusted to you by God to give me?” he says. God has said, “If a stranger becomes heartbroken, I destroy the world!” Let us be diligent on the path to God. Let us make much remembrance of God, and obey the commands. Let us not get stuck. Let us not remain at a look; let us go to the beloved. We all belong to God. God is also all of ours. Who is close to God is known only by God. The person‟s closeness to God changes constantly; he gets closer or distant. These are called “hal” (state). Let us remain at a balance and let there be no fluctuations. Let us maintain a certain position. Remaining close to God at a certain position is called “maqam” (station).

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“Nobody did turn from state to state, The state of us all is appreciated by the beloved only.” Y. Emre There are two main centers within us: mind and heart. These two must be connected to each other. One who finds the truth in his heart finds it right. Rising happens by descending. You ascend as much as you descend. Get down so that your heart may rise. That is, make sajdah! We have suffered a lot through our minds, and we are still suffering. And we still interfere with God‟s judgment. We say, “Make it as I wish, not as you wish.” The best is to say, “O Lord! You know the best. Ease my way; I‟m weak, I‟m powerless, help me!” Everyone with a spiritual disease is given a test. The test continues until the disease is cured. Wherever is his weakness, he is tested from that point until it ends. If he is very skeptical, if he cannot trust anyone, he is tested continually from that point. Can one become a doctor and perform surgeries by just reading books? Can one go to paradise by just reading books without practice and worship? God cannot be found by just reading books. Married people! Don‟t argue. Where do the arguments arise from? Because you say, “Why is he/she not as I want? Why doesn‟t he/she think as I do?” You cannot be the same! Be tolerant and tactful. Ninety nine percent of married couples are saying, “I deserve someone much better. I made a mistake once. Otherwise, if I knew this, would I ever look at him/her?” If they were given another chance, perhaps they would choose someone worse, but they are not aware of it. His soul desired a soulmate. It is not possible not to give. All souls missed one soulmate, all souls resembled one soulmate, and they all became the same. Then the friendship of souls occurred. From the differences in appearance, they have moved to the sameness of all. When the lover starts loving very much, light from God comes to him. That light flows from his eyes to his heart and settles there. Later, it gets reflected on his eyes from his heart. He sees the truth with that light. The truth cannot be seen without light. For this reason the eyes of the lover shine. We are the children of time. We are living in this time. Now it is our turn to live in this world. Billions lived before us. Now we are the children of time. Has anyone seen the father of time? We are attached to the father of time by the heart. At every age, there is a father of time. The universe revolves around the axis of his spirituality. Time will pass quickly. Be patient, little is left; we will go. We will pass from this dimension and go back to our real home. The soul goes to its origin and dust goes to dust. Corpses go to one place, and souls to another. Let us just break free from calling the corpse “I”. The greatest pleasure is to die; but with a beautiful death, not a suicide. Once you abandon this flesh and these bones, you will fly to the Beloved. We are not a bird of the cage; we must choose freedom, we must fly to freedom.

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 Every being goes back to its origin. You are a being into which God has breathed from his spirit. Your essence will also go back to Him...

Some attempt to teach God! Can God be taught? It is not possible to learn God by telling about Him. The person who is created to acquaint the servants with God is called a “messenger”. There is the messenger and there are his inheritors, those who inherit his legacy. Which legacy? His manners! What does messenger mean? Messenger means someone who says, “Those who see me would be like seen Haqq.” It means the Apostle of God. Messenger means one who is created to make God known. The explanation your Lord has given to you is sufficient. He wanted to be known. What did He do then? He created a light from His love for Himself. He called that light, “My Muhammad!” Go after this truth throughout your life; reach this truth. In reality, Muhammad is the forefather of Adam. Adam looked into the heaven when he was created and saw “La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah” written. He asked God: “O Lord, who is this person whose name you‟ve put next to your own?” “I created you from his light,” God responded. It is from that light that humanity is created. That light has completed its cycle on earth by passing through all the prophets and at the end descending to earth with a body of its own. Every being goes back to its origin. You are a being into which God has breathed from his spirit. Your essence will also go back to Him. We are stuck with the weights in this world; we cannot fly to Him. We have filled our skirts with stones and dust; we have become heavy. You are the most honorable being of creation. Why don‟t you be worthy of your honor? Why don‟t you seek pleasures other than eating, drinking, having fun, sleeping, and having sex? We know the world, but we are ignorant of ourselves. We have always looked outside but never inside. God, the Most High, says, “I have sent humans down to earth as my deputies.” What does deputy mean? It means representative. Who is the representative? The beloved servant of God, God‟s beloved. There is no insistence, no assertion, but there is loyalty and submission. Lovers start burning when they notice and distinguish Haqq8. They start yearning for Him as if they have seen and heard Him; their faith matures. They want to see Him. It is not possible to see God in His person; He can be seen as Haqq only as a combination of His attributes. 8

“The Truth”; one of the beautiful names of God. God is known and seen through this name.

46 Listen to these words being spoken, and change. Listen, whether asleep or awake. Those who listen while sleeping also benefit. They both see and sleep. There is a curtain at that point, between sleep and wakefulness. It is called “yakaza”. What is seen on this curtain is very close to reality. Let us talk to Him in prayer (salah) even if we don‟t feel it. Let us learn the meaning of the chapters (surahs) we recite. For example, Fatiha: half of it is said by you, the other half by God! You write ADAM in one rakaat: “alif” while standing, “dal” in ruku, and “mim” in sajdah. They become “Adam”. If the adhan were called beautifully, the number of those who come to faith would increase. If the person calling the adhan burnt himself, there would be no one left who didn‟t. Mansur al-Hallaj was once walking with his students when the adhan began to be called. “Ill-done, ill-done!” he said. Then they stopped by a blacksmith shop. He stepped onto the anvil and started calling the adhan. The iron anvil turned red from heat. When the adhan ended, the anvil melted and flowed. “This is ill-done too,” he said. “O master! How so? We understand the other, but how can this be ill-done?” asked his students. “The iron melted, but I could not,” he responded. A friend of God says, “We don‟t adorn for the blind, we don‟t play the drum for the deaf. We find who is needed and talk to him.” Prophet Job‟s body was infested with worms, but he felt no pain of it. One day a worm fell to the ground. Job took it and said, “You have not taken your share yet,” and then put it back onto the wound. He was pleased with his trouble for that trouble came from God. Aisha had not seen anyone more beautiful than Muhammad; she wondered whether he was more beautiful even than Prophet Joseph. One day she asked the Messenger of God: “Are you or Joseph more beautiful?” “Overall I‟m more beautiful; in appearance he is,” he responded. Zulaikha watched Joseph while he was sleeping and fell in love. What was the beauty she saw in Him? She pined away. People started gossiping about Zulaikha. Then she invited the women who gossiped and gave each of them an apple and a knife. “Go ahead,” she said. At the same time, she called Joseph in. The ladies saw Joseph while they were peeling the apples and cut their hands. “You became like this by seeing only once. I see Him everyday. You tell me, what can I do?” Zulaikha asked. God is very beautiful! Love God. Love of God is beyond one‟s love of oneself. Don‟t commit shirk (idolatry) by looking at yourself. Loving oneself comes before all. But love of God is much beyond that. One who helps make another person‟s home will have help from someone to make his own home. Help others, and someone will help you.

47 Don‟t expect any help from mediums and such. Pray from the heart, give charity, and calamities will go away from you. Especially if it finds its place... But it shouldn‟t be just by small amounts. It must be at least so much as to feed one person fully. A charity that makes someone say, “May God be pleased with you!” from the bottom of his heart saves its giver from so many negative things. I just got excited now and felt myself at the terrace of the hotel I stayed in Medina. On my right is the Jannat al-Baqi. So many martyrs are resting there. All the companions, the relatives of our Prophet are there. So beautiful is that place of heaven! If someone asks you, “Where is the paradise on earth?” Tell them, “It is the Jannat al-Baqi in Medina.” Spill at least one teardrop there so that a drop from you will go to paradise. Let no one receive any harm from your hands, tongue, eyes, or any other part of your body. Be a safe, trusted haven. Even if people do evil to you, do them kindness. When you get ill, protect others from your illness. In times of epidemics, protect yourself. Don‟t be around people too much. Don‟t be ill-tempered. Our friends are mild like Yunus; they don‟t shame people with their faults. People may speak wrong, they may speak lies; don‟t shame them, but instead be Sattar (veiler of faults). Does God reveal your faults? Whatever condition you may fall into, don‟t give up doing something for God. What will save you are the works you do for God. Everyone has a heart. Everyone who listens to his heart walks on the path to God. If you help someone, if you give a hand to the poor, that suffices for you. Doubt this, doubt that; what will the end of this be? Don‟t look at what others are saying, but believe in your own eyes and heart. Muhammad is the pride of weakness and poverty. While he was prostrating, the idolaters put camel entrails on his head. People passed the news to his daughter Fatima; she came running from home. She threw away the entrails. The same blessed man split the moon into two by a single movement of his finger. What is this weakness; what is this power? Who pointed that finger to the moon? Does a friend of God fall? He does fall and he does make mistakes, but he rises fast. He knows about asking for forgiveness. He knows about burning with regret. If he falls after ten years of growth, he rises again in two days. You reach there in ten years; he recovers in two days. Would you keep on doing your worship if you saw that you were definitely destined for hell in the Clear Record (Lawh-i Mahfuz)? Our goal is not paradise or hell, but to spend our lives on His way. What did they tell to Ferhat? “Are you crazy? How will you dig through this mountain?” “It doesn‟t matter! Then I will die for the sake of Shereen!” he responded. What are you living for? This is important; what are you spending your life for?

48 Don‟t fear the bandits; fear the oppressed. You cause sorrow to an oppressed person, then you run into a bandit because of that. Who is oppressed? One who is unable to defend himself is called oppressed. If people truly believed that they would die, these wars would end. The human being thinks that he will get away with whatever he does. Evil does not come to man from God! Evil comes to man again from himself. People are actually alike, aren‟t they? They are different in appearance, but in essence they are the same. Our outside is mud; our inside is light. “Don‟t leave us in mud, o Lord! Make us know the essence of our spirit!” Fire within fire is cool. If your fire is more, then the fire outside will feel cool to you, just as it became cool for Abraham. When I was at Hajj, the greatest pleasures for me were coming from natural sites, from places that remain from those days. When climbing Mount Nur, I was thinking, “He passed from these places.” When you enter the Cave Hira, you know that he stayed at that place, which is barely 10-20 square feet, and you lose yourself. You feel Him there. It is not possible not to feel Him in that cave. When we die, we don‟t go far. We are again here; we just change dimension. The soul does not have a material place. The soul does not need to step on soil. The soul can exist in every medium in the trans-material realm. Yunus Emre picked thorn apples from the countryside in order to avoid going emptyhanded to Hajji Bektash Wali. When he arrived at his place, he waited for three days. It is not easy to enter into the presence of the sultan immediately. The people there prepared Yunus Emre for it. What use is it to enter into the presence without being aware? Millions of people enter into the presence of God five times a day, but they are not aware. Many people enter into the presence of friends of God, but they are not aware. God extends his hand to people via His friends. Half of the human being is fish, and the other half is snake. At the seashore, the fish wants the sea, while the snake wants the land. Let us pray that the fish may prevail and dive into the oceans, and that the snake may be drowned. Let us strive that we may beautify the manners of this animal nafs and make it docile like a sheep. Let us make the nafs abandon the manners of the pig and hyena. Let us approach humanity. Perhaps someday we will suddenly see that grace has arrived and our nafs has turned into a mature human. When do we become human? When we are satisfied! This is not a mundane satisfaction but the satisfaction of the heart, the satisfaction of those who find the pleasure in the heart. Think about your tomorrow. Your children are your tomorrow. They are both your and your country‟s tomorrow. The mother is dying in the other room; the child has gathered his friends and is laughing and playing with them. Somebody warns him. A little later, the laughter increases even more. The mother is dying from cancer, while the child is dying from laughter. The mother is suffering deeply as she hears that laughter. Mothers and fathers say, “I had compassion for my children. I couldn‟t put limits on them. I left them free.” Then bad guys take control and raise them. The end happens like this. Young people! You say, “We are on the path of God.” You love the friends of God, but you don‟t take side with the right. You must be respectful of your parents while you

49 advocate what you know is right. Even if your parents are wrong, don‟t scold or reproach them. If your father wants to go to church, even if you yourself don‟t wan to go, carry him there on your back. Yunus would do so. Let us definitely not reproach our parents! Let us not object the seniors. It is one thing to be on the side of the right, and it is another to be disrespectful. If your parents are being unjust to you, you should convince them with kindness in a calm atmosphere. Patience is necessary. If you think, “I will not be patient about anything,” you cannot be human. If you will not show patience to anything, you will never be free from trouble. God tests the believing men and women. The work of believers is twice as hard. Nonbelievers are not tested. In this world, nonbelievers live comfortably. That is because the believer will work, deserve, and will also be tested. Why? In order to be rewarded in the hereafter. The books of those who don‟t believe will be crossed out as “faithless”. It is a serious sin to admire the nonbeliever. That is, in this world, those who deny God live comfortably. Let us accept this. They work, earn, and are not tested. They are treated according to the name Rahman. But the job of the believer is hard. He will both work, be tested, and earn. Be patient and seek refuge in God; the end will be good. Let our hearts be rich. Material richness and the richness of the heart are somewhat inversely proportional. As the material richness increases, the richness of the heart decreases. If you would not like to see this happen, make a sacrifice. Do charity work. Extend your hand to the poor. Be constructive for the sake of God. If you would like to be reconciled with God, reconcile two people. Don‟t take sides. Be impartial for the sake of God. May God protect us from taking sides for self-interest. May He make us from those who are with the righteous. O young people, don‟t be a dreamer, be realistic! Find your match and unite your lives. Let everyone be content, marry once finding someone suitable, and then work to get along well. If you want to live in paradise in this world, love God and His Messenger very much! Let your concern be God. Then you will not have sorrow for anything. You will not burn for anything. The troubles of those to whose hearts God comes end. When someone says something to you, your world sinks into darkness. You become ruined and obsessed with it for days and nights. You regret, “I wish I had responded so and so when he said that. It is still inside me.” Let it remain inside you; don‟t let it out. Is there anyone who misses God? One who misses from the heart? Where are the lovers; where are the lovers of God? God cannot be obtained. He can neither be held by the hand nor seen by the eye. But He holds with the hand of a servant He loves and sees with his eye. An adolescent sees someone and falls terribly in love. As they get to know each other, he loses interest. But in spirituality, burning increases as intimacy increases. One draws closer through the heart. The Almighty says, “I come to the servant I love, I enter to his heart.” One who cannot reach the love of Muhammad cannot be close to God. Because He created Muhammad from his love. It is said that in paradise, people with traces of prostration are seen. I saw such a man in umrah (the lesser pilgrimage). He had leaned against the wall, lost in thought. I thought of

50 going there and embracing him. It was very crowded; I was unable to get there; I was squeezed in the crowd. The person right before me turned back and said: “He is so and so from Egypt.” “Then who are you? How did you know that I was interested in meeting him? Given that I cannot reach him, I will hug you,” I said and embraced him. He didn‟t say anything. I was speaking in Turkish. I didn‟t know his language. I don‟t know how we understood each other! Be from those who smell and taste from the heart. Let your heart get thirsty; let your heart feel the scents. This place is the school of Yunuses. You have changed, you have changed very much. You all have changed. One who does not change would have spoiled the chance. Change fast. Yunus made the people he met resemble himself. Let us make everyone we meet resemble ourselves. Let us love, be loved, and make things easy. In sohbats, we don‟t always talk of yesterday; we talk of today. We are not satisfied with the memories of the past; we live in the current moment. We always serve fresh fruit to our visitors. We speak words that have not been spoken before. You say, “I‟m in love.” Real love is to endure the tribulations of the beloved. He says “I love God,” but cannot endure his tribulations. If the friend of God reproaches you only once, your love deflates like a balloon. We have been dismissed, shouted at, reproached at the door of the friend. The needle of the heart, thanks to God, did not fluctuate at all. May God not make anyone restless. May our love be abundant. Be from those who give their hearts. Those who give their hearts to God desire seeing Him. Let us all illuminate our environments. Illuminating happens by burning; you cannot illuminate without burning. Then who is the real enlightened? One who realizes the truth in this world. The lover who burns secretly has said “One who does not burn does not know.” They asked Mawlana Rumi about love. He responded, “Become me so that you may know!” Battal Gazi has a long tomb. When I saw the tomb, it made me remember an event narrated by a sultan of hearts. The master of that holy man had one day gathered his students: “Let us go and seek Battal Gazi,” he said. As the master was walking around, he saw a man standing at the entrance of a cave with a sword in his hand, dressed in old-fashioned clothes. “Who are you looking for?” the man asked. “I‟m looking for Battal Gazi.” “Enter inside, ask the person who is sitting at the head.” He entered in and asked the person there. “I‟m looking for Battal Gazi.” “The person at the door who sent you here was Battal Gazi. He couldn‟t say it for his humility and sent you here.” He returned immediately, “So you are Battal Gazi,” he said and kissed his hand. “Right, we have met, but I wanted you to also meet the Messenger of God, so I sent you there.”

51 “He was the Messenger of God?” the master exclaimed and ran inside, but there was no one there. He ran back to the door again, but he couldn‟t find the man there either. As I was thinking of this beautiful memory, I noticed the voice of a nightingale outside that was singing as if it had lost itself. I went there and saw that it had come to the door. I walked towards it. As I approached, it went back. As this continued, we came to a place like a cell. I realized that it was trying to tell me that Yunus Emre had lived there. One who trusts witchcraft cannot be a friend of God. One who does witchcraft for evil or to separate husband and wife becomes ruined. Those who trust in God are not harmed by witchcraft. God protects those who seek refuge in Him. No one can do anything to them. God is more powerful than all He has created. It is unnecessary to fear His creatures while trusting in God. If we receive harm, it is due to our fear, due to our not having full faith. When we have full faith, no harm comes to us. Several companions (sahabah) were traveling. They encountered a desert lion. They did not have any weapons so they all were afraid and ran away. Then Umar came: “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,” he said and pulled the lion away by its ear. “Pass safely now” he said. “God assigns against you what you fear. Why do you fear it when God is present? Those who fear God do not fear anything else.” One whose trouble is God does not have any other troubles left. There is a path from eye to eye. It does not happen by reading books but by live transmission. Truths have been transmitted from eye to eye, heart to heart, age to age. Words come from books, states come from eyes. This is the essence of tasawwuf. One who has claims or assertions cannot become anything. Let us not think of becoming anything. Let us wake up and also wake others up. Death will come; it will knock at everybody‟s door. Let us see this fact! What good will what you have lived be to you? Only what you have done for God will accompany you. Once upon a time there were two holy men living in the same area. People used to go sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. They used to say, “He said so and so, but you have said otherwise,” and cause mischief. One day, they wanted to go to Hajj. They asked one. He said, “Don‟t go.” They didn‟t like it. They asked the other, and he said “Go.” Three hundred of those who went died on the way. They came back to the man who said “go”: “You said „go‟, but three hundred people died,” they said. “Don‟t intervene in the fight of elephants. Three hundred may die, or five hundred may die,” he responded and explained to them what a bad thing it is to make mischief. Everybody likes a different color, a different style. If someone likes blue and you take him to red, that wouldn‟t be right. It is also wrong to condemn green because you like blue. Are they not all colors of the same light? By condemning them, you will unknowingly condemn the light. In this world, it is a problem if you make money and another problem if you don‟t. In the end, money really becomes a tribulation. A man shared all his wealth among his children, thinking that they would take care of him. The children then started quarrelling about which one of them would take care of their father. The poor man was looked after by a charity foundation in the end.

52 You always try to spare your child from difficulties while you raise him. But while you think “Let him sleep well, let him enjoy his youth,” you lose the child. How will you bear seeing your child in hell? The child goes out drinking, gambling, and goes to nightclubs. Is it not harmful to go to these places? When the child goes to the path of God, do you say, “Don‟t go too deep; you will lose your mind”? Once you lose the end of the string, others will catch it. God loves Himself very much; you cannot love yourself. He praises Himself; you cannot praise yourself. He breathes spirit into mud and tells it to represent Him. One who represents God is the Insan-i Kamil (the perfect human being). Those who see him will be seeing the manifestation of God. He is the model human being, he is the perfect human being. “Yunus has seen the manifestation of God on your face, There is no way to separate, because God has become manifest on you.” Wherever there is some beauty, it is all from God. Whatever there is that makes the heart move, it takes its beauty from Him. If you look with a pair of eyes, you understand only what you see. But if you reach the truth of seeing, you will know what all eyes see. The seeing of the human being is adjusted for human beings. Do we know how animals see? We can tell each other of colors or of what we have seen, because we can talk to each other. How does an animal see? Why do these creatures always run away from human beings? In what way does the Supreme Creator show the human being to these creatures? People‟s visions are the same in outward appearance but different in seeing attributes and manners. Some eyes look and see manners and characters. Let us acquire eyes that see the meaning. You should be able to tell whether someone is a liar or cheater when you look at him. If this vision increases, you will also see the attributes of the people whom you look at. But where is the brave person who will look without blinking? Come, give your life to God. Spend your youth, beauty, and knowledge on the path of God. Lovers, may your hearts be pleasant! There is only one goal of living, and that is to see the Beauty and to feel God. “Don‟t think that the lovers in ecstasy turn in vain, But they embrace Haqq and whirl with Him.” Mawlana J. Rumi One who comes by himself is called Mawlana; one who finds by himself is called Uwaisi. That is, someone who finds like Uwais al-Qarani from birth. “They call the sala (death announcement) for Yunus has died One who has died is the animal; lovers don‟t die.” Yunus Emre Go and visit Yunus and Mawlana with sincerity (ikhlas). See who is dead and who is alive then. We were in Konya once looking for a dorm for our son. We were unable to find a place although we sought until late afternoon. At some point, I felt thoroughly distressed. And

53 there was nobody I knew there. I felt sad! There was only one person I knew: Mawlana. So I went to him. I entered through the door and stood at a corner: “O my sultan, I‟ve been unable to find a dorm! Help! You know, I came to your door, please help. I beg the help of my Lord for your sake,” I said. As we stepped outside, a car stopped by: “Hi. Are you looking for something?” “We are looking for a dorm.” “Let me take you there.” He took us to a place that was like a five-star hotel. I asked the manager there in astonishment: “Would you accept our son?” “Of course, whom else would we accept?” he responded. After completing the registration to the dorm, we went to visit Shams Tabrizi. I thought from my heart “O Shams, I wish I could pray this asr (late afternoon) prayer with you!” As I was thinking this, a man from a few lines ahead of us turned back and looked at me. I felt a desire to give my life to that look; it attracted my soul. “Come, approach!” he said. As I was thinking, “Is this perhaps by chance?” he leaned his shoulder onto mine in such a way that I realized this was no accident. I felt burned as he leaned. I don‟t remember how I prayed. We finished the salah; I was waiting for the following prayer (dua) to finish to go embrace him. When I turned back, he was not there. I asked someone. “He left after the salah,” he said. What kind of a love this is, which is not like any other! Has anyone told you that you were trustworthy? When people are convinced from the heart that someone is completely harmless, that person is called trustworthy. The name of our Prophet was first Muhammad al-Amin (the trustworthy). You should also be trustworthy. No one received any harm from him through his hand or through his tongue since his childhood. Who is the one that makes the law? They call it Archimedes‟ Law. Did Archimedes make that law? He observed that water makes things float while in the bath. The law of liquids was made by the Creator. Let us be admirers of God‟s laws, and also appreciate Archimedes for his discovery. Why did the love dimension of Islam develop in regions far away from Arabia? Because wherever there is yearning, there is love! In Central Asia, in Bukhara... We went to visit the friend of God. We waited for about two hours to see him. Some of those who were waiting started to get impatient. Just as one of them was leaving, saying that he had something to do, the holy man appeared at the door. “How difficult it is for you to leave without seeing the host,” he said. “Then how will you leave this world without seeing its host?”

54

 We have been contaminated with the dirt and filth of this world. Let us clean and purify. Let us stay away self-interest and lust. Let us burn with the fire of love. Let us get rid of the parasites. Let us return the trust we were given to its owner as clean as we took it. There are Yunuses and Mawlanas in this age. Today there are also people as holy as those who lived in the past. Spiritual greats are usually appreciated after they pass away. People ask what it will be like to unite with the beloved. Before union, let us be human first. We have passed from being inanimate into plants, from plants to animality. Let us also pass from animality to humanity. Let us complete this circuit. Each of these passages is a revival. You died as soil and were revived as a plant. You died as a plant and were revived as an animal. You died an animal were revived as a human. You will then die a human and revive in God. This is dying before death. This is to become a mature, perfect human being (insan-i kamil). Man and universe. Both are the same. The universe outside is also inside you. Whatever you will see, it is all within you; don‟t seek it outside. If the truths were proven, faith would have no significance. Let us have faith while there is the unseen. If proofs were given in this world, no one would have faith. What a faithlessness is this that is beyond faith! Is there any faith left with the one who has seen? That person has received the proof. Faith is to accept what one does not see or know. If you see the Divine Beauty, you will also become faithless. But even the life can be sacrificed for such a faithlessness! “I‟ve passed from myself, I‟ve opened the veil on my eye I‟ve reached the union with the beloved, may all doubts of mine be looted.” Y. Emre God is not separate from any being. Some can distinguish how God is manifest on themselves. They are different because they distinguish. Esrefoglu Rumi said, “I‟ve been talking with God for over thirty years. People thought I was talking with them.” Destiny has its decisions. In destiny, there is falling and there is bumping. In the Clear Record (Lawh-i Mahfuz), it is written that this person will fall at that time. It says he will fall, but from where? The friend of God has mercy for him; he says “Come” and makes him sit next to himself. Then he pushes him and causes him to fall from the couch. If the person who fell is a fool, he thinks, “He humiliated me” and resents the friend. If he is wise, he thinks,

55 “There must be some wisdom in this,” and rejoices. Whether the friend pushes or pulls, he does not resent. I love the tears of those who weep for God; it‟s not easy to weep for God. God does not burn those who weep for God. From the eye of the person who dies, one teardrop comes out and dries. A drop just like that. Let us spill it before we die. Let us spill it before we die so that we may become servants worthy of Him. Let us abandon living in the wrong way. People can abandon everything but not gossip. Let us not talk about a person even if he is bad and deserves it. Someone comes and starts gossiping, and no one is able to say, “Let‟s stop this.” Let us not do that; let us wake up. If you make a mistake, you will harm yourself. If you backbite, you will take on someone else‟s sins. Let us stop backbiting people. Let us avoid causing rifts among people. Someone would have done a good deed if he reconciled two people, even if it is achieved by a beneficial lie. Instead of causing rifts by telling the truth, let us reconcile people by lying. And there are also robbers on this road. Someone has a newly flourishing faith; they hit ruthlessly and draw that person out of the religion. “Don‟t fast in vain! Your dress is not right. Don‟t pray in vain. You don‟t have a kufi (a traditional cap),” they say and drive the person away from religion and faith. Even the greatest of the friends of God make mistakes. But their regret is like no one else‟s. The devil envies their regret. God‟s mercy prevails. Because that attribute of forgiveness is to work, that attribute cannot remain idle. If God wanted a class who never sinned, he would create such a class. He would create a community like angels instead of humans. Let us not sink into sin. Let us not fall into despair with faults. Let us be hopeful of God. Let us take Yunus Emre and go to the beloved; come my heart, come! Let us not learn in order to show off or to shame people. Some speak such words that they shake the faith of those they talk to. If you encounter such a person, don‟t argue at all. Pray for him, “May you benefit from what you know.” We are not faultless, but today, thanks to God, we have given up committing faults, we have repented, we have intended, and we have decided not to do it again. From now on, we will avoid faults as much as possible and we will not turn back. We will always go forward on the path of humanity. Our only refuge is God; our only guide is the Messenger of God. God decides very well; you cannot decide. A servant who always errs suddenly makes one good thing and God forgives him. Aim to be a good servant; the decision is God‟s alone. Don‟t put anyone into heaven or hell Let us pray that we may adopt the manners of God‟s Messenger. May God not separate us from His path. We say wali, awliya; those are the beloveds of God. God desires his beloveds. God makes one of His beloveds the lover and the other the beloved; He makes them yearn for each other. We were sitting with friends in Medina and praying. Suddenly a young man far away started looking around. He saw us. He came by and sat down quietly. As we prayed, he cried. We wanted to find a common language to speak but we couldn‟t. I asked in Turkish:

56 “Why did you come?” He said in his language, “I sought again and again but couldn‟t find; then I smelled and found it here.” “What did you smell?” we asked. “The scent of Sayyid AbdalQadir Jilani,” he responded. We were reciting the prayer of AbdalQadir Jilani at that time. We hugged, and he left a while later. I said after he left, “He probably doesn‟t have any money. That lover doesn‟t ask anything from anyone but his Lord. How could we not think of this? Ah, I wish we had given him some money before he left.” He came back a little later: “I forgot something,” he said. We immediately collected some amount; he did not want to take it. Only when I said, “Take this, it is from God,” did he accept. We have been contaminated with the dirt and filth of this world. Let us clean and purify. Let us not be a captive to self-interest and lust. Let us burn with the fire of love. Let us burn the parasites. Let us return the trust we were given to its owner as clean as we took it. Let your Lord be pleased with you and you pleased with Him. Don‟t complain. It is said that the judgment day comes when there is nobody left who truly says God. That is, when the last wali has gone. One spirit upholds the universe; he is the master of time, the axis of the universe. What happens when he leaves without a new one coming? How does the Earth rotate in this vacuum? These people don‟t think at all. What happens if its angle changes by one degree or its speed increases a little? Mountains get pulverized and plains crack and break apart. The desire to create within man prevents him from seeing the one who created him. He writes a line or he paints a picture and says, “I created this!” Your mind should be a friend to your heart, so that the friend of God may be a friend to you. Otherwise he will never become a confidant to you. One claims he could sacrifice his life, but he cannot quit a bad habit. There are few who deny God, but there are many more who deny the friends of God. Let us be careful; let us not speak ill about people we don‟t know. “Those who deny the friends of God are rebels on the way of God, Those who are on that path are the rust of the hearts.” Yunus Emre When someone becomes Haqq with Haqq, he adopts the manners of God! His wish becomes the wish of God. Being a friend of God, being a beloved of God; these are all manifestations of God. Those who are the places of manifestation are the beloved of God. In the past a holy man called Quddusi Baba lived in Bor, Nigde. There was a lake near his house and he used to go to the mosque for the morning prayer walking over that lake as a shortcut. One day a man saw Quddusi Baba walking on water; he begged: “Please, teach me the prayer for this, so that I can also walk on water!” “Alright” said Quddusi Baba, “but there is no such lengthy prayer. I just say „God‟ and walk.” The man tried it immediately, but he fell into the lake and got soaked to the skin.

57 “O blessed man, you don‟t have fun with people; I said „God‟ but I couldn‟t walk, I sank!” Quddusi Baba felt mercy for him: “Okay, then say „Quddusi‟ and walk.” The man did that and he did walk. He wandered on the water for a while, satisfied his curiosity, and then came back to Quddusi Baba: “I don‟t understand anything. I said „God‟ but couldn‟t walk. How could it happen when I said „Quddusi‟?” Quddusi Baba explained: “You did say Quddusi, but you could not say God. While you said Quddusi, I said God for you.” “Then how can I say God?” he asked. “For you to say God, I must give my mouth and heart to you,” he explained. “If you had said God as if you saw and heard Him, it would happen.” The eye cannot see if the faith does not see. “You exist, you are true; I have no existence. Your existence is Haqq, it is true,” we will say and raise our faith. The fire of regret burns the faults and mistakes. If we did not have faults and make mistakes, we would not be able to ask for pardon so sincerely. May His mercy be unto those who commit mistakes. Don‟t look back! Say, “I made a mistake; I seek refuge in your mercy.” Don‟t turn back anymore; abandon your mistakes. Don‟t fool yourself. Seek paradise in the desert; don‟t be deceived by the color of green. Be both the rose and the nightingale of that garden. I was once in Darande visiting the tomb of Somuncu Baba. With me was a holy man who used to open the doors of secrets of the spiritual world. While entering there together, we met a lady who was eating sand by the handful. She took the sand we know, put it in her mouth, and swallowed. How could her stomach and intestines bear it! She swallowed five or six handfuls of sand before my eyes. This was not something comprehensible. When the heart has started seeing, you go without a blink, without any hesitation. What is wrong with blinking? One who blinks cannot see the Divine Beauty! One who doesn‟t blink does see the Divine Beauty. Can you look without blinking for God? It is hard, isn‟t it? You need to concentrate your attention on a certain point in order to look without blinking. When you look without blinking, you look from the heart. Don‟t go to the door that you don‟t feel is right; don‟t look into the eye that you don‟t feel is right. A friend of God narrates: Once, he desired to see Khizr and he was praying two rakaat every day, reciting surah Ihlas fifty times in each. “I went to see my master one day. He was sitting with someone I didn‟t know. A little later the adhan was called for the prayer; we asked for permission and went to the mosque. When we completed the prayer and came back, we found the master sitting by himself. He told us, „Our guest sent his greetings to you; we prayed together, and he left;‟ and added, looking into the eyes of the friend of God, „He was the person who you were praying to see for the last week.‟” It is understood from this event that you should not leave before the friend of God leaves, nor should you go before the friend of God sends you.

58 What a lady gives birth to from her abdomen is called a human being. What a “Man” gives birth to from his heart is called a wali (friend of God). Therefore seek a second birth in the world. Let your heart be satisfied. When your heart is satisfied, an infant is born. That is the child of the heart. He will guide you.

 Loving Allah or falling in love

with Him directly is difficult. However, calling “my love” to those whom He has called “My love” is to love Him. The Creator has meant “Of those who call „my love‟ from the heart to those whom I call „My love‟, I become their love and lover.” Let us be a love and lover of His friend. Let us find some way and reach the presence of the person whom He has called “My beloved.” Man cannot unite with Haqq until he matures. Let us first unite with humanity, and then reach God. Allah performs His kind acts through servants He loves, and His harsh acts through those He does not love. Understand whether you are loved or not from this. Do you destroy families? Do you have an eye on others‟ honor? Do you gossip and cause rifts among people? Or do you give good advice and reconcile people? Let us be wise and mindful, let us not disrupt the mind. Don‟t follow everyone you see. Don‟t follow a majzub (one who is lost in divine grace and has become insane) even if you see him walking in air, or else you will become insane and won‟t be able to follow him. They are the insane of Allah; we love them. Don‟t take this wrong; but this religion addresses the sane. Let us increase our knowledge first and then our irfan (deeper knowledge). Hazrat AbdalQadir Jilani narrated: “I was walking on the road; I saw a being that had covered all the sky; he called to me: „Eat from the olive; I made it permissible for you. I‟ve exempted you from fasting and prayer,‟ he said.” Gaws Azam immediately used his mind and knowledge and called that thing: “Go away, you cursed devil!” Satan immediately shrank into the form of a human being:

59 “O Gaws, pray for me that I may be redeemed from such things. I don‟t do it lovingly either. I wanted to deceive you by calling as if it was from God. How did you understand that I was satan?” “I did understand, because even the Messenger of Allah is not exempted from any kind of worship, so how could I be exempted? I made a comparison. Also, your voice came from one direction, but the voice of my Lord comes from all directions,” responded Jilani. Loving Allah or falling in love with Him directly is difficult. However, calling “my love” to those whom He has called “My love” is to love Him. The Creator has meant “Of those who call „my love‟ from the heart to those whom I call „My love‟, I become their love and lover.” Let us be a love and lover of His friend. Let us find some way and reach the presence of the person whom He has called “My beloved.” “Don‟t say I‟ve read and learned, I‟ve done a good deal of worship If you don‟t know man as Haqq, it‟s an effort all in vain.” Y. Emre Allah has said “I am according to the thought and expectation of my servant.” The shepherd sat in the meadows missing Allah: “O my Lord! I wish you to come to this solitary place. I will put the socks I‟ve knitted for you on your feet, I will serve you, I will draw fresh milk for you to drink.” “O Khizr, go and visit that servant of mine,” Allah said. Khizr, may peace be upon him, went to visit the shepherd: “What are you doing?” he asked. “I‟ve missed Allah,” said the shepherd, “I‟m calling him. „Come and let me give you some milk,‟ I‟m saying.” “Don‟t imagine Allah like a man. He does not drink milk or such,” responded Khizr. The shepherd got sad: “Is that so?” he said. At that moment, an exclamation came to Khizr from Allah: “Stop, O Khizr! I did not send you there to hinder and reproach him. I liked the way he loved me; I sent you there to see what a beautiful love he has and what nice servants there are.” Khizr, may peace be upon him, regretted: “Then let me teach you how to perform the salah (prayer) while I‟m here. How do you pray?” he asked the shepherd. “I say, „White sheep, black sheep, where should I put my forehead‟ and bow down to the ground” the shepherd explained. Khizr told that it was not the right way and taught him the surahs, prayers, and how to perform the salah, and he left. The shepherd forgot which prayer he should say while sitting and ran after Khizr. Khizr was proceeding by walking on water; the shepherd also caught up with him running on the water: “Wait! Which prayer were we going to say while sitting?” Khizr looked at the shepherd on water: “Well... you better continue the way you were doing before,” he said, and bade farewell.

60 Young people, go to Hajj early if you can afford it. Don‟t be from those who go at the end of their lives with great difficulty. It is different to go to the Kaaba and visit God at the beginning of the road; it becomes difficult after growing old. Don‟t hurt each other with your tongues. So beautiful is the path of Yunus Emre which was founded with adab (manners, courtesy). May Allah protect us from habits we cannot control. We cannot control our tongues. The greatest trouble comes from this. Think, consult, and then speak. Whom will you consult? Your heart. Speaking wrong destroys families, makes countries fight, separates mother and son. The one without any defects and faults is Allah. The one who is transcendent of space, the one who cannot be contained in definitions is Allah. The one who is with everyone everywhere is Allah. Allah chooses such people among His servants that, He first makes them adopt His manners and attributes. He first becomes their love, and then their lover. Allah is the only being that rightfully admires himself. Admiring oneself is forbidden for the servant, and it is the right for Allah. Because, the only being that deserves to be admired is Him. If you admire yourself, you will have committed shirk (idolatry). If you like being praised, you will have contended against Allah. Don‟t ever admire yourself! You don‟t deserve it; you have defects, you have mistakes. Seek being a drop. Then you will reach the secret of mixing with drops. One who does not become a drop cannot get to know the sea. Be a drop; you will become a stream, a river, an ocean. People of Truth do not argue; they do exchange. Allah puts His love among those He loves. One who loves those whom Allah loves will have loved Allah. They live not for themselves but for God. One whose eye of kashf is open sees everything. But the range of the eye of irfan (deeper knowledge) is farther; it sees what is needed. May your eye of irfan open; do not want kashf. Ninety nine percent of those whose eye of kashf opens go insane. But the eye of irfan is like a dream; it does not scare anyone. If you imagine the Kaaba and close your eyes, the Kaaba comes before your eyes. This is an illusion. But the inspirations and visions that come without imagining or expecting are true. The pride of humanity, our master, Muhammad Mustafa has said: “Don‟t praise me less than I am. The more you praise, the better it is.” One expression of much praise is to say, “You are a mercy to the worlds, O Mustafa!” I went to the friend of God. He gave everyone one cookie. He said, “Open your hand” to me and then emptied the dish and filled both my palms. “Do you know why I gave each of you one but filled his palms?” he asked. “Because he distributes it to everyone. He is a beggar; a beggar of Allah; he begs and then distributes it!” Is there no one who will tell ourselves to us? Is there no one who will introduce ourselves to us? Is there no one who knows himself? Who will make us know ourselves? Is there no one who knows us by himself?

61 You cannot know. No matter how hard you try, you cannot know. Even if you consume yourselves utterly, you cannot know. You can know only if He makes Himself known. As they say, “He does not give acquaintance.” A nice saying. Let us see Mecca and Medina before we die. Let us not go there to see the buildings, their walls, or the roads, but to see what remains from His time. Let us go to that time. The hills he climbed on the Mountain of Light remain. The Cave Hira where the first verses came remains. Najmuddin al-Kubra is a great master. I have read his autobiography. In that book he says, “I traveled from one country to another for one soul.” When he arrived there, people surrounded him and begged him to stay at their place. He noticed a young girl, leaning against a wall, weeping, “I wish he would come to our place!” “Is the father of this girl here?” he asked. “Yes,” answered her father. “I‟m coming to your place,” said the master. People gathered in the evening. That girl and several others were serving the guests. “My daughter, you also sit and rest a little!” the master said. The little girl was constantly begging by her heart: “O the beloved of Allah! You‟ve made them satisfied with knowledge. Grant the wish of my heart too,” she was saying. The master looked at her: “You knew how to ask. Will you also know how to receive the answer? If you feel this by heart, respond by bowing your head,” he said from his heart. The girl bowed her head. “Let me give you what you‟ve asked,” said the master, and a sohbat (speech) full of love started. What was to be given then passed from one heart to the other. After the sohbat, the master said: “I realized that in fact I was taken there in order to enlighten that little girl. She became our mouth and heart there.” Be patient, be realistic. Before all else, establish peace at your home. Stop arguing with your spouse and children. Then all will become easier. Obey the commands. Make the environment you live in beautiful. Allah will also make you beautiful. Accept what Allah has decided as is. You find the spiritual blessing (fayz) abundant in the first days. Then you cannot find it. Your heart burns. Your smoke comes out when you sigh. One day a neighbor of Hazrat Abu Bakr came to the Messenger of Allah: “O Messenger of Allah, I have a complaint about Abu Bakr. Every night he grills meat, but he does not send even a little bit to his neighbor.” “Come, Abu Bakr! There is a complaint about you. Why don‟t you give a little meat to your neighbor?” “May my mother, father, and my soul be sacrificed for you, O Messenger of Allah; no meat has entered my house for months,” said Abu Bakr and gave a sigh. Then his neighbor said, “Here it is; this was the smell!” His heart was burning; his neighbor thought he was grilling meat.

62 Hazrat Aisha narrates: “Messenger of Allah had a certain state. At that state, his breathing used to change.” “Call Bilal,” he used to say. “O Bilal! Send me away with that beautiful voice of yours.” While Bilal was reciting from the Qur‟an, our prophet used to go into a state of trance. And before that he used to say: “O Aisha! If it lasts too long, call me back with your feminine voice.” Let us analyze these; these are what we are interested in. There are secrets in these. Hajji Bektash Wali told Yunus Emre: “If you had taken the breath, you would haven taken all you wanted.” We have inherited that regret as a legacy. Yunus Emre is telling us: “Be aware; don‟t choose the wheat!” It would be better to make our warnings to each other not for criticizing but for encouraging the good and for the sake of God. Warnings should not be made among others but should be made in private. Let us not reveal the secret. Confidence takes place between two people. The significance of a secret is its being between two people. The third can only be God. There are people who have beautiful houses but who are themselves in extreme humility. The friend of God has said: “Let your hand be at trade, and your heart be with the beloved.” A blessed master looked at a young man; he was busy weighing gold. “Let me also look at his heart,” the master thought. The young man was busy with Allah in his heart. The same holy man went to the Kaaba and saw an old man there who leaned his head against the wall of the Kaaba, weeping bitterly: “O my Allah, grant my wish!” He looked at that man‟s heart too; he was wishing for the field of his neighbor. Look at the state of that young man. Feel pity for the miserable state of this old man.

 Whoever is in your heart, he

speaks from your mouth. If there is God in your heart, He is the one who speaks from your mouth. What comes from your heart is His knowledge. May you all be Yunus-hearted and enlighten your environments. If you cannot find peace in yourselves, you cannot help others. Find peace, be in peace. Be tolerant; let your state be a model for those around you.

63 If he is in need, give to the person who asks; but if you have the time, find those who do not ask, identify those who are hungry. Seek those who cannot sleep from hunger. Hold the hand of the strangers, the poor, the orphans. “I was ill, did you visit me? I was hungry, did you feed me?” says God. Whoever is in your heart, he speaks from your mouth. If there is God in your heart, He is the one who speaks from your mouth. What comes from your heart is His knowledge. This is called ilm al-ladunni (the divine knowledge, knowledge from the presence of God). It never ends. What is written in the books is the narrated knowledge. Ilm al-ladunni comes to those whose hearts are at God. Let your eyes and heart wake up. Don‟t be from those whose hearts are dead. In the sohbat of God, dead hearts revive. Let us not gossip; let us not give any chance to those who try to gossip, let us not let them speak. What ruins the society, workplaces, and families is gossip. If someone tells you something about someone else, immediately turn him back, and don‟t wonder or listen to what he has to say. Try to be a decent, righteous, honest person. Unless it improves your character, what good is it even if you learn about the whole world? The knowledge you don‟t practice becomes only a burden for you. The age of the person who has found God in his heart does not matter. Just find such a person, then go and listen to him even if your hair has turned all white. Let him counsel you. Again the easiest way is to find someone who has found Him, to take light from his eyes and to take that light down to your heart from your eye. That light enlightens the heart. “Can the person ever reach the destination with his own knowledge? He cannot reach God and gets stuck, when he does not hold to the robe of a man.” Y. Emre You wash your heart and empty it from worldly things with the blessings you get from the Pride of the Universe, from your prayers for him. The Kaaba was also filled with idols. Can one prostrate to the Kaaba while it is full of idols? No, he cannot. Clean that house of the heart from idols so that it may become Kaaba. Your eye is oriented outward. It does not ever look inside. If you look inside, you will see that everything outside is inside you. You will also find the universe inside. Turn your eye to the highest level of heaven in your heart. Try to reach it. The one who looks into the eyes of a real friend of God receives light. “He revived me with that light” means “He gazed at me!” There is already another light inside you: the light, that is, the spirit that the Creator breathed into the body of mud. The spirit is lonely; it seeks the spirit in other hearts. That is the vuslat (union). Two lights unite and vuslat happens. This is the secret of vuslat. Vuslat is the uniting of light with light. It is the meeting of the drops. There is a red sea before us, a sea of fire, which is arrived at after the Sidrat al-Muntaha. Mind, like Buraq, can travel on land and in air. It cannot pass through fire. Only by fire can fire be passed. Love is fire. Love is Rafraf. The destination can be reached by Rafraf. Do you wonder how far you have come in spirituality? As far as you have changed. If you still have the same manners, the same character, the same negative attitude, it means that you have been just marking time. Don‟t find fault with anyone else.

64 The friend of God makes you resemble himself. The friend of nafs (self, ego) also tries to make you resemble himself. A friend of nafs is a friend of satan. A friend of heart is a friend of God. He is the servant whom we call a wali and whom God calls “My beloved!” Sohbat is the sohbat of love, the sohbat of God. Neither the speaker nor the listener intervenes. Most of the knowledge in the sohbat is ilm al-ladunni. There are no thoughts. The friend of God said: “Be a reed flute (ney), and there will be someone who will breathe into you. Just connect to your heart and speak, that will suffice. Sohbat will go on.” Distinguish; distinguish the duality within you. Distinguish so that you may later be able to unite them. You cannot unite without first separating. Differentiate; differentiate the two sides. Differentiate what comes from the nafs and what comes from the spirit. Reach the truth of being a servant, a slave. If you find the slave, you will have found God. God is expecting those who will return to him: “O who has separated from me! O who thinks himself separate from me! Return back to me! Because you are from me. You are not a piece of mud. Realize this, and return. Don‟t remain in mud and mire.” A handful of wheat seeds were spread onto the earth. The seeds mixed into the earth, they grew green, and they gave grains. In the end they became wheat again, but mixed with chaff. The chaff is the nafs. The threshing place will be set, the chaff will be separated, and the wheat will be taken to the granary again. There is a seed within you. There is a light. Don‟t be afraid; say, “I‟m that light.” Get on the Rafraf, pass through the fire! Only fire can pass through fire. That fire burns the thorax. That is the home of love. That is the Fuad: the place of which the Pride of the Universe said, “I don‟t know, Fuad knows.” You also find the Fuad. Ask It. Why don‟t we do our charity secretly? How many times did our left hand see our right hand giving charity to the poor? Why do we care so much about recognition? Why do we look into the eyes of the poor to make him feel gratitude? Let us not exhibit; let us do our charity secretly. One by one we have come and we are going. The people we know go one by one before our eyes, but we still cannot see it as suitable for ourselves. Is there anyone who sees the death shroud suitable for himself, who misses that dress? Shroud is the wedding dress of God. Come, see the truth and wear it before you die. The only being is His. All acts are done by Him. All attributes are His. He is the seer. He is the speaker. The real life is His; only He lives. He lives and makes others live with His acts and attributes. All beings live by His attributes; they are dependent on Him. They see by Him, they hear by Him, they speak by Him. The shells that have a tight mouth have pearls in them. Those with a loose mouth have none. Notice people who don‟t speak. If a drop of secret falls into their hearts, it turns into a pearl. Love is very beautiful; let us fall in love. Let us make an exchange from the heart. An exchange from the heart has no letters or words. It cannot be translated. Try to take the pleasure which you feel from your heart. Don‟t try to understand. It will be understood by itself when the time comes.

65 Who is the one you sleep with head to head, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, chest to chest? Are you aware? Is there anyone who is closer to you than Him? You still seek Him outside. You sleep with Him every night chest to chest, head to head, but you are not aware of it! And then you complain that you have been separated. Don‟t seek the real beloved outside. That beloved is in you. Seek Him in yourself! “No one could know Haqq, without coming to this body From this body has the beloved showed His beauty to us.” Y. Emre The one who is not cooked by the fire of love cannot mature. The one who burns for himself gives out smoke; the one who burns with love emits no smoke. No comparison should be made among lovers. Let us follow a lover of God, listen to him, and find the truth. Yunus is also a real lover of God; let us follow him. If we follow him, we will all become the same. The root of „mirror‟ means „the same‟.9 Then we will see the sameness in each other. In the field of resurrection, no one will recognize the other. A group of people will come, a group who are luminous, gentle; the group of lovers, that will put out the fires of hell. Let us wake up, let us come to our senses. Let us go to the beloved friend as soon as possible. We will be concerned for those who are left behind. Join us, let us go together. The time is running short; let us get ready and set out on this journey. Let us make a journey before we die and reach the friend. We have had fun a lot, laughed a lot, shopped a lot, loved and been loved a lot, and been burned a lot; we were raw a lot and have been cooked a lot! Enough! Let us get stripped from humanness and make some progress. Let us go, let us go together. This cannot go on like this; let us go to the friend without any reason. Enough! Let us go back to the source of the affair we have been sharing. Let us enter the home of love with love. When Abraham pressed the knife to Ishmael‟s neck, the knife did not cut. “O knife, what happened?” he asked. He hit it against the stone; the stone split into two. The knife that did not cut the flesh cut the stone. But Ishmael was really such an Ishmael: “Dad, don‟t tie my hands. I would feel ashamed to the angels! Let them not say „He feared, so got his hands tied.‟ Don‟t be sad, I won‟t flutter; don‟t tie my eyes either! I don‟t want to enter the presence of my Lord as a coward. Since He wanted me to be sacrificed!” he said, and lay down as calmly as a lamb. In fact he submitted better than a lamb; they tie the feet of the lamb in order for it not to flutter. He became a sacrifice; let us also be a sacrifice. Even if we don‟t become like him, let us be qurb-an (sacrifice). Qurb means near, an means moment. Let us be near at the moment. The whole world is reading Mathnawi. Who made Rumi say those verses? Shams, that fireball, that chess master, that skillful lover who checkmated kings and sultans. So many hearts did he burn! He was also the cause for Rumi. Understand from the state of the servant. He comes with his nonexistence and leaves you alone with God. Don‟t you deny him then. Allow him to remove himself from the midst 9

In Turkish.

66 and leave you alone with God. See the powerful at the weak, the rich at the poor, and the real existence at nonexistence. Don‟t mistake, don‟t err, don‟t fall into satan‟s trap. Once you make a mistake, don‟t dive into a second. When mistakes come on top of each other, turning back gets harder. When you commit a mistake, repent immediately, regret, and strive not to do it again. Young people! Don‟t take everyone who appears by you as a friend. To understand a friend, check where he takes you. One who takes you to the pub to drink, or to somewhere to gamble, or who says, “Forget about studying; let‟s go and play ball,” is a bad friend. If you don‟t know how to choose your friends, you will never be free of trouble. Don‟t say, “Our mind suffices for all,” o young people! Accept and apply this advice now; you will appreciate it later. Accept it in advance, so that your souls may not suffer. I cannot forsake you; use the ready experiences. Listen to people you trust who are more experienced than you. I consulted, and I benefited a lot. In my youth, I used to very much enjoy having company with grown-ups. Let us consult and have experience. If you consult, you find the experience of two lifetimes. He is fifty, you are twenty, you will have the experience of seventy years. Here is the capital for you. Without experience, the capital that is only financial does not last even for one day. Those who accept these today will succeed throughout their lives. Elders, aunts, uncles! What do they do? They put money into the child‟s pocket and then say, “I‟ve done my part.” Is there such a thing! Let us give not just money but also experience to the youth. In fact there is no separate being as wali, awliya, qutb. They are all different manifestations of the Creator. As long as there is manifestation on someone, he is a wali, awliya, qutb. Let us change as soon as possible and recover. Let us purify and clean from dust and rust. Let us become a mirror for our Creator to watch Himself.

 Come, let us find the real friend.

Come, let us tell humanity about this friend. Let us know the real friend of humanity who never strays nor makes mistakes. We consist of flesh and bones body-wise. By flesh eating flesh, we acquire manners of the animal we eat. Let us not be from those who are obsessed with the flesh. Come, let us find the real friend. Come, let us tell humanity about this friend. Let us acquaint humanity with its real friend who never strays nor makes mistakes.

67 There is a path from heart to heart. When you mention somebody‟s name, he calls a little later. If you have knowledge on the heart, you feel it when you are remembered by heart. Heart waves travel spaces; their range is very long. But the range of brain waves is short. You know what they call telepathy; its range is short. When a current passes through a conductor, a magnetic field gets formed around it. Another conductor nearby also gets affected by this magnetic field, and current starts flowing over it as well. Similarly, a person may get affected by another‟s thought and become aware of it. This is telepathy. But the heart feels by inspiration; feeling by heart is something else. People who are not faithful can also do this by working on it. This is called istidraj. It is done by hard work and by trial and error. They can experience many extraordinary events in this way. If the believer does something by trusting in his Lord, by taking the strength from his Lord, this is called karamat (spiritual blessing). Karamat comes as a gift. In karamat, saying from the heart, “I wish this would be so,” suffices. Be hopeful of your Lord. Let there be the light of hope in your eyes. Eyes of those who are promising in spirituality shine. That is “nur” (light). God‟s light shines in the eye. When an eye sees the light, the light comes to that eye as well. The eye has a feature; when it sees the light, it takes the light and shines. Let us love, be loved, and be in unity. We are servants of the same God. One is from Caucasia, the other is Turkish, the other is Kurdish. I traveled to Elazig for eight years. I scented spirituality in the East. We slept on their soil. We knowingly or unknowingly had contact with their saints and their tombs. What does East-West mean? We have all mixed and become relatives. We all believe in the same God. We all follow the same Prophet. We have lived as brothers for years; where did this separation come from? One day you will grow old, you won‟t have your previous strength, you won‟t be able to shake the earth when you walk. What were you and what will you become! “I was once such a cabinet minister, such an ambassador,” you will say. You will sigh, but what is gone will not come back. There was a girl who used to visit a nursing home every weekend. This is something granted by God. Her only delight was to spend the weekend at that nursing home. “Don‟t you have any other enjoyments?” I asked. “This is my enjoyment,” she replied. When asked, “What do you do there?” “I‟m learning the life. Come with me; you will also see and hear the facts of the life,” she said. “I have an ambassador uncle there; he tells me amazing things!” Every week she used to wash and iron his shirts and laundry and take them back to the nursing home. The youth have become strange now; they don‟t listen to their elders. People said lineage and bloodline, they separated the society and divided it into pieces. They said generation gap and divided again. When there is no love in a society, the family also disappears in that society. The same person who used to say, “Dear mom!” when he was a child forgets such expressions slowly and starts yelling “Look here!” Some go too far and even say “Hey, old fogey!” They feel too lazy to explain something their parents have asked,

68 show no respect and respond, “You won‟t understand!” But the child is not aware that he will be treated the same way tomorrow as he is treating his parents today. We have come to this world in order to see each other. When our Lord gathered the souls, while we were still in the form of spirits, we promised not to forget Him. Let us keep that promise. Sometimes we get the feeling of knowing somebody for many years whom we have just met but we cannot recall from where. That familiarity comes from the spirit world. Don‟t trust your worship or charity. Trust God. In prayer, don‟t think how beautifully you are praying; think of God. Let your mind and heart be with God. Do charity for God; help the poor and the distressed for God. One day in the eighth grade, our literature teacher read poems from Yunus Emre in class. That day, he tied our hearts to Yunus. Therefore I became a friend to the distressed. Everybody comes and tells me his problem; people I know and people I don‟t know. I was on a bus trip one day. I was tired and planning to sleep. The person next to me said, “Brother, I have a problem. Can I talk to you about it?” “Go ahead, tell it,” I said. He told it and relaxed. They call the wrong number on the phone: “Is so-and-so there?” “Wrong number.” “Brother, I have a problem. Can I tell it to you?” Apparently my job is to listen to people‟s troubles until death. It is to share their troubles as much as I can and to relieve them. This condition will also pass to you. Be the soul of souls and listen. Be from those whom people in trouble know are close to them. God shows the address by saying, “O Moses! I was ill, you did not visit; I was poor, you did not shelter; I was hungry, you did not feed.” Let us go to these addresses and meet our Lord there. The wise person knows not his own truths but the real truths. The wise person first critiques himself. He distinguishes between truth and falsehood without favoring himself. Praise God, praise our Prophet. The Messenger of God did not die. Go to Medina and visit him alive. The Messenger of God awaits you there. God asked in Miraj, “O Muhammad! What do you wish from me?” “My ummah,” he said. How can you forget the one who wishes for you more than anything else? How can you not love the one who says, “He who does not love me more than all else, more than even his own soul, will not have his faith completed”? You will go to Mecca; you will prostrate not to the walls of the Kaaba but to the Lord of the Kaaba. The officials there think that we worship that stone wall when we rub our faces against the Kaaba. They don‟t understand. We worship not the house itself but the Lord of the house. Now, when I pat this friend on the back, is it the jacket that I love? “Sometimes I rise to the heaven and watch the world, Sometimes I descend to earth and the world watches me.” The asked Nasimi, “Are you doing well with your love?”

69 “Whether I‟m doing well or not, that‟s my love. What is it to you?” he said. When he was being flayed, he didn‟t make any sound. When the knife cut the hand of the person flaying him, Nasimi said, “Ouch!” “Why did you say ouch? You weren‟t making any sound before,” they asked. “Because he cut his hand because of me,” he responded. The person whose faith is beautiful does not consume himself; he does not exhaust himself. The person who has faith finds the inner peace; he does not disrupt the world outside. Otherwise, the monster eats itself. It pierces the stomach and gnaws the liver. Is there a worm inside? No, there is the nafs. Let us discipline the monster of nafs inside us; let us tame it so that it will not consume us. God with His person (zat) is only in His person, He cannot be in anyone else. God does not give His God-ness to anyone else. But He wishes to watch His names, His attributes, and His skills. In order to watch His attributes by His person, He becomes manifest with his attributes. He is manifest in every being! But only in humans is He manifest with all His attributes. That is, the Supreme Creator becomes manifest in order to see His names and attributes, and He makes manifest the unity of His person by the multiplicity of His attributes. His attributes are so many, but His person is one. Someone who received the manifestations of His attributes cannot say, “I saw God.” It would be more correct if he says, “I saw Haqq!” No good comes from someone who has claims and assertions for himself. Desire for leadership, desire for recognition is a claim. Desire for praise is being. Let us not commit any mistake against God, especially not against the Messenger of God. Muhammad is the love of God. The love of everyone with a revived heart is God, and the love of God is Muhammad. God forgives what is done against Himself, but does not forgive the mistakes done against His beloved. Let us not speak ill of the beloved of God. When you see a manifestation, just watch. He makes himself appear where He sees worthy of it. Because only Haqq can see Haqq. In fact, both the seer and the seen are Him. The expression, “I saw,” is in fact wrong. If you ask where God is, we say in His unseen unity, and also in a secrecy that befits His glory. He is hidden with His unity and becomes manifest with His multiplicity. There is no act that is not done by God. The listener is God, the speaker is God, and the seer is God. What does this mean? Nothing can happen without the attributes of God. Those who live also live by God‟s attributes. The one who does every act is God. You see by the attribute of basar (seeing). Partially you see, and wholly He sees. All visions are God‟s. He sees from your eye, but you also see since it is your eye. Come, be wise, and achieve the whole vision; don‟t remain in your seeing alone. Man sees with all his faculties. Rumi says, “My body became an eye, and my eyes became a hand.” See what is behind you and what is under your feet. He whose body has become an eye does not crush an ant. Their feet also see. You should also become someone who does not crush an ant. Join those who do not crush any ants. God says, “I was a hidden treasure, and I wished to be known, so I created people.” Look at these people whom God created to be known. He says, “I created them to represent me, I

70 sent them down to earth as a deputy.” But people hide the essence and accept the apparent form. There is no sin graver than denying one‟s own origin. The one who created you is awaiting to watch Himself at you. Obey the one who says, “Withdraw yourself from the animality of this body, so that I may become manifest at you, I may watch myself at you.” He will become manifest at you, and He will watch Himself at you through someone else. God is very beautiful; God is very compassionate. Who may be as forgiving as God? Let our goal be God. To take people to the union is the job of the greats; let us be human first. Let us go to the school of humanity. Let us find Yunus. Let us reach the truth of his poems. Let us learn humanity. Dust will go to dust, and spirit will fly to God. This is a coexistence; the transient coexistence of the spirit and body. He who thinks of himself as the body will remain in the dark pit! Don‟t ever be attached to the pit! Say, “I‟m not this,” and let your ways depart with the body. He who cannot depart his way will not be able to separate himself from the body in the grave. Don‟t call the body “I” in this world. What you call “I” is a light which resides in this body temporarily. He who seeks all the attributes can find them together in Muhammad. Let us be on his path. Let us gather around his banner in the field of resurrection. Let us remain in the shadow of his banner. That banner is not made of cloth and fabric. It is like the cloud which walked above him when he was in this world. The most perfect place He created to demonstrate his attributes is the Muhammadan place. Adam was also created from his light. Only a certain number of the attributes were manifest on each prophet. Then He gathered them one after the other in a body that was worthy of it. Those who see him will have seen Haqq. Because all the attributes of the Creator have become manifest at His Muhammad. He is the “Mercy to the Worlds.” I listen even if a child speaks. Just he should speak the truth. The age of the speaker does not matter. Whether an elder or a child speaks, the truth is the truth. From whatever mouth it comes, you should listen to it. Every person has a spiritual path. In fact there are as many paths as the number of humans. That path is lived only by that person. They are as various as the fingerprints. Your path to God has never been lived before. You will live it. Those who write also write only what they have lived. Spirituality makes the person beautiful. Let us become beautiful. Friends of God beautify people by their sohbat and nazar (gaze). Their faces and eyes shine. This is a different kind of shining. Irfan (deeper knowledge) means to see the truth. Without light, can colors be seen? You see the sun everywhere you look as a color, as an attribute. Do those green colors belong to the trees? They are the colors of the sun. The sun appears green on the trees. Colors are attributes of the light. We say “seven colors”. Those are just what we know. Mix colors with each other. There will be so many of them, right? They also have sub-colors. That is, there are no green trees! Then what? Then, the sun appears green on the tree, and blue on the sea. What appears on the tree is the green color of the sunlight. Then where is the real sun? What we see is the sun of the earth. What are the colors of the sun of God? Its attributes. Let our eyes see the names (asma). Let us know the truth. Now

71 when you see the tree, you will say, “I saw the sun.” How can the attributes be seen? These eyes need someone who will give them an example, who will make them recognize the attributes. If you see the names at him, you will also see them at others. At one look you will say the sattar (veiler of faults), at another look you will say the merciful, at another you will say the generous. You will see them curtain by curtain. Don‟t get stuck at one color; see all the colors together and see the light. If you see all the colors, all the attributes together, you will see the light. When the time to leave comes one day, we will see that all we have lived was a dream! Let us work, be strong, and not need anybody. Let us say alhamdulillah at rain, alhamdulillah at snow, and alhamdulillah at sun; let us live every season thanking and praising God. Let us appreciate what we have. Let us be pleased with God; let “reza” be our name. God gives Himself to those who spend their lives for God. People don‟t look at the truth of the matter; they look at the turban and the robe. What really matters is to recognize; to recognize the one who is without any marks. Those who have developed this ability to recognize without any marks see without the outer, apparent shape. Water appears in a different shape, in a different color in every vessel. But in fact, it has neither a shape nor a color. Can you see it without any shapes or forms? I used to enjoy it in the early days when the friend of God said things that suited my mind. “I also think like this,” I used to say. Then he said things that didn‟t suit my mind. He trained my mind as well. Those who follow them will certainly get trained, either by ease or by hardship. I expected compliments, I wished him to pat me on the back; I was reproached at such times. Whenever I trusted my mind, he checkmated me. It is difficult to keep company with them, but it is also beneficial. Friends of God are among us. They have neither a name nor a title. They don‟t say, “I‟m this.” They don‟t observe any benefit for themselves. They are the Yunuses, Mawlanas, Hajji Bektash Walis of this age. They can be found in every city, in every region; they are trusted by the people around, they benefit their environments. They are the model human beings, the friends of God who are remedies to society‟s ills. You will recognize them by seeing with your eyes and with your heart. You will visit them and grow a friendship. You will listen to their sohbat and benefit. You will take the healthful prescription of becoming a mature human being, and will get rid of your illnesses and find health. The friend of God shows us the right and the wrong. He makes us know ourselves. Let us know everyone from ourselves. If we hadn‟t known ourselves, we wouldn‟t know anyone else. I used to have a friend. He got cancer at a very young age; they first cut his leg, then it spread to his lungs. “I thank God; does He give everyone such a chance to prepare? What would I do if he took my soul suddenly while I was doing something wrong?” he used to say. What good is it unless we are ready to sacrifice our souls for the beloved? What good is it unless we give up the paradise and wish only for the Divine Beauty? “His wish has become our wish,” says the friend. How is that so? “First we obeyed his wishes; then he did not deny ours. We obeyed each other, we had mutual accord. When we had accord, we united,” he says.

72 You will trust God very much. When you are with God, you enter into the Khaybar fortress with its door like Hazrat Ali. This bravery comes from God. Loving God is more beautiful than all else! Let our thanks be beautiful. Let us not be anxious; let us seek refuge in Him. No one can do anything to those who are under His protection. Let us be faithful and diligent. Let us join the people on the path of God. One cannot mature without dissolving first. This road is not the road of the crowds, it is the road of dissolving with adab (manners, courtesy). Don‟t forget the one who gave you yourself. Don‟t forget the one who created you from nothingness. Be grateful; the one who gave you yourself, who gave you life is only Him.

 When the time comes, a sun rises in that house of the heart. The sun of your heart is rising. Afterwards, your mouth speaks differently, your eye sees differently. You look and see borders beyond the material world. “Is it really me who sees these?” you wonder. It‟s you, but it‟s You within you... The first step on the path to God is to become human. We will tell you how to become human; you will figure out the rest. Some disbelievers think of God as a person. If they knew God, they couldn‟t deny Him. What they deny as god is a magician residing in the sky, a king, a sultan. They first make it up and then deny it. Our God is not such a personality, nor such a being. He can be known by His attributes, not by his person. He is without qualities; He cannot be described. When someone who has committed a mistake comes, if you help him without shaming, God‟s name of Sattar (veiler of faults) will be manifest in you. You cannot cover faults unless that name is manifest in you. Those who shame people with their faults disturb their environment. Those who are humble bring peace to their environment. Don‟t be arrogant; be modest. Forget about others‟ faults and flaws. Be concerned with your own faults; be human. What is asked from you is to be a merciful, humble human being. Don‟t be impressed with advanced technology. Be impressed with God. His technology is incomprehensible. The wisest people in this world live with God. They become drunk and exultant in the love of God. They are the happiest of the drunk.

73 Their drunkenness is a higher awareness than the wakefulness of the disbelievers. You say, “It came to my mind.” Where does it come from to you mind? That means there is a mind other than your mind. How can you depend on your mind which is also dependent? An inspiration came into Edison‟s heart and he started chasing the light. While Archimedes was in the bath, a feeling came into his heart and he investigated how water lifts and saw that iron floats on water. Where does the floating power of liquids comes from? Who gave that power to the atmosphere? Why does the earth attract? It is so balanced that if it attracted more, clouds would descend to earth. What would happen then? Who made that balance? The attraction of the sun is also in such a balance that, if it attracted more, it would swallow the planets. Who gave the first motion so that this universe is revolving continuously? What is the purpose of living? People try every kind of pleasure but they still cannot be satisfied. There are those who commit suicide because they cannot be satisfied. Satisfaction of the heart is important. One whose heart is not satisfied cannot himself be satisfied. Even if he can, that satisfaction will not last more than five minutes. Those who pin their hopes on the satisfaction of the body end up frustrated. “I created man in order to be known,” God says. When will we know; when will we make others know? Each one of you can become a Khizr and Elias. Why don‟t you become Khizr and experience this pleasure? One day I was walking in Ulus when I saw an elder man. I put all the money in my pocket into his and walked away immediately. “Stop, O Khizr!” he called behind me. You too do it. We don‟t do and tell these to show off. We encourage others. Don‟t have any fame or pride. Then you won‟t be the one who does it. You will get out of the way. When I was in my twenties, my only concern was to find and help the poor that were not in sight. I was making plans about how I could help. I went to an elementary school as a teacher. I entered a class; I talked about things I knew for a while. Then I called a little girl at the corner to the board. As she was passing by me, I heard “wirch, wirch” sounds from her feet. That sound was coming from her worn out plastic boots. What happens to those feet in snow water all day? I felt very sad about the girl‟s condition. I came back home and transferred some money to that school without specifying any sender‟s names, for buying boots for that girl and for other poor students. I sent it with the note, “New ones for the worn-out boots.” Local newspapers wrote about it for a long time. They named me, “Loving Grandpa.” The charitable Loving Grandpa! They didn‟t think that a young man could have done it. Children wrote poems that said, “My grandfather is a good old man; his hair is as white as snow.” When a blind girl asked for three thousand liras from the Loving Grandpa, I died! Because the Loving Grandpa could not possibly pay that money from his salary. In the local newspapers, they wrote that the Loving Grandpa had probably died because if he were alive, he would certainly help that girl. Then I died before death, and I couldn‟t appear again!

74 Be happy. Don‟t let words hurt you. Be someone who cannot be ruined by words and gossip. Seek refuge in your Lord. Only be sure that you don‟t fall away from God. That is the most painful of all. The other separations don‟t hurt us as much. Will the friend follow you or will you follow the friend? If the friend follows you, you will rejoice; but in the end you will all sink together. If you follow him, you may feel sad for a while but in the end you will all be saved together. The believer is the mirror of the believer. Their aim is to be a mirror. They live like you for your sake. They follow you in order to make you follow them. There is a heart which is like a flawless building, and there is a heart whose wall is in ruins, you fix its wall. You also seek and find hearts which are to be fixed. Would you sacrifice all you have for God? Would you be a sacrifice for God? Check your inside, your understanding; can you be so? When God is with you, you can give up all. Don‟t rebel against God. Don‟t sulk when He doesn‟t give you what you want. The essence of loving is to accept both blessings and afflictions as one. The biggest restlessness in spirituality is the issue of station. O God! Don‟t leave us without God. Don‟t keep us away from yourself. We have forgot about stations and positions; we only wish for you. We come crying into this world; let us leave it laughing. Let us reach the beloved as soon as possible. May God give us a peaceful life without taking our consciousness. May He not lay on us a burden greater than we can bear. May He give us a testless test. Beautiful words prepare the setting, but nazar (gaze) finishes the job. Let us receive the nazar of a friend of God. Their aim is to acquaint you with yourself. Open the door of your heart widely. The friend of God has come to clean your house of the heart. Later the most supreme of the visitors will come to that house. The heart is full of houses, cars, and so on; there is no room to move. The friend of God is telling you: “What do these things have to do in your heart? Where will you receive the guest? Everything in there is an idol. Try to remove them from your heart!” When the time comes, a sun rises in that house of the heart. The sun of your heart is rising. Afterwards, your mouth speaks differently, your eye sees differently. You look and see borders beyond the material world. “Is it really me who sees these?” you wonder. It‟s you, but it‟s You within you. There are no bad human beings. Everyone is good by creation; there are bad behaviors. Don‟t let yourself go downhill because you already made a mistake. Say, “I regret, o my Lord!” and repent immediately; don‟t do it again. Know your nafs (self) so that you may know your Lord. To know your nafs is to empty the heart of worldly things. You came from the Creator; your essence is the spirit. You humbly entered into this mud. Your spirit‟s source is your real nobleness. Nobleness does not pass from dust to dust, but passes from heart to heart. There is a region called the „heart‟ here. It is the Kaaba, the house of God. We have filled it with worldly desires, idols. God cannot enter His house; there is no room left! Let us clean it.

75 A person who is a friend of God acquaints you with yourself. Becoming acquainted with yourself begins with looking into your heart. Forget about the state of others. One who cannot see inside his own heart cannot see others‟ hearts. First see your own heart and listen to it. Rumi says, “Don‟t think that the lovers in ecstasy turn in vain; but they embrace Haqq and whirl with Him.” Why do the Mawlawis whirl? Because the moon, the sun, and the galaxies all whirl in the same direction. In recent times, outer sciences have made significant progress. Let us attain faith as soon as possible; the time of proof is coming. Because the sun will rise from the West. That is, the truth will make its final rising from the West. There will be no chance for faith after that final rising. There is no time left! Faith is to affirm without seeing or hearing. It is to affirm by using your mind, by looking at His arts. Both the shepherd and the professor do it. It has nothing to do with education; one professor accepts while the other does not. It is a matter of discernment, a matter of understanding. Discernment is to follow the traces. You must follow the traces of the Creator. Some say that prayer (salah) is difficult; somehow it has come to be seen as a burden among people. They say, “Let me do the prayer and get rid of it.” I tell them that prayer is to enter into the presence of God. Does one say, “Let me enter into the presence and get rid of it”? They told Hazrat Ali: “Don‟t go to the mosque tomorrow; they will stab you there!” “Will the fear of death prevent me from entering into the presence of God!” he replied. It is also narrated that once an arrow struck Ali in the leg and they couldn‟t remove it because of the pain. “Let me start praying, then you will remove it,” he said. When he completed his prayer, he asked, “Did you remove it?” It was removed without his being aware of it. May God grant us all the ability to pray in such a way. We do shopping while we are in prayer; we walk in the mall. And you say that you prayed. Did you talk with God? The servant must talk with God in prayer. God certainly hears you but you don‟t hear Him. What is the ear of the heart? It is listening with your soul. The child cuts his hand with a razor blade and his mother screams “Ouch!” You drop a crystal vase from your hand and your soul shakes. When material property is lost, the soul shakes, but it does not shake when God is remembered. Let us wake up! When someone says God, your soul must also shake! Our real home is God; let us never forget this! Don‟t fear death! Fear dying badly, fear being wasted! Dying before death is the most beautiful event in this world. If you experience it, you will wish to die everyday. We don‟t know the real pleasure, so we have become captive to mundane pleasures. Don‟t deny the verses of the Book of God. Say, “O God! I can do only so much. You are the forgiving, the merciful; forgive my shortcomings!”

76 Don‟t be pessimistic; be patient and persevere on the spiritual path. Change! Learning without changing is just being a porter of knowledge. Practice what you learn. We read so many pages of books. What percentage of it have we practiced and comprehended? We perform the prayer (salah) day and night. To pray is to enter into the presence; it is to talk with God. Can we really be in the presence each time? If they give three boxes of bullets to someone in the military service and tell him to hit the target, he may boast that he fired three hundred shots. The friend of God says: “I put one bullet into the gun. I hit exactly the center. The officer said “Bravo!” I listened very well about how to aim, I learned how to do it, and I did not fire any vain shots.” Be such a soldier. Don‟t fire vain shots. When you say God, feel that God also hears you. Believe with a complete submission, and practice what you believe. Mature your faith. Each time you say “God!” hear Him saying, “Yes my servant!” If you cannot hear it, you should know it to be from yourself. “Our ears are deaf!” you should say. Open the ear of your heart and listen. If you want to be satisfied, hear and feel God. The power of the servant does not suffice to answer all questions. There is a book called Tazkirat al-Awliya. It narrates God‟s friends‟ talks with God. Read it; your satisfaction will increase. Let each of us be a volunteer for peace. Let peace spread in waves around the world. Water puts out fire. Don‟t go to fire with gunpowder, go with water. Water is love. Fire is hatred. You cannot tell anything to someone you don‟t love. Look at his face; if you don‟t feel love, don‟t try to tell him anything. Don‟t ever resent God because you are upset with His servant. Don‟t look for excuses to leave the path of God. Look for excuses to reach God. Don‟t say, “Such men make people go astray!” and leave the mosque. Don‟t resent God due to the servant‟s mistakes. Do you wonder whether God loves you? When a poor patient comes, if you treat him for free, then God loves you. If you feed the poor, then God loves you. If you ruin families or if you hurt people, then God does not love you. Everyone is working to divide; we will work to unite. We will unite people with love and friendship.

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 Life consists of just three steps walked in the blink of the eye. You were born from your mother and opened your eyes; you lived; then you died and closed your eyes. This is the blink of the eye. And the three steps are to become ilm al-yaqin, to become Haqq al-yaqin and ayn al-yaqin! Be worthy of God! Be an admirer of God! Love those who remind you of God! Care about those who bring you closer to God as they gaze; don‟t follow your nafs! Go to the heart of the friend of God from his eye. His heart has seven door; knock at these doors one by one and enter inside! The man of heart is such a person that he opens to you the doors of Kaaba of his heart widely. Just knock it with the yearning for God. Say, “God, God!” Nothing but God can enter through that door. Get out of the way by forgetting about yourself, so that only the one who created you will remain. Then both the one who knocks at the door and the one who opens it will be God. Those who enter there will not have any memory of it. Because the nafs cannot enter there. The person‟s mind also cannot reach the place where the nafs cannot enter. Fakhreddin means the fakhr (pride) of the religion. He is the pride of the religion. Take pride in your religion, your God, and your Prophet. Take pride in our prophet who is the Pride of the Universe. Don‟t take pride in yourselves. Take pride in your God. If you take pride in yourself, you are nothing, you are just a drop. If you take pride in Him, you are an ocean. May my soul be sacrificed for you, o the Pride of the Universe! May my mother, father, children, may everything I have be sacrificed for you... Sacrifice yourselves to your Muhammad! When you pray, feel and say. The truth of prayer is to hear and feel what you ask for and to make it heard. It is not to repeat memorized words. If you don‟t hear what you ask, how can you expect God to hear it? When you have a debt which you cannot pay, how do you beg the creditor? Beg God like that. Otherwise, don‟t complain that God does not hear you. God also hears what you feel inside, but he responds to what you feel and say. Beg as you would beg someone who would give you food when you are starving; beg God not as a formality but with the awareness that He hears you and you are in need. In this age, the young person who obeys God‟s commands and who has not been a slave to lust and self-interest is a candidate to become a friend of God. An ear doctor knows about the ear; an eye doctor knows about the eye. Likewise, creation is known by the Creator. Grace is God‟s, shafaat (intercession) is the Prophet‟s, himmat (spiritual effort and support) is the saints‟, the spiritual greats, and service is ours. I sought and sought but could not find a real friend. I could not find that address. I sought according to my mind but I could not find it in any way. I also, for whatever reason, could not believe what I found myself. The friend found me; I could not find him. When I accepted in advance that my mind could not comprehend His actions, I found great comfort.

78 Before that, I used to believe that everything my mind reached was correct. I used to call true what my mind agreed to. Later I gave up. I became pleased with the decisions of God. I admitted that my mind could not grasp it all. There is a mind above the mind. Our mind does not comprehend everything, but we think it does. You take your mind‟s decisions to be right. Let us ask people, everyone will say something different. Everyone believes in the truth of his mind. These human beings are being wasted! They believe in their minds. To believe in the mind unconditionally is to worship the mind. Let us not worship the mind! It may break down and leave us stranded. We are seeking God. We will seek it until the end of our lives. We love all humanity, but we are together with the faithful. If you cannot be sincere towards yourself, you cannot be sincere towards anyone. You cannot be sincere towards God either. Don‟t cheat and don‟t be cheated; you will be brought to account. Whatever talent you have, use it on the path of God. Serve for the sake and gratitude of being created. He who loves the fruit also loves the branch and the tree. The fruit is on the branch, and the branch on the tree! Is it possible to love the fruit but not the tree? If you say, “I don‟t want the branch; I want the tree,” you can‟t get the fruit on the branch, especially the fruit at the root of the tree, which you cannot find at all. To search a fruit there would be like being a mole. Fruit is found only on the branches. Roots are the underground branches of the tree. The branches below are to feed the tree itself; those above are to feed others. God is not dispersed into the universe, but He is present everywhere. What does it mean to be present everywhere? He sees what every eye sees, He hears what every ear hears, He speaks what every mouth speaks, He feels what every heart feels. These are all His attributes. God sees, God hears. Let us not hurt others, so that we won‟t be hurt. Let us not break hearts, so that our hearts won‟t be broken. Let us exist in an atmosphere of peace. Let us be friends with angels. If you greet the devil, he will take you by the arm. If you give your hand, you can‟t save your arm; let us be awake. You are a witness to yourself. When you are a witness to yourself, how will you hide what you have done in the Judgment Day? Don‟t be a captive to causes; don‟t be a man of causes. See where causes are sent from. He who comes near with causes will also fall away with causes. Let us go to the source of the causes and not leave it. O you who seek God! Where are you seeking God? “I was ill, did you visit? I was poor, did you help? I was orphan, did you shelter? I was hungry, did you feed?” asks God. Don‟t ever hurt the poor, break the heart of the ill, or cheat the orphan! You hear the truth when your ear concurs, see it when your eye concurs, and feel it when your heart concurs. You agree with the truth by concurring. Don‟t delay it any longer. Tune to the channel of God and remain listening. God, who transcends space, is everywhere; you cannot describe Him by location. He created every place. He created the time, He created the space. You cannot describe Him by the measures of space, time or volume; He is transcendent of all. A place without Him

79 cannot be imagined. He cannot be contained in measures, He cannot be described. His description is that He cannot be described. Minds cannot comprehend Him, because mind is also created by Him. This mind cannot understand Him, but it can see His works and be amazed at them. The heart that tries to feel is closer to Him than the mind that tries to understand. The mind wants proofs; it is satisfied with proofs. We are hopeful; we became close because we are hopeful. We knew Him as close; we found Him as close. Our faults and mistakes did not prevent it. His forgiveness came to our help. So many Rumis and Yunuses are passing from this world; but each appears in a different shape, in a different appearance. If your eye looks well, the miracle is obvious. But where is the eye that looks without any conditions and limitations? Being the same does not mean being the same in eyes, faces, and appearance. If we become the same in truth, the eyes look and see the same. It is a great sin to abandon those who rely on you! Don‟t abandon those who give up their parents and homes and rely on you. Don‟t disappoint those who trust in you. Get along well with your spouse. Don‟t leave him or her. The causes that drew you away were shadows; those that drew you near were real! May God grant everyone their wish. May God not disappoint all the believers; may He not lay on us a responsibility which we cannot bear. Take pride in God‟s power. I don‟t know about you, but I miss Him very much. I miss my Lord every moment. God is expecting us. God wants us. If we have missed Him once, He has missed us a hundred thousand times. “O the servant who is pleased with his Lord, return to your Lord!” That means we should return to Him while we live. We should die before death. This is worth everything; it relieves the lack of whatever you think you couldn‟t reach in this world. You won‟t remain sad; just return to God. When prayer (salah) gets lax, everything gets lax and your nafs starts to rule. Even if you cannot perform it during the day, make up for the missed prayers in the evening. Don‟t leave prayer despite anything. If prayer collapses, the religion collapses. If we want to win over our nafs, let us keep up the prayer. Let us perform it even if we feel bored. The prayer that is performed while feeling bored is more valuable. Let us not say “I will pray when God gives me the pleasure for it.” When there is pleasure, everybody prays. What really matters is to pray without any pleasure. It is more valuable to pray despite everything. You will not think that you are praying; you will just say, “O my beautiful God!” and enter the presence. You will forget pleasure and boredom, and prostrate. Prayer is to enter into the presence. God gives us an appointment five times a day, but we don‟t show up for the appointment; this is a great heedlessness. Let us have ilm al-yaqin (knowledge of certainty). Let us learn, research, and read. To know God‟s attributes and to get near to Him by learning, by knowledge is ilm al-yaqin. Haqq al-yaqin (Truth of certainty) is that we should see Haqq in every being; we should know everything from Haqq. To be ayn al-yaqin (the vision of certainty; or the sameness of certainty), that is a state of sameness. You will find the sameness in everyone, in every being. You will reach the secret of tawhid (unity).

80 Whatever state we may be in, let us not lose our hope in God. Let us always be hopeful of His intimacy. Life consists of just three steps walked in the blink of the eye. You were born from your mother and opened your eyes; you lived; then you died and closed your eyes. This is the blink of the eye. And the three steps are to become ilm al-yaqin, to become Haqq al-yaqin and ayn al-yaqin! Let us read these topics, of which we have only scratched the surface, from books of tasawwuf and learn them in detail.

 No one can do the harm to you that you do to yourself; no one can gnaw your inside. No one can make your stomach or intestines ill.

Always be constructive. Stay away from gossip, mischief, thinking negatively of others and looking for faults. What you see as a fault may be something you cannot comprehend. Keeping company with a friend of God is like keeping company with Khizr. Sometimes he acts like Khizr and you cannot understand his actions. He may sink a ship for no reason; you may see him as unjust. Moses could not bear traveling with Khizr even for one day. So you should try to mature as soon as possible. Don‟t scrutinize why and how it happens. After Shams met Mawlana Jalaladdin Rumi and lived with him for a while, he got tired of gossip and the mischief people were making and escaped to Damascus. Rumi got very sad and wrote him letters full of yearning asking him to come back. In the end, Shams responded: “I‟ve shown you my beautiful face. It is why you are calling me back with so much yearning. I also have an ugly face which you wouldn‟t be able to stand if you had seen it. If I come this time, I will show you that face.” Despite that, Rumi kept calling him back insistently and Shams returned to Konya. Rumi dived into the deepest of meanings in Shams‟ ugly face and wrote masterpieces. For that reason, Rumi says about the works he wrote: “Those who are occupied with and get stuck on the words of our books will fall away from religion and faith. But those who reach its meaning will reach God and the truth and will become enraptured with it.” Therefore those who are in close contact with friends of God, those who are friends with them, should not fall away from spirituality by minding their words and actions which may appear wrong, which is their ugly face. On the contrary, they should sense different meanings from the actions which appear wrong and try to see what kind of wisdom can be hidden in them. By making mistakes towards you, they save you from greater mistakes. For instance, if it is in your destiny that you will fall, they push you and make you fall from your

81 chair instead of your falling from a cliff. For those who have the understanding, some very special meanings are hidden in these words. Let us not talk big in tasawwuf. Let us not think that talking big will make us big. If you really want to become big, to grow up, then get down to earth, become earth, descend to the lowest of the low. If you want to rise, descend and become powerless. The secret of growing strong is being powerless. It is to get down and vanish, to make the prostration of truth. Don‟t block your own road with your mind! Even if your mind does not accept, follow your heart! Be a man of heart! The rising in your heart is your nasib (fortune). There are two kinds of love: The love of the mind and the love of the heart. You aspire to the love of God; but you want it to suit your mind. And when it doesn‟t, you keep faltering. He makes you experience love in a way He sees as suitable. He may even make you experience things that appear wrong to you. He first demolishes your shaky faith, and then reconstructs it. Keep loving God in every situation; don‟t be afraid! If you have submitted sincerely, God will protect you. He makes you live what He wills. He who sees Haqq has no faith left; because then there is no gayb (unseen) left. Faith is to acknowledge the unseen. It is to believe, at least as much as you believe in your own existence, that what you don‟t see, what you don‟t touch exists. When you see and hear Him, your faith is gone and you find the proof. Then you join the faithless lovers! You become like Mawlana and Yunus. This is what Mawlana meant when he said, “We have become faithless due to love.” Otherwise it doesn‟t mean to deny the Truth, the Haqq. Each person‟s spiritual life is different. Your spirituality has not been experienced yet. It will be experienced in time, as you feel and listen to the channel of love in your heart. In everyone‟s heart, there is a recording, a videotape coming from the creation. Love, divine love, starts unrolling that tape. That tape starts to turn and you listen to it. Your love life is revealed. The tape is read. As the recording is read, your spiritual wishes (talab) are revealed. You want to live them. When you enter through the gates of God, they ask you “What do you want?” In the beginning you don‟t know what you want; but nobody tells you what to ask for; everybody‟s wishes are recorded in his own heart. The friend of God wants you yourself to feel, to ask, and to live what you feel. You are astonished; “Oh my God! I didn‟t know I had such wishes!” you say. These don‟t resemble anything you had in mind until that day. Every state is a wish. Then you are given a spiritual answer according to those states and wishes. Write down those states. Then tell what you have written to someone who has that wisdom. You see a dream, you find it irrational, and you censor yourself. You block your own way. Those states can be revealed only to a spiritual friend. You should have your state interpreted, translated. This is called tarjuma-i hal (translation of state). He gives you an answer. You take and digest that answer. You cannot move to the second state without being satisfied fully. These states are usually not agreeable to the mind. If the mind denies the first state lived, you cannot move to the second one. Then the second state, the second wish begins. If you enjoy some state very much and don‟t want to leave, then you stay in it. You need to pass it; you need to move on. Whatever you may live, you cannot continue the road unless you move from state to state. He turns you from state to state. He makes you move

82 around and then gives you back to yourself. He takes you from yourself and gives Himself to you. Then you pass from yourself and become the one who looks at Him with Him. Let us not remain at a glance; come, let‟s go to the beloved, o my heart! You should go with your heart! If you don‟t go with your heart, you will always be in doubts. It doesn‟t happen by insisting or forcing. The mind asks again, “How does this happen?” If you deny with your mind the states you have lived, then your heart cannot reach its wishes. Your mind will block the road of your heart. Let me tell you an interesting experience I had in Mecca: We had just completed our tawaf; my eyes locked on someone and I forgot myself: “Come here, o lover!” I shouted, they told me later. He came; at first we couldn‟t understand each other. Then we started talking in English. “Did you call me?” “Yes,” I said. I began to talk. He listened and listened. He started to cry and said: “You don‟t know me, I don‟t know you. How did this happen?” “ God wanted it to be so,” I told him. “When are you leaving?” “Tomorrow,” I said. Tears were flowing from his eyes. He called the hotel in the evening: “Can I come to see you?” he asked. He came and we continued our sohbat. This time he completely lost himself. He started to tell me of a dream he had in his hometown. “I came to umrah because of that dream,” he explained. In his dream, someone was calling him at the Kaaba just like what we had experienced. “Lover!” that man was calling, and later they were having a sohbat. That is, he lived his dream. We talked about love at length. He became enraptured with love. Everyone travels with his own state on the path of God. Nobody tells you, “Live this state!” The state comes from God. It does not happen as a result of the mind‟s thinking about it. A state is not lived unless God wills it. If it happens by thinking, it is a daydream, an illusion. Daydreams are a product of strong thought. If a daydream gets stronger, it becomes an illusion. Visions appear. Hallucinations are seen. This is not real. The Gospel, Torah, Psalms, and the Qur‟an: the meaning of the four books is hidden in one Alif.10 Alif is within Adam; Adam is within Alif. Alif is one; it is unique. Alif is within unity; unity is within Alif. Alif is “A”. Alif is within ahadiyat (oneness); ahadiyat is within Alif. Whatever there is, it is in “Ahmad”, in ahadiyat. Alif is within “Ahmad”, Ahmad is within Alif! There is no era in which Yunus Emre did not exist! He will continue existing until the Day of Judgment. Yunus Emre is the symbol of love, peace, unity and harmony. Yunus says, “Let us wake up; this world will not be left to anyone!” You have to love everything that is created. People may have bad behavior; but perhaps they will be better than you if they quit that behavior. Let us not look down on anyone. Let us love everything for being created. He may have gone astray; let us not despise anyone. He

10

The first letter of the Arabic alphabet, „A‟; also the Arabic numeral „1‟.

83 may quit that behavior and become better than you. Let us not cause mischief and disrupt the social peace. Let us love humanity and work for peace. Yunus Emre says that if it will cause rifts, don‟t even tell people the mazhab (school of thought) you follow. Mazhab is a set of judgments; it is the detailed opinions of a scholar on some unknown issues. But what do we do? We treat the detail as the main essence. When people‟s hearts turn dark, their faces also turn dark. I‟m not talking about dark skin; someone with white skin can also be dark. When his heart gets dirty, his face gets dark. Any kind of bad thought passing from the heart ruins the heart. Let us cleanse our heart by regretting greatly. Every believer needs to purify his heart. When the heart becomes clean enough, God settles in that heart. If you break this heart, it will be like breaking down the Kaaba. When there is spirit, the wife, children, life all appear nice to the person. When there is no spirit, they all look vain. Spirituality is the science of humanity. I sometimes talk with men; some have problems with their wives, some with their children. In the end, it all boils down to the same thing; “Let‟s have the pleasure of this life,” says everyone. I wonder how this will happen! We have found, thanks to God, how to have the pleasure of this world. The pleasure of this world is had through the friendship of souls! Live it yourself, see it yourself. Every state has a result. Live what you are meant to live; don‟t leak it. When you start leaking, your state ceases. Don‟t feel any sense of pride due to some event you experience; don‟t try to be distinguished. Don‟t say, “I live this, but I don‟t let it be noticed. If I spoke what I lived, you would be amazed!” There is an instinct within us, which wants to be felt, which wants to be distinguished. Does the praise of God not suffice for you? What does it mean to be known and recognized by people? Why don‟t we share our state with God? Why don‟t we wish to receive the praise of God?! Let us know how to be happy in our inner worlds. He who cannot find happiness within himself cannot find it outside at all. The most beautiful sohbat is to live while speaking, to live while listening. This sohbat changes the person. It is not right to compare someone with another on the path of God. From whoever your heart receives it, he is your friend. You don‟t have another nasib (fortune). Others are also fruitful, but you cannot receive from them. Events‟ getting out of control happens by too much exaggeration. May God protect us from the negative qualities of our nature, from nervousness, anxiety, hastiness, and acting without thinking. May He make us have a sound mind and a sound heart. May He make us peaceful. No one can do the harm to you that you do to yourself; no one can gnaw your inside. Who gnaws your stomach? How do your lungs get ill? All illnesses are caused by stress. Don‟t gnaw yourself, don‟t exhaust yourself. Be a friend to yourself. The friend of God is like a bee, and you are like flowers. The bee flies from flower to flower. Its task is to collect the essence in the flowers. The hive of this bee is in the heart. The bee visits all the flowers and takes the essence it collects to the hive. The queen bee comes and makes a tour over them saying “Huuuu...” Everywhere it passes turns the same color, the color of honey, and adopts the Muhammadan oneness.

84 Don‟t cause divisions. What does it mean to cause divisions? To discriminate. That is, don‟t be after comparisons. Don‟t say, “Is he closer than me, or am I closer?” Your end will be the same. We are working to make you the same, but you are trying to be different! What is happening to you that, while going so well you fall into the nafs‟ hands? Laziness may be understood, but what about harshness and ill-temperedness? Let us fear breaking hearts. When I see someone breaking a heart, I cannot bear it. If God is in that heart, it is Kaaba, don‟t break it! Some are close but may be far away; some are far but may be nearby. Don‟t call the physical distance “farness”; find the real closeness. Don‟t be a captive of appearance, distance, or time. Be free; break free from distance and time. Don‟t be limited by space; break free from space. Become serious, become solemn. You cannot become light without being solemn. The more solemn you are, the lighter you will get; you will start to fly and you will rise to heaven. Carrying the knowledge you learned without practicing it is being a porter for nothing. Let us not be a porter in this world; let us be someone who lives by what he knows. Let us not be greedy; let us not have a hungry eye but a hungry heart. Let us be a person of wisdom who lives the truth, and let us make others live the truth. You can make others live the truth only if you live it yourself. You can read and memorize every single book on love if you want to, but you won‟t be able to speak it unless you yourself fall in love. You cannot burn others without first burning yourself. Even a match first burns itself in order to light the stove. You first need to burn yourself in order to light others, even if by a little. Forests are set on fire by one spark. The size of your fire doesn‟t matter; what matters is to kindle. Be a spark, be a match, and kindle. You cannot change without practicing. Practicing starts with shahadah (bearing witness); it starts with faith. It starts with bearing witness to the unity of God and Muhammad being His messenger. Then it continues through obeying the command. If you perform the salah (prayer), you will be practicing. We will discipline the nafs by fasting; we will understand how the hungry feel. Then we will give zakat (alms) and help the poor. We will go to Hajj and visit the house of His messenger. “Take us to the house of God,” we will say. We will stand before the door of God at the Kaaba. We will prostrate not to God‟s house but to God himself. We turn towards there, towards the house of God when we pray. The most beautiful part of the human being is his face. We put our face on the ground. We acknowledge his greatness by belittling ourselves. You want to make progress on the spiritual path, but you want to go by your mind. Your mind cannot be the guide. If it could, there would be no need for the Prophet or for a murshid (spiritual guide); your mind would take you there. The mind is a friend, but only if it listens to the heart. If you have a mind which listens to your heart, follow your mind. But if it doesn‟t listen to your heart, don‟t follow the mind in vain. Find a friend of God like Yunus, Mawlana, or Hajji Bektash Wali, and learn the way of truth from him. Let us be awake and protective, and let us not be a bigots. Let us be neither a believer bigots nor a disbeliever bigots. There are many bigots among disbelievers as well. They ridicule people‟s beliefs and pressure them. Let us protect people against evil.

85 Religion is not a danger. God‟s path is the best assurance. A few charlatans cannot stain the religion. Don‟t defend those who do wrong. He who has a good faith does not do wrong. Here we have united around the common minimum; we can also unite around the common maximum. Don‟t speak ill about a group in general. Yunus Emre says, “I didn‟t tell my mazhab in the towns I went to.” Mazhab means judgments, that is, details. And what do we do? We make the least significant part the most significant! We have come and we are going! Perhaps we have already finished most of our lives. Let us learn the truths and not waste this life. Young people! Be attached to your family! Those who leave home are eaten by wolves. Don‟t disrupt the family union. The community (ummah) of Prophet Muhammad will rise in the field of resurrection dressed in adab (good manners, courtesy). This is the secret of being buried in a shroud. They will rise in a collarless shirt. As love matures a person in spirituality, the desire for that white shirt increases. Mazhabs have occurred about differences in details. Judgments were made to form a unity in the details. We as a society have so far been unable to unite even on the main common issues; how can we discuss the details? The faithful person can have a good intention and benefit from each mazhab and follow its judgments. Mazhab is not the religion. A Muslim has to be awake. You rent an apartment; you will live in it perhaps for six months or a year. You look at every detail of it. Let us give the same care to our religion as well. Someone has seen the prayer from his parents and thinks that it is about rolling on the floor. You graduated from college, learned tons of knowledge, but you did not research what the truth of this prayer is! How to fast, what is the truth of fasting, you couldn‟t know. When your boss calls for you, you cannot sleep at night, wondering whether he will reward or punish you. You enter into the presence of God in prayer who has created all this universe, but you don‟t worry at all whether he will accept it! Who are you, learn this first! Given that you will die and your life will end, why were you created? Find this out! Look at the other parts of creation! Look at the world of minerals! Look at the world of plants! Look at the world of animals! The closest to you is the world of animals. They eat, drink, and sleep like human beings. Animals live by their instincts within a fixed program. But man was given the faculties of reason and love and was created with honors. All worlds were given to his service. He has to think that he has a mission other than eating and drinking, something beyond his pleasures. On the other side, he has to satisfy his physical needs in order to survive. We should earn money and satisfy these needs, but this is not the purpose of living! Man has to see that he is not a bag of flesh and bones. He will touch a corpse and say, “Cold?”; he will touch a live body and say “Warm!” He will contemplate the difference between the dead and the living. I‟m saying let‟s wake up, let‟s wake up for the sake of those who are trying to wake us up! Let‟s look at the truths; let‟s open our eyes to the truths. Don‟t say that you know yourself; or you will be embarrassed. No one has been able to know himself completely. Even if someone did, he couldn‟t find himself! Have you seen yourself? What you see in the mirror is your body. Look into the mirror of truth and see your reality. Find such a mirror that it will show you yourself without any

86 shape. Have you ever listened to your heart to this day? Every person has a heart; if you listen to your heart by seeking refuge in the Creator, you will hear the truth. But there are two channels that broadcast to the heart‟s receiver. One is divine and the other demonic. As you listen, you must say, “I seek refuge in the One who has all the strength and power.” “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billahil aliyyil azim.” If you don‟t say this or pray in words to this effect, satan will become involved. Besides, you also need to check whether what you hear while you listen to your heart agrees with the commands of God. Read the tombstone of Hazrat Munir Derman. Before he died he asked it to be written on his tombstone: “I was the youngest of the Forty.” What will he do with fame after his death? Why does he say this? Let those left behind know whom they were together with. Thanks to God, we met twice during his lifetime. He had long hair and his appearance was magnificent. Once, he saw a friend of his across the road before the Onur Mall. While walking towards him, he passed through the iron barriers. A police officer saw what happened; he ran to him immediately and held his hands: “O holy man, I‟m in hardship. Pray for me. I saw you; you walked through the barrier!” he said. “Did I? I was lost in thought!” Munir Derman replied. Be a slave and know the Creator. Know the Creator, and make others know the Creator. Making the Creator known is possible only by showing! You cannot describe Him with words. You should see His attributes and manners in actions. You will take from God‟s manners as much as your capacity allows. See someone who is alive and take him as an example! Why did the Messenger of God come down to this earth? Why are there spiritual guides (murshids)? Are there any eyes that have seen the Messenger of God? We are talking about who the real human being is; we are talking about Him. We are talking about the man of truth who feeds his body so much that it will not transgress, who has reached the freedom of his spirit. We are talking about the really free human being who has freed his soul from the captivity of the body! Don‟t wander around in vain. Find an axis of truth and revolve around it! Know your heart and enter into the Kaaba of the heart; someone is expecting you in the house of the heart! If you say “ God!” deep from your heart, you will find God in your heart. God is present in the Kaaba and in your heart! Whichever trouble burns your heart, that trouble is your remedy, that trouble will take you to God. If I happen to have a disagreement with someone, I seek refuge in my Lord, then that difficulty disappears by itself. So, it turns out that, getting along well or not is also up to us. Pass the affairs you cannot handle to God, seek refuge in God, He will set it right. When we ourselves are right, what we worry for will also become right. If we are given some trouble, it is for the remedy of our heart. Our prayer takes place with the burning of our heart. Our only hope is prayer and seeking refuge in God. Every difficulty disappears by prayer. Prayer is the only solution. Help the people whose troubles you listen to, but don‟t grieve. When you feel it from the heart, you don‟t grieve; you feel his pain and pray for him. You listen with your soul, you pray with your soul. There are millions of lovers of the same beloved. Everyone has written books to the beloved; our lifetime would not suffice to read them all. Let us also become one of the lovers.

87 The greatest reward is to love Him. Let us make a heart; let us purge our heart of idols and turn it into Kaaba. The Kaaba was previously a house of idols; it became the qiblah once it was emptied and purged of the idols! Let us also write for that beloved, let us tell about Him; but the works we write are not everlasting. These works can be everlasting not as books but by making the hearts of those who read them. The hearts are everlasting. The hearts don‟t die, the hearts don‟t vanish.

 Shukur, being grateful, is a feeling; it is felt, it is experienced. Are you in a state of shukur? Are you grateful? Someone gives you a job and you become grateful to him. How about what God has given you?

You try to get an appointment from someone with authority for a worldly business of yours. You follow whatever procedures are necessary to enter his presence. You present your case: “I have such and such a problem, sir.” He then gives you his help and support as needed. The way to enter God‟s presence is by salah (prayer). Even if we listen to sohbat, read books and study spiritual sciences for days, still these won‟t take us into the divine presence. These are the necessary preparations for entering into the presence; they are about learning the procedure to present your case to the governor of all. You learn those but don‟t enter into his presence. Who is the real governor? It is God. He is the sovereign of all. If a person is the governor of a city or state, God is the sovereign governor of the whole universe. We don‟t enter into the presence of the real governor. We present our case from a distance. Of course, there is no distance for God; but He accepts his servant into His presence during the prayer. The Messenger of God says, “The prayer is the miraj (ascension) of the servant.” A brother of ours once asked me: “I believe in God and I‟m satisfied. I also acknowledge His Messenger. Do I have to perform the salah? Can I not do without it?” What is he saying! “Do I have to enter the presence? It looks unnecessary to me?” That is, he is trying to say that he doesn‟t need God and His Messenger; there is nothing he needs from God, so he doesn‟t want to enter the presence. This is not right. Are we Muslim? What are the pillars of Islam? What are the articles of faith? We memorized these when we were children, and we have been continuing like that by imitation. Let us learn the truth from scratch. The pillars of Islam are five. The first is to utter the shahadah; to have faith and bear witness that there is no god but God, and that

88 Muhammad is His servant and messenger. To say, “Ashadu‟an la ilaha illallah, wa ashadu‟anna Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluh”; to say this by tongue and to confirm it by heart. Then comes performing the salah (prayer). Your Islam cannot be complete unless you pray; it will remain deficient. “O believer! Come into my presence,” says God. Stand up in qiyam, pass to ruku, bow down in sajdah, and be a slave. Write with your body “alif” in qiyam, “dal” in ruku, and “mim” in sajdah; that is “adam”. These are not random movements. Each has a special meaning. The third pillar is fasting. Fasting has innumerable spiritual benefits. It is the best way to discipline the nafs (self). Fasting is a system of training and discipline. The fourth pillar is giving alms (zakat) if you are financially able. The fifth pillar is going to Hajj, if you are able to do it physically and financially. Among these pillars, two are dependent on material ability, but the other three must be done by everyone. Performing the salah is not memorizing the prayers and going up and down; it is entering into the divine presence. Have you ever been accepted into the presence to this day? Have you ever called your Lord? Have you ever gone to the door of the sovereign of all and met with Him? Have you presented your situation to Him? It goes like this: You go to the governor‟s office, knock at the door, wait a little, and then return all the way back since you didn‟t hear a “come in”. Some don‟t knock at the door, but just wait and go back. Have a little courage, knock at the door, enter when they say “Welcome, come on in!” and present your case. Enter through salah. Check your clothing first. Is it proper for entering the presence? Would you go into the presence of your superiors to get some business of yours done with improper clothing? You wrapped your hands; you said “Allahu akbar!” and wrapped your hands because you were in His presence. You started talking to Him as He taught it. If you talked as you knew it, you would make mistakes. But you haven‟t entered the salah yet. You need to enter into the salah. This happens as you recite the Fatiha. As you say “Iyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka nasta'in,” you pass into the salah. “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.” In the name of God, Most Gracious (Rahman), Most Merciful (Rahim), you said. You started reciting the Fatiha: “Alhamdu lillahi Rabbil 'Alamin.” Praise be to the Lord of the Worlds. “Arrahmanir rahim.” He is the Rahman; He does not distinguish between believers or unbelievers in this world, He treats even those who deny Him equally. Those who work get their work‟s reward proportionally to their effort. He is the Rahim, He will reward the believers on Judgment Day. Therefore He tests the believers in this world. As they say, “Always believers are suffering in this world.” Yes, the faith of those who believe is tested. There is no need to test the unbeliever; his verdict is known already. He is subject to the attribute of Rahman only. To receive the reward of Rahim, it is necessary to be tested in this world. What is the test? If you receive the reward of every effort you make, you will always win in this world. But a test is a trial. You work but you don‟t win. You believe, you pray, and you don‟t get anything in return; but you acquire such a faith that you submit completely. Then you have nothing to be tried; you obey the commands completely; you become pleased with your state. Then the test is lifted from you; you have proved your faith under all circumstances. Let‟s return to Fatiha. “Maliki yawmiddin.” He is the master of the Day of Judgment. He is the master of the day that people will be gathered in the field of resurrection. God spoke the part up to this point and introduced Himself to you. God introduced Himself to His servant. From which mouth? From the mouth of His servant. Now the servant has heard him: “Iyyaka

89 na'budu wa iyyaka nasta'in.” You alone we worship; you alone we ask for help. “Ihdinas siratal mustaqim.” Guide us to the straight path. “Siratal ladhina an'amta 'alayhim ghayril maghdubi 'alayhim walad daalleen. Amin.” Make us together with those who walk on your path, not with those who will receive your anger. That means that it does not happen alone by oneself. God wants it to be that way. A raindrop cannot flow to the ocean by itself. It needs to meet with other drops. It is necessary to become a stream, a river, and then flow to the ocean. It does not happen alone. The beloved servants of God are like rivers. They flow to the ocean continuously. He who has reached the river would be like reached the ocean. Some raindrops are fortunate; they fall directly onto the ocean. Let us recite the prayers and surahs we recite in the salah while being aware of their meanings, being aware that we are in God‟s presence, and understanding what we say. All the details of how to pray, how to perform the salah are written in the books. I am not telling you that; I am telling you to perform the salah with due consciousness. I am asking you to find the truth. The prayer Attahiyyat, for example, was spoken in the miraj (ascension to heaven of Prophet Muhammad); it is the conversation of God and our Prophet. Our Prophet says, “Attahiyyatu lillahi was-salawatu wat-tayyibat.” all worships – oral, physical and monetary – are for God. And God responds to him, “Assalamu alayka ayyuhan-nabiyyu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.” God‟s peace be upon you, O Prophet, and His mercy and blessings! Our Prophet responds, “Assalamu alayna wa 'ala ibadillahis-salihin.” peace be on us and on all righteous servants of God. God and the Messenger of God speak one after the other. In the end, Gabriel bears witness saying the word of testimony, “I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.” You too must experience this state when you sit in the prayer. Both speeches will come from the same mouth. Let us say this conversation with due consciousness and live the miraj. Our friend was asking, “I have believed in all. Do I have to pray (the salah)?” When all the rewards we will receive are in the salah, how can I say, “Don‟t pray!” Be pleased with God. Those who complain of their state are complaining of God! Give thanks, be thankful. Be thankful so that the good may increase. Admit in advance that your mind cannot reach the secrets of God. Only with the irfan (deeper knowledge) He gives you can you reach some secrets. Interpret everything well and you will win. Say, “There is also a wisdom and good in this.” It takes ten years to get rid of the belief that your mind can understand it all. Come, accept it in advance. Believe also in what the mind does not agree with. If the friend of God follows you, you will be ruined; if you follow him, you will be saved. The only condition for unity is to talk about Him. If we talk about ourselves, we will be separated. It is nice to dive into the sea and then come out. You will come out to the shore, watch the sea, then miss it, and dive again. Patience; I advise patience to you all. One who is not patient cannot change. Manners change only by patience. We will be determined, we will be patient.

90 We don‟t thank God; our shukur (thanksgiving) is little. For that reason, goodness is decreasing. Shukur is a remedy for the ill and a solution for those who are in trouble. It increases the goodness and the blessings. Have you ever thanked God that you can see? Have you thanked Him that you can smell? Have you thanked Him that you can speak without any problem? Have you thanked Him that you can hear? Have you thanked Him that you have intellect? Have you thanked Him that you are created without flaws? I once saw a man on Necatibey Street; he could walk barely one step in a minute. He was thanking God that he was able to walk. “O my God! I‟m ashamed of myself; I cannot thank you!” I said. Are you aware of the blessings at your home? You have a warm atmosphere. Your shoes are sound and your feet are warm; do you thank for these? Shukur is a feeling; it is felt, it is experienced. Are you in a state of shukur? Are you grateful? Someone gives you a job and you become grateful to him. How about what God has given you? Are you also grateful to Him? He gave you yourself by creating you. Do we thank Him for granting us the opportunity to go to the holy land? We climbed there to the hill where the Qur‟an was revealed and saw the place where the Messenger of God met with Gabriel. “Read!” said Gabriel. What was it to be read, do you think? The book was not revealed yet. “I don‟t know how to read!” he responded. “Read in the name of your Lord!” Read, you too read now. Read in the name of your Lord. Say “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim” and read. There were no books; what would he read? The Qur‟an was not there yet. When he said, “I don‟t know how to read,” Gabriel embraced and squeezed him. He said, “Read!” again. It is for this reason that friends of God embrace and squeeze people. Read, read! Read the flowers... Read the stars... Read the sun... Read the mountains... Read the seas... Read in the name of your Lord. Because He created you to read. Come, read creation. If you read creation, you will understand the Creator. Read... Read... Read hearts. If you learn how to read, you will read everything. Learn how to read. Don‟t be from those who are illiterate. See, we are all unlettered, we can‟t read. Give thanks to your Lord so that He may make you from those who read. Thank your Lord so that He may grant you His grace and blessings. Be a friend to people, with your mistakes, with your defects, whatever you may be. Don‟t let any mischief come from you! The mother of mischief is satan. Don‟t set lovers of God against each other. Always be constructive. In order to make friends love each other, instead of breaking them up by telling the truth, reconcile them by lying. Young people! Don‟t scold or reproach your parents, or you will be at great risk without knowing it. You will realize it when your children scold you years later, but then it will be too late. Children scolding their parents is a sign of the end times. They may be less cultured than you, they may not be as knowledgeable as you; but don‟t ever say, “Shut up! You won‟t understand this!” Instead say, “My dear mother, it‟s not like that!” Convince them with kindness. If you don‟t want to do what they are asking, don‟t do it again; but don‟t scold. Do whatever you will, but don‟t scold!

91 The pillar of religion is prayer (salah). When every member of a household prays, that place becomes heaven and becomes filled with peace. However, prayers must be done with khushu (awareness of the heart), feeling and living that one is in the divine presence. Lay the prayer rug first, say “In the name of God,” and put your right foot on the prayer rug. Say, “O my Lord! Please accept me into your presence, I‟m coming to you!” Wrap your hands in His presence. If you perform your prayers well, there won‟t be discord at home. No matter how angry you get, don‟t swear. Be in control of your speech. You say that you are on the path of God; how? You swear at the face of the person you get angry with. “I made his face with my hands,” says God. The face is holy; it should not be hit at, it should not be sworn at. When you go to visit a spiritual master, don‟t go with your stomach full. Be a little hungry so that your heart may feel easily. When the stomach is full, the heart has a hard time feeling. Everybody has a truth according to himself. But the truth is unique, only one. If we go to the truth of God, then we all reach the same point, the real truth. Truth has various definitions. The key to remaining on the path of truth is to seek refuge in the Creator and to always find Him in the heart. Humanity has come to this age, but mind and intellect still lack an exact definition. What is intellect? It is to seek an answer to the question “How can I satisfy my needs; through which ways can I win?” Those who go to the dead die; those who go to the alive revive. Let us visit our Prophet as alive. When we were visiting Masjid al-Nabawi, I said “O, Messenger of God! We came to visit you. Please accept our visit. But we are a little sad. Medina is the city of ansar (helpers), but not one person said welcome to us. In fact we were hoping to be received by words and banners that said “Welcome pilgrims!” We didn‟t get any warm reception, o Messenger of God!” When we walked out of the Masjid al-Nabawi afterwards, there was a squad of soldiers standing across the masjid. One of them came running towards us, “Welcome, my Turkey!” he said and embraced me firmly, and ran back immediately. I leave the interpretation of this event to you. You comment on it. I sought a person in this world whom I could believe in and seek advice from. I asked people. I saw that people didn‟t know people. Then I begged God: “O Lord! Show me an advisor who will make me know myself, who will make me know You, who will know my secret as his, and who will show me his secret.” My prayer was accepted, and that friend of God appeared to me in my dream. In the end I asked: “How will I find you?” “You cannot find us; we find you,” he said. Some time passed, and a high school student came to my office. I liked his attitude and asked: “Who taught you? Would you take me to him?” We went, and there I saw the person who had appeared to me in my dream and so we became acquainted. If we ask the same question to different people, we get different answers. Everyone has a truth according to himself. Everyone‟s mind works differently. If everyone‟s mind could see the real truth, there would be no conflicts but only unity. The truth is known only by God.

92 Some pray to God for themselves; they ask for various things, but perhaps they want what will be bad for them. Maybe He will give them something better than what they asked for, or maybe what they asked for will be harmful for them in the end. It is best to leave what to ask for to His decision as well. It is more appropriate to say, “O Lord! Give us what will be the best for us.” All humans make mistakes. What is important is to be able to distinguish the mistakes. The best is to see that it will be a mistake before doing it. If a mistake is noticed while doing it, one must repent and stop doing that mistake immediately. To distinguish a mistake after doing it is heedlessness. One must repent as soon as he discovers it. How can we distinguish a mistake? If you listen to your heart, it will at least tell you “yes” or “no”. If you feel discomfort about something you do, it means “no”; if you feel peace, it mean “yes”. Sometimes mistakes are also useful. If someday the fire of regret takes over your whole body, you pray to God in such a way that it causes all your mistakes to be forgiven and you don‟t do those mistakes again. “These mistakes saved me!” you say. May God grant understanding and faith to everyone on His path; may He make them all from those who distinguish mistakes before making them. Sometimes a person is saved but he doesn‟t know by whom. I almost died in an accident when the car rolled over four times. A danger appears ordinary once it is over, but I could have died. I must really have had some fortune (nasib). How can I not be grateful now; He took us from where to where? Our advice to the friends: Let us be faithful for the sake of God. Let us not neglect or betray our friends. We have become friends for the sake of God; let us be faithful for the sake of God. God granted us a friendship and now He is testing us with this friendship. If you send an elementary school teacher to teach university students, the students will laugh. “We studied these things years ago,” they will say. If you do the opposite, if you send a university professor to teach elementary school students, the professor will have to descend to their level and will be bored. It is also like that in spirituality. Ibrahim Adham was a sultan. He heard someone walking on the roof and asked: “What are you doing there?” “I lost my camel. I‟m seeking it.” “How can you seek a camel on the roof?” “Just like you seek God in a feather bed!” He immediately ordered his viziers to catch the man, but they couldn‟t find anyone. Another day, one of the maidservants, while making the feather bed, wondered how it would feel to lie in it, and she was caught by the sultan lying in the bed. He immediately ordered her to be lashed. The maid roared with laughter while she was being lashed. Ibrahim Adham asked why she was laughing. She responded: “I lied in it for ten minutes and got so many lashes. You have been lying in it for years; I thought about your situation in the hereafter and was laughing at that!” When Ibrahim Adham heard that response, he left the throne. He built a hut on the seashore and retired into seclusion there. He started to live there with the bare minimums. His viziers came and begged him to return, “Can one live like this?” they asked. Ibrahim Adham was repairing a rent in his dress then. He threw the needle in his hand into the sea and asked the fishes to

93 bring it. A fish brought the needle in its mouth and gave it to Ibrahim Adham. He took the needle and said: “I found the real sultanate; you better find someone else in my place!” In the end his son succeeded him on the throne. When Ibrahim Adham left the throne, his son was only one year old. His son decided to find his father and left the palace to seek him. He heard that Ibrahim was in Medina. He finally found him there. “That man sitting there is the person you are looking for,” they told him. He approached him from behind and touched him on the shoulder: “Are you Ibrahim Adham?” “Yes, I am,” he responded without turning back. “I am your son whom you left at one year old.” “O my Lord! If anyone steps between us, either take him or take me,” Ibrahim Adham prayed. Suddenly the young sultan started shaking and gave his last breath. “It was the saddest day of my life!” Ibrahim Adham used to say. And so lived Ibrahim Adham! Everyone has a character. Some have the character of water, some earth, and some fire. The friend of God says, “Either be earth or water.” One day a priest with many Christians around him visited AbdalQadir Jilani. “O Jilani! They speak very highly of you; let us see how big you are. My Prophet used to raise the dead from their graves. What did your Prophet do?” “If my Prophet had wished to, he would have done it all. He split the moon with a single gesture. Your Prophet is also my Prophet. If God permits, even this humble servant can do what your Prophet did,” responded Jilani; and they started to walk towards the graveyard. Jilani approached a grave and called: “Rise up, with God‟s permission!” and the dead in the grave rose. The priest who witnessed this event converted to Islam. Let us grow beautiful. Instantly some beauty appears on the face of the person who turns his heart to God. That beauty can be distinguished. You will take someone by the arm, you will make a heart, you will make someone happy. Find the point where you say, “Nothing in this world matters to me.” Let there be no worry for life or possession at that moment. Be like Ibrahim Adham and say “I want you.” Say, “My faith and religion is to love you!” Say, “Let us not remain at a glance; come, let‟s go to the beloved, o my heart!” Do you want to learn God, or do you want to fall in love with God? Decide what you want. Who did learn God in this world; who has reached Him by knowledge? We don‟t belittle knowledge, but one cannot reach God by knowledge; there can at most be some intimacy. The only way to reach Him is love. “Knowledge is to know knowledge, knowledge is to know your self If you don‟t know your self, what kind of study is that?” Y. Emre Once you know yourself, your wings are spread and you start flapping your wings like a bird; you know your Lord. You must be freed from human conditionings so that you can

94 become close to God. You should pass over the bridge of Sirat while in this world. If you pass over it in this world, you will pass over it in the hereafter easily. Let your heart be awake. Distinguish a beggar and a person who is really in need. Don‟t hurt the beggar, but also don‟t indulge a shameless one. Even if you give a little to the beggar, he will be alright. He will collect a lot little by little. You should find the really needy ones and give them a lot. Our Prophet in miraj traveled in a moment, perhaps in a millionth of a second, from Mecca to Masjid al-Aqsa, and rose from there to the highest heaven. Given that the whole miraj happened in a moment, why, do you think, he went through all that trouble to travel that long road through the desert during the Hijra? If he wanted to, couldn‟t he say “Come on Abu Bakr, let‟s go!” and be in Medina in a moment? He could, with the permission of his Lord, but he chose servanthood. Whatever issue your mind is troubled by, that is your test. You cannot make progress until you get rid of it. Pass it to your Lord and relax. Otherwise, the more you deal with it, the deeper you sink. Satan always gives you doubts and scruples from that point and finishes you. Once you become a true lover, just know that you are beloved. God makes the whole universe love those who love Him. “I will create a deputy on earth, I will send a representative,” said God to the angels. “O Lord! Will you send someone who will make mischief on earth? We constantly glorify your name. Will you cause mischief by sending a deputy?” asked the angels. “He will represent me, and will be a place of manifestation for my names and attributes. The acts of my names and attributes will be manifest in him. If you‟re saying that it‟s not necessary, then tell me the meanings of my names and attributes.” None of the angels could. Then He asked Adam: “You tell me those!” Adam recited the meanings of all the names and attributes one by one. “O Lord! You are all-powerful; whatever exists, it is all in your knowledge; we made a mistake!” said the angels. “Then you all bow down to him,” God told them. They all said, “Allahu akbar!” and prostrated, but the angel named Azazil, the teacher of angels, did not. “O Lord! I don‟t prostrate before anyone but you!” he said. And he therefore became Iblis. God placed Adam and Eve in His heaven and told them: “Eat, drink, and live as you like, but don‟t eat from this forbidden fruit!” Iblis deceived them and made them eat from that fruit. For this reason, they descended to earth. If they had not, none of us would exist. “Go down to earth, have corruption among you, shed blood,” said God. Adam begged very much and asked for forgiveness. “Then stay on earth for a certain while, and those who obey my commands will return to heaven,” said God. There is no other reality on earth; we will stay here for a certain while, and then those who obey the commands and know God will return to heaven.

95 God‟s names become manifest in His servant. For instance, as-Sabur (The Patient). If you don‟t show patience, this name doesn‟t become manifest in you. Show patience to your spouse at home; it will be beneficial for you and you will also receive the manifestation of asSabur. Show patience to your children and parents! If you are impatient, this name of God will never be manifest in you. Be patient! Be patient, so that the problem you show patience towards will be solved. If you show enough patience, every difficulty will become solved in the best way. “Yunus says, he doesn‟t resent the beloved God I am ill, but my condition is not being asked about.” Y. Emre Yunus is saying, even if I get ill and I‟m not asked about it, I don‟t resent the beloved friend. God doesn‟t like the prideful. He tests His servant with the prideful. If the servant shows patience for the sake of God, God will break the pride of the prideful. You know, they observe the moon to start the Eid-ul Fitr after Ramadan; it is called Ruyat-e-Hilal. Do you also do it? Where will you see it? On the face of the perfect human being. I looked at the moon, it was fully round. I turned to those with me: “Look at the sun!” I said. “You are confused; it is the moon, not the sun!” they responded. “If there were not the sun, would the moon have such light?” I said. The sun appears as the moon in the night. The sun is manifest in the moon. The shortest path is to be pleased. Be pleased with everything that comes from God so that He may give His favor to you. If you are not pleased, He will not give His favor. Love Him very much, but don‟t love without substance. Even Ferhat attempted to dig through a mountain for his love. If you don‟t follow His commands, your love will be without substance. Start struggling with your own self. Struggle with your nafs (self) and make it develop and reach purity. By abandoning all kinds of bad manners, pass from nafs al-ammara (the commanding self) to nafs al-lawwama (the blaming self), which is the nafs that regrets what it does, criticizes and reproaches itself. Afterwards listen to your heart more and pass to the nafs that receives inspirations, nafs al-mulhimah (the inspired self). This station of nafs is the most critical place. People usually fall into great fallacies here, thinking that they have matured. They think that they are at nafs al-mutmainna (the contented self) at this station. In order to pass from this station to the nafs that is satisfied with faith, nafs al-mutmainna, a great master needs to hold the hand of that person. There is safety and trust in nafs al-mutmainna. Those who reach this station of nafs are the people whom we call awliya (friends of God). After mutmainna comes the station where the person is pleased with everything he goes through because it is from God: nafs al-radiyah (the well-pleased self). After that, there is nafs al-mardiyyah (the pleasing self) and the nafs al-safiya (the pure self). These are the stations of

96 nafs that can be reached only by very exceptional people. Nafs al-safiya is the nafs station of our Prophet. You can find more detailed information on this topic in books of tasawwuf.

 Be sincere towards yourself and

towards God.Perform your duties sincerely. Worshiping God is your duty, but don‟t be confident in your worship. Don‟t be proud of your worship or of your knowledge. Yunus Emre did not die. Most of us go to visit his tomb. On the road to Eskisehir, in Aksaray, in Karaman... He has a tomb in many places. Go and visit Yunus at any one of them; just know that Yunus will be present there. Be sincere towards yourself and towards God. Perform your duties sincerely. Worshiping God is your duty, but don‟t be confident in your worship. Don‟t be proud of your worship or of your knowledge, or else you can‟t see any benefit from it. God told His servants to worship Him for their own benefit. Otherwise God doesn‟t need your worship. Look at the wisdom in prayer (salah), for example, and see its benefits. Save your worship for yourself. Look instead at what you have done for the sake of God. Be happy and satisfied with your faith. There can be charlatans in every age. There were also those in the time of the Messenger of God. A fake prophet appeared. The person who had killed our beloved Hamza with a spear and plucked out his heart also killed that fake prophet. Let us be in control of our tongue and our hands. Come, let us start a struggle, let us grow into mature human beings. Don‟t try to make others mature before you yourself mature first. If a gossiper says, “Don‟t gossip!” his words won‟t have any effect on others. First get rid of your own bad habits, then try to help others. The event which we call death is in fact a birth. Death is the body‟s ending and the soul‟s exiting the body. It is death for the body, it is birth for the soul. When did the soul enter the grave? When it entered the body in the mother‟s womb. The soul is currently traveling around in a two-legged, mobile grave. If only you reached the taste of service for the sake of your Lord! If only you fed a cat for your Lord! God is just looking for a reason to give His grace. One day around Haci Bayram I saw a kitten meowing, reduced to skin and bones. I ran to the grocery store; there was no milk left! After some searching, I finally found some milk and came back. I found the cat and gave it the milk. How hungry it was! I cannot describe how it drank the milk! We reached grace like that I guess.

97 Don‟t have any claims of superiority over anyone. As Yunus said, “I did not come for assertion.” Let us be from those who don‟t expect any benefit for themselves. If you yourself haven‟t become right, don‟t try to set anyone else right! Let us ourselves be healthy, so that we can benefit society. I tell those who don‟t change at all: You are not struggling with yourself. Because you are pleased with yourself. Anyone who loves God shouldn‟t praise us, because all power and strength are in the hands of our Creator. I was a man of logic, computer people will understand this, but when I had a car accident and smelled death, my logic stopped. The doctor was a young fellow. “Take this guy to the morgue, he is gone!” he said; I could hear him. He said this while I was still conscious. I prayed in such a way; I had never prayed like that before in my life. “Please, take me back!” I was saying. I was so regretful: “I haven‟t understood anything from this life yet; children are left behind; my mistakes are many. With what face can I come!” I was saying. An old woman came and put her hand on my forehead: “Your prayers are accepted,” she said. I still remember her face very well. “How many children do you have?” she asked. “Two,” I said. Somehow I spoke at that moment. I don‟t know what she did; but it was clear that she was someone prayerful. She folded her shawl and put it under my head. She went to the doctor: “Son, this man is alive!” she said. I reached the grace of returning to life after smelling death through this experience. Man comes into existence by the union of two, that is, by wahdat (unity). Two cells come together and become a single cell; this is wahdat. Then the cell multiplies by division of the one, grows, and forms the body, which again becomes one. Man can realize the truth only by reaching the secret of wahdat, because it came into existence by wahdaniyyah. Not everyone can affirm the truth. To be able to see and affirm the truth, one must have no weaknesses. One can find the truth that belongs to everyone around him only by distinguishing Haqq (Truth) from falsehood. When you get close to the friends of God, proximity blindness takes place. His actions start erasing the holy image you had. The veil of nearness occurs. It is easier to know someone holy from a distance. Actually, his holy side is not his physical actions but his soul which has united with Haqq. Don‟t let familiarity blind your eyes! Nearness is good, but let us not lose our moral values. Alif is the axis of the universe. Its neck is slightly bent. It is the center of all axes; all axes are parallel to it, with their necks slightly bent. That is, the universe has its neck bent before the Creator. This humility has made them satellites. They remain in orbit with that humility. The friend of God is a mirror to you. You see yourself in him. You get to know yourself by your reactions to his various states. And, sometimes he becomes like a glass mirror; you look at his face and find yourself. He who is pleased with God will not regret. There is more of this grace; we are at the beginning; minds will get bewildered and stop. Minds stop with wonder. If one tries to go by his mind to a place that should be gone by the heart, the mind cannot bear it and breaks down. The mind is like Buraq. One can go from Mecca to Masjid al-Aqsa and from there to

98 Sidrat al-Muntaha by Buraq. But Buraq cannot go beyond Sidrat al-Muntaha. There, one must get on Rafraf. Rafraf is love. That is, love is necessary on the road that goes to union. For this reason, we will be people of the heart; we will love from the heart, we will live from the heart. We will burn from the heart. If we burn from the mind, the mind will break down. The brain will get damaged. We are ready to swallow the whole world if they would give it to us! Let us not be so greedy! We work relentlessly during the day to earn money; only the evening remains. While we could spend the evening dealing with something for the sake of God, we spend it half sleeping and then go to sleep. Let us be organized. We live twenty four hours a day, but we cannot spare just one hour in total to meet the one who created us. We neglect going into the divine presence. If we had realized the truth, would we do so much to enter into that presence. Wake those up who expect their nasib (fortune) from you as much as you yourself have awakened. Our share has been love. What a pleasure for us! Given that your fortune has opened from the side of love, empathize with lovers, get together with lovers, reach the pleasure of being a lover. Time is passing very fast. Our life has passed like yesterday. If our past life appears like yesterday, let us think of our remaining life as tomorrow. Our remaining life will pass like tomorrow. Let us live accordingly. Threshing time is coming. They will separate the chaff from the wheat. They will take the chaff to the hayloft and the wheat to the granary. Be a jeweler. A blessed man who used to work as a jeweler is narrating: One day a man with a flashlight in his hand came to the mall where he was working. Although everywhere was well-lit, he was entering the shops one by one, holding the light in his hand to people‟s faces, and saying “I‟m looking for a man, I‟m looking for a man!” A few days later, one of the jewelers grabbed him by the collar: “Are we not men?” he shouted. “Leave me!” said the man with the flashlight and gave him a slap in the face. For a moment, the inner eye of the jeweler opened and he saw that only the man with the flashlight had a human appearance, while everyone else was appearing as animals. “Make a man of me too!” he exclaimed and held his hand. That holy man visited the jeweler regularly and made a man of him. Then the jeweler also helped the others in that mall to become men who had that fortune. You should live beautifully. Those who disrupt the peace in their families, who claim to be living a love, who dive into love neglecting their spouses and children are not from Yunus. Those who don‟t show patience are not our friend. The first recommendation of Yunus: Peace at home, peace at work. If the other side does not make any sacrifice, you do it. Do it even if it is one-sided. Your Lord sees it all. Usually, in spiritual visits, going there happens to be hard with many difficulties, but coming back is easy. You seek but cannot find, or you find but he is not in his place. These visits take effort and perseverance. The person is tested at the beginning. The pillar of heaven and earth is prayer. Pray believing sincerely; but if it doesn‟t happen, don‟t ask why it didn‟t happen. Sometimes you pray for days and months and it

99 doesn‟t happen. Then a day comes when they happen all together. Your Lord is not obliged to accept your prayer. Perhaps it isn‟t to your benefit. He considers you more than you yourself do. God accepts every prayer that will be beneficial to the servant; some He accepts for this world, and some for the hereafter. Let us not be sad and rebel because our prayers are not accepted; let us especially not say, “Unbelievers live better than we do; they work and get its return many times more, but we can‟t!” They work and get its return; you will work and be tested; sometimes you will get its return, sometimes you won‟t so that you can get it in the hereafter. Those unbelievers‟ books are crossed out and “faithless” is written on them forever. Feel pity for them and try to warn them. Be a confidant, keep secrets. If you cannot keep any secret, keep a dream as a secret; whether it‟s important or not, keep it. Don‟t spread around everything you hear or see. If there is nothing you keep secret, you cannot reach God. First you will become clean like glass. Then you will have a secret; those who look at you will see themselves as if they were looking in a mirror. Those who curse at you will be cursing at themselves; those who praise you will be praising themselves. If he says “How beautiful you have become,” look at the person who says this; he himself has become beautiful. You have a dream, a nice dream; this dream gives spiritual blessings (fayz) as long as you keep it secret; when you tell it to others, the blessings cease. When the friend forgets about himself, only Haqq remains there. You cannot distinguish this coming and going. Only those who have that awareness distinguish Him. They distinguish divine and human words. Let us become a baby again, an old baby. Let us be pure like a baby. And there is also the baby of the eye. Has anyone seen the baby of the eye? I mean, has anyone seen the baby who looks through the eye? If you ask the friend of God, he may not know the answer to your question; but if you keep the question inside, he answers it unknowingly. Wait, be patient! Yes, there is a distinction, and we are always after that distinction. We have become distinguished by that distinction, and we are in search of that distinction. The material world is limited, while the spiritual world is unlimited. Thousands of cells die everyday in our body, and thousands of new ones are born. The universe is also like that: thousands of planets vanish every day and thousands of new ones are formed. The earth is very small within the universe. It is like one of the innumerable cells in the body. The basic building block of the universe is the atom. If we see the universe as a collection of atoms, we see it as a single entity. Just like we see a human being who is a collection of atoms as a single entity, we then see the universe as a collection of atoms as well. This is the unity of matter! It is to realize that the brick of the universe is one and to pass from multiplicity, kathrat, to unity, wahdat. The world also has a spirit. What gives the world its unity is this spirit. It is the composition of the spirits of all entities in the world. What holds the human body together as one is its spirit. Otherwise its structure would decompose and its atoms would disperse. In order to keep your mind healthy, don‟t be a person of panic. All mistakes happen in times of panic. Fights and murders are done in times of panic. If you want to remain balanced until the end of your life, don‟t be a person of panic. Wait and see the results of

100 events. Let your heart remain clear and your mind sound. Let your faith be strong. He who has a strong faith will not have a deranged mind. Because he trusts in God. What deranges the mind is the feeling of insecurity. God forbids his servants what He Himself does. He admires Himself, He is worthy of being admired. He praises Himself, He is worthy of being praised. “I‟m the most beautiful!” He says. “My knowledge encompasses the universe!” He praises Himself. The servant cannot say what he doesn‟t have; he has no right to do that. He cannot claim the attributes that belong to God. Admiring himself is forbidden for the servant. The servant says, “I am not.” The servant only sees that he does not exist and takes pride in his nonexistence. At that point, God fills that emptiness. God grants everything to make His servant pleased with Him. Just he should not be in a state of rebellion. So many presidents have died, so many people who used to say, “I created the world,” are gone. Why are these people so heedless? Why do they deny the truth despite seeing the fact of death constantly? Those who have faith and those who don‟t are not the same. Azrail (the angel of death) frees us from prison. “Come, the solitary confinement is over,” he says. We are in a mobile prison. We cannot get out of it. Those who get out of this prison before death are called awliya (friends of God). God is very beautiful. Every beauty is from God. Every ugliness is from the nafs (self). The one who knows and who lets others know is God. The one who is beautiful and who makes others beautiful is God. Having regret is also a kind of worship. Satan deceived Umar one day so he couldnt wake up for the morning prayer. He had so much regret and wept so bitterly that the next morning satan came himself to wake him up for prayer: “Wake up, o Umar! You showed such a regret that God granted you ten times the reward of the prayer you missed. Wake up, perform your prayer; have the reward of just one, not ten!”

 O Lord! Sometimes you are

outside me and sometimes inside. When I talk to the outside, you are outside me; when I talk to the inside, you are inside me. You are neither inside nor outside me. You are at me, I am at you. You are at the place which has no description. You are transcendent of space. You are my love, my heart, my soul!

101 Don‟t say, “Why is it like that”; because it is like that for you! In the struggle with nafs (self), the person first gets rid of the bad emotions of animality, then he takes the good qualities of animality. First he gets rid of the ill temper and aggressiveness of dogness, then he takes its loyalty. A holy person once said: “I saw how a cat waited on the water‟s edge with patience for minutes without moving in order to catch its prey; I watched that state and was enlightened.” He means, I waited as the cat did and the moment came when I snatched my prey. I feel embarrassed most when I give money or help someone. Out of the worry of whether I‟ll make him feel embarrassed. If you help or protect someone, feel embarrassed for that. Anyone thinking “Why would I both help and feel embarrassed; let him feel embarrassed” would be wrong. During my childhood and youth I could never ask for money from my father, I would feel shy. My mother would ask it for me. Mothers must be a buffer between the father and children; they must be constructive! Since the father is the decision maker, mothers must always try to maintain a good relation and not alienate. “My dear, your father didn‟t mean it like that. You are getting sad for nothing,” she should say and smooth things over. There is a hidden desire in the carnal self of the human being; when they ask your opinion about a good person, first a desire to say something bad comes, then the right one comes after you think a little. Always be preconditioned to speak well of others. Why do we forget the good things, and the bad things come to our minds? We forget ten good things but remember one bad thing. One bad thing sticks, we always remember it, and forget ten good things. Let us remember each other with our good sides. In order to be able to use your brain further, the divine names must become manifest in you. The person who used his brain most was our Prophet. Because he is the one in whom most names were manifest. The more names are manifest, the more the capacity increases. Recordings are made from mouth to ear, from ear to heart, from heart to comprehension, from comprehension to soul. Recording to soul is made by the brain, just like a recorder. Let us make good recordings before death; let us load good kinds of knowledge and emotions to our soul. Let your heart be close to God and your mind robust. Don‟t tire your mind. Don‟t be constantly in deep thought, or it will become a vicious circle. Be peaceful and remain in balance. What is called mind hangs on a hair; it is already weak; don‟t pressure it any further. Thinking about past problems, especially, is very useless. Being young is a great advantage for awakening of the heart! Young people submit easily. Older people require that it must suit their mind; they have calculations and experiences. Grown-ups have more apprehensions; the youth don‟t have apprehensions. Too much caution causes apprehensions. Apprehensions tire a person. Let us not keep circling around the same place. Let us take an example from friends of God. Let us see how determinedly they have submitted to their Lord. It is very nice to be close to friends of God, but one must be respectful and only listen. He should not speak unnecessarily unless the opportunity is given to talk.

102 God does not burn, God does not decay, God does not sink into water. Don‟t ever deviate from the needle of your heart. Have a secret. Don‟t speak everything. Mistakes happen due to panic, don‟t decide in panic. Whatever I have learned to this day, I learned most of it due to those who listen to me. Because I spoke looking at them. What I told came to my heart when I looked at them. We give what you don‟t know to you among things that you already know. The friend of God told me: “Say one from this, one from that; be like Yunus. One from the surface, one from the depth. If you always go deep, you‟ll be drowned!” Some students like elementary school very much and don‟t want to leave their childhood. “I‟ll go to elementary school no matter what,” he says. “I won‟t leave, I won‟t graduate! I love my elementary school teacher a lot, I won‟t leave him.” He has the potential to progress, but he remains at the alphabet. We know the commands of our Prophet; but we don‟t know him. He used to race with Aisha in solitary places. Today this would look strange to many. “No way! The Messenger of God would not do any such thing!” they would say. There are those who obey the commands of the Messenger of God; and there are those who know the Messenger of God and fall in love with him. God commanded His servants to worship him in order for them to approach Him, not in order to make it a curtain between them. Let us grow satisfied now. The heart‟s eye and ear don‟t open until one is satisfied from the heart. May God grant us that. Let us live a time which that be worth a whole life. Let us say, “This is the time.” After that have no regret for what you couldn‟t live or for what you won‟t be able to live. You cannot love God directly. He sent His Messenger in order for people to love Him. That is, He created from Himself someone you can love. He loved Himself and so created His Muhammad. You cannot reach God without reaching His Messenger. You cannot love God without loving him. Because he is the one who serves as an envoy for being loved as well. While going to Hajj, a feeling of excitement comes over a person. “Will I be able to make it?” he wonders. One does not go there to become a hajji (pilgrim). You should go there to fulfill your duty of Hajj. You should go there to reach the truth of the duty of Hajj. A mufti (a high-ranking imam) once told me he saw a man crawling on the ground in Mecca. The mufti leaned towards him: “Walk, hajji. Everybody is waiting for you!” he said. “Did you step here or here?” that pilgrim was saying and kissing the ground. “Get up dear hajji, there was no asphalt at that time, nothing remained from where the Prophet stepped!” explained the mufti and brought him to his senses. When returning from Hajj, the two happened to sit together in the bus. At some point the pilgrim turned to the mufti: “What would we do had he not written our name into that book?” he said. “What book, who wrote it?” asked the mufti.

103 “The Messenger of God came, he had a golden notebook in his hand. „Tell me your name my dear pilgrim; you also joined those pilgrims who fulfilled there duty excellently,‟ he said and wrote my name.” Now the mufti narrates this as he weeps, and sighs, “I wish I also kissed the ground like my brother!” Don‟t be attached to the earth; the earth will disintegrate, turn into lava and burn. O holy souls! Don‟t think of yourselves as dust! Else you will remain in dust and vanish with the collapsing world. But you came from God, and you will return to God. Don‟t think of this dust body as yourself! This is a leap of comprehension. Those who can‟t make this leap become people of the grave. Let us open our eyes to the reality. We finished universities in worldly knowledge, but we couldn‟t complete even the elementary school in spiritual knowledge. What an imbalance is that? Let us obtain this balance as soon as possible. There are no gods; there is only God. Every person‟s heart is His Kaaba. A moment may be worth one‟s whole life. Live such a moment that you will be happy until the end of your life. Sometimes you live it but don‟t know. You realize it later; that also suffices for you. Yunus Emre says, “We came to revive dead hearts.” It is beautiful to listen to beautiful words, but living them is more beautiful. Beautiful words are listened for a while, then they must be adopted and practiced. One day I saw someone looking at the Kaaba, and it was like he was frozen. He was looking without moving or blinking at all. How long can an eye stand without blinking? If the person attaches his eye to the Kaaba and his heart to God, it can go on for hours. So I learned there how to look without blinking and I saw what I had to see. What benefit can I get from someone who does not touch my heart? There is a path from eye to eye and from eye to heart. Nothing happens by empty talk. Say you learned it; so what? You will also tell it to someone else, and you will boast about what you know. Instead you must practice what you know. Haqq11 appears only to Haqq who is Haqq. Come, you too forget about yourself and see Haqq. Make such a sajdah (prostration) that who makes it and to whom it is made become one. Say God, and disappear. You are the place where God is manifest. You are the dawn. The place where the sun rises. We call what we see „manifest‟ and what we don‟t see „hidden‟. We separate them. For those who know, the manifest and the hidden are one. Everyone wishes to make someone resemble himself. We also wish to make you resemble us. A person who is a drug addict wishes to make everyone he talks to a drug addict. We also wish to make people addicted to whatever we are addicted to. We are addicted to God and the truth; we also wish you to become like that. O Lord! Sometimes you are outside me and sometimes inside. When I talk to the outside, you are outside me; when I talk to the inside, you are inside me. You are neither inside nor outside me. You are at me, I am at you. You are at the place which has no description. You are transcendent of space. You are my love, my heart, my soul! O Lord! 11

“The Truth”; one of the beautiful names of God. God is known and seen through this name.

104 When I feel myself I cannot feel you; when I feel you I cannot find myself. You are also transcendent of being felt. O my God! You are so sweet; I cannot resist your sweetness! Although He is clearly in the open, we cannot see Him. “I look from the eye of the servant I love,” He says. “I speak from his mouth, I hold from his hand,” He says. “Despite that, no definitions can contain what I am.” You know that whom you miss is closer to you than your jugular vein. You miss what is in you. I lay down on the couch, thinking, “I couldn‟t see any holy person in Samsun; I wonder if there is also one here in this town.” As soon as I fell asleep, someone told me in my dream that he would be waiting for me in the Grand Mosque at Saathane Square after the afternoon prayer. I woke up and immediately told my son to prepare for the mosque. I checked the time, and it was almost the time for prayer. The adhan started being called while we were on the bus; I worried that we wouldn‟t be able to make it in time, but we did. There were a few white-bearded elderly men in the mosque. I wondered which one he might be but couldn‟t find him. We exited the mosque; I was looking into their eyes one by one. I didn‟t get any signal from any of them; we sat by the fountain in the yard. Then my son said: “Look father! Someone is coming rapidly looking at us.” As soon as he arrived, he said: “I‟m sorry, I‟m late!” He pointed to my son: “Is he yours?” he asked “God‟s trust,” I answered. “I‟m a baker. I‟ve just put the breads into the oven and came to see you; I need to go now,” he said and left us. Somehow I was tongue-tied, I could neither ask his name nor his address. But there were those in Samsun as well, I saw that. Find someone who changes you. You look at yourself and watch how you change. “O friend! Change me some more, I need it!” you say. “I want not to learn but to change; make me like yourself.” Some say: “I couldn‟t understand you!” “Have you been able to understand yourself; if not, how can you understand me?” I tell them. “First understand yourself, then you will understand me, if your time allows.” There are many learned people, but those who see are few. I mean, those who see and who know what they see. There are many who look, but there are few who see. When you become a host, everyone passing by stops over; friends, friends of God, sultans stay there. And sometimes satan stays there. Everyone coming there leaves a bag, they leave all kinds of gems and jewels. What does satan leave? He leaves a large bag of doubts and scruples. Say, “Take your bag, satan,” without opening it. Say, “I‟m at my Lord‟s service, I don‟t need your gift, it‟s all yours,” and return his bag. Say that you are not curious, and return it immediately. Else, if you open the bag, you can‟t see the other gifts, and you can‟t reach God‟s grace and blessing.

105 We will first think, then speak. People fight each other because they speak first. We will not say everything that happens to come to our mind. We will say it after thinking about its consequences. We loved God at birds, the birds approached; we loved God at trees, the trees bent, the leaves shook; we loved God at streams, the streams bubbled over. We loved God at sea, the sea surged and hit the shore as a single wave. We are devoted to God; may God not separate us from God. We have one difference from you: We are accustomed to thinking first, speaking later. Get this training well, so much will change in your lives. First think and calculate, then speak. Don‟t make sudden decisions. For important decisions, definitely wait a night, sleep, and make your decision the next day. There is a significant difference between the decisions made in the morning and those made in the night. Shams Tabrizi‟s name was Muhammad Ali! He used to play hide-and-seek often when he was a child; nobody could find him when he hid. Therefore they gave him the name Shamsuddin Parwana (The Flying Shams). He was able to do tayy al-makan, that is, he was able to be present where he wished instantly. He burnt Rumi in such a way that Rumi has been whirling and burning people for centuries. He gave to Rumi once, and from Rumi it spreads to millions. There is no being other than God that can be relied on. The earth will not remain in its place; it will disintegrate and turn into dust. The earth is also a planet, it will vanish like every other planet. Do we know how many planets vanish every day? How many suns disintegrate in a second? Most of these stars and suns we see don‟t exist anymore, though their lights keep coming. We see the lights of those that are nonexistent in the sky. If we had given this effort that we give to seeking money to seeking God, we would have found Him long ago. We seek very well when we seek money. We used to stay up for days; we used to work before the computer until morning! How many days did we stay up for God until morning? He is the holy envoy. He is the only envoy we can reach as a human being! He is the mediator between God and the servant. We will reach God with him. The envoy between God and His Messenger was Gabriel. He is also a messenger. He is the messenger angel. “Amantu billahi wa mala'ikatihi, wa kutubihi, wa rusulihi.” You should believe in the Prophet. You should believe in the articles of faith. If you don‟t, your faith is deficient. You will believe in the existence of the angels, the books, the Prophet, and in the unity of God. “Wal yawmil akhiri wa bil qadari.” You should believe in the Day of Judgment and in Predestination. “Shafa‟at, o Messenger of God!” we say. But what is shafa‟at? Shafa‟at is our Prophet asking for mercy and forgiveness from God for his community of believers. It is his asking for their reaching the divine grace. God wants his heart from His servant. “Give me a house in the land of body; I gave you yourself, you also give me your heart,” He says. This is the Kaaba! The Kaaba of the heart! Rumi made his tawaf around it by whirling around himself. Let us be people of God. God is giving us chances; we don‟t give ourselves a chance. We block our own way.

106 Have you ever found a mistake of the friend of God? Have you ever looked for one? The friend of God says: “I act generously also to those who look for my mistakes; I make plenty of mistakes. I also get deceived if they want to deceive me.” The moment you look for his mistake, you have lost him. Then what should we do? We will follow his words. If we follow some and don‟t follow others, that‟s not right. You will trust him and follow his words. You will not leave him because he didn‟t act as you wish. If you always think that your mind‟s rights are right, you will be unable to trust and befriend anyone. When God comes to a heart, what does that heart become? It becomes the house of God. God looks from his window of eye. God speaks from his mouth. God holds from his hand. No matter how you live, be pleased and try to do something good. If it doesn‟t happen, don‟t rebel. Let us be pleased with God. So many have come and gone! My mother, father, and brother all went within a year! We still couldn‟t wake up. If we do, we will see the truth. We were in Konya yesterday. We went to Meram. There I recalled the meeting of Yunus Emre and Rumi; I began narrating it. Yunus asked the innkeeper how he could go to Konya. The innkeeper answered, “There are lovers from Khorasan, go and join them.” Yunus asked them, “O lovers! Would you accept me into your group?” They agreed, and they continued the journey together. When they approached Konya, the lovers said, “O, great sultan! We are very tired and hungry. Would you have a meal prepared for us, and also have halva dessert made?” They asked Yunus what he wanted, but he didn‟t answer. When they arrived, they smelled delicious halva. They became so joyful. Rumi met the lovers at the entrance hall: “Welcome my dear brothers!” he said. Yunus had also entered and kneeled behind the door. “Our sultan! You got halva made!” they said. “So your wish has been fulfilled,” Rumi told them, “but where is the one who wanted me?” and ran to Yunus: “Oh my dear!” he said, “Are you left here?” He embraced him in such a way that they couldn‟t separate for a while. Then they moved to the seclusion (khalwat) room. They stayed there for a couple of days and dived into oceans. “My sun is gone; come and be a consolation to my heart!” said Rumi. “Now your share is solitude, and mine is to wander,” answered Yunus; he bade farewell and left. Where are the people before us; what happened to them? They have all gone one by one. They were used to living comfortably. Where are our past acquaintances? We will all go when the time comes. Let us not be heedless; there is no way back when death comes! Let us save ourselves. Our only hope is the help and mercy of our Lord. This arena is the arena of those who feel as they live and who live as they feel. It is the arena of truth. It is not an arena of parrots. Here everyone speaks what he feels, sees, and lives. It is not an arena of reading books and narrating them. So many heads are cut in this arena, but nobody hears of it; that is, minds lose their authority here. Tell me what you want, and I‟ll tell you who you are. Do you want a house? Do you know how many people a house wears out? You can‟t be the owner of the house, you rent it until the end of your life, it is time-sharing. If I told you that you would in a month, would you have any worldly desires left, tell me? If they brought you mansions, would you say, bring it, bring some more? You would say, “What business do I have with houses or cars?” You wouldn‟t want a husband or a wife.

107 Don‟t come to the arena for yourself; come for God! “If two people come together and talk about me, I become their third one,” says God. “I become involved between those who look at each other while they talk,” He means. When you hold two mirrors against each other, an infinite image occurs. Those people who see themselves on others‟ faces have died before death. Find someone on whose face you see yourself. You will forget about yourself and see him as yourself. This is a different kind of seeing. I prayed so much years ago. “Please condescend to me,” I said. I prostrated myself on the sand on the seashore. “Please show yourself to me, o Lord!” I said. I waited for years. Then he devastated me, and showed that he accepted all my prayers. In fact, He had accepted my prayers years ago. Love with ants, birds, flowers; say “May I be sacrificed for You!” Love from a snapdragon flower and see. If it opens its mouth by itself, what do you do then? You lose all your strength and collapse to the ground. Seek refuge in your Lord in such a way that it will finish. Your seeking refuge is not sufficient! If you sought refuge sufficiently, you would fly over mountains and would have no troubles left. Whatever trouble you have, run from it to God. If something bad happens to a small child, he runs to his mother, saying “Mom, mom!” You too take refuge in God; run to God. Lovers embrace Haqq and whirl with Him. Did you see a Mawlawi dervish whirling in the air? Those who embrace Haqq whirl in the air. Whatever makes you forget God is harmful. “It is burning here,” she says and shows her heart. So what was it? Her husband was making her sad. Burn for God; let your heart burn for God, then nothing else can burn you. Are you sure that you go somewhere sincerely for God? If you are, then don‟t interfere no matter what happens. Wait and see what will happen! If we receive harm from somewhere, it is because we couldn‟t seek refuge well in God. There is no seeking refuge with doubts and hesitation. You want to get rid of your troubles, but I am trying to bring a greater trouble to you. Let your trouble be big; so it will swallow the small troubles. Say, “O my God! Is there a trouble greater than yearning for you?”

 The mirror of God, who is without any marks or descriptions, is nothing. Find nothingness and watch the existence. Because reflection of reality is seen in the mirror... Do you love your destiny? Loving your destiny is being pleased with God. Because God decided it. Say, “O my dear God, if you deem living like this suitable for me, if you decided

108 this destiny for me, then I‟m also pleased with it. Because I love you so much. I‟m pleased with the destiny you decide, I‟m pleased with every hardship I experience. But you know, I‟m weak, so don‟t lay on this weak one a burden greater than he can bear, please. Make this weak, humble servant of yours from those who find guidance with your grace. I love you. I‟m pleased with your decision; but I‟m weak, make my way easy, o my God!” God is very generous to us. Are there any of you having any problem due to hunger? Anyone suffering from hunger among us? Anyone suffering from thirst? Anyone who doesn‟t have a dress to cover himself? Do you know that dresses are to cover oneself? We forgot it long ago. It became a matter of apparel for us. Forgetting the covering function of dress means abundance. Do you know that eating is about relieving one‟s hunger? Eating has now become about taste and palate. Like dressing, eating has also become a pleasure. How about sleep? The Master of the Universe used to sleep on a mat with a piece of adobe under his head. The most beloved servant of God lived like that. Is there a life easier than ours? You get on the car and you are where you want to be within minutes. You go by plane wherever you wish if you have a little more financial ability. There are villagers who have never seen a town in their lives. There are villagers who put the bread baked in the city into their own bread baked in the village as relish and eat it as “whitish bread.” Let us remember the blessings of our Lord with thanks. Let us be thankful for what we have reached rather than complaining about what we couldn‟t reach. People love those who are kind to them and who treat them well. This is not real love. The love I understand is different: To see both the blessings and afflictions of the beloved as one. To love both the beautiful and the unpleasant states of the beloved. Sometimes I expected attention from the friend of God. At such times he said, “Go. Don‟t you have any work to do, go!” even before I had a chance to sit down. “No problem. I must love him no matter what he does,” I used to tell myself. Then he humiliated me among people I knew. You shouldn‟t interfere with what he does. You should come when he tells you to come, and go when he tells you to go; then you will win. You shouldn‟t say, “Why is he doing this;” you shouldn‟t criticize. You should interpret everything you experience favorably. Meanings are manifest through appearances. Those who look at the appearance taste the meaning from that appearance. God gives pleasure to people of appearance through appearances, and to people of meaning through meanings. He grants the wishes of people of appearance through appearances. Meanings and appearances both have different kinds of wisdom in them. The people of wisdom who have a sharp vision observe both of them with awareness. The feeling you get from the appearance you see is the meaning. The hidden treasure is also seen in appearances. A treasure is hidden in appearances which are open to the observation of all. Appearances are places of manifestation. The appearance is what reflects the meaning; beautiful feelings are received from the appearance. Various sorts of meanings are hidden in a flower. Be a person of wisdom, be aware, and know every appearance as a meaning that has become manifest. There is this expression, “I created,” which has become so common among people today. One does a little thing and says, “I created.” To say, “I created,” one needs to give existence to something that was nonexistent. This whole universe was completely nonexistent and

109 then came into existence. By one command, He said “Be,” and it was. God Almighty gave existence to nonexistence in shapes and appearances. He created fire, water, earth, and air. He mixed those with each other and made appearances. Appearances don‟t exist in reality; they are created from nothingness. Those which are created from nothingness are called an appearance. It has a shape, a place, a description, and an explanation, but the real being has no explanations. The real being cannot be described like appearances. For that reason, God cannot be described, the spirit cannot be described. That is, the being that really is cannot be described. The nonexistence, that which is not, became the universe and appeared by the command, “Be.” What do you rely on? Buildings? Your children? Let's ask the old people who relied on their children. Are their children taking care of them as they took care of their children? Now think about a mother's heart. Can the compassion and love a mother's heart has for her children be found in the children‟s feeling towards their elderly parents? This is one-sided love! A mother's love towards her children is one-sided love. She loves whether she is loved back by her child or not. She embraces her child; every state of the child appears pretty to the mother. In physical love, those who mutually love become happy. Physical love is unfaithful. Spiritual love is faithful. Physical love expects its return. What is the secret of this nonexistence? What a surprising wisdom this is! In some sense, the nonexistent is existent, and the existent is nonexistent. Is this comprehensible? I mean, today we call the soul nonexistent, but in fact it is existent. These appearances we see are nonexistent. Existence and nonexistence appear to be reversed in this world. What will happen if the earth approaches the sun too much? The sun is expanding. What technology will stop it? Is there any technology on earth that can stop the sun? The sun will swallow the earth. When? It's uncertain... It is expanding at an increasing rate. On the other side, the ozone layer is being damaged. What will you do? Go and stop the sun; go and fix the hole in the ozone layer. We are not belittling what the humankind has made and invented; these are great things with respect to the human being. I mean, they are great achievements for the societies on earth, but they are very small things with respect to the universe. When it snows forty inches in winter, life stops helplessly. It is like that in every country. If the earth cracks and lava spews out, what will you do? Where will you run if it spews from all sides? You will die like a helpless ant. Don‟t you see that you can‟t make four cars travel in a city properly. Cars crash everyday and many deaths occur. In this universe, in the Milky Way galaxy, hundreds of billions of suns rotate, but none of them crash into another. Each of them revolves around a center as well as around themselves. The whole universe is revolving. They don‟t collide; none of them gets out of its orbit and crashes into another. Even if one does, it is by the command of that power. If a meteor hits the earth, it is also by the command of that power. It is no accident. If you want a lesson, there are many lessons in the Qur‟an. The truths are written in the Qur‟an openly and clearly. If some verses are closed today, it is because their time has not come yet. Just like the fact that two seas meet but don‟t mix was understood in this century. In the previous centuries, its time had not come yet. Captain Cousteau researched the two

110 seas, saw that they didn‟t mix, and found a clear expression of this in Chapter Rahman in the Qur‟an. If the time comes, the Qur‟an will answer every century. Today, meanings of some chapters of the Qur‟an are still not known. They are not known because their time has not come yet, because the Qur‟an will speak until the Judgment Day. Our principle is to learn man and his truth, through the support of Yunus Emre. We have learned and assimilated most of these things we are telling you from his poems. We compared them with today‟s circumstances and derived certain conclusions. The only assurance is to seek refuge in God‟s power; there is no other assurance. We have our God; not even an atom of those who trust in God gets harmed. Those who expect help from psychics and spirits are not our friends. We have said that the existent is nonexistent. Those which are seen in fact don‟t exist, they have been created from nothingness; but what is not seen exists. That unseen is what really exists, the eternal, what is without any marks. What is nonexistent is transient, mortal, and apparent. What does nonexistent mean? It means something that will not exist. For instance, this beautiful body will decay and turn into dust. Let us take good care of our body as well; but let us not rely on it. It wrinkles, crinkles, puckers, and gets buried under the ground. As Yunus Emre says, “I saw so beautiful people who are under that ground, lying at rest.” You realize the difference of existence and nonexistence through prostration. You need to prostrate; you cannot realize it in any other way. You must prostrate. Let your forehead touch the ground and see. Your most valuable part is your forehead. It‟s your most honorable part. But you will put it on the ground in the presence of Him who created you. At the moment it touches the ground, you pass into nonexistence. That is, your body passes into nonexistence and your soul into existence. The mirror of God, who is without any marks or descriptions, is nothing. Find nothingness and watch the existence. Reflection of reality is seen in the mirror. God, which is the essential, is hidden in meaning, in the unseen. Those who are not aware of their own existence cannot be aware of God. Those who are not aware of their own spirit cannot know God. Only the spirit can know Him. This body, this appearance is mortal; it will vanish. Then give up hope of relying on it. Let us study, work, and make money in this world; but let us also prepare for tomorrow. Let us not worship worldly goods. Give up your hope of them and seek the love that is eternal. What is love? Love is not to see, like, and desire someone. We don‟t even know what love is yet. Love is to want what you have never seen. Wanting what you have seen so far is not love. Love is to want what you‟ve never seen, to miss what you‟ve never seen. Love is to give up flesh and bones and to want what is eternal. Love is to be close to the eternal. Love is the desire to unite with the eternal. Love is the purpose of returning to the real home. Love is the longing for one‟s home. The real love is the yearning for one‟s homeland. Love is the desire to return to where you came from; it is a raindrop‟s falling into the ocean. It is a raindrop‟s getting lost in the ocean, a raindrop‟s becoming the ocean. Are you still concerned with the drop? The drop has become the ocean and you are asking what happened to the drop. Forget about the drop now.

111 Some ask, “Who will feel the pleasure when I don‟t exist?” Haqq will feel the pleasure when you don‟t exist. The pleasure is actually His. The real pleasure is the pleasure of Haqq. He loved Himself from appearance to appearance, He yearned for Himself from appearance to appearance, He missed Himself from appearance to appearance, He wished Himself, He united with Himself, and He shouted a cry of reunion. You have experienced the love of the body; now seek the love of the soul. Strive to watch the beauty of God, the Lord of all blessings, and make your soul happy. Make your soul reach that pleasure. The body becomes happy in this world when it reaches its desires. But the soul becomes sad that it is away from what it wishes. The soul is sad where the body is happy. The soul begins to become happy if the body endures some hardship on the path of God and falls into the woes of love and experiences some hardship for that. In some sense, we are not parents or children of anyone. Because we saw appearances vanish, we forgot the relationship of the appearance. We are under the influence of the relationship of what is unseen, what is inward. Then we are all the same. Then we are all one. You cannot reach unity without seeing the sameness. You cannot remain in unity without giving your heart to someone who has become one. You cannot know the hearts without passing from one to one. We need unity, in order to reach the meaning of the oneness of being. In order to dive into the secret of oneness.