During an inauspicious period when the masses suffered concentric separations and succumbed to darkness, and when societies were stranded and stunted, their people losing hope as they were diverted from the path, these travelers of light essentially taught all exhausted travelers the qualities and conditions of being privileged as “the best of creation.” They invited the weary to self-respect, rousing the eyes and ears of those who had stopped walking on the path, and promising resurrection to lifeless hearts.

Thanks to their profound disposition and representation, over time, the abyss between the soul’s horizon and humanity became nothing more than a plain. The seemingly insurmountable peaks turned into highways. Each sea of blood and pus became a crystal clear waterfall. The travelers of light led the stricken, hopeless souls towards the horizon of light beams.

The travelers of light were created from dirt and clay, too; however, after spiritual transformations, they took wing in tandem with the creatures of light. They lent their wings to those in their environment so they could soar towards the peaks of “annihilation in God” (fana fillah) and subsistence with God (baqa billah). These are realms with no element or quality. Leaving their corporeal edifice a step behind and finding their metaphysical profundities far better, they ascended toward the realms where angels resound “May God bless you!” (barakallah). They even ventured toward the inexplicable domains far beyond the essence, where they urge, “Ride forth, for you have the ball and the mallet.” 

Almighty God, with His Divine will, majestic might and power, perfect favor, and profound compassion, reciprocated their step toward him with miles of proximity, bestowing innumerable favors on them for their turning toward Him, even if they just turned an inch. He conferred on them boundless Divine favors in return for their loyalty. He replied to their limited love and affection with His infinite and boundless kindness. He produced downpours of favor that no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and no mind has ever imagined.

Due to this, the travelers of light started fluttering between amazement (hayra) and stupor (hayman). They couldn’t think of leaving that atmosphere, even for a while.  How could they, when they always had an eye far beyond the horizons? When their hearts beat with eagerness for infinity and their emotions burst forth with the joy of love and unity? Of course, as they ascended to the “inexplicable” peaks on top of the atmosphere, they – by conferring all that pertains to the carnal self to anger and sensitivity – were filled with a profound sense of humility, modesty, shame, and awe, and each was inversely proportional with their horizons of sensation.

Sometimes, they sobbed and said:

“If the Compassionate One weighs me with these sins,
The Scale at the assembly place of Judgement will break!”
Sometimes they thoroughly criticized themselves:
“I glanced at the universe’s book of deeds,
I have not seen any book rivaling the anthology of my sins!”

As opposed to these blessed soldiers of truth who have always been dedicated to veracity and still run from one peak to another, there are also ill-fated, ever-shackled slaves of lust, fame, pomp, show, and power. They are those following Satan and his posse. Since they have turned away from servanthood to God, they have chased innumerable idols. Besides losing the hereafter, they have turned their world into hell thanks to stress, angst, and paranoia. They have lived with the fear and worry of losing all they have acquired, and by fabricating whimsical foes, they have engaged in fighting them, both plainly and secretly. They have spent their power and strength on tyranny, injustice, domination, oppression, aggression, and molestation. They have stooped to the position of being more evil than the most damned tyrants.

Within the constant cycle of historical recurrences, the slaves of pomp, power, reign, and fame have always displayed parallel attitudes to one another. They have all resorted to similar tricks, fooled the masses with similar conspiracies, and eventually fell into a pit of their own digging. How nicely Sheikh’ul-Islam Ibn Kemal puts it:

“Given a pick in the hand of your carnal self,
Do not dig a pit on the path of anyone.
Whoever digs a pit on the path of another,
Himself falls face down into that pit.”

With no exception, the arrogant, egotistical bullies of the past perished in similar finales. Surely, today’s fanatical and delirious tyrants, who disregard fairness, consideration, and justice, will meet the same end in the very near future.

In contrast to them, the radiant faces who are directed towards the right course always see the truth, think accurately, and strive to deliver others toward the truth. They lend a saving hand to those tripped and dragged by Satan. By showing them the signs along the road, the radiant souls arouse the shaken ones, orienting them toward light and radiance. It is their indispensable wish to save those who deviate from the oppression of falsehood. It is their mission to deliver them to the joyous clime of truth and justice, hence crowning their lives with the sentiment of letting others live.

No matter how dark days may turn, what distress weeks may bring, or what months may start and end in oppression, the radiant souls smile towards the future, believing:

“The night is always gravid with joy and sorrow,
See what emerges from the womb of the night before the daybreak!”

They walk on toward that sacred destination that is the object of their wishes and say, “Every night has its dawn and every winter has its spring.” They walk on by seeing each trouble and predicament as a font of purification, heedful that domination and tyranny are two inseparable trials placed on the path of prophets. Aware of walking towards infinity and turning down worldly offers, they walk toward eternity and reach beyond the world, to where the splendors of infinitude are apparent. They do so already intoxicated by and languid with the reflections on the beyond.  

May God bless the diligent travelers of this path thousands of times! Shame on the futureless, miserable tyrants who want to turn them away from this path!

Meaning fear and dismay in the face of a frightening event or situation, utmost astonishment is the feeling of shock which travelers to God experience during their spiritual journey on coming face to face with the manifestations of the Beauty and Grace of the AllBeloved. Although there is no explicit statement touching on it in the Book or in the Sunna, a relation with the verse (12:31), whose meaning is, When they saw him, they so admired him that they cut their hands, can be established.

Some have described utmost astonishment as the shock when encountering an incident beyond one’s understanding and endurance, and power to explain. This can also be described as experiencing the truth that the Divine manifestations exceed the limits of reason, and that love for God goes beyond the limits of patience; and getting into a state beyond one’s capacity of perception.

We add here some further explanations about this state:

Travelers on the way to God feels astonishment when the state in which they find themselves exceeds the limits of their knowledge and perception, and then they go into a state of ecstasy beyond their endurance, where God will favor them with spiritual discoveries disproportionate to their efforts. One can go into ecstasies unintentionally when reciting the Qur’an or performing Prayers, although selfpossession and a feeling of awe are essential to both; the heart can go into spiritual arrhythmia as a result of excessive rapture, destroying the balance and selfcontrol in an initiate; a traveler on the way to God behaves hastily and sometimes in an uncontrolled manner, under the enrapturing influence of witnessing God’s signs, although seeking God always demands loyalty and faithfulness. All of these are causes of utmost astonishment.

When, under the influence of the state that the initiates have entered upon, or because of the spiritual pleasure they feel, they see the whole creation annihilated in God’s Existence and all time ending in eternity, and the spirit witnessing God’s signs, then they are swept up in astonishment. That is the spiritual station where travelers on the way to God can hear through God’s Own Hearing and see through God’s Own Sight.1

When the slopes of the heart are unexpectedly exposed to the shower of gifts from the AllGlorified and the Divine favors, when the lights of nearness to God envelop one, and when secrets are disclosed to the extent that they result in reaching the horizon of worshipping God as if actually seeing Him, astonishment pervades the whole being of the lover of God. The person is then lost in the depths of selfannihilation and the considerations of astonishment. The following verses of Gedai, expressing this spiritual station, are truly beautiful:

I did not know myself as I see me now,
I wonder whether He is me or I am Him?
This is the point where lovers lose themselves;
I have burnt away, so give me water!

This feeling experienced by those still on the journey may sometimes cause confusion. For this reason, those who do not lead their lives in strict accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunna and who do not feed their subconscious with the lights that emanate from the sun of Prophethood, upon him be peace and blessings, may be deceived through the influence of these feelings and experiences. Such deception may lead them to utter words of pride incompatible with the rules of Shari‘a, words that are irreconcilable with selfpossession.

Stupor (Hayman) is used to denote one whose thirst is deepened by drinking, not quenched or satisfied, and also one who is mad with passionate love.
In Islamic Sufism, stupor means that an initiate is deeply in love with God, and therefore loses selfcontrol in great ecstasy, drowning in wonder, appreciation, and spiritual pleasures under the influence of the surprising Divine gifts and manifestations that pervade the heart during the journey to God. Since there are no explicit statements in the Qur’an and the Sunna concerning stupor, many exacting scholars have tended to see it, like astonishment, as a spiritual state rather than a station, something transient rather than lasting. Although some have attempted to relate it to the verse (7:143), Moses fell down in a faint (as if struck by lightning), it is evident that the situation of a Messenger receiving Divine Revelation cannot be reconciled with a faint. So, I feel that we should approach Moses’ falling down in a faint on Mount Sinai as his conscious astonishment and shock, an attitude that he felt was fitting for him in the face of God’s partial manifestation of His Majesty in all Its transcendence and above all corporeality.

Like astonishment, stupor can also be analyzed in three categories:
When initiates, aware of their helplessness, poverty and worthlessness before God, are favored with Divine gifts far beyond their capacity during the first stages of their journey, then they—like Prophet Job, who entreated God, saying, “I cannot be indifferent to any of Your favors,”30 —joyfully desire more and more gifts. Such an attitude, when observed in those who are on the way, is characteristic of those in the first stages.
In the face of abundant gifts granted in advance in response to the sincerity of the initiate and his or her virtue that God knows that he or she will acquire in the future, the initiate renews him or herself in perception, spirit, and will, and observes with deep pleasure the wonders and marvels, whose doors have been half opened. In the mood expressed in the verse (66:8), Our Lord, complete our light for us!, the person, with great determination and spiritual tension, longs for and expects what lies beyond the favors already granted. The couplet of Gedai,

I have dipped my finger into the honey of love;
Give me some water!

very beautifully expresses this degree of stupor.

Initiates attain a state where they feel they are standing on the same point as their sight reaches and careful about where they put their feet, and they begin to observe the universe from the horizon of annihilation and disappearance. They reach the point where nothing other than God exists any more for them and they feel their existence annihilated in God’s Existence, which they experience every moment with a new manifestation of Him. They acquire an unshakable certainty that God always sees them, that certainty being a gift of recompense for reaching the highest point of excellence, and they overflow with the yearning and zeal to see Him.

We should mention here that all these favors come in proportion to the strength of belief, and as long as the initiates can maintain their relation with God from the heart and continue to lead their life in utmost loyalty to Him. This depends on strictly following the master of the creatures, upon him be peace and blessings. Any extraordinariness which arises in a state where one does not feel perfect attachment and devotion to him, is likely in most cases to be deceptive. Those seeking the gifts of the Almighty must certainly enter the circle of Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, and the lovers of the Almighty’s light must conform to the rhythm of that circle.

O God! I ask You for useful knowledge, and seek refuge in You from any knowledge of no use; and I ask You for acceptable action. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, and on his Family and Companions, all of them.

The lover pursues more and more knowledge of God, for every new Divine gift increases his or her desire. As this desire increases, new gifts pour into the lover’s heart. He or she embroiders the acquired knowledge of God with the feelings and thoughts traveling between his or her heart and things. Like a honeybee collecting nectar from flowers and thus making flowers the source of honey, the lover collects the nectar of the knowledge of God from the manifestations of Divine Names and Attributes that open like flowers in the garden of the universe. He or she distills the collected nectar through the filter of his or her appreciative, grateful conscience, and feels as if his or her sight has reached the rays of the Attributes themselves. Then the dream of reaching the Divine Being is realized, and the lover is stricken with the utter astonishment.

Sa’di, The writer of Gulistan (The Rose Garden) expresses the traveler’s feelings of astonishment and amazement while burning and drinking:

At times You show Your Beautiful Face,
but It is veiled without being completely seen,
thus You incite us to compete to be able to see You
and increase our fire.
When I see unveiled the Beloved
with Whom I have fallen in love,
something occurs to me
and I am bewildered on my way.
The Beloved lights a fire in my breast
and then puts it out with a drizzle.
That is why you find me burnt away
and drowned in an ocean.
Ismail Haqqi Bursavi presents travelers as incessantly intoxicated:
All saintly ones are intoxicated
with the pure water their Lord offers them (76:21);
seven, five, and four are intoxicated
with His Beautiful “Face.”

If the traveler has not prepared his or her heart according to the requirements of the spiritual journey and the commandments of the Shari’a, that is, if one does not think and reason in the light of the Prophethood while one’s feelings fly in the boundless realm of the achieved spiritual state, he or she will inevitably fall, be confused and bewildered, and speak and act contrary to the spirit of the Shari’a.

Mulla Jami’ expresses astonishment and amazement in his vivid language:
The women of Egypt were astounded and cut their hands when
they saw the beauty of Joseph. O Master, the light of my eyes,
if they had seen Your Beauty, they would have thrust the daggers
in their hands into their breasts. Speaking of Joseph’s
beauty where Your Beauty is mentioned, is no more than making
up stories.

In other words, if transient, worldly beauty and perfection that only reflect the Infinitely Perfect and Beautiful One through many veils can seduce us, how great will be our inability to perceive the dazzling awe and amazement produced by beholding and gazing upon that Beauty.

Those who prefer to serve Islam and the Qur’an at this point in time should not aim at all the pleasures, whether bodily or spiritual. Rather, they should continue their service, assisted by God, in awe of and with amazement at the extent to which God comes to their aid and makes them successful. They should never conceive of anything other than serving Islam. This is a special gift of amazement to the army of light from God’s special treasury of: We make the distribution among them (43:32).

O God! Create a light in my heart, a light in my tongue, a light in my sight, a light in my hearing, a light on my right, a light on my left, a light before me, a light after me, a light above me, and a light below me. And bestow blessing and peace on the one whom You sent as a light, on his Family and Companions, all of them.