FAKIR SOZLERI by Hasan Shushud Translated by Brent Hyder with Anthony Blake

http://www.toutley.demon.co.uk/Fakir.htm

Those who have not found Reality have made ceremonies into religion. The pleasure of Liberation is the possession of someone who is the essence of religion, and not possessed by religion. There are many who speak of God, none who know Him. Mysticism is the knowledge of non-existence. There is salvation for man, beyond the human state. Everything is you, but you are not you. To the extent you are not, you are dominant; to the extent you are, you are dominated. There is a fundamental error in worldly values: The non-existent is thought existent. There are no sons of Adam, there are only sons of Intelligence. Do not remain in the concrete, attain the abstract. The riddle of creation is solved by non-existence. Have you proof positive that your body is bodily? Many are awake, but none awakened from the human state. The satiated body strives for the limited, the hungry body for the absolute. If you are content with what you've found, how splendid! If not, that is the splendor of splendors! Verification is not the road to the "oneness of being", but to the "essence of being". Without asceticism you cannot change mere words into revelation.!' On the day you wander satiated, don't consider yourself a seeker.

There has never been peace for man, except in extinction. The spiritual guide wants a seeker with X-ray eyes; whose vision might see the unseen. Seek strength in weakness Seek riches in poverty Seek life in death Seek existence in non-existence. Asceticism puts the seeker in touch with the Divine Essence. It makes him independent of a guide. Hunger is the bread of the prophets, the dainty morsel of the saints. Prophethood is cheap, extinction is costly. He who does not achieve poverty is poor indeed. He who wanders the ocean, what has he to do with the river? He who reaches the absolute, what has he to do with the messenger? What does the toper know of drunkenness? Ask the alcohol what is intoxication. The world is a manifestation whose character is "as if it had never been". Eternity is found in non-existence; to the degree something is not there, it is eternal. The Unseen is the Bounty without obligations. Renounce worldly wiles that you may receive the perspicacity of the pre-eternal. Quitting this world is the greatest miracle. Everything is matter, but matter is not matter. Verily all existing things are reality, but reality is not real. Knowledge is the veil covering the Unseen. Know the value of grief, hold affliction dear. What your question is, your perfection is.

What you lost in being born, you will find in dying. The world is an unfinished business." Turn the page of existence, and the book is finished. The body is pure meaning that appears as matter. Go so far that "in you there is no you-ness left," in things no thing-ness left, and in God no Godhead left. On the road to extinction, you will be denied the permissible to make possible the impossible in the perfection. You will find the true life in death. In the logic of Verification, the minor premise is perception, the major premise is the unseen. The heedless are in a deep coma that is "Creation". The sole pleasure of the world is its evanescence. God is the abyss; those who love to fall discover. In the world be a stranger With the Divine Essence be as one. At the feast be the goblet. Attain the Realities and the difficulties are over. Mysticism is not about knowing but finishing. It is mysticism that comes with asceticism; it is imagination that comes with storytelling. Do not wander from door to door; what you desire is within you. Look at the disciples and discern the teacher. Don't search in the outside world: when nothing remains outside then you have come into Being. It does not happen through the Beautiful Names of God, it happens through extinction. Put aside the mysticism of consolation and go to the mysticism of manifestation.

In extinction every concept turns into a different truth. "The twenty years of Paganini. A body without asceticism is an instrument untuned. In extinction, the truth of what God is takes on another quality, another nature. He who attains verification is saved, today from darkness tomorrow from slavery. "Suffering, like a sculptor, chisels you from the block." The more your human nature dies, the more your essential nature emerges. Your loves and affections are your heedlessness. The world is a negative they call manifestation. "The human is a compromise between Being and Non-Being." The truth of the sons of Adam is expanded perception. The truth of the sons of Muhammed is extinguished perception. One who has found God has found everything. The eye was given that one might see what is unseen. The foot was given that one might reach the unreached. Aptitude and longing are the passive connection; Asceticism is the active connection. Other connections are illusions. The world and its ruins endure. The beginning of time is a darkness, radiant. The ending of time is a brightness, obscure. He who seeks the ipseity of faith reaches the source of all religions. Have you never reached a world without you? Be drowned in zikr; until neither the seeker nor the sought remains. Don't eat, don't eat; until hunger is your home and satiety exile. Hold affliction dear: until you are totally saved. Fall into the bottomless abyss that you may be free from falling, like the planets.

At one time they speak from below, another time from above...it seems a contradiction to us. Be a candle burning till dawn, that you may find Permanency. Extinction begins in the place where existence ends. The work is the transition from being to ecstasy. The spiritual guide is the light-house; he is not the destination, neither does he hide his light. The world is a poisonous mirage: it is worship that is its antidote. The true spiritual guide is the essential knowledge of the divine. One compelled by God is as gold leaf: crushed but not broken. 0 Shemsi Tebriz! What a sun you must have been that a single ray of your light became Master of the world. Put aside the religious laws, and find the Supreme Judge. The path of Verification passes sometimes through the tranquilities of the mosque and sometimes through the tavern of ruin. Your heart cannot come to life before you die. Lights deprive one of the mysteries. One sun sets, a thousand suns rise: in the evening of things visible, in the dawn of things hidden. Do miracles astonish you, or does love intoxicate you? For knowledge of the nonexistent, there is no codex. Seek a God not restricted to the Godhead. The animal Spirit is beyond the inorganic; The relative Spirit is beyond the body; The absolute Spirit is beyond all existences. What you have found is the obstacle to what you have not yet found. The things that are are without cause or purpose.

The spiritual guide is a mirror, whose value the beloved understands. The Inventor of the non-existent - what does this mean? Things holy are things non-existent. The task of the spiritual guide is to take you beyond you. Nirvana is a wine-cup with no bearer. Hunger resurrects the dead, satiety kills the living. Satan has concealed himself in the "Bismillah". What have you sought and not found in Islam ? Love is metaphorical, so long as it is between personalities or between Lord and slave. Mankind's pleasure is found between "Bewilder me" and "Forgive me"." Perception is the link between necessity and possibility. The more your heedlessness of True Realities, the more your unsureness in apprehension. The heedless are nourished on things existent, the perfected on things non-existent. Truth is the Lord of the uninitiated, the substance of the initiated. But for the rarest of the rare Truth is neither the one nor the other. The Absolute is the starting point and the answer to every question. Who does not reach non-existence has not reached the Truth. It is neither unity nor multiplicity, it is the discrimination of the Totality of meanings. Be consists of knowledge of the essence.'" Extinction resolves the "contrariness of the quiddities". Old wine is speech from a master of verification. What is sought is the music; the words are only a means.

What is desired is intoxication; the cup is only a pretext. What is sought from extinction in the wilderness of Tiyh is the manifestation on Sinai. What is promised from the Vision of the goal is the Canaan of the Unseen. If you are aware of the mystery, you will not strive to reform the World. The people of extinction find life in the fire, like the salamander. The highest zikr is to know even the highest zikr as heedlessness. He who has not been cast into the Nile cannot command the Red Sea. The perfect man is the meeting place of two worlds. He who says that God is One says "illa", the master of Verification says"la". Your body is the extent of your existence; your perception is the extent of your finding; Your absence is the extent of your pleasure in non-existence. Created things serve as reminders, like sums of money in the bookkeeping of itlaq. "What is my real name?" -Your glory is being nameless. You cannot explain the religions; their source is the secret of the Unseen. The ancient work is holy; "it was while you were not". "I am the Truth" is not mysticism. "To marry two humans is to force two universes to suffer each other." If it burns you, it is a work of art. There are those who bequeath and there are those who are bestowed. "The human is the shore between the infinitely existing and the infinitely nonexisting."

Events are non-eventful, accidents are non-accidental. Religions came from mysticism, not mysticism from religion Does that which is not you come to your knowledge? He who takes from extinction has taken from the lamp-niche of the Prophet. It is the master of verification who becomes the true realist; because he is saved from illusions. The world is a magnificent lie. Non-existence is home, existence is exile, to someone with high spiritual disposition On the path of itlaq, there is no idolatry of Allah. Be the porcelain bowl, that you touch once and then hear a thousand sighs, from your own breast.! "What is life? Nothing but strife." The greatest of multitudes is but a sublime phantom; the mightiest of thrones is the greatest of limbos. Piety is felicity, politics is catastrophe. The purpose of Creation is perception. Morals are physical emanations: whatever your first step is, so is your last. You cannot know the world until you've left it. There are no riches like poverty, there is no food like hunger. You cannot have known the relative, without having reached the absolute. The degrees of the seeker's progress are: insistent longing, fervent petitioning, coming into possession, and freedom from need.