something new but merely a re-opening of the way already opened up for
the chosen few by the Prophet and a further elucidation of this way. The
actual experience of the Presence of God by a Sufi seemed to lie at the basis
of this shift. Considering the impossibility of understanding an experience
available only to a select few, as well as the equally impossible task of expressing
verbally something so exceedingly rare, it is best to turn to the actual
descriptions left by the Sufis.
Bayazid described his spiritual attainment thus: ‘When the Lord released
and separated me from all creation and endowed me with His effulgence,
and made me aware of His secrets, then I saw the Lord with my own eyes (of
faith).And when I compared His effulgence with mine, the latter looked like
a dark spot, and before His glory and majesty I looked puny and of no worth.
Before His purity I was impure.
‘I learnt that it is only when He confers strength that we can carry on our
spiritual practices, so the real Doer of all acts is God.
‘When the Lord annihilated my ego, and enlivened me with His eternity
and revealed His unveiled Self to me, I saw the Lord through His
instrumentality, and at that moment I turned mute, devoid of the sense of
hearing and was totally illiterate.The curtain of ego being removed, I stayed
in that state for long without the help of any organs of sense.Then the Lord
bestowed on me divine eyes and divine ears and I found everything was in Him.
‘Then, at His instance, I asked from Him and prayed to Him that He
might keep me near Him and away from the persons and things of the world,
and from everything non-God and alien from Him.Thereupon He conferred
His grace and I entered the Palace of Divine Unity (
tauhid
) where I was
told that thenceforth my will shall be His.
T owar d s Mys t i c i sm 40
