TenTreasures_SSDT, #CallsOfTheTruth_SSDT From the Spiritual Outpourings of the Noble Imām of Hassanī Pedigree, Shaykh Ṣalāḥ El-Dīn al-Tījānī,

#TenTreasures_SSDT, #CallsOfTheTruth_SSDT
From the Spiritual Outpourings of the Noble Imām of Hassanī Pedigree,
Shaykh Ṣalāḥ El-Dīn al-Tījānī, may Allah be pleased with him.
BOOK: Calls of The Truth (Hawātif al-Haqq)
Call/Hātif #1: The Secret Realm and the One More-Hidden
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The servant is always receiving from his Lord.  That reception takes place in two of his inner realms: The Realm of the Secret (`ālam al-sirr) and the one More-Hidden (`ālam akhfā).  He, the Exalted, said: “He knows the secret and what is [even] more hidden”[1]. So, what are these two realms: the secret and the more-hidden?

We know that the Blown Spirit in us is absolute and nondelimited [2], whereas our bodies, being created from clay, are bounded and delimited. The unbounded cannot accept delimitation and the undelimited cannot deal with the absolute.

So when Allah ﷻ blew His Spirit (rūḥ) in the human body, the human soul (nafs) was created as an isthmus between the unbounded spirit from one side and the bounded mind and body from the other.  In other words, the nafs has two faces: one face towards the unbounded spirit and the other towards the created, and hence delimited, mind and body.

The secret realm (`ālam al-Sirr) refers to that space between the nafs and the mind/body whereas the space from the other side of the nafs, facing the spirit, is the more-hidden realm (`ālam ‘akhfā).

One of Allah’s bounties is the creation of that secret realm.  Anything that you want to keep hidden from others, you can keep there.  Even the Angels and Satan don’t know what you keep in there although it is in that realm that the Angels inspire you and Satan tries to seduce you.  In other words, even though that realm is the arena of their communications with you, Angels can’t record what you have there for they don’t see it; and Satan can’t ruin it even if he wanted since he, too, don’t have access to it [3].

In the deeper more-hidden realm, Allah, the Exalted, communicates directly with His servant, i.e. that’s where Allah ﷻ talks to us.  Sadly, we are so outwardly preoccupied with ourselves and our lives that we neglect that Holy Realm.  The denser our human nature is, the more heedless we are of the Most High Companion.

He, the Exalted, said: “And recall what time when your Lord took from the children of Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify of themselves, [saying to them], "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we have testified." [This] - lest you should say on the day of Resurrection, "Indeed, we were of this unaware”, [4]. This event took place in the more-hidden realm.
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Phrases like “Ḥā Mīm (حمٓ)” and the like are part of the speech that takes place in the more-hidden realm.  And even though a phrase like Ḥā Mīm is very simple, it contains many meanings like the waves of an ocean [5].

Look at the Quran, we read it and we think that we understood it.  Even if we could mentally understand its outward (Zhāhir) meaning, there is a wider and a deeper understanding to be grasped in the Secret Realm and even a bottomless understanding if we are in touch with our More-Hidden Realms.

It is easy for the us to remember what we have in our secret realms but we can’t remember what we have in our more-hidden realm unless Allah, the Exalted, bestow an opening (Fatḥ) upon us.

Allah ﷻ is always speaking to us in our more-hidden realm [6] and we are in constant communication with Him.  But because of our dense human-nature, we don’t remember any of that.

Finally, know that the Secret Realm vaster than the Visible Realm (`ālam al-Shahāda) and that the More-Hidden Realm is the vastest of all realms.
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Translator’s note: This is not a verbatim translation of the original Arabic text.  I took some liberty with the order of words and phrases, while trying to keep the gist of the message untouched [Sh. Ahmad Shawqī Al-Tījānī].
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[1]- Quran 20, Taha: 7.
[2]- Quran 38, Ṣād: 82.
[3]- An analogy shared by Sh. Mahmoud Atijany: As data-entry operators for a large database system, the operators have an authorization to enter data and they have access (an entry point) to the database. They obviously know the data they are entering but they don't know about the database or the data that other operators are entering. In the same way, Angels and Satans have access to the secret realm (`ālam al-Sirr) in the form of an entry-point, but they are unaware of the contents of that realm (rather than what they deposit).
[4]- Quran 7, al-‘A`rāf: 172.
[5]- Look at the word Ḥub (حب) or love.  A simple word that consists of just two letters (Hā’ and Bā’) and yet it contains many meanings.  We could be talking about the love one has for his wife, or for his parents, or for his children or even for His Lord.  We could be talking about the love between friends or the members of a group, … etc.  One very simple words, yet it has many denotations.
[6]- As an example, Shaykh Salah, may Allah be pleased with him, once said, that before Allah ﷻ inflicts a sickness upon us, He ﷻ asks us first and gets our consent before such sickness manifests in the Visible Realm.