The Witness Within

Someone was sitting with bawa, and they asked him, “Will there ever come the time when I will be able to see through my eyes what I see when I’m looking at your eyes?” And Bawa responded, “When the day comes when the “I” in you becomes a “we,” you’ll be able to do that.” Now the fact that Bawa could pun in English like that is quite extraordinary. But more extraordinary is that understanding. The...

Different religions and different sects and different teachers approach things in different ways. Some teachers teach a religion of exclusivity. They say that in order for you to be among those who are with God, you must do things not only in a certain way, but you must belong to this sect. You must belong to this group. You must belong to this denomination. And you must believe exactly in the way...

In the physical world, consequences are readily apparent. If you throw a rock at a glass, there’s a crash and the glass will shatter. Like that, physical consequences are not difficult to see. They are not only apparent in the sense of the reality of the physical world, they are apparent to all of your senses. Sounds cause disturbances. Various physical manifestations cause other things to happen....

You’ve all watched sports, and some have participated in sports. Sports is an industry. And in the industry, you have lots of different people involved in it doing lots of different things. It starts out with the people who go to work to build the stadium. Then, you have the people who own the teams. Then, you have the people who buy the tickets to watch. Then, you have the people who broadcast th...

When people ask you, “Where do you live,” the response is usually something like “America” or “Turkey” or “Philadelphia” or “Istanbul” or “Canada” or “Toronto.” In other words, it’s a place. We all identify ourselves with living in a place. Some people might say, “I live on the planet Earth,” which would cover most of the countries. But still, people identify themselves with a specific spot somewh...

When humans are born, they are incredibly vulnerable and they have to be taken care of for a long time before they can fend for themselves. A baby is really without the capability of making it in this world without somebody nurturing it and raising it and teaching it. Now slowly that baby, over the course of time, goes from vulnerability to being able to take care of itself. And there is a change...

In ancient cultures, especially in Africa and South America, we describe certain parts of those cultures as taboos. In other words, things these people won’t go near, things these people won’t do, things these tribal ancient cultures are afraid of.  They have had ingrained in them since they were very very young, the fact that in addition to what they see, there are other things going on that they...

Shakespeare told us that the world is a stage, and we are all players. Now, the concept of being an actor in this world is an interesting one. But if you’re an actor in this world, there are times when you are also an audience in this world. We participate as actors, and we participate as audiences. We should ask ourselves, in our act, who are we playing to? And as an audience, who are we listenin...

It’s been said that this world is a farm for the next world. In other words the seeds are planted here, but you don’t see what grows until the next world. Now, in order to understand that and in order to understand the consequences of that, you have to be able to see what you can’t see with these physical eyes. You have to be able to comprehend things that are only available to you through faith....

The way we’ve been taught sufism in this century and in the past century in America is different than the way it was done in the past. In the past groups were hidden. Tariqats were hidden orders where people didn’t live as out in the open in society as they do now. The orders werern’t monastic in the understanding of Christian monastism because marriage was permitted. But there was a certain monas...

At the beginning of the French Revolution, people were screaming, “Liberty, equality, fraternity,” and shortly thereafter came the guillotine. In Cambodia they were talking about an entire new generation of people and a society that was equal to all, and then came the killing fields. In Russia Stalin talked about, “From each according to his abilty to each according to his needs,” and then came th...

Many different people can be looking at the same thing and see entirely different scenarios. Someone looking at an engine of a car who is a mechanic, can look at it and through his various senses of sight and sound, can diagnose if there is a problem. While someone who doesn’t understand the mechanics of an automobile, it means absolutely nothing because to him it is a black box. To somebody else...

There was once an arranged marriage between a student at a madrassa, a religious school, who was a brilliant student, and the daughter of the director of the school. This was a very prominent school, and the director of the school was a very prominent man, he was of a very high genealogy and his lineage was the best in the entire area. And it was the custom in this town to announce the genealogy o...

I want to say first, welcome everybody here, it’s so good to see you all again. Al-hamdu lillāh. It’s a great joy to be among lovers. And I can see the love in the faces that I am looking at. And when lovers come together love grows. May we have fertile ground today. The path of Sufism is a path of maturity. We are all born into this world and we all age, but we don’t necessarily become mature. Ma...

As we go through our life, we are either going towards the path of reality or moving backwards from reality and getting more and more involved in the world. The idea of purification is essential for ridding ourselves of attachment to the world, so that we can get closer to reality. It has been said that if the entire world was worth as much as one wing of a mosquito, then the wicked would not have...

As we go through our life, we are either going towards the path of reality or moving backwards from reality and getting more and more involved in the world. The idea of purification is essential for ridding ourselves of attachment to the world, so that we can get closer to reality. It has been said that if the entire world was worth as much as one wing of a mosquito, then the wicked would not have...

This world is full of oppositions. And we are constantly in situations where we have opinions. And we run into people who have different opinions than we have. This creates a situation where one person opposes another and difficulties arise from these oppositions. Anytime you get two or more people together these things happen. In the west we have formalized this, we call it politics. It’s a nice...

We all know the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments are the basis for morality and for the sharī‘at or the cannon law or the chalacha of the monotheistic religions. However, the Ten Commandments don’t say, thou shalt love. It is not a commandment. In various religions when a child reaches a certain age, they become accountable for adherence to the laws. There is a huge controversy in Christ...

To know yourself is a daunting enterprise. It’s been said that if you can accomplish this you will know your Lord. The reason for existence has been something that men have thought about for ages. Many have concluded that the reason for existence is to actually come to know the Lord of creation, our Lord, the one who created us. And we’ve been told that the path towards this knowing, towards this...

Recently, very recently I was dealing with a client who has been a client of mine for over thirty-five years. And he’s one of the brightest men I have ever met. However, he’s eighty-four years old and his memory isn’t what it used to be. Here’s a man who is used to being always right and never making mistakes. And being incredibly methodical in the way he went over things, over and over and over a...

Wise men often explain situations through allegories, stories that when told depict a certain situation and then bring your own awareness of certain things to a different level. Sometimes you don’t get it. Sometimes you hear the allegory and you really don’t have any idea what they are talking about. And then the teacher will explain the allegory and then you can get more insight into the situatio...

Anyone who studies the cultures on this planet will notice very quickly that there are many different religions, there are many different religions throughout the world and they don’t even predominate in particular areas. There may be areas where there are many different religions. There may be areas where there is just one religion that predominates and doesn’t allow any others. There are some ar...

We have all seen westerns and we have all seen the situation where the guys with the black hats are running the town, and then the lawman arrives. The man with the white hat rides into town and all of a sudden the black hats either become very confrontational or begin to scurry around or hide or develop new strategies to handle the white hat. Before the white hat came into town they sort of ran fr...

The body of divine instruction in Islam comes not only from the Qur’an but also from the hadīth. The hadīth are the sayings of the Prophet, but in addition there are also the stories of what the Prophet did in certain circumstances. In other words how the Prophet acted. There is a story of the man who was asked why he went to see the great shaikh. And his response was, “I went to see how he puts h...