BismillahirRahmanirRahim
The believer, breaking the fast now is not just eating. Breaking the fast, you eat you break the fast especially in countries where it is very difficult to fast. In America it is so easy, next 15 years, 20 years it’s going to be very easy. But we also did hard days also here in America. We also did 15 hours, 18 hours fast also here. We pass through those days too and Allah is making us to taste Ramazan in every seasons. There is also a secret to that.
So when it is very difficult, and when you are drinking, when you feel it, in some ways, alhamdulillah we don’t feel so much hunger and thirst during the Ramazan, there is another blessings, but when you feel that and you are taking the water, you say shukr alhamdulillah,
the pleasure that you feel from that when you are breaking your fast, He says it is going to be like that, the ni’mat, the pleasure, when you meet your Lord. So that means that before you meet your Lord, in reality you are fasting. When you meet your Lord, it’s like you break your fast. Because fasting you are separated. You are separating, the body needs the food, no? I’m not saying now that it is the food that is making the body to become alive. It is the spirit that is making the body to become alive. But Allah SWT is making everyone to understand, step by step, coming from the lowest point. Step by step now. Now, who is making the spirit now to become alive? It is Allah, our Creator and when we are going to meet Him now we are going to become more alive.
We don’t really understand what it means, because how many understands themselves, how many understands their Lord? And the Prophet (AS) says, ‘the one who doesn’t understand himself, he doesn’t understand his Lord. The one who knows himself, he knows his Lord.’ Tassawuf is all about knowing yourself. If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your Lord. You don’t know your Lord, you cannot worship your Lord. People don’t know, we are saying, you have this quality. You didn’t know. Now you know? ‘Yes I know.’ Now you are going to change? ‘I will try.’ Insya’Allah, ya Allah, we go on our journey. You are coming into Tarikat, you must know yourself. You know this for yourself? ‘No, I didn’t.’ Now you know? ‘I’m not accepting.’ Okay if you are not accepting, it’s okay also, but whatever that you are not accepting, it’s going to destroy you because you don’t know yourself, you don’t know how to fix yourself. That sickness now, you don’t know how to fix yourself, your worshiping and knowing Allah is going to be broken. It’s going to be broken. So the whole aim is knowing yourself.
Person is so arrogant, person is so stubborn. He doesn’t know. You know so many people they don’t even know they are angry people or they are arrogant people. Their prayer, their zikr, their worship, everything it is good, but one piece of anger it can destroy all your good deeds. I’m not saying this, our Prophet is saying this, aleyhi salatu wa salam. He is saying this. Anger burns our amal and our ibadats like fire burns the wood. Which is why Prophet (AS) is saying, there will be people who fast in the month of Ramazan and all they get from fasting in the month of Ramazan is just hunger and thirst. No sawab, no blessings, no understanding, no knowledge. And He is saying, there are those who worship all night long, nafila ibadat, in the month of Ramazan and all they get from that is just tiredness. No blessings. So where is the blessings coming from? And what is it that we are doing that is blocking the blessing to come? This is beyond now, this is not the worship. It is not the action. It has to do with the heart.
So Ramazan now, it has to do with the heart. You have to understand what is the heart. If your heart is not longing for your Lord, Allah, Allah, that heart must be dead. Because our heart, 24 hours, it’s saying, ‘Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu….’ If you listen to your heart, the way that it is beating, it’s saying, ‘Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu….’ And everything in creation is calling their Lord in their own language. Every animal, every fish, every atom, every insects, things that has been created, everything has a different life, not the same life, different life, and everything that is in existing Allah SWT has created that, that one is remembering his Lord. Even the galaxies they are circling around remembering their Lord. But the remembering of your Lord cannot be with the tongue, it has to be with the heart. And if the heart is not clean, then whatever you say with the tongue it’s not going to be too clean, whatever you do with the hands, with the body, with the everything is not going to be too clean. Your heart is clean, you cannot worship so much, you cannot do so much, but your heart is clean, you are going to get the blessings more than those ones that their hearts are not clean but they do everything. Because that one whose hearts are clean they see the reflection of their Lord and they start to know themselves, and they start to know their Lord, and they become very beloved to their Lord.
How many Prophets there are that we don’t even know their names? So many, we don’t even know their names. Quran is just mentioning twenty-eight? Twenty-seven? Around there. But there are 124 000. Let’s just say, in our way, in the Naksibendi way, we at least know the Nabi mursals. Nabi mursals, how many are there? You think there’s only five or something, but Rasul, there’s 313. Rasuls. And that is written, their names and everything, by Sheykh Mawlana himself and that’s made into a tahweez. Now, I’m just saying there are thousands that we don’t know their names but Allah knows them and they know their Lord. There are thousands, over a hundred thousands, let’s say 124 000, let’s say we take 1000 out, 123 000, we don’t know their names. It’s lost. It’s forgotten. But Allah remembers. The angels remember. All of creation remembers them. And so many of them, they don’t even have one person to follow them on the Day of Judgement. But they are quiet. They know their Lord and their Lord knows them. So everything points back to the heart now.
So the Ramazan, if we are not looking into our heart to see how our heart is sick and how to cure it, then we miss the point of Ramazan too. We cannot now move forward from Ramazan. So many people ask me, every Ramazan, every Eid, ‘how do I continue with my ibadat from Ramazan, how do I continue with this feeling? How do I continue with that?’ Why are you asking me? Number one, you can never continue because the blessings that comes down on Ramazan is not given to any other month. The whole world is fasting at the same time, I mean more or less, these days they fight over everything, the whole world is breaking fast, the whole world is in prayer and is in fasting. That is very powerful. Never you are going to get that outside. In the old days, it used to be, outside of Ramazan you will find almost the entire ummat fasting on this day, this day, this day and this day. Correct? Those are holy days and nights. Now no. They say, ‘you are fasting this time, rajab? It’s bida’at. You are fasting Sya’ban? It’s bida’at.’ Everything is bida’at. Or they say, ahle Sunnah now they say, ‘oh, is that wajib?’ it’s sunnat. ‘oh okay, no.’ But you call yourself ahle Sunnah. Why you don’t call yourself ahle farz? Or ahle wajib?
We call ourselves ahle Sunnah because we love our Prophet. Because we are defending the Sunnah. So ahle Sunnah now say, ‘oh no, no it’s not.’ So they can dare to come without covering their head for instance. ‘oh to cover your head is only Sunnah.’ Only Sunnah? People used, Sahaba e-Kiram, they died, they sacrificed themselves because of only Sunnah. This is how far away we are form it. You understand? And we in this way following Sultanul Evliya, we have to be very careful now. We are not like others, we are doing something that is against the Sunnah, you better have a good explanation. You have to, not explanation, you better, you’re following a Sheykh? You have to have permission. You have to have a permission. Because everything that you do, there is a price for it.
So the Ramazan time people are asking, ‘how we can do after Ramazan?’ you cannot do. You cannot pray Tarawih after Ramazan. Even if you want to try to pray you won’t have the same feeling. But if during Ramazan you are watching yourself, how I fail and how I pass, and then you like, ‘I fail in this way,’ you are not looking to Ramazan just to harvest, harvest, harvest but you are looking to see, ‘oh I harvest this but this fruit is not too good. This one is good. This one is good.’ And you are trying to figure out, ‘okay because during Ramazan I didn’t do this too much…because during Ramazan I didn’t do this worship too much…because Ramazan like this I allow my anger to come out, I allow my arrogance to come out…’ then after Ramazan, especially in the six days of fasting in the month of shawwal, you put that intention in, that is how you are going to make your Ramazan, the blessings of Ramazan to continue. Because the Ramazan is about changing yourself and becoming a better person. Changing yourself and to become more pure, more clean. It’s not about fasting. It’s not about iftar. It’s not about Eid. Ramazan is not about fasting, it’s not about iftar, it’s not about Eid. Now they are going to say ‘he’s crazy.’ But Ramazan means to burn. To burn your bad deeds. To burn.
You know how some things you can clean by washing. Some things you have to scrub very hard. Sheykh Effendi used to say with what? Brillo. Scrub with a Brillo. Some you have to pour acid and some what do you need to do? You have to burn it. Especially those who are auto mechanic, that kind of rust and everything burning up, you have to burn it in order for it to clean. But that is the highest point, to burn, and that is the most effective. Ramazan burns all of our bad deeds. It is to make us to be pure. So Ramazan’s purpose is for that.
If you are fasting, if you are praying, if you are making tarawih, if you are making nafila, but if you are not burning your ego, you are not burning your ego, you miss the point of Ramazan. You miss it. You miss the real meaning of Ramazan. Like that kind of Ramazan, just to not eat and drink, can break your fast at iftar, munafiq can do. That kind of Ramazan, a kafir can do. It’s easy. You understand? But the kind of Ramazan to say, ‘I have to fix myself, I have this mistake, I have to fix it,’ that kind of Ramazan, very few are looking.
We are following a doctor. Everybody needs a doctor. We are following a doctor to become clean. The doctor may even say to you, ‘okay tomorrow I’m going to cut you up.’ People accept. People don’t accept this kind of doctor cutting them up. And the doctor will say to you, what? Before operation, always he says what? Don’t eat and don’t drink. Fast. ‘why he has to be like this? why he has to be like that?’ You are questioning, be careful. You don’t understand now. Eh, doctor does not see whether you are black or white. Correct? Doctor doesn’t see whether you are male or female. Doctor doesn’t see whether you are young or you are old. Doctor can be thirty years old, let’s say, these days, let’s say forty years old, by the time they reached forty they have hundreds and thousands of debt but they become doctor and they make it back, alhamdulillah, Insya’Allah. So 90 year old man comes in front of him, the doctor will tell him, ‘look, you are sick like this, this is your medicine. You have to take.’ ‘I don’t like to take this.’ Doctor is interested? No, doctor is not interested whether you like or you don’t like. Doctor may even say, ‘if I don’t cut you up you are going to die.’ ‘Please cut me up,’ so many they are saying that. That is if the person is understanding himself and understanding the doctor that is in front of him. Some doctors, like those fake ones they will just say, ‘don’t worry. Just eat this supplement and then you are going to be okay.’ But the really good ones they are not going to be shy because they know if you don’t take it you are going to suffer. The real doctor they are not going to be shy. They don’t look, this one is older than me I shouldn’t. This one is like this, I shouldn’t. No. He’s going to say, ‘Haqq is Haqq. This is it.’ But situation is different now. No patient is going to look at that doctor and the patient is saying, ‘who is he? This one is beneath me. This one is young, this one is this, this one is that.’ It doesn’t happen. Breh, kafir doctor you treat with so much respect. The spiritual doctor, ohhh….It happens. This is ahir Zaman.
We all, all of us we have those diseases. Not everything that the doctor does you’ll understand. You shouldn’t understand anyway. You are going to go crazy if you try to understand. But to know that one is not doing anything to destroy you. He’s giving you new life. He’s killing himself to make you to become better. One day maybe you’ll thank him. Just as this man, one day he was sitting under a tree. Weather is kind of like this, it’s nice. He’s sleeping and his mouth was open. One man coming on a horse and sees him sleeping and he sees a snake coming and going into his mouth. The snake went in, inside into his stomach and the man riding on the horse look at that and he says, ‘I have to save him before it’s too late!’
The man rode the horse, waking him up and the man who’s sleeping woke up and he saw the man on the horse trying to kill him, it looks as if this man is trying to kill him. “Who is this mad person trying to kill me?” and the man take the whip and he says, “get up!” there’s no time for explanation now. Because this one who swallowed the snake is going to die. And he says, “get up!” He says, “what? What do you want from me? Stop! don’t kill me! I don’t even know you.” He says, “get up! Run! Run!” and this man kept running and he’s charging him with the horse and he came to the apple tree and the apples are all on the ground, the rotten ones and he says, “stop! now eat the apples.” The man says, “what? First you woke me up, then you tell me to run, now you ask me to eat rotten apples! It doesn’t make sense.” Sounds familiar? It doesn’t make sense. The man says, “Eat! You don’t want to eat?” He whipped him. And the man started eating.
He started eating. “more! Eat more!” More he eats until his stomach was like this and he feels like throwing up, you know like some murids, they get sick and then they throw up, by the way don’t throw up anywhere, okay. If you want to get sick you go to the toilet and you throw up. Don’t throw up in kitchen, don’t throw up in waste paper basket and then say, ‘oh it’s nothing…’ This is clean place. People bring dirtiness here. But anyway, he was eating and eating and he feels like throwing up and the man says, “run again!” and he whipped him and the man started throwing up. He threw up, all the apples came up and the snake came out. And the man, before he was crying, he was cursing at this man whipping at him, who thought that he is sheytan, he ran up to him and kiss his hand and he said, “you must be an angel. You must be a Saint. How did you know?” The man said, “I don’t have to explain anything to you. I didn’t even have time to explain things to you.” And so many times, just to submit, you are going to see.
We are not whipping anyone, but we are seeing how much it is that is inside of you, what it is. So many we are filled with snakes and scorpions, “no, no..please, please…” now people are going to say, “no, not me. Not me. I pray every day.” I say, no, no, no, it’s nothing to do with that. We are talking about disease of the heart, do you understand? Who amongst here saying, “I don’t have anger,”? Say, and then I may say you are on the way of Sainthood. Who? Men or women. Or say, jealousy, or arrogance or stubbornness, all inherit from sheytan. So now, where is it that you want to go? Which kind of iftar you want? The iftar that is going to be swallowing snakes or scorpions, or the iftar that you are going to be breaking with your Lord or with your Prophet. Because that kind of iftar, breaking with your Lord and your Prophet, you have to throw up everything.
We are saying, we are saying, we are saying. People are not believing. These are not my words. And if you say this is a story, it’s not a story. It’s a reality. It happened. Same way people are saying when they are reciting the Quran, the Jews and the Yahudis and the Munafiqs saying, ‘ah! He’s just telling us old stories.’ Don’t be like that. They are there not for us to curse at them. They are there so that we say, we don’t have those characteristics and to share. You have to be very careful because this is a way that is very alive. This is not a dead Tarikat. It is alive. If I open a little bit more about the station of SahibulSaif and Sultanul Evliya, we wonder how many of you are going to believe or you are going to get floored. You are going to say this is….
So this is for you and this is for me. Take it for what it is. I’m not pulling myself out from this. but if you are going to say, ‘well, you tell us not to be angry but you are angry…you tell us not to, but you are like that,’ I’m saying, okay you know that story of the man who swallowed the snake and the man who is whipping, then you are going to get your answer there. Because the man who is riding the horse, who is whipping, who is doing everything, it looks as if he is crazy, right? It looks as if he’s angry, it looks as if he’s a tyrant. He loves you. And he wants to save your life. Believe it or not. As you like. WaminAllahu Taufik Al-Fatiha.
Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
Osmanli Dergahi New York
4 Shawwal 1440
6 June, 2019
Sahibul-Saif Sheykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi 