All praise be to our Owner, the Lord of all and everything; Allah Most High. His benedictions upon the last and the best of all His prophets; our Master Muhammad Mustafa. May Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him and all the other prophets before him, and upon his blessed family, wives and children, and his companions and friends. May the hearts of his followers be filled with the love of Allah, and the love of His beloved, and may they live in accordance with Allah’s orders in His Holy Book; the blessed Qur’an. May all Muslims hold the hands of Allah’s friends who follow the path of Allah’s messenger and his blessed family and companions.

May you all know, find, and be as Allah meant us to be; may your hearts be mirrors of your Lord’s beautiful attributes, receiving inspired wisdom and becoming fountains of eternal life.

Then you will discover the meanings of  the prophetic traditions, “The wise men of my people are like the prophets of Bani Israil,” and “My companions are like the stars in heaven; whoever follows them finds salvation.” Are his companions the blessed few who lived in the time of our Master, the Messenger of Allah? Nay! The Beloved of Allah, whom Allah sent as His mercy upon the universe, is always alive with the secret power of the divine Name ya Hayy, the Ever Living. His Shariah, the Divine Law which fashions our lives, is ever alive. And at all times, there will be friends, lovers, loved by Allah, with perfect faith, knowing and living the truth, ready to give everything including their lives for Allah and His Prophet. And they see and they are with the Prophet as much as the ones who lived in his time.

Some amongst them are charged to teach and to show themselves, others are hidden, and they are many. They are the inheritors of the Truth of Muhammad (saws), and they, too, are deathless with the secret power of the Name ya Hayy. They guide the ones who hold on to them, and they will continue doing so after their visible selves are hidden from you. This is one of the greatest gifts Allah Most High gives to His faithful servants. They are the Pirs; the founding saints of many mystic paths. They are all one; their faiths are the same; their Book is the same; their imam and master is the imam of all the messengers of Allah, our master Hz. Muhammad Mustafa (saws); their worship, their thoughts, their spirit, their love and the light which shines through them is the same. That is the Divine Light of Love, the Light of Muhammad, which Allah created first, upon which Allah’s Divine Light is reflected. Like the earth, the planets, and the moons upon which the light of the sun is reflected, those beloved lovers of Allah turn and return and circumambulate around the Originator of the Light. They are always here and always with their Lord.

Many of those blessed beings are called Qutubs, Poles of wisdom and Khatemu’l awliya; the last of the beloveds of Allah. But there is no end to Divine Love. They are like the circumference of a circle around a center, which is indeed the limit of what is in the circle. That circle is the Last and Seal of the Prophets, Hz. Muhammad Mustafa (saws), and on the circumference, which is ever continuous, are the lovers of Allah. They are before us and after us; they are at the beginning and at the end, and they are one and the same, because they are not they, but they have lost themselves in our Master, the Prophet. The wisdom, the service, the miracles coming from them are not from them, but are the ever living actions, ever existing truth of the Prophet. Blessed are the ones who can see and know this. Alas not with the mind, but it could be understood only by inspiration.

Our shaykh Fahreddin Efendi, may Allah’s mercy be upon his soul, wrote

the dervishes whirling around

like the moth hovering round the candle

will burn themselves into ashes

to wake to the dawn of Truth.

To those His Light will dawn, and that Sun will never set. (Hadith)

The inner light of those will not go out when their outer light is extinguished.

Know that the Divine Light of the Beloved of Allah will never be extinguished, and it will burn and destroy the ones who try to put it out.

Wa min Allahittawfik; Allah is the best of helpers. Wallahu a’lem bi’ssewab; Allah knows best.

Muhibbul Jerrahi Safer Dal Efendi