A Sufi Saint fo the Twentieth Century – Shaykh Ahmad al Alawi

Author: Martin Lings
Publisher: Suhail Academy
Year: 1999
Pages: 242
Printed: Pakistan

Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: New
Weight: 429gr.
Description from the publisher: Fairly often while I was talking quietly with the Shaykh, the name ‘Allah’ had cone to us form some remote corner of the zawiyah, uttered on one long drawn out vibrant note: ‘A …l..l…a…h!’ It was like a cry of despair, a distraught supplication, and it came from some solitary cell-bound disciple, bent on meditation. The cry was usually repeated several times, and then all was silence once more. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, Oh Lord’. ‘From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I’. These verses form the Psalms came to my mind. The supplication was really just the same, the supreme cry to God of a soul in distress. I was not wrong, for later, when I asked the Shaykh what was the meaning of the cry, which we had just heard, he answered: ‘It is a disciple asking God to help him in his meditation’. ‘May I ask what is the purpose of his meditation’?’ ‘To achieve self-realisation in God’. ‘Do all the disciples succeed in doing this’?’ ‘No, it is seldom that anyone does. It is only possible for a very Few’. ‘”Then what happens to those who do not’? Are they not desperate’?’ ‘No: they always rise high enough to have at least inward Peace’. Inward Peace. That was the point he came back to most often and there lay, no doubt, the reason for his great influence. For what man does not aspire, in some way or other, to inward peace’? From the narrative of Dr. Mareel Garret “”The Gnostics are ranged in hierarchy: the knower of his Lord and the knower of himself-, the knower of himself is stronger in Gnosis than the knower of his Lord”. “Whosoever sceketh God through another than himself will never atain unto God”. From his Aphorisms