Nur Efendi

NUR EFENDI: THE AXIS

NUR EFENDI: THE AXIS

By Abdullah Muzaffer al-Jerrahi

Recently we had a vision of a wheel and Hazreti Shaykh Nur al-Anwar al-
Malik al-Ashki al-Jerrahi, the “sun of the golden age,” (may Allah sanctify
his secret and perfume his resting place). We saw a wheel divided by its
spokes into sections. Each interstice represented a religious tradition
that Hazreti Nur (r.a.) explored. We recognized that Islamic Sufism was
one interstice of that wheel.

The sensation came over us that many people spend their entire lives
exploring that one interspace, isolating and living only in one section of
the totality of Hazreti Nur (r.a.).

We considered how Hazreti Nur (r.a.) profoundly immersed himself in
many of the interstices of the wheel, yet did not live in any one religious
district all of the time. We wondered why some of us choose to live our
spiritual lives only in one locality, when the Pir of the New Humanity (our
contemporary model of the insan kamil, that is to say, the Complete or
Whole Human Being) traveled freely through the parallel sacred worlds,
expressed by the wheel, what some now call the multiverse or meta-
universe?

Of course, we realize that many Nur Ashki Jerrahis do choose to whirl
freely throughout the wheel of the sacred worlds. Then our vision went
deeper. It came to us that the solution is not that we must go and deeply
explore all the various traditions, as only someone of Hazreti Nur’s (r.a.)
genius, brilliance and spiritual rank could undertake that gargantuan
task. It seems rather impossible, speaking about our limited abilities, to
explore in a profound manner, several spiritual traditions simultaneously.

Hazreti Nur (r.a.) encouraged us to learn from the wisdom masters of all
the traditions and bring this living knowledge back into the tekke of Pir
Muhammad Nureddin Jerrahi (r.a.). As he uttered in prayer in a hand-
taking ceremony in April of 1994,

“ . . . May (these sincere dervish souls) have the mystic teachings from all
of the sources and may they find mystic guides and sages from all of the
traditions and learn from them and receive the blessings and may they
bring all of that nectar and pollen back into the hive of the Jerrahiyya, the
hive of the universal principle of tariqa, and may we make honey together
and feed the whole universe with this honey.”

As my meditation deepened, we saw how Hazreti Nur (r.a.) is actually the
center or axis of the wheel. He embodies in himself the nectar of all the
traditions. He is the fruit of all the traditions. He is beyond religion, for he
is Essence.

Then we sensed that the goal was not to do all that Hazreti Nur (r.a.) did,
but rather to be what Hazreti Nur (r.a.) is. He embodied in his
consciousness the distilled essence of the revealed wisdom of all the
world’s traditions. The goal is to be “La ilaha ilallah.”

In other words, rather than travel around the wheel, instead, be the center
of the wheel! Be Hazreti Nur (r.a.); not in imitation, but through
experiencing the spiritual inheritance we have received through the
silsila.

We remembered the age-old teaching that the center of the wheel is
always still. While the wheel is rotating and revolving, the center is
always still and calm. To take the analogy a little further, the center of a
wheel, where the axel connects, is empty. This brought to mind the goal
of our Way: complete extinction of ego into the Infinite, the Final
Singularity, fana fi Allah. As Attar writes,

“I never saw any lamp shining more brilliantly than the lamp of silence.”

Hazreti Nur (r.a.) is the white Light in which all the colors of the spectrum
are subsumed. Following this principle of inclusion, we intuit that
perhaps we should not stop at “revealed” traditions. For, while we may
or may not know the names of the Prophets who came to Mesoamerica,
South America, Africa, North America, Asia, and so forth, along with the
true history of these peoples, we believe the native religions and spiritual
practices of the world also have their profound validity and need to be
incorporated in our “wheel.” “Folk” and “indigenous” religions have
their place and authenticity too within the effulgent polychromatic
spectrum of Allah’s revelation.

Several months after having this vision and writing the above, we came
across an essay by René Guénon entitled Haqiqa and Shari’a in Islam.
The essay seems to mirror in some ways our vision of Shaykh Nur (r.a.).
In it Guénon writes:

“To express their respective “outward” and “inward” natures, exoterism
and esoterism are often compared to the “shell” (qishr) and the “kernel”
(lubb), or to the circumference and its center. The shari’a comprises
everything that in Western languages would be called “religious", and
especially the whole of the social and legislative side which, in Islam, is
essentially integrated into the religion. It could be said that the shari’a is
first and foremost a rule of action, whereas the haqiqa is pure knowledge .
. . But this is not all, for esoterism comprises not only the haqiqa, but also
the specific means for reaching it, and taken as a whole, these means are
called the tariqa, the “way” or “path” leading from the shari’a to the
haqiqa. If we return to the symbol of the circumference and its center, we
can say that the tariqa is represented by the radius that runs from the
former to the latter. And this leads us to the following: to each point on the
circumference there corresponds a radius, and all the radii, which are
indefinite in number, terminate in the center. It can thus be said that these
radii are so many turuq (plural of tariqa) adapted to the beings “situated”
at the different points of the circumference according to the diversity of
their individual natures. This is why it is said that “the ways to God are as
numerous as the souls of men” (at-turuqu ila ‘Llahi ka-hufusi bani Adam).
Thus the “ways” are many, and differ all the more among themselves the
closer they are to their staring-point on the circumference; but their end is
one, as there is only one center and one truth.”

Rather than copying Hazreti Nur (r.a.), we attune ourselves to the
frequency of Hazreti Nur (r.a.). We become the insan kamil through our
deliberately linking ourselves with the Pir of the New Humanity, Hazreti
Nur (r.a.).

Shaykha Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi aptly writes that "The Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, stands in the center of the center. Nur is
manifesting his centrality within the Prophetic traditions."

In our tradition, the Nur Ashki Jerrahi, we do not worship Hazreti Nur (r.
a.), rather the awliya of Sufism (the Friends of God) reveal to us the true
majesty of the human being, reminding us that the core of their being is
the core of our being, encouraging us to reach the full potential each of
us possess within our hearts, the kingdom of heaven within us, and
showing us the way to become the vicegerents of Allah on Earth.

This attuning occurs through harmonious sympathetic vibration. A
common illustration of sympathetic vibration is to strike a tuning fork and
bring it close to, but not touching, another tuning fork of the same
frequency, which will then begin to vibrate sympathetically. The soul too
may be set into vibration by being brought into close contact with a
Living Shaykh, who through his or her very being, is vibrating all the
Divine Frequencies (has activated all of the ‘esmas).

We bring ourselves into vibrational attunement by first “taking hand,”
and so joining our souls with the majestic soul of Shaykha Fariha Fatima
al-Jerrahi, and through Shaykha Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi, joining with the
royal soul of Hazreti Nur al-Anwar al-Malik al-Ashki al-Jerrahi (r.a.), the Pir
of the New Humanity.

Making and balancing a wheel requires a skilled wheelwright. These
“skilled wheelwrights” are Shaykha Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi and
Shaykha Amina Teslima al-Jerrahi. We praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that we have this direct access to the center that Shaykh Nur (r.a.)
opened to us, embodied for us, and in doing so, now abides in all the
subtle realms as the Pir of the New Humanity.

Any errors in what we have written are our own. Allah knows best.

© 2009 Abdullah Muzaffer al-Jerrahi (Laurence Galian)

Hazreti Nur (r.a.) in
West Virginia. Photo
copyright Shaykh
Muhammad Jamal
al-Jerrahi (Gregory
Blann).