Ibn Ataa Allah as-Sakandari
November 12, 2012
Perhaps a person is blessed with miraculous gifts [karāmāt] before he is complete in his righteousness and rectitude.
Do not be impressed by apparent miraculous gifts [karāmāt]. Indeed the true karāma is righteousness and rectitude. It evolves out of two issues: true belief in God -Dignified is His Majesty- and following what was revealed by His Messenger -God bless him and grant him peace-, both outwardly and inwardly. That is why Abu Yazīd said: “Don’t be deceived if a man sets his prayer rug on the water, and sits on the air, till you regard how he is with His orders and prohibitions.” He was told that someone passes to Mecca in a single night, he said: “The Shaitan passes in an instant from the east to the west”. He was told that someone walks on the water, and he said: “Fish in the water and birds in the sky are more of a wonder than this”.
Of the signs that it is Al-Ḥaqq who set you up in something is that He allows you persistence in it, while its results occur.
Of the signs that it is Al-Ḥaqq who set you up in something as in gaining or in dispossession, is that He allows you persistence in it, while its results happen as the occurrence of safety of dīn or profit and gain.
Whenever He allowed you apparent and manifest compliance to His orders, and granted you internal self-submission to His overwhelm, then He has greatly bestowed upon you.
Whenever God graces your appearance by piety, which is submission to orders and avoiding prohibitions, and graces your interior by submission or total surrender to His overwhelm while accepting and contenting with hardships then He has greatly bestowed His graces upon you.
Indeed, there is nothing more sublime than being in external and internal slave-hood.
Not everyone who has been specialized has been totally purified.
When you see someone displaying extraordinary wonders as crossing the earth in an instant or flying in the air or walking on water, do not take this as evidence that he has been totally purified of regarding othernesses and of what the self desires of lusts.
Miraculous gifts frequently appear with the novice on the beginning of the path, and do not appear with those who have reached the Lord.
The author will write later: Perhaps a person is blessed with miraculous gifts [karāmāt] before he is complete in his righteousness and rectitude. For righteousness is the greatest karāma that the Lord dignifies the slave with.