‘Jo Dam Ghafil So Dam Kafir‘
I had heard the said verse of poetry since my childhood, always fascinated but always lost on its meaning. Years passed on, somethings I remembered, others I forgot but never this verse. And behold one day, I became one with Ma’arifa! And behold one day, I knew what this verse meant. Ma’arifa is a procedure to make reside Allah in your heart.
This verse is attributed to Sultan Bahu who used it in his famous poetry Kalam-e-Bahu. A rough translation allows us to understand it as “Any moment you are negligent in remembrance of God, is a moment spent in denial of God”. Those who do not forget God for a single moment become “Wali u Allah” i.e. friend of Allah. Abū Abdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, said: “Allah never makes an ignorant his Wali (Friend)”. This remembrance of God is not from the tongue which one can chant and be on with it. Rather, this is a chant from the soul, a chant from the Wali’s hearts that infact enchant Allah. Qalb (heart) is a place where either God lives or ignorance. When Allah lives in someone’s Qalb then the person gets Ma’arifa and becomes Wali.
The idea of Ma’arifa expands across a great realm with its own dedicated discourses. For instance, Ilm Al-Laduni and Ilm Al-Batin are also the names of knowledge of Ma’arifa. One of the reasons why it is named as such is because it is not a knowledge of the external (Zahi’r) but knowledge of inteternal (Bati’n) and thus, the itnernal.
Knowledge of Ma’arifa
Abu Huraira, one of the Ashab us Suffa, narrated, “I learned two sciences from Prophet, I have conveyed you the first one. You cannot comprehend the second one and you would kill me if I disclose it to you”. In this narration, the first science is knowledge of the external (Zahi’r) and the second, is the knowledge of the internal (Bati’n) which Allah rests in the hearts of people who have Ma’arifa. It is a hidden knowledge, a knowledge of secrets directly revealed to the heart of Wali ul Allah (Friends of Allah). This hidden or esoteric knowledge of secrets is not transferred by written or oral sources rather it is revealed to the people of Ma’’rifa to their Qlab by four mediums.
1. WAHI: This was a communication only between Allah and his chosen Prophets.
2. ILHAAM: A type of Prophetic dream inspired by Allah, inspired by Allah to divine personalities for the benefit of mankind.
3. DARJ-E-FIRASAT: This a stage of the highly developed divine intelligence acquired by Saints and the pious.
4. KASHF: The privileged inner knowledge that mystics acquire through personal experience and direct vision of God.
People of Ma’arifa
Quranic verses also convey this knowledge. Only the people of Ma’arifa can interpret these verses and get Ma’arifa from the verses i.e. Walis – who understand these verses and succeed in getting the Ma’arifa. They may also covey these messages of Ma’arifa to the people by their poetry as Sultan Bahu said, “Jo Dam Ghafil So Dam Kafir“.
