Mu’inuddin Chishti

The following appeared in my inbox today from the Meher Baba Centre in Bombay and quoted from Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 7, pp. 2391 – 2393:

(Feb.1939) On one occasion, referring to the purpose of his visits to different shrines, tombs or dargahs of saints and Perfect Masters, Baba stated:

By my living presence, I clean the tangled atmosphere of the shrines of the dead saints, Sadgurus and Qutubs. This complicated atmosphere is of the thought world. Thought force is really very strong and powerful. Chaitanya did not go to places of pilgrimage for the sake of pilgrimage, but for cleansing their atmosphere which were full of the sanskaras of thoughts of worldly people. Chaitanya was a Hindu Perfect Master, during the time of Shankara. He originated the ecstatic song or evocation, “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram!”

For my work, a pilgrim on the third plane is more helpful than the place of a dead Master of the seventh plane; but a well-known dead saint or Master may have a strong influence due to the multitudes going to his tomb. That is why I thin down the effect of this complicated thought atmosphere by visiting such places.

Meher Baba went to the shrine of Mu’inuddin Chishti several times. Chishti is responsible for more converts to Islam in India that any other man. He converted over two hundred thousand people during his time in India; no one else ever did such, even the Mughal warlords during their invasions. On a later occasion, Meher Baba revealed that the Sufi Master Mu’inuddin Khwaja Saheb Chishti was the Qutub-e-Irshad of his time.

I asked Bard to explain the term Qutub-e-Irshad (link):

The term "Qutub-e-Irshad" is a composite phrase consisting of three words:

• Qutub: This word in Arabic can have multiple meanings depending on the context. In Sufi terminology, it often refers to a "pole star" or a spiritual guide who serves as a central figure within a specific lineage or order. It implies the individual holds high spiritual authority and wisdom.

• e-: This is a Persian connecting particle, meaning "of" or "belonging to."

• Irshad: This word in Arabic signifies "guidance" or "instruction."

Therefore, when combined, "Qutub-e-Irshad" translates roughly to "Pole Star of Guidance" or "Master of Instruction." It refers to a highly respected spiritual leader within a Sufi tradition who offers guidance and instruction on the path of spiritual enlightenment.

Meher Baba explained that at any given time on Earth there are five Qutubs or Perfect Masters overseeing the affairs of the world. One of these five in charge and is referred to as the Qutub-e-Irshad. Of the five Qutubs in Meher Baba's early life, Sai Baba was the Qutub-e-Irshad:

Was this ascetic a Hindu or a Muslim? People of every religion and caste in India would seek him out. This holy man belonged to no caste or religion or "ism." He himself was the true fakir, the Emperor of Emperors. Why would people journey hundreds of miles to see him? Because his eyes shone brilliantly with a magnetism that drew them towards him. The light in his eyes attracted thousands to his feet.

Hidden in this extraordinary fakir was the Qutub-e-Irshad of the age — the head of the spiritual hierarchy and the leading Perfect Master of his time. He who held the key to all worlds and universes in his very hands appeared as a ragged beggar in a nondescript village in India. In his hands the conflicting forces of the world's turmoil and the throes of the universes were kept balanced! It may be difficult for a worldly-minded materialist to believe this, but it is a spiritual fact. Source.

Bard had this to say about Mu’inuddin Chishti (link):

Mu'inuddin Chishti: A Revered Figure in Sufi Islam

Mu'inuddin Chishti, also known as Khwaja Gharib Nawaz ("comforter of the poor"), was a revered Sufi preacher, scholar, and mystic who played a significant role in spreading and shaping the Chishti Order of Sunni Islam in the Indian subcontinent. Here's a summary of his life and contributions:

Life and Lineage:

Born in Sistan, Persia (present-day Iran) in 1141 CE.

Descended from both Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Received spiritual guidance from renowned Sufi masters in his youth.

Embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca, spending time in Baghdad and Delhi before settling in Ajmer, India, in 1206 CE.

Contributions:

Established the Chishti Order in India: He is considered the founder of the Chishti Order in the Indian subcontinent, known for its emphasis on love, devotion, and inclusivity.

Promoted interfaith dialogue: He cultivated relationships with people of different faiths, fostering peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding.

Emphasized service to humanity: His teachings stressed compassion, generosity, and service to the poor and marginalized.

Attracted diverse followers: His charismatic personality and message resonated with people from all walks of life, regardless of caste, creed, or social status.

Left a lasting legacy: His tomb in Ajmer became a major pilgrimage site, attracting devotees from all over the world.

Significance:

Mu'inuddin Chishti's contributions are considered pivotal in the spread of Islam in India, particularly Sufism, which offered a more mystical and inward-looking approach to faith.

His teachings and personal example resonated with diverse communities, contributing to social harmony and interfaith dialogue in the region.

He continues to be revered as a spiritual guide and source of inspiration, not just for Muslims but for people of all faiths and backgrounds.

Further Exploration:

If you're interested in learning more about Mu'inuddin Chishti, here are some resources:

• Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%27in_al-Din_Chishti

• Ajmer Sharif Dargah website: https://ajmerdargahsharif.com/

• Books and articles on Sufism and the Chishti Order

I hope this overview provides a helpful starting point for understanding Mu'inuddin Chishti's life and significance.

This news article from January 29th 2019 provides additional information.

God versus Godhood

How much better it would be if God were conceived of less as a person and more as an experience. Boys pass into to manhood, girls pass into womanhood and some humans pass into Godhood. All humans have the capacity to experience Godhood but very few do. The more God is objectified, the more humans project human qualities on to this notion that they have of God. God becomes a sort of super-person who is all powerfull, all knowledgeable, all merciful etc. The attempt is made to contain God within the bounds of human intellect and understanding.

The so-called Perfect Masters, also called Sadgurus or Qutubs, have experienced Godhood or God-consciousness and returned to worldly consciousness for “universal duty”. Others, called Majzoobs, have also experienced Godhood but remain oblivious to the world, their bodies are here but they have no awareness of their physical surroundings. The majority of those who attain Godhood drop their body within three days, as they have no further use for it. Meher Baba has told us that there are always 56 God-realised souls on Earth at any one time. It is only on Earth that these God-realised souls can be found and on none of the other approximately 18,000 worlds supporting human life.

The first human to attain Godhood is known as the Avatar or Ancient One. This human was a male and His “universal duty” is never-ending. Unlike the Sadgurus who return to consciousness of the physical world only once, the Avatar returns periodically (every 700 or 1400 years) and always in a male body. Zoroaster, Krishna, Ram, Buddha and Christ are some of the forms He has taken. His most recent incarnation was in the form of Meher Baba (1894-1969).

Meher Baba’s life has been recorded in great detail and Bhau Kalchuri’s epic biography, Lord Meher, remains the most authoritative account of His life. Unlike previous Avatars, Meher Baba did not establish a new religion because He said that there were enough of them already. To quote His Universal Message (source):

I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts. Throughout eternity I have laid down principles and precepts, but mankind has ignored them. Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion He taught, man has waged crusades in His name. Instead of living the humility, purity and truth of His words, man has given way to hatred, greed and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric Form I observe Silence. You have asked for and been given enough words — it is now time to live them. To get nearer and nearer to God you have to get further and further away from “I”, “my”, “me” and “mine”. You have not to renounce anything but your own self. It is as simple as that, though found to be almost impossible. It is possible for you to renounce your limited self by my Grace. I have come to release that Grace. I repeat, I lay down no precepts. When I release the tide of Truth which I have come to give, men’s daily lives will be the living precept. The words I have not spoken will come to life in them.

It can be noted that the Avatar Himself uses the term God but He makes it clear, via His other utterances, that God is not an external entity but an inner state to be attained. To find God is to experience Godhood: Oneness without Division. Meher Baba emphasised the importance of the Perfect Masters and Avatar as well as alluding to the formless state of God (Godhood) in the following quote:

On May 27th, (1926) Meher Baba discoursed on the Personal and Impersonal sides of God:

The foremost and highest object in life is personally serving a Sadguru and complete surrenderance to him. The second is constant meditation on the divine name. The third is selfless service, and the fourth is the offering of worship (prayer). Serving a Sadguru is like taking a course for a Master’s degree; meditating on the divine name is like studying for a Bachelor’s degree; performing selfless service is like obtaining a high school diploma, and offering prayers is like learning the alphabet. Once one attains the Bachelor’s degree, it does not take much time to attain the Master’s degree.

Were someone to ask me who is greater Personal or Impersonal God, Tukaram or Bhagwan, Zarathustra or Ahuramazda, Jesus or God the Father, I would definitely answer that Tukaram, Zarathustra and Jesus are greater. In fact, they are the Greatest of the Great because by being a Sadguru or the Avatar they render infinite service to the universe and suffer infinitely by taking upon themselves the burden of the world’s infinite amount of sanskaras. Undoubtedly, a conscious divine person such as Tukaram or Zarathustra, compared to the unconscious Bhagwan or Ahuramazda (formless God), is definitely greater!

Zarathustra was actually God in human form – an Avatar. In order to work in creation, he had to come down as man among illiterate, fanatical and hot-tempered humanity. Had Zarathustra told them to worship him, they would have denounced, harassed and murdered him. They would have thought him an enormous egotist and absolutely crazy. So he taught them to pray to formless God. But in reality, by worshiping formless God, they were worshiping him; and consequently they gained the impression that Ahuramazda was greater than Zarathustra, which was wrong.

Lord Meher, Original ed., Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 3, 803.

A Year with Hafiz: November 20th

Seeing that I discovered Ladinsky's A Year with Hafiz (read my previous post) on November 20th, I'll start with his entry for that day (I've preserved the original spacing):

NOVEMBER 20

ALL THE HEMISPHERES

Leave the familiar for a while. Let your senses and bodies stretch out

like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love.

Like a blooming night flower, bestow your vital fragrance of happiness and giving upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day. All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul.

Greet yourself in your thousand other forms as you mount the hidden tide and travel back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while

stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

I'm reminded of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road" as I read this. The pivotal phrase for me is "equator in your soul' which is echoed in the last line as "the great circle inside of you", with "great circle" being place in italics for emphasis. A great circle is a circle on the surface of sphere which lies in a plane passing through the sphere's centre. An equator typically refers to a great circle whose plane is perpendicular to the axis of rotation of a spinning sphere. This is illustrated nicely in Figure 1 that shows an equator and meridian as special types of great circles and where the hemispheres that are created are emphasised a well.

Figure 1

For a spinning sphere, it only the two hemispheres created by an equator that have centres of gravity that lie on the rotational axis. If sliced as shown, the two hemispheres created by the equator would continue to spin as before whereas those created by a meridian or any other great circle would fly off on opposite trajectories. The only poise or balance is to found on the equator where the hemispheres still exist but they are perfectly balanced.

It is a great metaphor for a Perfect Master, especially in light of the fact that a Sufi term for such a God-realised being is a Qutub, meaning literally an axis. To quote from Wikipedia:

Qutb, Qutub, Kutb, Kutub or Kotb (Arabic: قطب‎), means 'axis', 'pivot' or 'pole'. Qutb can refer to celestial movements and used as an astronomical term or a spiritual symbol. In Sufism, a Qutub is the perfect human being, al-Insān al-Kāmil (The Universal Man), who leads the saintly hierarchy. The Qutub is the Sufi spiritual leader that has a divine connection with God and passes knowledge on which makes him central to, or the axis of, Sufism, but he is unknown to the world. There are five Qutubs per era and they are infallible and trusted spiritual leaders. They are only revealed to a select group of mystics because there is a "human need for direct knowledge of God".

On the other hand, the hemispheres created by great circles other than an equator typify our lives before Realisation: 

All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your soul. 

In all these lives (the thousand other forms) the opposites are not in balance. It seems to me that Hafiz is exhorting us to step off the current great circle we are on (leave the familiar for a while) and for a while at least be bigger than we imagine ourselves to be:

Let your senses and bodies stretch out like a welcomed season onto meadows and shores and hills. Open up to the roof. Make a new watermark on your excitement and love ... change rooms in your mind for a day

All that has happened, all that is happening and all that will ever happened exist in a configuration beyond time. We move on our great circles and that movement we interpret as time passing. Our attention is constantly shifting from one point on the circle to the next and that shift in attention registers as time passing. All the hemispheres that we have created as we travel along our great circles, life after life, exist simultaneously.

All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around a campfire chatting, while stitching themselves together into the great circle inside of you.

These are just some of the thoughts that arose from the November 20th entry and it is in no way an exhaustive analysis but it has served its purpose of focusing my attention on spiritual matters. It is spiritual exercise to borrow a phrase used by Saint Ignatius Loyola.

Image taken from here