Introduction of Saeen G

On the eleventh day of September, 1948, the fortunate earth of Faisalabad was honoured to receive a light that the pre-eternal Decree had long destined for it. That light entered the world of witnessing in the form of the Sultan of the arifeen of his age, the qutb of the circle of the Real, the lamp burning in the niche of Naqshbandi nisbat — Hazrat Khawaja Saeen Sufi Nisar Ahmad Khaliquei Naqshbandi. Those who have tasted even one sip from the cup of ma'rifah, those whose hearts have been kindled by a single glance of his gaze, do not utter his name as one utters an ordinary name. They whisper it with trembling adab, with foreheads bowed and the burning of love upon their tongues: "Saeen Sufi Nisar Ahmad", "Sain Ji" — and in those sacred syllables the lovers breathe the fragrance of the presence of the Beloved.

Before the tablet of time received its first inscription, before the pen of destiny touched the scroll of existence, the Hand of Divine Omnipotence had already kneaded into his sanctified clay the jewel of faqr before God, the humility of the annihilated, the radiance of taqwa, and that pre-eternal ache for the remembrance of the Real which is the inheritance of the chosen alone. The nafs that others receive as a tyrant, he received already bowed in surrender; the heart that others must polish over a lifetime, he received already turned toward the qiblah of the Divine. His childhood was not a childhood but a hidden apprenticeship in the school of the Unseen. In the years when other children learn to play, the lights of ma'rifah were already gathering upon his brow of devotion, and the eyes of the people of basirah saw upon that child the unmistakable seal of wilayah.

The arifeen teach that the heart is a mirror. The sciences of the outward polish one face of that mirror and the sciences of the inward polish the other, and neither face alone can hold the reflection of the Beloved. So it was that while his sanctified inner being burned in the fire of Divine longing and drank from the cup of shuhud, his outward self stood wakeful and illumined in the halls of manifest learning. He attained the degree of B.Sc. (Agriculture) from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad — and in that attainment lies a teaching for every seeker: tasawwuf is not the abandonment of the field but the cultivation of two fields at once, the field of the earth and the field of the heart. He whose hand tills the soil of the world while his heart tills the soil of dhikr is the true farmer of the path.

In this he embodied, in living flesh, the golden and imperishable principle upon which the exalted Naqshbandi silsila is founded:

"Dast ba kar, dil ba yar" — The hand in the work of the world; the heart, without interruption, in the presence of the Friend. The outward in the marketplace of creation; the inward in the sanctuary of the Creator, where none but He may enter.

Every wali has an hour that divides his life into before and after — the hour in which the door of the Unseen is opened and the seeker is received into the circle of the accepted. For our Murshid Pak that hour struck on 27 December 1967. On that day he placed his hand of surrender into the truth-upholding hand of the Ghawth of his age, the Mujaddid of the Tariqah, the one through whom the Real executes His will upon the hearts of men, the Qutb of guidance, the Sultan of the arifeen of his time — Hazrat Khawaja Saeen Muhammad Sharif Khalique Naqshbandi (may Allah's mercy be upon him) — the luminous heir of the Mujaddidi Naqshbandi trust and the thirty-eighth (38th) link of this blessed Shajra.

Let no one imagine that 27 December 1967 is merely a date. It is a seal stamped in pre-eternity upon the Tablet of Destiny, and time only unveiled what eternity had already written. In that sanctified and fragrant hour, from the truth-upholding hand of the noble grand-Murshid, Hazoor Gojrawi Sarkar, the light that is the fountainhead of the bounty of Mustafa ﷺ and the distributing treasury of Divine ma'rifah was transferred as a sacred trust into the breast of our gracious Murshid Pak. It was transferred not in part but in whole, not from behind veils but without a single veil, not as a reflection but as the thing itself — in one hundred percent complete manifestation and utmost tajalli, so that the lamp of the Shaikh was kindled entire within the lamp of the disciple, and the two flames became one flame.

Every drop of his spiritual nurturing, every irrigation of the garden of his lataif, every station of his khidmah and every ray of his hidayah — this most complete and perfect bestowal of faiz — flows from one fountain alone: the exalted threshold of Hazrat Khawaja Saeen Muhammad Sharif Khalique Naqshbandi (may Allah's mercy be upon him). In the school of that threshold he learned that service is the first dhikr, fidelity the second, and the effacement of one's own being before the Shaikh the door to every effacement that follows. Through the utmost degree of khidmah, unwavering wafa, selfless guardianship of the Shari'ah, and the crossing of the arduous valleys of suluk — the valleys of the nafs, the qalb, the ruh, the sirr, the khafi and the akhfa — he journeyed in such wise that he was no longer merely a mureed at his Murshid's door, but the solace of his pure heart, the axis of his gaze of grace, the vessel of his secret, and the mirror in which the Shaikh beheld his own light.

Today he is the fortieth (40th) luminous link and the peerless pearl in the exalted Naqshbandi Mujaddidi chain. He is the trustee of that Divine trust and those secrets of creation which began in the sacred breast of the Master of the Two Worlds, the Sovereign of Madinah, Ahmad-e Mujtaba Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa ﷺ; which were poured into the breast of the Siddiq of the ummah in the darkness of the Cave; which passed through the Rightly-Guided Khulafa, through the Khawajagan of Turkestan whose breath was dhikr and whose sleep was muraqaba, through the Mujaddid of the second millennium and the great revivers of this land — an unbroken chain of light in which each link kindled the next and none was ever dimmed. Hand to hand, heart to heart, sirr to sirr, that light travelled fourteen centuries to reach our age, and in our age it reached him.

Although in the luminous order of the blessed Shajra his noble name is enthroned as the fortieth link, the true root of his bay'at and the true source of his training remain directly and eternally attached to Hazrat Khawaja Saeen Muhammad Sharif Khalique Naqshbandi (may Allah's mercy be upon him). The numbering belongs to the ledger of history; the nisbat belongs to the ledger of the heart. To sit in his blessed assembly is therefore not to read history but to enter it — to feel the imperishable blessings and Divine lights of a living, breathing, everlasting silsila descending into the hidden chambers of one's own spirit, awakening lataif that have slept since birth.

The arifeen say that the speech of the wali is the overflow of his state; what the tongue utters is only the spray of the ocean within. Those travellers upon the path of the Real who, by reason of distance, cannot sit in his outward assembly of grace are nonetheless nourished through his exalted irshadat, for in them the depth, the subtlety, and the radiance of his illumined heart become present to whoever reads them with the eye of the heart. The quintessence of his lofty teaching is this: sincere and selfless love for Allah and His Noble Messenger ﷺ is the very root of iman, and the honouring of the rights of Allah's creation is the fruit that root cannot fail to bear.

On the journey to the Divine Essence he holds the stations of fana to be indispensable, and he lays out the ladder of the path in three ascending rungs:

1. Fana Fi Al-Shaikh →↓
2. Fana Fi Al-Rasool ﷺ →↓
3. Fana Fi Allah

"The path to the Divine Essence passes through the stages of fana; until the traveller passes through fana fi al-Shaikh and attains the station of fana fi al-Rasool ﷺ, his inner being is not fit to attain the everlasting reality of fana fi Allah."

In an age of turbulence and deception, when the marketplace is loud and the mosque of the heart stands empty, he sits enthroned upon the exalted station of "Abul Hasanat" and "Rahnuma-e Kamilin" and continues, in a silence more eloquent than speech, to train the travellers of the path in the four pillars of the Naqshbandi way: the dhikr of the heart that no ear hears, the rabita with the Shaikh that no distance breaks, the company of the righteous in which the heart is polished, and complete adherence to the Pure Sunnah, which is the very shape of love.

His blessed assembly is that island of serenity where the storm of the nafs falls silent and the restlessness of souls finds its shore. A single glance of his loving attention melts the hardened heart like wax before the flame; a single word from his lips breathes life into hearts long withered. Those who enter his presence as strangers leave as lovers; those who enter as lovers leave as the annihilated. He is the living proof, walking among us, that tasawwuf and tariqah are not tales of a vanished past but bright, luminous, soul-nourishing lamps of guidance even in the darkness of the present age.