Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Sixth Fascicle

in attaining their own fanâ. If the nafs also joins the heart in this
trek, it also will find ‘tedhkiya’. That is, it will attain its own fanâ.
However, if the nafs, after attaining the grade of the heart, remains
there instead of joining the heart in its upward progress and
thereby getting beyond the two phases, it will not attain the ‘nisyân
(self-oblivion, forgetfullness)’; it will not attain ‘mutmainna’.
A person who has attained the fanâ of soul may not have
attained the fanâ of heart. The soul is like the father of the heart.
The nafs, so to speak, is the heart’s mother. The heart has a special
propensity in the direction of its quasi-father, the soul. If it
manages to turn away from the nafs, its quasi-mother, so that its
propensity in the direction of its father will be augmented and pull
it towards its father; it will reach its father’s grade. That is, it will
jump beyond the two phases. The heart and the soul’s being fânî
does not necessarily entail the nafs’s being fânî, (i.e. attaining
fanâ.) If the nafs’s affection for her son develops into a propensity
in the direction of her son and this propensity intensifies, so that
she joins her son, who has already attained the grade of his father;
she will become like them. Attainment of fanâ of each of the other
three latîfas called sir, khafî, and akhfâ follows the same
procedure.
The heart’s having rid itself from memories and thoughts shows
that it has forgotten everything other than Allâhu ta’âlâ. Failure to
remember them means that knowledge pertaining to them has
gone. In fanâ, knowledge has to have gone and perished.
24 – THIRD VOLUME, HUNDRED and
TWENTY-THIRD LETTER
This letter was written for Nûr Muhammad Tehârî. It explains
that there are two ways guiding to Allâhu ta’âlâ:
Bismillâh-ir-Rahmân-ir-Rahîm. Hamd be to Allâhu ta’âlâ, and
salâm to those slaves of His whom He has chosen and loved! There
are two different paths whereby man attains to Allâhu ta’âlâ: The
first one is the path of Nubuwwa, which is analogical to the
proximity of the Prophets and which leads man to the origin of the
origin. It is this path through which the Prophets ‘’alaihim-ussalawât-u-wa-t-teslîmât’
and their Sahâba (Companions) atained.
Choosing also some non-Sahâbîs from among their Ummats
(Believers following them), they honour them with an attainment
through this path. Yet there are quite few of them. This path does
not employ a means, an intermediary. That means to say that once
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