A wake-up call comes around when a person is deeply in trouble.
There is a Turkish saying roughly translated as: “Unless a vassal reaches a dead end, Khidr will not appear.” Khidr is the mystical figure who comes around to aid those in desperate need; anonymous and immortal, he is also a mystic teacher for the chosen. But why would he reach out to a Balkhi prince who had everything? A myriad of graces had been already bestowed upon him, so what was lacking in the life of Ibrahim ibn Adham? It was believed to be the same Khidr who was reported in the Quran to have accompanied Moses and made him witness a series of ostensible misdeeds and in the end, unravel the reality veiled to the eyes and minds.
Khidr represents here the reality in the storyline, while Moses is the defender of reason and morality, which obviously indicates a dichotomy between the visible and the invisible, the latter being the reality that opens up only to a few through a chosen one like Khidr. Following his encounter with Khidr, Adham gave up every property, title and privilege he had owned and set out barefoot on the path. The reality presented to him woke him up. It was a call to wake up from a dream that is called life.
Farid ud-Din Attar tells us how Khidr kindled the heart of Ibrahim ibn Adham. In the story, Adham was in his palace, a line of slaves waiting in front of him when an unusual man came through the door so boldly that no one had the courage to ask him to stop. Ibrahim asked him about what he wanted, to which he replied: “I am stopping over at this inn.”
Ibrahim objected saying that it was not an inn, it was his palace. Then the man questioned him about the lineage of the owners of the palace which attested that it was actually an inn where people had come and gone. Ibrahim understood he was just another visitor in this inn, coming for a short period and leaving it, eventually. This was the first spark in his heart that would never stop growing.
And when tasted once, the thirst for the quest becomes unquenchable. To distract himself from this feeling burning him inside out, Ibrahim wanted to go on a hunting trip. This is where he heard the wake-up call: “Wake up before they wake you up!” As he pretended not to hear, that voice repeated his message again and again. Bow in his hand, he was after a gazelle when the coup de grace to his resisting self came: “By God, you were not created for this and you were not commanded to do this!”
This was the final warning that made him drop his guard; he dismounted from his horse, took the woolen shirt of a shepherd he met, gave him his gold-brocade robe, all his belongings and horse, and began wandering in the desert. He had finally woken up.
He was woken up to the fact that the things he owned did not belong to him and like the rest of all people, he was just another traveler in this world. So began his real journey where he lived according to his reality. The words of Ibn Arabi, known as the greatest master in Sufism on the temporary nature of this world, summarize it all: “The world is a bridge to be passed over, you don’t build houses on it.” Human beings come from nothingness in the sense that their own existence depends on the mercy of God and can have no authority either on this world or on their lives.
How come they can be considered powerful and self-sufficient when they can lose it in the blink of an eye? Sufis lived their lives by this maxim. Using the terminology of Islamic philosophy, it can be stated as this: Their possibility is their reality and they keep in mind that they are possible beings even if they have come to existence.
When Ibn Arabi says, “Universe is an imagination,” he means that when human beings came into existence, they assumed and claimed to have existed and gained the possibilities that come with this existence and they believe that they and the world around them are real and existing on their own. However, in fact, what they see is just in their imagination as they have never left their reality as possible beings.
However, forgetting their possible nature, they forget the fact that they are weak, incapable and powerless in this world. Unless they accept this and behave accordingly, they can never fulfill their purpose, which is being an absolute vassal. It is reported that Ibrahim ibn Adham asked a man why he was looking for his lost camel on the roof, he asked him a similar question: “How come you are looking for the Lord while you sit on a golden throne and wear satin clothes?” Worldly power and wealth are the major veils blinding the eyes of a vassal in this world that will make him sink into the imagination that he is powerful and rich and yet he is weak, poor, and destitute for the divine succor to maintain his existence.
Therefore, Sufism is the journey of giving up the things that become a veil between Allah and his vassal. Getting rid of the veils one by one is in fact the process of returning to the reality that comes into existence by wearing a new veil every step of the way.
The more veils there are, the harder it is to reach the truth hidden behind them. With Ibrahim ibn Adham, Khidr became an intermediary to wake him up from the fantasy that he was an all-powerful prince and make him see his true self, which is all depending on the mercy of Allah to continue his existence. That is why he tore down all of his veils such as a throne, a family or a people, and set on the ascetic path to fulfill Allah’s intention of him.
