Cut It Open

To first see the fault in yourself
and then to pass judgment
and correct yourself
is true justice.
~ Bawa

"My very precious children, what do we call love? The love we usually manifest is selfish. We might love a tree, but for selfish reasons. We raise a cow and love it. Why? For selfish reasons. We breed a horse, but what kind of love do we have for it? Selfish love, because it is our property. We keep a dog, and because it is our dog, we love it. We may look after a garden, grow a tree, keep a cat, or raise goldfish. No matter what we have or nurture, our love for it is selfish. If we have a friend, we have a motive for having that friend. Whether it is a friend, a house, whatever it may be, the love we manifest is selfish. No matter what we love, if we examine that love accurately we will find a selfish reason for it; we expect something in return. Even when we cling to a religion, a doctrine, racial prejudice, anything, if we examine our feelings carefully, we will always find that there is a reason behind those feeling--selfishness. All the different kinds of love we offer or observe have to be understood in this way...

We must reflect on the love we give each and every thing. Let us look at the condition of the human race today. If a man marries a beautiful woman or a woman marries a handsome man, if they have a beautiful child and do many things together lovingly, that certainly is looked upon as love by most people. Their two bodies joined and their two hearts merged and became one for awhile. But what is that love? It is physical love. It is selfish love and illusion. After a while, if the wife should fall ill, her husband will not take care of her. That same husband who promised so much love, saying they had one heart even though they had two bodies, now asks for a divorce. He does not want to look after her when she is ill, and his wife would probably also want a divorce in a similar situation. Is that love? No it is not. In true love, life must be shared. Illness, wealth, bodily suffering, happiness, joy, and sorrow must all be shared. Whenever there is love in which the husband and wife do not share everything equally, that love is born of selfishness. Only when everything is shared can it be called true love.

So, my very precious children, when you fall in love, analyze the state of that love. Cut it open, examine it carefully, and look for the love which is intermingled with love, the love born of wisdom, the love born of good qualities, the love born of good actions, the love born of good behavior, the love emanating from clarity. That is true love. Any other love is merely selfish, merely the love of physical beauty, of beautiful possessions or beautiful learning."

~ “In 1971 on October 11 at 4:45 p.m. Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen arrived in Philadelphia. He spoke. I sat transfixed and openly stared at this miracle. Stunned. Every word he spoke was an exact description of the experience I had. To my perception he had manifested from that One and he spoke only of that One.

I knew then and I know now that this was not an ordinary human being. This was an extraordinary being sent by God. Every word he said was true whether it was an explanation of God or an explanation of how the world worked or how the mind of man worked. Every example, every story ended in God and there were thousands of examples and stories and songs and discourses, all about the One. Everything he saw he turned into an example; even the plastic trash bags we used in America to put out the garbage and the story would end in God. He spoke morning, noon and night. He sang beautiful glorious songs about and to God. When people came for the first time he would tell them everything about themselves…

For nine months we sat happily at his feet, soaking up whatever we could hold within ourselves. Then he returned to Sri Lanka. Some of us followed, to Colombo, to Jaffna, to Perideniya… What we saw and experienced there could fill books also. We saw the thousands of desperately poor he fed and healed. We saw people possessed by demons, and I guarantee you demons are real; we saw things difficult to imagine, yet we saw them, and him, rising above it all, the only true human being I have ever seen. He taught Hindus in Jaffna, Muslims in Colombo, Christians and Jews in America, speaking Truth to their perspective, but it would all end in the One as the only reality…

The realm Muhaiyaddeen lives from is not subject to the time-space rules we experience, so I testify that this is true…

When one has experienced God and returned forged as one with God, changed and fully aware that all else is false, one must tell others. There is an impulse, a compulsion to do so, combined with compassion for all lives as they go about in ignorance of this glory. One must tell them; it is dedication, duty, and gratitude, for how could one leave His glorious story untold? This is the work of the prophets and the qutbs, those true human beings, so different from us, who spend their every moment in conscious remembrance of that One. Their awareness stretches the full spectrum of God’s Light, it comes from Allah to this world we live in, and extends back to Allah, the One. Al-hamdu lillah, all praise, all worship is due to God, the creator of all things. May Allah’s peace forever be upon His beloved and most worthy servant Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. Amin.
Carolyn Fatima Andrews, “Secretary”

~ Introduction to The Tree That Fell to the West: Autobiography of a Sufi by Bawa Muhaiyaddeen