Preface by Sheikh Nazim al-Qubrusi

Preface and Commentaries by Sheikh Nazim al-Qubrusi

Among the readers of this booklet may be Sufi aspirants who have been practicing the methods of any one or several of the forty Sufi Paths other than the Naqshbandi Path. If you are one of such people you may be wondering what difference there is between the Naqshbandi Way and other Sufi Ways: Are they not all ways to One and the same Lord?

Most Sufi Paths offer aspirants a gradual unveiling of the heart’s eye, accomplished through the practice of Dhikr, the commemoration of Allah. These spiritual exercises may contain various of the Lord’s Holy Names and other spiritually potent formulae. Some of them involve practices designed to break the spell of mundane consciousness, and propel the practicant into a state of altered awareness. Such practices may include the repetition of many, many thousands of holy phrases, sometimes connected with breathing exercises and often with physical movements. Without a doubt, through the steadfast and dedicated practice of these methods the aspirant may experience states and attain stations unimaginable in a normal state of consciousness, may feel himself to be flying towards a heavenly goal, beholding the wonders of the mysterious and hidden aspects of creation

If your eyes have thus opened, and if you are greatly enamoured of the wide vistas you have beheld, then be warned, that, should you embark upon the Naqshbandi Path, your colourful plumage will be…