Freedom From and Freedom To

And then: abandoning wants. Most of what we have in our lives, we do not need; they are wants. Learning how to conquer want. This is something we as a people particularly have to do, because our wants are having such a massive impact on the rest of the world's needs. At a talk given at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, one woman said: well, the problem is that all the Muslims have too many babies. And the answer was: the problem is that we are consuming sixty per cent of the world's resources, and we are only five per cent of the population. So before we start pointing the finger at overpopulated countries, we had better think about how we are really using our resources. There are gross imbalances.

And the Muslims are not communists. There is an idea of property. There is an idea that there are wealthy people and there are poor people. The Qurʾān says that there are reasons, that there is a wisdom behind that. If everybody was the same, who is going to take out the garbage? Really — who is going to? Why would anyone do the low jobs, and why? But the idea is to recognise that this hierarchy is part of the world, and then to recognise the responsibilities that go along with all of that.

And then he says: his actions are done with trust in God, contentment — and the final one, contentment, being content: really feeling content with what one has. These are achievable. In other words, we have to struggle to get them, but they are things that can be achieved by the human being. And the final one is love, which is the highest station: to love God with all one's heart. The Christian ideal exists in the Islamic tradition as well. His actions are done sincerely for the One witnessing them — in other words, God alone: that we should do our actions not for anybody else, but for God alone. And he is content with whatever the Divine has apportioned for him. Through that, he becomes a knower of his Lord, truly free, and otherness has left his heart.

Now, in the Islamic tradition there is an idea of two types of freedom: freedom from, and freedom to. So if one is free from want, then one is free to live. As long as one has all of these wants, one will never be satiated. When one becomes free of those wants, then one is free to really be alive. So this is very strong in the tradition: becoming free. And the interesting thing is that the word for a freed slave in Arabic is also the word for a master. The idea there — mawlā, what is called a mawlā — is that if one becomes a master of one's lower self, one is truly free. If one is a slave of oneself, one can never be free. So: overcoming one's desires.

Through that, he becomes a knower of his Lord. For this, he is loved by God. So through all of this work one enters into a divine love, and is chosen for the divine presence, which is the maqām of iḥsān, the station of iḥsān. That is the result of all this struggle: that one begins to experience the divine presence. And that is the end of it.

What has been given here is a very traditional approach to this science, instead of an academic treatment: really just a taste of what is taught to a student in West Africa by his teacher. So there is a type of transmission. It is said that there is a blessing in transmission when one receives something in this way, because it goes all the way back to the Prophet. The signs of the last days follow in the next chapter.