Q: How do the saints of God become disconnected with the world?
How Do the Saints of God Become Disconnected With the World?
Because the saints of God realise the world’s reality.
When one realises the reality of the world,
one is no longer inclined towards it.
God has used everything as a sign.
However, it also depends on whether one’s intellect is sound.
God has said that the Qur’an has been revealed for the intellectuals, not for the ignorant.
When you go to the bathroom to relieve yourself,
you feel quite disgusted with yourself,
you think, ‘what the heck is this,
all this filth is coming out from inside me’.
That feels really horrible.
This is not me. Why am I here?
And then when it’s time to eat, you feel troubled again,
‘what on earth am I eating? What is all of this?’
The reason why the saints of God become disconnected with the world
for instance, if there is a song playing,
like ‘Munni badnam huwi darling teray liye…’.
The song’s playing, everyone’s dancing
and suddenly someone changes the CD and plays qawwali.
‘Allah Hoo, Allah Hoo, Allah Hoo…’
The song suddenly turned into a qawwali,
there must have been a reason for it, right? The CD was changed.
The lower self has been placed within, to drag a common person towards the world.
The lower self provides the luxuries of the world.
I will explain something else in order to explain this to you.
Do you know what the dervishes back in the day would have to do in order to purify the lower self?
They would have to remove the tastebuds from their tongue
so that it didn’t make a difference to them what they would eat;
they would eat only to survive.
If we take a look at our lives
and ask ourselves, ‘do we eat to live?’
We eat for the taste. Right?
Although, genuinely, we should be eating to live.
God has placed tastebuds on our tongue.
Those who wanted to be successful in purifying the lower self,
those saints would kill their tastebuds by eating hot chillies.
There is a particular plant in the jungles
the leaves of which would kill your tastebuds if consumed just once.
Since their tastebuds were destroyed,
they would not taste anything no matter what they ate.
Now, we see those who adopt austerities and solitude in the jungles,
who ate stale bread dipped into water as a meal
and we thought, ‘gosh, what a pathetic man!’
Could we ever do anything like that?
I mean, if someone dares us to do it, we may eat that once.
We won’t be able to eat that every day.
Why can’t we do it?
Because we have tastebuds on our tongue.
They will pester us.
When your tastebuds are destroyed, you too won’t care about what you have to eat.
How will that happen?
You bring nihari to eat but don’t enjoy it.
You bring korma but don’t enjoy it.
Even if you eat chicken from Nando’s, it all tastes the same.
Whether you eat grass or leaves, it all tastes the same.
So you’ll think, ‘what’s the point of going to Nando’s to eat chicken?
I might as well eat leaves at home’.
This is how the lower self is purged of carnal desires.
When one’s lower self is impure
and at the stage of Ammarah (Commanding Self),
it makes the luxuries of the world appear tantalising.
‘I want to drive the most luxurious car, I will enjoy it’.
How will you enjoy it?
Driving the car isn’t what makes it fun.
What you enjoy is sitting inside it and showing off.
All these sports cars, all of them,
like Lamborghini, Ferrari.
They are not comfortable!
They’re all about speed and splendour.
Similarly, the lower self tantalises us with various carnal desires,
For example, clothing.
You could go to Primark and get pyjamas for £5
whereas a pair of pyjamas from Armani would cost you £500.
Now, you just need to wear a pyjama, so you wear the £5 one.
But then all these people that wear pyjamas that cost £500
and jackets that cost £300, who are they?
They want to show people, ‘look at what I have!’
Where does this attribute come from? The lower self.
Now, if the lower self is purified,
the pleasure of all such things comes to an end,
and when the pleasure ends, you become disconnected with all such things.
Believe me, the day you travel in first class for the first time,
you’re going to love it.
Once you’ve done it a few times,
then you’re going to start finding flaws, ‘What kind of first class service is this?
What is this? Get rid of it! What is that?’
The human being is as such that one he tastes the pleasure of something, he becomes carefree of it.
So, the saints of God become carefree of the world
after the pleasures and carnal desires of the lower self come to an end
and the spiritual heart introduces a new form of pleasure,
which is not merely pleasure but euphoria.
That is the euphoria of the spiritual heart.
Then, when divine energy begins to enter the heart, one feels a new kind of ecstasy.
Such people are inclined towards the heart.
Now, what is the heart’s job?
The heart pulls one towards God.
The stronger your heart is the closer you will be to God.
Whereas, the heart of a saint is inhabited by God himself,
therefore, they become completely disconnected with the world
because the substance within them which would have pulled them towards the world becomes purified.
When it becomes purified, they no longer have any interest in the world.