It is he who leaves all the 'space' to God

Extract from the teaching of Osman Fazli (1632–1691) of the Jaluti sect: educator, initiator, teacher and friend of Ismail Hakki Bursevi.

Man does not possess anything else but his sensibilities as his real organ of intelligence, and without Divine action man cannot even use his memory which is his sacred treasury of experience acquired long ago. The initiate, the saint, insân al-kâmil, is he who possesses the faculty of being able to recognise the true non-existence of his faculties of thought and his own impotence in putting them in motion.

It is he who leaves all the ‘space’ to God and who passes all his life in controlling his intimate faithfulness, in actions, ‘thoughts’ or in the acts that materialise them. It is he who prays constantly to God, even if it be only by a breath or by a movement of the heart, when he perceives the natural and constant phenomena of thought. In fact everybody knows that this faculty is permanent, constant, irresistibly active.

The intimate work of the mystic consists, therefore in trying to attain the Divine proximity, to respond to His infinite clemence by his recognition, or through zikr, whenever thoughts, ‘visitors from heaven’, manifest in his interior. Good or tempting, these visitors have for their mission the exercising of our discernment to the most subtle degree of ‘Good and Evil’, whereby we accord them our consent or we refuse them.

From Addresses II, a translation by Bulent Rauf
Available from Beshara Publications.