“He who has access to the divine realities is drawn away in rapture,” said Hazrat Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (1196–1258), the founder of the Shadhili Sufi order (tariqa). In our modern times, rapture is understood as a term limited to the experience of the senses. Our thirst for spiritual growth may find rapture in the ecstatic, sonorous rise of a qawwali sung in the praise of the Divine Almighty. But caught in the hustle and bustle of life, we forget that rapture does not have to be a fleeting experience. Sufis who devoted themselves to the spiritual path and surrendered their ego to the Almighty found rapture as a state of being. They were so rooted, so anchored in the divine presence that spiritual bliss became their way of life.

It is important to talk of this transcendent state of being so that we stay aware of the rewards and joys for the seekers on the divine path. Hazrat Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324 CE), the beloved saint of Panipat, called out to his followers, “When an irrational animal like camel dances at the tune of bell, why don’t you, being the best of creation, attain absorption and ecstasy in the love of God, or go into rapture by listening the name of the Beloved?”

These were the times when the ecstatic rapture of the Sufi saint of Delhi, Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, was talked about with awe and reverence in the Indian sub-continent and beyond. Hazrat Kaki (1173–1235 AD), a towering figure of the Chishti Order in Delhi, lived a life of extreme austerity and deep meditation. His passing is often cited as the ultimate example of Wajd (spiritual ecstasy) and the power of Sama in the Sufi tradition.

In 1235, Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki was attending a Sama gathering in Delhi – a Sufi ceremony focused on spiritual and meditative experience of music, poetry, and chanting. In Arabic, the term Sama means listening. In the Chishti order and Mevlevi order of the whirling dervishes, Sama is a form of Dhikr (constant remembrance of God) to induce a state of spiritual ecstasy and proximity to the Divine. For the Sufis, Sama was “the nourishment of the soul.”

As Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki was enraptured in Sama, the qawwals began reciting a Persian couplet written by the Sufi poet Hazrat Ahmad Jam:

Kushtagan-e khanjar-e taslim ra

Har zaman az ghaib jane digar ast

(For the victims of the dagger of submission,

There is a new life from the Unseen at every moment.)

It is said that when Hazrat Kaki heard this couplet, he fell into a deep state of spiritual intoxication (Wajd). Qawwals often sing the couplets of a qawwali repetitively to raise the spiritual energy of their audience. Hazrat Kaki was so enraptured by the repetitive singing of this couplet that he passed into the Divine Almighty lost in the spiritual glory of this beautiful couplet.

The gravity, the mysticism, the sheer intensity of the event has made it one of the most beautiful examples of the spiritual “shattering” and the “melting” that comes as a blessing for those committed to the spiritual path. Hazrat Kaki was honoured with the title of ‘Shahid-e-Mohabbat’. In the Sufi tradition, his death was not seen as a tragedy, but as the ultimate success – the divine rapture that slayed the ego and led to total union of the lover (seeker) with the Divine Beloved (God).

The full lyric by Hazrat Ahmad Jam is a Sufi masterpiece and deserves close consideration.

The destination of Love is in another realm,

The man of deep meaning has a different sign.

How can the intellect know where this secret is from?

For this group [of lovers] has a different symbol.

Those dervishes who drink from this cup,

Each one is a king of a different age.

Why do you bind your heart to this fleeting world?

For beyond this world, there is yet another world.

For the victims of the dagger of submission,

There is a new life from the Unseen at every moment.

Love is not taught in any school,

For that kind of knowledge has a different expression.

O Ahmad! Stay vigilant so you are not lost,

For this bell belongs to a different caravan.

Imagine the state of spiritual rapture of Hazrat Kaki. He was struck by the exquisite paradox, that by “dying” to oneself, one receives a “new life” (jane digar) from the Divine every single moment. It is said that Hazrat Kaki remained in this state for four days, oscillating between the “death” of the first line and the “revival” of the second, until he finally crossed over for union with the Divine Beloved.

The Sufis celebrate Fana, the spiritual “death before death”. Fana is an Arabic word which means ‘extinction’, ‘annihilation’ or ‘dissolution’, but none of these is seen as a negative concept. Fana is the joyous state when the seeker’s nafs (individual ego), worldly desires, and sense of ‘I’ or ‘Mine’ are completely erased, making room for the glorious presence of God.

Sufi mystic Hazrat Faridoddin Abu Hamed Mohammad Attar Nishapuri (1145-1221), popularly known as ‘Attar of Nishapur’, wrote of the state of oneness with the Divine, “Now I am made one with you and from that union my heart in consumed with rapture and my tongue is all bewildered. By union, I have been merged in the Unity, I am now altogether apart from all else. I am You, and you are I, nay, not I, all is altogether You.”

This erasure of the distinction between the ‘Lover’ and the ‘Beloved’ was famously celebrated by Hazrat Amir Khusrau in his famous couplet, “Man tu shudam, tu man shudi, man tan shudam, tu jan shudi Ta kas na-guyad ba’d az in, man digaram tu digari”.

“I have become you, and you have become me, I have become the body, and you have become the soul; So that no one may say hereafter that ‘I’ am someone else and ‘you’ are someone else.” In poetic ecstasy, Hazrat Khusrau talks of the time when the bridge of separation has vanished. The veils of illusions have fallen. There is no ‘I’. Only God is. This is ‘Fana’. This is the ecstatic rapture of divine joy.

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