Supernatural Perception Through Near-Death Experience

Some people have supernatural perceptions in the transition from waking to sleeping.

This taps the supernatural knowledge of the unconscious which then speaks about the thing being asked.

This happens only when one has lost the power to control one’s words, talking as if by innate compulsion.

Supernatural Perception Through Near-Death Experience

This also happens to those who are about to be killed, at the moment when their heads are being severed.

Certain criminal tyrants used to kill their prisoners in order to learn their own future from the words the prisoners would utter when they were about to be killed.

It was unpleasant information they received from them.

In the Ghayah, Maslamah similarly mentioned that when a human is kept in a barrel of sesame oil for 40 days and is fed with figs and nuts until his flesh is gone and only the arteries and sutures of the skull remain, he will answer all questions regarding the future after he is taken out and dried in the air.

This is detestable sorcery. But it shows what remarkable things exist in the world of man.

Some men try to obtain supernatural perception through exercise.

They attempt an artificial state of death through self-mortification.

They kill all corporeal powers in themselves, and wipe out all influences of those powers that color the soul in various ways.

This is achieved by concentrated thinking, and doing without food for long periods.

It is definitely known that when death descends upon the body, sensual perception and the veil it constitutes disappear, and the soul beholds its essence and its world.

These men attempt to produce, artificially before death, the experience they will have after death, and to have their soul behold the supernatural.

Supernatural Perception Through Sufi Sorcery

Other such people are the men who train themselves in sorcery.

They train themselves in these things, in order to be able to behold the supernatural and to be active in the various worlds.

Most such live in the intemperate zones of the north and the south, especially in India, where they are called yogis. They possess a large literature on how such exercises are to be done. The stories about them in this connection are remarkable.

The Sufi training is a religious one.

It is free from any such reprehensible intentions. The Sufis aspire to total concentration upon God and upon the approach to Him, in order to obtain the mystical experiences 330 of gnosis and Divine oneness.

In addition to their training in concentration and hunger, the Sufis feed on dhikr exercises 331 by which their devotion to that training can fully materialize.

When the soul is reared on dhikr exercises, it comes closer to the gnosis of God, whereas, without it, it comes to be a Satanic one.

Whatever supernatural knowledge or activity is achieved by the Sufis is accidental, and was not originally intended. Had it been intentional, the devotion of the Sufis (who intended to have supernatural perception) would have been directed toward something other than God, namely, toward supernatural activity and vision.

What a losing business that would have been! In reality, it would have been polytheism. A (Sufi) has said:

If, meanwhile, some supernatural perception is obtained, it is accidental and unintentional.

Many Sufis shun supernatural perception when it accidentally happens to them, and pay no attention to it.

They want God only for the sake of His essence, and nothing else.

It is well known that supernatural perception occurs among the (Sufis). They call their supernatural experiences and mind reading “physiognomy” (firasah) and “removal” of the veil of sense perception, kashf.

Their experiences of supernatural activity they call “acts of divine grace” (karamah).

None of these things is unworthy of them.

However, Professor Abu Ishaq al-Isfarayini and Abu Muhammad b. Abi Zayd al-Maliki, among others, disapproved of it, in order to avoid any risk of prophetic miracles becoming confused with something else.

However, the speculative theologians rely on the “advance challenge” (tahaddi) as the distinguishing characteristic of the prophetic miracle. This is sufficient.

Muhammad said:

The men around Muhammad, as is well known, had experiences of a sort that confirms the fact that mystics and pious persons may have some sort of supernatural perception.

For instance, there is the story of ‘Umar saying, “O Sariyah, beware of the mountain!”.

Sariyah is Sariyah b. Zunaym.

He was the general of a Muslim army in the ‘Iraq during the conquest. He had gotten into a battle with the polytheists. He thought of withdrawing. Near him, there was a mountain toward which he was directing himself and where the enemy was lying in ambush.

This came supernaturally to ‘Umar’s attention while he was preaching from the pulpit in Medina.

He called out to him:

Sariyah heard it, there where he was in faraway Iraq. He also saw ‘Umar there in person.

Something similar happened to Abu Bakr in connection with his last will, addressed to his daughter Aishah.

He had given her a certain amount of dates from his orchard, as a gift. Then, when he was near death, he suggested to her that she harvest them, so that the other heirs would not get them.

And so it was. This is mentioned in the Muwatta’ in the chapter on gifts that are not permitted.

The men around Muhammad and the pious and exemplary men after them had many similar experiences.

However, the Sufis say that:

• such experiences are rare in the time of prophecy because, in the prophet’s presence, the adept of mysticism cannot continue in his mystic state
• the adept of mysticism who comes to Medina is deprived of his mystic state, so long as he remains there and until he leaves.