The Journey to the Pleasure & Closeness of Allah ﷻ

The purpose of this book

Allah created man to worship Him, so that through this he can attain His pleasure.

The rest of creation on earth has been created to serve mankind — even the sun, the moon and the stars in the heaven were created for this purpose. In this world Allah tests man through wealth, possessions, land, relatives, spouse, children, sickness, health, and even through life and death.

The question is whether these worldly things take mankind away from Allah, or whether mankind uses the world to achieve the closeness of Allah the Most High.

The example of the plane

Many people travel to many lands. But there is one journey that needs no ticket you can buy.

The whole of this teaching is carried on a single image. The plane is your heart and soul — it is through the heart that you travel towards Allah. Every part of the aircraft stands for something you must build in yourself: the wings are your belief and your knowledge of the law, the wheels are your repentance and your striving, the doors are the seven organs you must close against sin, the engine is remembrance and the fuel is steadfastness.

And there are other runways. Some planes are waiting to carry you to the lands of your desire, and to Hell.

The book maps the whole flight in one diagram: the mountain of four conditions at the near shore, the bridge of purification over the ravine, the mountain of four objectives, and beyond it the mercy and grace of Allah opening onto the kingdom of heaven. Below runs the river of things that look like progress and are not.

Before anything else

You are standing in the middle of a story that started before you existed.

The book opens by placing you on a timeline — seven scenes running from a period when there was only Allah and nothing else, through the world of spirits where every soul answered a question, to the earth you are standing on now, and onwards to the grave, the reckoning, and one of two endings.

It marks your position on it plainly, and it marks the direction of travel.

The shape of the work

Four conditions to meet. Then four stages to cross.

Nothing here is abstract. Each stage is a practice with a method, a duration, and a way of holding yourself to account — thirty consecutive days at a time, one organ at a time, one level at a time. If you break the condition, you begin that count again.

And one thing to settle first

None of this counts if it is done to be seen.

The book is severe on this point, and returns to it again and again. A seeker who begins in order to be respected, or to gain money, or to become known, has nullified the aim of the whole journey. Worse, the book warns against chasing the things that merely resemble progress — good dreams, visions, miracles, lights during meditation, the ability to heal. Sixteen of them are listed, and none of them is the goal.