Woe To Me! Woe To Me!

One of the Shaykh Rajab Ali Khayyat (ra)'s disciples who had spent around thirty years with him quoted the Shaykh as saying to him:

"I saw the spirit of one of the scholars of spirituality -who had been residing in one of the big cities in Persia-in Barzakh, who pitied himself, beating on his thighs and saying: 'Woe to me! I have come (out of the world) with no pure and sincere actions in hand!'

I asked him why he was doing so. He answered: 'In my life once I made acquaintance with a businessman who introduced to me some of his esoteric features. When I parted with him, I decided to practice asceticism so that I could also acquire an insight to have intuitions and to see the barzakh and the unseen. I practiced self- discipline for thirty years before I succeeded.

At that time death knocked at my door. Now (in the barzakh) they are telling: By the time you ran into that man of spirituality, you were indulged in your carnal desires, and after that you spent about thirty years of your life in achieving intuitions and vision of the states in barzakh. Now tell what you have done purely for Us?!"

Excerpt from the book 'Elixir of Love' by Muhammad Reyshahri