From the Twenty-Fourth Discourse—page 524
in Irshad: Wisdom of a Sufi Master, by Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Al-Jerrahi, trans. Muhtar Holland. An Ashki Book of Amity House, Warwick: 1988.
Several eyes have indeed come to you from your Lord. The supreme proof of all this is the Messenger of the Lord of All Worlds, for our Master is like an eye in the head. Those who do not believe in our Master are like blind men. The blind cannot distinguish light from dark, while those without faith cannot separate the true from the false, the good from the bad. The Holy Qur’ān is another eye bestowed on us by the Exalted Lord. The Qur’ān is a light by which we can see, just like an eye. To follow the Qur’ān is to follow our Master, on him be blessings and peace.
The venerable ‘Ā’isha, the Mother of the Believers, was once asked to describe the blessed Messenger of Allāh. “Read the Qur’ān,” she replied. Where morality and ethics are concerned, the Qur’ān and our blessed Master are identical. Our Master, on him be blessings and peace, was the living embodiment of the Qur’ān.
The scholars and saints also represent eyes that have come to us from our Lord. Their actions and words are the Qur’ān itself, for these beings are so closely bound to Allāh, to His Messenger and to His book, that they have become words from God and the very eyes of our Community. To attach oneself to them is to follow the Messenger. To follow the Messenger is to follow his Exalted Lord.
To obey these worthy beings, who are a divine blessing and proof, and gratefully to accept these eyes as one’s own faculty of sight, is to see the Truth with these eyes, to find God and to possess perfect faith. Those people of faith, who look with these eyes, do so for their own benefit, while those who do not follow these beings, who do not see the Truth, who do not find God and who opt for falsehood, likewise do what they do for themselves.
As we have explained, belief in Allāh, the Lord of Glory, is belief in the Unseen, for it is impossible in this lower world to see the [Entity] of Allāh with our ordinary eyes. But for the divine gift of those special eyes: the Holy Qur’ān, the glorious Messenger, the Imams of independent judgment, the noble scholars and great saints, we would have no way of seeing the Truth. These worthy beings are the gateway to the Truth, not its actual substance. They are Allāh’s vicegerents on earth. To obey them is to obey Allāh. Love and respect for them are love and respect for Allāh. To reject them is to reject Allāh, Exalted is He. As for those who reject the Truth, no matter how well they may see with their ordinary eyes, they are blind in the eye of the heart. Since this blindness prevents them from seeing the Truth in this world, their ordinary eyes will also be blind in the Hereafter. The Noble Qur’ān states this as a fact….