Stories and Sayings of Khwaja Alauddin al-Attar

Khwaja Alauddin al-Attar (may God sanctify his innermost being), the eighteenth Shaykh in the Naqshbandi Golden Chain and at the same time, the ninth Khwaja of the ‘Khwajagan’ – the Masters of Wisdom of Central Asia, said the following:-

“One day a Shaykh asked me, ‘How is your heart?’ I replied, I do not know how my heart is.” The Shaykh responded, “I know my heart and it is like the moon in the third night.”
I related this conversation to Khwaja Shah Naqshband, who said, ‘He answered according to his heart.’ As he said this, he stepped and pressed firmly on my foot. Immediately I left myself and I saw that everything in this world and this universe was in my heart. When I awoke from that state of unconsciousness, he was still standing on my foot.
He then said, ‘If the heart is like that, then no one can describe it. What do you now think about the holy Tradition, ‘Neither My earth nor My Heavens can contain Me, but the heart of the Believer contains Me’? This is one of the hidden secrets you must come to understand.”

“When God makes you forget both worldly power and the heavenly kingdom – this is absolute annihilation. If He makes you forget absolute annihilation – it is the essence of absolute annihilation.”