The Lamp (al-misbah)
The miṣbaḥ is the innermost secret of the kernel of the heart. It is a subtle point of light that reaches the heart of the servant. It occurs from a Divine Name or an Attribute at the hands of a Shaykh who has attained and who enables others to attain (shaykh waṣil muṣil).
The pure reality of this subtle point of light flows through the disciple and lifts the veils of sensory perception from his inner vision. As a result, the disciple begins to find pleasure in the lights of pre-eternity. His inner vision is drawn like a magnet to the guardians of the spiritual realm (malakut).
The Lamp is a warid, an in-rush. It awakens the heart of the seeker of the Divine Presence from the sleep of forgetfulness. It is thus a cause for him to reach the Real so that he may be freed from the shackles of space and brought out from the prison of his illusory existence.
The Lamp is the carrier of pure meaning. Its lights are the Pathway of pure meanings and innermost secrets. It carries the seeker so that he may surmount his obstacles and cut across the deserts of his lower self, level by level, thus purifying him from the impurities of space and time and cleansing him from the distractions of sensory perception. The Lamp transports the seeker from the worlds of other-than-God (aghyar) to the world of lights and secrets.
For the night of separation and distance is the clothing of the people of forgetfulness. It is their state. They find repose in the outward sense faculties which behold the play of this lower world and its distractions. They are lured by the adorning appetites, pleasures, and beauties of the Enemy ... The Enemy partakes in their children and their wealth. Hecauses them to forget the Covenant of Alastu, “am I not your Lord?.” He causes them to forget the honor of “I blew into him of My Spirit,” (wa-nafakhtu fihi min ruḥi), and to forget the Trust of “I am placing a vicegerent upon the earth” (inni ja‘ilun fi-l-arḍi khalifatan). Thus, those who are forgetful are constantly in the night of separation.
This state of distance and separation is what we call darkness. It is distance from divine knowledge and the site of separation. Those who long for the gleams of proximity find repose in the lights of the stars of the exalted Divine Attributes. They long for the Lamp of the Attributes...and the lights of the Essence...and God's attentive care. They long for the Lamp of lights that obliterates the darkness of alterity and other-than-God.
When the seeker's yearning becomes intensified, and when his determination is sound, he directly tastes the pure meaning and is removed from his state of forgetfulness. At that point he employs the plow of the invocation, strikes the idol of his own "I", and breaks it asunder. He does not incline to his selfish interests, his state (ḥal), personal attachments, knowledge, or deeds...
When the star of the Lamp (miṣbaḥ) rises above the heavens of the unseen within his longing heart, the Spirit becomes inebriated by the wonders of what it witnesses. For the luminous Lamp is the soldier of the heart that reaches out for the presence of the Real.
Sh. Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari, “al-Mahajja al-Bayda'“
