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Jijñāsa
my heart full of enlightenment and ecstasy". He was the Crown Prince of the vast Mughal Empire and had everything in the world, but a spiritual yearning to know the Reality was gradually driving him towards the path communion with God. In the year 1640, when he was in his twenty-fifty year Dārā completed his first biographical work, Safinat-ul-Awliya' (a book of the friends of God), a difficult and time consuming work in which he deseribed lives and aphorisms of four hundred eleven saints of different religious sects and orders- Qādirī, Nqshbandi, Chishti, Suhrāwardi etc., in chronological order giving precise date of birth and death of each saint. Dārā had great respect for the saints. The communion with God is dependent upon the saints ... He, who has found a guide, has found the Path which leads to Him",'' he wrote.
His next work Sakinat-ul-Awliya', which deals exclusively with the lives of the saints of the Qadiri order in India, was completed in 1642. While his first work was based on a large number of philosophical and biographical works of the Sufis, the Sakinat was based on his own intimate knowledge of the sect and its principal saints and their spiritual practices. As noted, Dārā had met Mivan Mir a number of times and so also Mullā Shāh whom he refers as his friend, guide and spiritual teacher'. His account is vivid, rich in anecdotes and aphorisms, embellished by verses of Sufi poetry of Rumi, Jalāni, Sādi, Nizami and others. Some of the aphorisms, such as of Mullā Shah, given by Dārā are very revealing. "Mullā Shāh said to me" he writies for you, who adhere to the real Faith. prayers/namă: are not obligatory, for at the moment you are in the state of intoxication (Sukry and ecstasy. Intoxication (in God's love) is of a higher degree than prayers (namaz, and in relation to God are nearer to Him". In Mullā Shāh's conception of Faith (Iman) the real faith was the "absorption of alll human attributes in search of God' which is possible when the mind is illumined with the light of Divine manifestation". This real faith was of the highest type, and different from the visible external worship prescrobed for all Muslims."
Two years later i.e., in 1646 in his 31st year, Dārā brought out another work Risāla i Haq Numā, shortly after his formal initiation in the Qadiri order in 1047 A.H. The tract brings together in a handy volume the doctrines of the order hitherto scattered in various works and describes the devotional practices and stages and the centres of meditation in the heart, brain etc., and the process of hearing Sultan-ul-Askar (the same as Näd of the Yogis) to attain Divine communion. In this work Dārā also describes a disciple's journey through the four worlds-the Physical plane. Astro-Mental Plane, the Plane of Bliss and the Plane of Absolute Truth ('Ala-i-Lāhūt) by practicing breath-control (Habs-idam), perfect concentration and meditation to reach a stage when the mind is free from all thoughtforms, all of which seem to have been adopted without much change from the much older Yogic traditions of India."
In another small tract Tariquat-ul-Haqiqat written in mixed prose and poetry, Dārā has described the thirty stages called manzils in the path of an Ārif, which require detachment from worldly things, acquisition of knowledge, purity of mind, cultivation of sincerity, resignation, steadfastness in the path of Divine love, fixity, detachment etc. In the Prologue of this work he has explained his concept of god whcih is identical with the Vedantic concept of Para Brahman. He is omnipotent. Därā says, all pervading, beyond human intelligence or wisdom to comprehend, and all things were nothing but His representation. He, therefore, felt no hesitation in saying:
Thou dwell in the Ka'ba and in Somnath (temple)
