From the ONE to the NONE

As mentioned in my previous article, THE ONENESS , I was in pilgrimage in Makkah during the past month. I’ll have to learn that being in Makkah is called visiting, and that pilgrimage or Hadj is in fact the series of rites and rituals during specific days in a space most of the time in Mina, near Makkah.

And going through the real hadji journey will impact me and make the change inside I hope forever. That’s what I’ll talk about here today.

Yet in Makkah I’ll see that the geography and the atmosphere there are so rough, with high temperatures, the sun almost near our heads, and the geography around made of Rocky Mountains in a grey to dark color.

And thinking about that and about the serenity and tranquility that rises inside everyone whenever we are in the space of the Haram (the space around Kaaba), I’ll come to the conclusion that where the Light of God is so present, the space around will almost shrink so it becomes dark and rough, and almost fade to be None, in the presence of the Light, in the presence of the One.

Yet at my arrival in Makkah, I’ll have an accident and get injured, and I’ll had to face a lot of challenges that I’ll get to overcome. I'll conclude later that all this welcoming and surrounding circumstances was there to prepare my journey in Mina. However, I must recognize that not everything in Makkah was dark or rough. I was installed in a hotel with 4 great travel mates and had to benefit from some privacy and ease in life as well as from great moments not only inside the Haram, but also visiting the city, its towers, museums and surroundings.

Finally, the day will come to go to Mina, and everything will switch from that moment. We’ll make the journey by night I don’t know why. They’ll take us in buses, and we’ll be welcomed at our arrival by smiling and kind youth people. We had the chance to be among the first ones to come to the camp, so we’ll be able to choose the place where we’ll get installed even if that privilege will make no difference for us at the end. The camp is divided in sections with small alleys between them. Each section is divided into two great rooms. Each room is constructed with a collection of six tents. The room was arranged in a way that bunk beds are aligned in each side inside the room, and in the middle was posed two lines of foldables beds. So, the room was arranged to welcome around 120 hadjis inside in a way, when everyone get place, you only have your own individual space for you and no way to move without having to go across people. I’ll have to discover after our arrival and during the stay in Mina that this configuration was typical for our group, and that there are other maybe more spacy configurations depending on who’s the organization behind, public or private, and of course depending on the cost.

I’ll discover after that that there is common toilets and ablution facilities for each at least 4 sections. And the night we came there, there were no water at all. So, you can imagine the whole situation. I’ll had to prevent myself from going to the toilets not only this night, but all the nights during my stay in our own camp. I’ll manage to go to Mosque toilets and my body will manage instinctively to lower the need to one time per day, and of course eat and drink accordingly. I remember that during my stay in Mina, the toilets will be at my eyes a sign of distinction and whenever I’ll have to go next any other camp, I’ll look to their toilets zone first and get surprised that some have a mirror and a washbasin.

During the first day in Mina, I’ll had to experience the phenomenon of promiscuity and how this affects the social relationship between people, where some ethical and normal distances will just fade away and where hygiene and human interactions standards will change. Someone can for example put his hand on your shoulder in a way like he doesn’t have to ask for the permission and get excused for, thinking maybe that because you are in his private space, which is not your choice, it’s normal and if not accepted it’s your fault.

In front of our camp was four luxurious buildings where was installed the so called ‘Ashab Safwa’: Literally, Elite people. They have luxurious rooms, with a private toilet, TV, air conditioning, and balconies from where they used to stay and look down to us. This make me, I don’t know why, get the image of The Titanic, with the separation in the ship between the elite people on the top, and the other ones confined to the lower levels. During the night of our travel to Arafa, again a night, they even locked the iron door of our camp, just like again the image in Titanic in my mind, meanwhile ‘Ashab Safwa’ get into the buses.

The journey to Arafa will last 5 hours with the bus, mostly because all roads are locked, and the driver does not seem to know how to get there regarding the new traffic plan. So, I’ll finally look at google maps and will ask the driver to stop and drop me down with my travel mates to get to our position by walking. It will take us 30 minutes to get there, to notice that all the tents are full, and to finally find a covered position where we’ll stay till the moment we had to move near Rahma mountain, and stay there praying till the sunset.

The first level of disconnection will happen to me during this day of Arafa, and I’ll learn about it days after when a friend will ask me if women during this day and the coming ritual days of Hadj will still cover their faces like in Makkah or not, and I’ll make the observation that I was unable to answer his question because I’ll notice finally that during this day and the coming ones, people were around me, but I don’t look at them, to their faces or to any detail about them.

The night will come, and people will rush to buses to make the move to Mozdalifa, and a second level of disconnection will happen to me, when I’ll find myself separated from my travel mates, and got disgusted from people behavior around the buses. I’ll take at that moment the decision to go through the rest of my Hadj journey, by myself, by walking. I wasn’t the only one to make this decision and the journey of ‘walking hadjis’ will start from there, silently and steadily, for me and all the people around me.

After several hours of walking, we’ll finally arrive to Mozdalifa where we’ll spend the night under the moon. A third level of disconnection will happen to me there, where I lost my contact and consciousness about my own status, and felt with my filthy clothes, bloody feet, dusty body and empty stomach, like a vagabond.

After two hours or three of deep sleep, I’ll wake up, make my prayers and wait the sunrise before continuing my walking, this time in the direction of Jamarat. I remember that when someone asked a local about the direction of our destination, he will tell him: you see this mountain far there, it’s behind. And I remember the discussion of two hadjis and when one of them, who seems uncapable to read the Saudi scripture way for numbers, how much distance we still have to Jamarat. His friend will respond: we still have one hour to get there. And when his friend will insist for his query about the distance, his response will be: it doesn’t matter, just forget about it.

And yes, from that moment, nothing really mattered. And I’ll go through my last level of disconnection. From the feeling of my presence and existence even as a vagabond, I’ll switch to the feeling of my emptiness and helpless. I was able to observe that in every step, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my power nor my willingness to go through this whole journey, which will come to be a total circuit of 40 km in almost 24 hours, alone even surrounded by people, in the heat and between the rough mountains, but the only power and will of God. I was able to observe that the whole journey is a trip to God, and during the trip, approaching the destination is approaching the state where I become NO ONE in the presence of the ONE.

And suddenly, I’ll look around me and got the meaning of all this journey from its beginning at my arrival in Mina till that moment. It was my individual own journey, the one that God had chosen for me and the state God wanted to see me in, to make this trip to him. And around me, if we were, I don’t know, maybe 2 or 3 million hadjis, we were experiencing the same number of separated specific Hadji journeys. And the same way, I understood why I got separated from my travel mates: they were my travel mates, not my Hadji mates. And everything showed up to me so clearly at that moment.

I’ll continue the walk to Jamarat repeating to myself: ??? ?? ??? ??? ?????

Which means:

I’m NO ONE, at the presence of THE ONE.

The rest of my stay in Mina, I’ll escape during the day the camp, the closing iron door, and everything there. Each day, once the ritual of Jamarat done, I’ll spend it in the mosque nearby, and return to the camp lately only to stay the night there.

The rest of my stay in Mina, I was repeating to my travel mates: each one of us is experiencing his own Hadj, and was repeating to myself: I’m NO ONE, at the presence of THE ONE.

The rest of my stay in Mina, I was out of the boundaries of space and time.

The rest of my stay in Mina, I was free of myself.

And I got finally this learning. I thought for a while before this experience, that the journey of life is a journey to the SELF. I’ll learn during this stay in Mina that this is only halfway.

The second half is a journey from the SELF to the NONE, where there is only THE ONE, GOD, so Good, so Good!

And my journey started from there!