Discussion of the rank of ihsan in the religion and the deviation of what is called al-rabita among the Sufis.

The Shaykh : This rank is the rank of ihsan, and as you have heard, it is the highest of the ranks of Islam and faith. Therefore, it is a grave error to transfer this high rank, which is specific to the relationship between the servant and his Lord—where he worships Allah as if he sees Him—to a human servant, under any interpretation or justification. Some people try to justify that the servant should monitor a servant of Allah while he is remembering his Lord. They claim that this servant whom the servant should monitor is one of those who have reached Allah, and that he in turn conveys this servant who is being monitored in his remembrance. This is what is called in some famous paths "al-rabita": that the aspirant links his heart to the heart of his shaykh, whom he does not see and knows nothing about at all—whether he is in remembrance or heedless? Then this one who is in remembrance himself does not know anything about the state of his shaykh either—whether he is in remembrance or heedless? And so the matter becomes, in its contradiction of the Islamic Shari'ah, a fundamental contradiction, and becomes absolutely illogical, because the one whom a person should monitor must be one who believes that the monitor knows the one being monitored, knows his need, his supplication, his request, and the like of the prescribed purposes.
How can it be reasonable to monitor the helpless, the ignorant, and the heedless? This is nothing but what some of the Sufis themselves said: "But the predecessors" were not among those who surrounded him. "The calling for aid of the created by the created is like the calling for aid of the prisoner by the prisoner". Who is going to free him? So he calls for aid in him!
So this servant who is being monitored is like this monitor; both are in need of turning to Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) and monitoring Him with true monitoring. It is regrettable that this high station of the stations of Islam and faith, namely the rank of ihsan, where the servant faces and monitors his Lord, is diverted to this servant monitoring a shaykh of his. This is the regrettable deviation that has affected some Muslims today. In this hadith, and in the hadith of Jibril, and the like of such hadiths, there is a refutation of this innovated monitoring and an establishment of the Shari'ah monitoring, which is that the servant monitors his Lord only, and no one else, and that he monitors Him in this state as if this monitoring servant sees Allah with his eye. This is one of the admonitions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) to his companion Mu'adh ibn Jabal.