It feels odds taking a scholarly approach to this mystical discussion. The path of the Sufis is through mysticism, which by its nature rejects categorization, analysis and dissection. Recognizing the indescribable nature of ultimate unity, the Real, I humbly hope I can use the imperfect tool of words to describe a bit of my wonder, fascination, and the power of this approach. God cannot be capture with words, and I am a mere messenger. I may fail but when you are intoxicated and in love with God, dazed like a fighter in the ring or lovers on their wedding night, I think a failure is understandable, and admitting failure is honest and humble. Let’s begin.
If you can look past some obviously outdated thinking and phrases (or get an updated edition, I was reading a 1975 reprint of the original), this is a fascinating book. The level of analysis that gets a solid understanding without getting too academic or staying too shallow (the Goldilocks Zone).
In a world that is increasingly distracted, intentionally made afraid, and increasingly ruled by the false currency of “like” and “followers” it is beautiful to be reminded of the underlying unity and the ultimate quest - follow the Real. That which underlies life. Sufis see the world and ourselves as an extension of God. Everything that is is an extension of God (the technical term for this = pantheism, it’s not a position unique to Islam). As a participant in this divine manifestation, the proper attitude is one of wonder, awe, and love towards the Divine.
To get there, you can follow three main roads.
Meditation – common to most religions
Mortification – again, common to all those who want to shake off their earthly attachments and focus on the more important
Music – an interesting deviation from the norm. Music, and even intoxication through wine, are considered ways to worship because you are disconnected from the ego self.
Forgetting self is a big goal of the Sufis, as is your tone when you speak to the Divine. Another point I found fascinating was your approach or tone towards God. If you repent for your sins excessively or demansiado (in Spanish that describes it perfectly, the gringo equivalent doesn’t quite hit the mark) it’s a form of pride.
Do you think God wants you to spend your time talking to him about what you did? Your time is better spent in worship and adoration.
The point is this – you should come to God not from fear, not from desire for reward, but from a place of love and adoration. Most mystic traditions (even within Christianity) reach this truth.
I wonder why it isn’t propagated more and I believe it’s because most (adults) lose the capacity for wonder. Most organized religions are about a rule system, it is better (and easier) to be feared than loved as Machiavelli would say. It’s also dangerous to set up a special group to whom the rules don’t apply (people never like that set up). Children, are more in touch with the divine, in fact Sufis poetically believe children cry because they have been separated from the Divine in the womb. May that be comfort to someone rocking a newborn at 3 am.
I side with the mystics and the gnostics. I embrace the uncertainty and the ultimate unity. I am wary of those who claim they figured it out and here’s the rules you have to follow. Anyone who claims to have found the Truth and gives you a rule book is selling you something. Anyone who says their group has found the truth and that group over there is the enemy is a liar. There is uncertainty when you realized we don’t quite know, but living and reveling in the uncertainty is a more honest, open, and ultimately beautiful way to live. May we reveal in the Divine.
Quotes
Mohammedan mystics are fond of calling themselves ahl al-haqq, “the followers of the Real.” 1
“O God, I never listen to the cry of animals or the quivering of trees or to the murmuring of water or to the warbling of birds or to the rustling wind or to the crashing thunder without feeling them to be an evidence of Thy unity and a proof that there is nothing like You.” 7
“O my God, I invoke Thee in public as lords are invoked, but in private as loved ones are invoked. Publically I say, ‘O my God!’ but privately I say, ‘O my Beloved!’” 8
These ideas –Light, Knowledge, and Love – form, as it were, the keynotes of the new Sufism…ultimately they rest upon a pantheistic faith which depose the One transcendent God of Islam and worshipped in His stead One Real Being who dwells and works everything, and whose throne is not less, but more, in the human heart than in the heaven of heavens. 8
“Jesus passed by three men. Their bodies were lean and their faces pale. He asked them, saying “What brought you to this place?” They answered, “Fear of the Fire.” Jesus said, “You fear a thing created, and it behooves God that He should save those who fear.” He left them and passed by three others, whose faces were paler and their bodies leaner, and asked them, saying “What brought you to this plight?” They answered, “Longing for Paradise.” He said, “You desire a thing created, and it behooves God that He should give you that which you hope for.” Then he went on and passed by three others of exceeding paleness and leanness, so that their faces were as mirrors of light, and he said, “What has brought you to this?” They answered, “Our love of God.” Jesus said, “You are the nearest to Him, you are the nearest to Him.” 11
The Buddhist moralizes himself, the Sufi becomes moral only through knowing and loving God. 17
When the Sufis say, “die before you die,” they do not mean to assert that the lower self can be essentially destroyed, but that it can and should be purged of its attributes, which are wholly evil. These attributes – ignorance, pride, envy, lack of charity – are extinguished, and replaced by the opposite qualities, when the will is surrendered to God and when the mind is concentrated on Him. Therefore, “dying to self,” is really “living in God.” 41
“There are really two kinds of contemplation. The former is the result of perfect faith, the latter of rapturous love, for in the rapture of love a man attains to such a degree that his whole being is absorbed in the thought of his Beloved and he sees nothing else…when the lover turns his eye away from created things, he will inevitably see the Creator with his heart.” 56 Kasf al-Mahjub of Hujwiri (one of the oldest texts on Sufism)
The whole of Sufism rests on the belief that when the individual self is lost, the Universal Self is found, or, in religious language, that ecstasy affords the only means by which the soul can be united with God. 59
Pythagoras and Plato are responsible for another theory, to which the Sufi poets frequently allude, that music awakens in the soul a memory of celestial harmonies heard in a state of pre-existence, before the soul was separated from God. 64
Normally the heart is ‘veiled’ blackened by sin, tarnished by sensual impression and images, pulled to and fro between reason and passion: a battlefield on which the armies of God and the Devil content for victory. Through one gate, the heart receives immediate knowledge of God; through another it lets in the illusions of sense. “Here is a world and there a world. I am seated on the threshold.” –Jaluddin Rumi. 69
How shall a man know God? Not by the senses, for He is immaterial; nor by the intellect, for He is unthinkable. Logic never gets beyond the finite; philosophy sees double; book-learning fosters self-conceit and obscures the idea of the Truth with clouds of empty words. 69
Niffari bids the gnostic perform only such acts of worship as are in accordance with his vision of God, though in so doing he will necessarily disobey the religious law which was made for the vulgar. His inward feeling must decide how far the external forms of religion are good for him. God is the One Real Being which underlies all phenomena.
This principle is carried to its extreme consequences, as we shall see. If nothing except God exists, then the whole universe, including man, is essentially one with God, whether it is regarded as an emancipation which proceeds from Him, without impairing His unity, like sunbeams from the sun, or whether it is conceived as a mirror in which the divine attributes are reflected…“I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known; therefore I created the creation in order that I might be known.” 80
Sufis have deepened and enriched the lives of millions by ruthlessely stripping off the husk of religion and insisting that its kernel must be sought, not in any formal act, but in cultivation of spiritual feelins and in purification of the inward man. 93
Love is the essence of all creeds. 105
“No religion is more sublime than a religion of love and longing for God.” –Ibn al-Arabi
“When God loves a man, He endows him with three qualities: a bounty like that of the sea, a sympathy like that of the sun, and a humility like that of the earth. No suffering can be too great, no devotion too high, for the piercing insight and burning faith of a true lover.” Bayazid 111
“Oh God! If I worship you in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell. If I worship you in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship you for your own sake, withhold not your everlasting beauty.” Rabi’a 115
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