Sufism
and Truth
John 15
(NET Bible Translation)
15:1 “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. 15:2 He takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in me. (Ponder this…God the Father takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in Jesus. This warning from Christ in itself refutes everything that the Sufis teach. The Sufis do not bear fruit IN JESUS.) He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit. 15:3 You are clean already because of the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. (A person cannot follow the Sufi and remain in Jesus.)
15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me--and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing. 15:6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up, 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples.
15:9 “Just as the
Father
has loved me, I have also loved you; remain
in my love.
The paper you
are about to read has been written to refute the claim by the Sufis
that the
This paper
will accent exactly what the Sufi way teaches by showing the source of
that
teaching and by utilizing the writings of various Sufis countered by my
comments as coming from a perspective in Christ.
These comments will be bold-faced and in
parenthesis. As you
begin to peruse this
paper also keep in mind what is written in John 14:5-14:17: Thomas
said, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 14:6 Jesus
replied, “I am the way,
and the truth, and the
life. No one comes to
the Father except through me. 14:7
If you have
known me, you will know my Father too. And from now on you do know him
and have
seen him.”
One can read into the above
passage that if one does
not accept Christ and what He taught about Himself, then there is no
way that person
can know the Father. God
the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit is not known by such a one.
Therefore, this person, in this case the Sufi, does not
and cannot know
God. This is simple
logic. So simple, a
child should be able to
understand.
Sufism
Short
Introduction into Sufism
Neo-Platonism
strongly influenced the development of Sufism; therefore it is not true
that Sufi
thought came directly from God by way of the Koran and Mohammed. Sufism is not the heart of
Islam as Sufis
teach to an unknowing public.
Neo-Platonism,
as developed by Plotinus, conceives God to be the source and goal of
everything. Islam qua institution is closed to all
critical and
philosophical thought, but Sufism enjoys a more liberal and critical
approach.
It is more than probable that the translations of Plotinus have
provided the
necessary philosophical ground for Sufism. An examination of both
Sufism and Neo-Platonism
reveals close similarities with regard to the nature of God, the soul,
the
body, concepts such as goodness, evil and beauty, death and life, and
creation.
In the roots of Sufi philosophy
there are influences other
than Neo-Platonist philosophy. Ascetic practices within the Sufi
philosophy are
also associated with Buddhism. The notion of purification (cleaning one’s soul from all evil things
and trying to reach Nirvana
and to become immortal in Nirvana) plays an important role in
Buddhism. The
same idea shows itself in the belief of "vuslat" (communion
with God) in Sufi philosophy.
Sufism was also influenced by
Orpheus and related beliefs,
and consequently by Pythagoras and his teachings, because Pythagoras
was
closely interested in Orpheus beliefs. Orpheus was a poet who lived in
The attempts to construct a
religious philosophy on the
basis of Greek thought and especially the theories of Pythagoras
culminated in Neo-Platonism.
Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, took Plato's theory of ideas
and
reinterpreted them from Protagoras' point of view. According to
Neo-Platonism,
God is conceived as the source and goal of everything; from him
everything
comes, to him all things return; he is the alpha and omega, the
beginning,
middle and end. Communion with God or absorption in God, therefore, is
the real
purpose of all our strivings, and religion the heart-beat of the
universe. The
principal doctrine of Plotinus states that there is just one exalted
God, which
is a supreme power, the final cause, the cosmic force. God is the
highest
spiritual and creative Being.
The Sufi believes that, although
the world proceeds from
God, he did not create it; the universe is an emanation from God, an
inevitable
overflow of his infinite power or actuality. (This
is not true from a Christian perspective.
God created the world, according to the Old
Testament, and Christ did not refute this teaching.
Since Christ taught about His resurrection
before it occurred, I will follow what Christ taught.
He teaches from authority.
Plotinus taught a philosophy which was
thought to be true at the time. However,
Christ takes precedence over Plotinus—Christ did not teach
what Plotinus taught.) Plotinus
employs several metaphors to suggest
the meaning of emanation. God is a spring from which the spring flows
without
exhausting its infinite source; or, God is the sun from which the light
radiates without loss to the sun. The absolute being (God) is higher
than beauty,
truth, goodness, consciousness, and will, for all these depend on him.
The
farther we are from the sun, the source of light, the nearer we are to
darkness
(matter). Beauty is in the structure of divine existence. Other types
of
existence such as matter and body are not beautiful in themselves, but
rather
they are beautiful as a reflection of God's beauty. Among all beings in
the
universe human beings are the closest to the divine essence because
they have
souls that strive to turn in the direction of pure thought. The
truthfulness,
beauty or goodness of a human being depend on its soul's actions within
its
body; the closer the soul of a human being gets to the source of light,
the
more it acquires the qualities such as truth, goodness, and beauty.
Human beings
reflect the appearance of God in themselves more than other life forms,
and
consequently they are the highest in the scale of being.
There is no
aspect of Sufi philosophy that is not influenced by Neo-Platonism, therefore
the claim that Sufis make concerning that their teaching emanates from
the heart
of Mohammed and the Koran cannot be true. Neo-Platonism existed long
before the
Koran ever graced the earth. This may be why Muslim scholars and
clerics frown
upon Sufi teachings.
According to Sufi philosophy,
Absolute being is also
Absolute beauty, and since beauty tends toward manifestation Absolute
being
developed the phenomenal world. Human beings in this phenomenal world
are the
only ones that share a unity of essence with God, because they have
souls.
After a human being dies, his/her soul goes back to its source, to the
Absolute
being, while his/her body dissolves and decays. Since the soul makes a
human
being a person, one should practice the quiestic virtues such as
poverty,
austerity, humility, fortitude, and discipline; devote oneself to the
ways of
inwardness such as withdrawal, silence, solitariness, and
self-examination; and
keep in mind a constant awareness of God with faith and desire. This
way, one
can achieve a sense of direct communion with God which is the Absolute
being
behind the phenomenal world. f one follows these directions with
sufficient
perseverance, one will advance through the standard mystic stages of
concentration, appreciation of the oneness of everything, epiphanies,
i.e.,
sudden and unpredictable illumination, blissful ecstasy, sense of union
with
the Deity, sense of one's own nothingness, and sense of the nothingness
beyond
nothingness.
Neo-Platonism is the closest
doctrine of thought to Sufi
philosophy in terms of their system of belief. Now, these two doctrines
need to
be compared more closely, and the similarities between them need to be
described in detail.
In Sufism, the universe is just
an appearance of God, and
does not have an independent existence. To think of the universe and
the God as
being separate is to deny the "Oneness" and to suggest a
"duality" between God and the universe. But in reality, So Sufis
teach, the God and the universe are the "One" and the same thing such
that God reflects himself as the universe. It is not possible to think
of God
and the universe as separate entities because God is not something
outside the
universe as Islam favors, but rather something within the universe. As
seen
above, this belief was initially suggested by Neo-Platonism. They both
see the
existence of the universe as an emanation from God.
Sufism assumes that there is a
union of God, universe and
humans, and that human beings are an appearance of God; but God's
appearance in
the shape of a human being cannot be thought of any further than just
an
appearance. The reality is not a duality between God and humans, but
rather a
sameness, a oneness between them. A person is a talking, thinking,
acting God.
This idea is beautifully expressed in Yunus Emre's following verse:
I
didn't know you were the eye inside of me
You were a secret essence both in body and soul
I asked you show me a symbol of you in this world
Suddenly I realized you were the whole universe.
This poem
expresses the idea of the oneness of God-universe-human beings. It is
possible
that the belief of oneness of humans and God in Sufism is carried from
Neo-Platonism.
In the trilogy of God-Universe-Humans, God has the highest position,
second is
the universe, and third is human beings. Even though humans rank last
in the
trilogy, they are very close to the God, and almost identical to him
because of
the soul they have.
Sufism and Neo-Platonism
share the same beliefs about the soul. According to Neo-Platonism, the
soul is
a divine essence, a substance, the source of all existence. The soul is
the
effect, image, or copy of pure thought, namely God. It is immortal,
infinite,
and separate from the body. The body is a cage where the soul is
trapped, and
it can be freed when the body dies. The soul, by its nature, always
tends
toward perfection, beauty, goodness and exaltation. In Sufism the soul
is
treated similarly, and expressed as a divine essence in humans.
The body,
like soul, is also treated similarly in both Sufism and Neo-Platonism.
According to Neo-Platonism, the body is mortal, temporary, and not
divine. The
body tends not towards beauty and goodness, but towards ugliness and
evil. What
is beautiful, good, valuable and divine is not body, but the soul. The
body
tends towards temporary desires and wishes. The task of the soul is to
purify
the body from evil tendencies, and its deficiencies. The body is a cage
for the
soul. Sufism shares the same belief. The body is created from the
earth, and
will go back to the earth, and decay there. For this reason, the body
is not
important, and a person should not follow the desires of his/her body,
but
rather should turn from sensuous life to thought, and through it, to
God.
For Neo-Platonism
beauty means much more than mere symmetry. It involves a close
relationship to
the ideal reality; it is an appearance of God over the objects of the
universe.
Whatever the divine light shines on becomes beautiful. Sufism thinks
exactly
the same about beauty. In Sufism, beauty is expressed with "cemal"
meaning human face, the beauty of human face. What is really expressed
in
"cemal" (human face) is the appearance of divine light in the face of
a human. Neo-Platonism identified beauty with divine essence, and
Sufism
adopted the same idea. This is beautifully expressed in the following
verse from
Husrev:
Want to understand an example of
the real essence of
God
Look at the face of a beautiful woman and there see the face of God.
Realizing
divine characteristics in human beauty might be an influence of
Neo-Platonism
in Sufi philosophy.
Both Neo-Platonism
and Sufism believe that, just as beauty, goodness is also a divine
virtue.
Goodness is the most important among the characteristics that exalt a
human
being to the highest stage of being. Both in Islam, and in Sufism,
goodness as
a divine virtue is associated with God's will. The belief that God will
recompense good deeds in blessing to human beings is not something new
or
original in Islamic philosophy. Goodness was first formulated
systematically as
a philosophical problem in Plato. Goodness, honesty, bravery, wisdom,
and
virtue are the main topics of Etik in Plato's philosophy. Later
Plotinus
reconciled Plato's philosophy with religion under the teachings of
Neo-Platonism.
Thus, the idea of goodness as a divine virtue in Sufism is probably
carried
over from Neo-Platonism. In both of these doctrines, the more the soul
purifies
itself from temporary passions, wishes and desires, the more harmonious
it
becomes with goodness.
Both Neo-Platonism
and Sufism believe that death is a separation of body and soul. When a
person
dies, the soul as a divine essence does not die, and travels to another
body
while the body decomposes, decays and becomes earth again. Death is a
dissociation of two entities, the soul and the body.
Sufism sees
the creation as an emanation from God, as an "appearance" of God.
This notion of creation is quite different from Orthodox Islamic belief
of
creation as coming to existence from nothing. According to this belief
God
created the universe, mankind, and all other living creatures from
nothing but
out of self-love. This belief is adopted by all monotheistic religions,
such as
Christianity, Judaism and Islam which assume the existence of only one
God, and
it probably first originated in the Old Testament. Sufism, like
Neo-Platonism,
explains creation in a pantheistic fashion.
Both Sufism
and Neo-Platonism claim that the soul can reach exaltation by passing
through
certain stages. First of all, the exaltation of the soul depends on
purifying
itself from passions, sensual desires and wishes. Secondly, the soul,
because
of its divine nature, is immortal and its tendency towards temporary
beings can
cause it to degenerate and deteriorate. In order to prevent this, the
soul must
turn to itself, and try to understand its meaning. Thirdly, the soul
can reach
exaltation by knowing itself. The way to know thyself is through love.
Love is
the appearance of God, and by love one can achieve a special knowledge,
knowledge of one's own self. Self-knowledge can be achieved through
introspection. At the last stage, as a person knows oneself and
understands the
essence of the soul, one realizes that one is identical with the
universe and
all other creatures, and that God is the only being showing itself in
all
creation. Hence, one frees oneself from dualism. This is the stage of
unification of God, humans and the universe. At this stage, words, such
as you,
and I, which imply separation and differentiation, lose their meaning;
there is
only "One", and this "One" is unification in the essence of
God. This is the highest stage of exaltation for a person, and once one
reaches
this stage, one sees God in one's own self, and understand that God is
the only
being in the universe, and that one's self is nothing but God.
As
seen above, there are very close similarities (almost identical is some
aspects) between Sufism and Neo-Platonism. How they came to interact is
really
a question of the social and cultural environment in which Sufism
flourished.
As is known, Islamic philosophy has its roots mostly in the works of
Aristotle
which were all translated into Arabic. Islamic philosophers interpreted
Aristotle from an Islamic point of view, and established their theories
on the
basis of Aristotle's philosophy. Through the translations of the
writings of
Plato and Plotinus, they also were introduced into the Anatolian
culture and
mingled with different ancient Anatolian beliefs, such as Orpheus. The
mystic
elements within Neo-Platonism, woven together with ancient Anatolian
beliefs (eg, the sacredness of natural events
such
as the sun which is incorporated in Sufism in the belief of God's
resemblance
to the sun), prepared the way for liberal interpretations of
Islamic
principles in Sufi philosophy. Neo-Platonism seems to be the most
probable
underlying philosophical system of thought for Sufi philosophy.
Now, in
the context of the
history of thought, according to the Sufi, Sufism always insists on a
return to
the sources of the Islamic tradition - can be seen to have functioned
at times
as a positive and healthy reaction to the activity of Islamic
philosophers and
theologians. (But we have just read that
Sufism derives the foundation of its thought from Plotinus’
thought. It is not
derived from Mohammed.)
For the Sufis, the road to spiritual
knowledge - to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of
rational
or purely intellectual activity, without intuitive knowledge (zawq,
"taste") and the direct, immediate experience of what they claim as
the Heart. Truth, they believe, can be sought and found only with one's
entire
being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insist
on a
total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the
Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the
fourth/tenth
century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and
was martyred for it by what we could call Islamic fundamentalism),
he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity
(tawhid), but simply stated the truth from the mouth of the Truth. So
the Sufis
believe. This is
debatable, however.
This
insistence of total involvement in "mystical" realization, and on a
participative understanding of religious doctrine, sharply
distinguishes Sufism
from other Islamic schools of thought, so the Sufi would have one
believe. However,
after having read what is written
above, this appears not to be the whole truth.
Considering themselves the true core of Islam (which cannot be since much of the source of Sufi
thought originates
from the thought of Plotinus), Sufis appear as outsiders not
only to the Islamic
philosophers and theologians, but even to "ordinary" Muslims. Their
peculiarity, their distinctness, manifested itself in every aspect of
their
lives: their daily activities, their worship, social relations, and
even style
or means of expression. Like mystics in all traditions, they tend to
remake
language and form for their own purposes, and as in all traditional
civilizations,
the potency and directness of their expression tends to flow out and
permeate
other areas not directly related to mysticism in the narrow sense:
literature,
the arts and crafts, etc.
Islam,
according to the Sufi, gives the basic situation in which we find
ourselves this
interpretation: man in his ordinary state of consciousness is literally
asleep
("and when he dies he wakes," as Mohammad said). He lives in a dream (which is to infer that the life is not
real—which is not true.
Life is not a
dream. There is no
purpose to a dream,
no goal. Life does
have a purpose and a
goal. The statement
that life is like a
dream is false.) whether of enjoyment or suffering - a
phenomenal, illusory
existence. [Existence is not
illusory—this thought is derived from Buddhism, a tradition
that states that
God is not necessary to live a life of non-suffering.] Only
his lower self
is awake, his "carnal soul." Whether he feels so or not, he is
miserable. But potentially the situation can be changed, for ultimately
man is
not identical with his lower self. Man's authentic existence is in the
Divine;
he has a higher Self, which is true; he can attain felicity, even
before death
("Die before you die," Mohammed has been cited as saying.). The call
comes: to flight, migration, a journey beyond the limitations of world
and
self.
Imprisoned
in the cage of the world (the world in its negative,
"worldly" sense), man is exiled and forgetful of his true home. To
keep his part of the covenant, to be faithful to his promise, he must
set out
on the Path from sleep to awakening. It is only the blessed few for
whom this
Path lasts no longer than a single step, although in theory all that is
needed
according to the Sufi is to "turn around" or "inside out"
and be what one is. For most seekers the Path is long; one Sufi speaks
of
"a thousand and one" different stages.
"Everything
perishes
save His Face"; the first step on the Sufi path is to begin to
contemplate
the futility of the world of dust, the world in which one's lower self
is
doomed. The seeker must renounce it all, including his own self, and
seek that
which is Everlasting. He must travel from things to nothing, from
existence to
Nonexistence. (This is foreign to
Christian teaching, and false from a Truth standpoint.
Christ is the truth—He did not teach that man
must travel from existence to non-existence.
Therefore, this statement is false.)
How does
one get lost on
purpose, according to the Sufi? Our present state is one of
forgetfulness
toward the Divine - the true Self - and remembrance of worldly affairs
and the
lower self. The cure for this is a reversal: remembrance of the true
Self, the
Divine within, and forgetfulness toward everything else. (It
would be difficult to forget all else and be a productive person in
society. This
teaching also is foreign
to Christian teaching.)
In Sufism the basic technique
for this
is invocation or "remembrance" (dhikr) of the Divine Name, which is
mysteriously identical with the Divine Being. [The Divine
name—what is this
name? Is it not
Jesus, the son of God
and God? Sufis do
not remember
Christ. They do not
take part in the
Last Supper. Jesus
said to eat the bread
and drink the blood (wine) in remembrance of Him.
If anything, Christians participate in
remembrance of God every time they participate in Eucharist. Does the Sufi?] The Sufi claims that through
this discipline
the fragments of our directionless minds are re-gathered, our outward
impulse
turned inward and concentrated. This is the act of a lover who thinks
of
nothing but his beloved.
Sufism or tasawwuf,
as it is called in Arabic, is generally understood by scholars and
Sufis to be
the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam. Today,
however,
many Muslims and non-Muslims, as I stated above, believe that Sufism is
now outside
the sphere of Islam. In
fact, Sufism,
since its foundation is based on Plotinus’ thought, never was
based on Islam,
certainly not on the thought of Mohammed, as I understand his teaching.
In spite of its
many variations and expressions, and the intimation that Sufism is no
longer
under the thralldom of Islam, the essence of Sufi practice is quite
simple. It
is that the Sufi surrenders to God,(their conception of God) in love,
over and
over; which involves embracing with love at each moment the content of
one's
consciousness (one's perceptions,
thoughts, and feelings, as well as one's sense of self) as
gifts of God or,
more precisely, as manifestations of God.
While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to
God and will
become close to God in
Jesus replied, “Your
brother will come back to life
again.” Martha said, “I know that he will come back
to life again in the
resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her,
“I am the resurrection and
the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the
one who
lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?” She replied, “Yes, Lord, I
believe that you are the
Christ, the Son of God who comes into the world.” (John 11:
23-27.) The
person in Christ, does he/she not dwell
in Eternity now?]
Furthermore, the
attainment of the knowledge
that comes with such intimacy with God, Sufis purport, is the very
purpose of
the creation. Here they mention the hadith qudsi in which God
states, "I was a hidden
treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation in
order to be
known." Hence for the Sufis there is already a momentum, a continuous
attraction on their hearts exerted by God, pulling them, in love,
towards what
they believe to be God. They experience the joyful ecstasy of being
gently
drawn to their Eternal Beloved, yet this primordially blissful return
seems to
have been interrupted. The Persian poet Hafiz remarked, “O
Wine giver, pour me
a cup and pass it around for love seemed easy at first, but later the
difficulties arose.”
The
difficulties in following the Sufi path derive primarily from one's
self or ego
(nafs). In other words, it can be said that if one
is not recognizing or
experiencing God's "closeness" or presence, the responsibility for
this condition lies with one's own self.
[It must be emphasized that Sufi’s place short
shrift to the Christian
belief that Christ is God. They
maintain
that Christ is a prophet, which denies the essence of Jesus, who
stated, “I and
the Father are one.” In
effect, a Sufi,
by denying that Christ is God, will never be able to experience
God’s closeness
or presence. The
love they experience,
though sublime, is not the deep love of God.
This is a major problem with Sufism that Sufis apparently
do not see.]
Some of the gross
effects of the dominance of
the nafs are that one may become overwhelmed by the
need to gratify
desires such as anger, lust, and the many addictions that afflict us.
Other
gross effects are that one may become dominated by states of
consciousness such
as anxiety, boredom, regret, depression, and self-pity-- so that one
feels like
a powerless victim or prisoner tortured within one's own mind.
Given that the
Sufi regards every thought,
feeling, and perception that he or she has (including
his or her sense of self) as a manifestation of God or as a
particular view
of God's face ("Wherever you turn
there is God's face"--Qur'an), a more subtle effect of the
dominance
of the nafs than those expressed earlier (but still
a devastating
effect) the Sufi believes is to imagine that God is absent from one's
experience
or to imagine that one does not have the choice to embrace the way in
which God
appears at this moment. Such mistaken imaginings often cause one to
cease to
surrender gratefully and lovingly into God's embrace. In fact, being
overcome
by these subtle effects opens the door for the gross effects mentioned
earlier.
Hence, one of the
emphases of Sufism is upon the
struggle to overcome the dominance that one's nafs has over one, a struggle that first
and foremost involves
choosing at each moment to remember and surrender actively to their
conception
of God--irrespective of whether the form in which God becomes manifest
is one
of absence or presence, benevolence or severity. As Rumi said,
“I am a lover of
both his benevolence and severity!
Amazing it is that I'm in love with these
opposites!” [An
individual must surrender his/her
conception of self. This
surrender is to
God. The Sufi does
not do this. Works
will never free one from the self, from
nafs. In some
cases, such activity works
to increase the conception of self. This is another flaw in Sufism.]
The Qur'an instructs Muslims to
remember God, whose reality
encompasses and pervades both the unmanifest and manifest worlds (al-ghayb
wa-al-shahadah). Sufis have developed this into the
quintessential Sufi
practice of silent and vocal dhikr (remembrance).
An inherent problem in
dhikr, however, is the difficulty in remembering God
when one has little
or no awareness of God. To start with, Muslims begin with a name of
God, such
as "Allah," which is often called the "comprehensive" name (al-ism
al-jami'). It is comprehensive in the sense that it comprises
all of the
infinite names of God (except Jesus, the
most important), which refer to the source of the awareness
of all of
reality. In down to earth terms, the ultimate source of one's awareness
of the
words on this page, for example, is the reality of one of the names of
God, all
of which are encompassed by the name Allah. In short, according to
Islam and
the Sufi, the source of one's present awareness--whatever that
awareness may
be--is encompassed by the name Allah. Thus, remembering God can begin
quite
simply and ordinarily with the awareness of two things: one's present
awareness
and the name Allah--even when one has no awareness of the reality to
which the
name Allah refers. (A logical question
is, “If one has no awareness of what Allah means, the reality
of Allah, then
how can one be aware of the reality behind the meaning of the word? Anyone can repeat any
word, let’s say
benikneuteranibus, but without the awareness of what the word means,
that
person is, in actuality, aware of nothing.
Do you, the reader, glean awareness from knowing the above
word,
benikneuteranibus? The
word has no
meaning…it’s a made-up word with no meaning. It is
extremely difficult to
remember God if there is no basis for the remembrance.
A person needs to know something about God to
be able to remember Him. A
name for God
does not do this. I
have pointed out
another flaw in Sufism.)
The Sufi follows the path toward
God
primarily by means of love. For the Sufi who is enraptured with the
love of God
(who is the source of all existence, or, as some might say, who is all
of
existence), all of existence is extraordinarily beautiful. In contrast,
one who
is not in love with God to this degree will not see what is so awesome
about
existence. While
some Sufis such as Rumi
become utterly consumed by love's fire, for most who wish to love God,
their
love is merely a wavering flame, ever in danger of diminishing. Hence,
by
remembering God's forgotten reality and beauty, Sufis are said to
rekindle the
flame of their love for God. In Sufism, it is remembrance that makes
the heart
grow fonder. In a nutshell, this is the relationship between dhikr
(remembrance of God)
and love.
This paper will attempt to show
that Sufism,
though beautiful in many aspects—it’s poetry is
sublime—cannot reach what it
purports its goal to be.
Now, let us turn to a more
elaborate
review of Sufism.
Islam at the
beginning was primarily a
legalistic religion and placed before its adherents little more than a
code of
ethics combined with a set of rituals. The faithful observance of these
was
deemed sufficient to satisfy every man's religious quest and ensure him
a place
in heaven. There was no demand for spiritual regeneration through a
rebirth
experience and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as in the Christian
faith, nor
for a highly spiritual form of devotion through which the worshipper
could draw
near to God in a personal way and discover the knowledge of his grace
and favor.
During the Ummayad
period, after Islam had made direct
contact with Eastern Christianity and
other oriental religions, a deeply mystical movement arose within its
realm, in
many ways, perhaps, indebted to the influence of these faiths for its
motivation and principles, but nonetheless an independent theosophy (so the Sufi would have us believe.
(Remember, however, that the Sufi has gleaned
most of its philosophy from Neo-Platonism, Plotinus, Gnosticism)
developing
purely within the framework of the Islamic society and heritage. The
movement
is known as Sufism (tasawwuf) and its followers are
known as Sufis
(pronounced "Soofies"). The word Sufi almost
certainly comes
from the Arabic suf, meaning "wool", and implies
that the Sufi
is a wearer of a woolen garment. In pre-Islamic times ascetics often
dressed in
wool as a symbol of their particular course of life and the early
Muslims who
practiced austerity were duly nicknamed "Sufis". Later on the name
was adopted by those who sought to obtain knowledge of God through
various
stages of spiritual self-denial as asceticism in Islam gave way to
mysticism.
Sufism is
principally a quest for a living
knowledge of the Supreme Being. To the orthodox Muslim, Allah is the
Lord of
the Worlds, unique in his essence and attributes, ruling over the
entire
universe and quite unlike anything in his creation. To the Sufi, on the
other
hand, "God is the One Real Being which underlies all phenomena"
(Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, p.80). He is
everything and there is
nothing but Him. Man's purpose is to lose his natural sense of a
separate
identity from his Creator and to be absorbed instead into his knowledge
until
there remains no distinction of consciousness between him and God.
Through a
series of stages (maqamat) and subjective
experiences (ahwal)
this process of absorption develops until complete annihilation (fana)
takes place and the worshipper becomes al-insanul-kamil,
the
"perfect man".
The Sufi concept
of a God who is "all in
all" (pantheism) differs from the orthodox conviction that the further
he
is placed from his creation, the more he is glorified. Historically it
is a
marvel that Sufism grew out of the bedrock of Islam but its
development, so the
Sufi believes, will not surprise Christians who believe that man was
made in
the image of God and that his highest glory is to be conformed to the
divine image
and be partaker of the divine nature through the indwelling Holy Spirit
(However, this does not mean that man may
be absorbed in God and lose his identity as the Sufi believes).
The
mystical quest in Islam was perhaps to be expected for, as it has been
put by
Sufis, there is a "God-shaped vacuum" in every human heart that no
religion based purely on ethics and formal rites can ultimately fill.
To become a Sufi a
Muslim must attach himself to
a tariqah, one of the Sufi orders, and submit
himself to a pir or master.
Only when this master adorns the disciple with a khirqah,
a robe
inducting him into the order, does he become a recognized Sufi, and
only then
can he embark on a valid pilgrimage through the various stages towards
his goal
of union with God.
Accordingly,
whenever an unknown dervish comes into a convent or wishes to join a
company of
Sufis, they ask him "Who was the Pir that taught thee?" and
"From whose hand didst thou receive the khirqa?"
Sufis recognize
no relationship but these two, which they regard as all-important. They
do not
allow anyone to associate with them, unless he can show to their
satisfaction
that he is lineally connected in both these ways with a fully
accredited Pir.
(Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, p.23).
The covenant by
which the disciple is initiated
into the particular order he enters is known as a bay'ah
and it attaches
him to his master and the silsilah (chain) from
which the master himself
derives his power (barakah) and authority (similar to the "apostolic authority" conferred on
Roman
Catholic priests through a progressive laying on of hands said to go
back to
Simon Peter).
The initial Sufi
experience is not, as it is for
true Christians, a rebirth experience in which the man, once born of
the flesh,
is now born of the Spirit, has a totally new relationship to God and
knowledge
of him, and can through his unity with God in the Spirit develop the
relationship. Rather the Sufi really seeks only "to become aware of
what
one has always been from eternity (azal) without
one's having realized
it until the necessary transformation has come about" (Nasr, Living
Sufism,
p.7).
The major Sufi
orders are the Suhrawardiyya
(founded by one as-Suhrawardi), the Qadiriyya
(attributed to Sufism's
most famous personality, Abdul Qadir al-Jilani), the Chishtiyya
(its
master Mu'iniddin Chishti who is buried at Ajmer in India), the Shadhiliyya,
the Mawlawiyya (a Turkish order founded by
Jalaluddin Rumi who is buried
in Konya in Turkey), and the Naqshabandiyya (which
is prominent in Iran
and other parts of Asia).
2. A
Brief Analysis of Sufi Stages and Experiences.
The goal of the
Sufi is to reach a personal
knowledge of his Creator until knower and known are one and there is no
awareness of any distinction of personality between them. Like all
orthodox
Muslims, Sufis reject the concept of incarnation (hulul)
and do not believe
that God can become man (they therefore
reject the teaching of Christ, which is Truth). They also resist pantheistic
tendencies (but do not deny that they exist
within
Sufism), carefully distinguishing between God and his
servants, while
nevertheless teaching that man's aim must be to attain to such a high
state of
consciousness of God that his personality may no longer be
distinguished from
God's essence and character (this is not
a logical construct—cannot have it both ways—not
logical). Man
does not have this knowledge by nature,
however, and each prospective Sufi must prepare for a course which will
take
him through many stages and experiences before he completes his
journey.
…the
Sufis never tire of emphasizing that the end of Sufism is not to
possess such
and such a virtue or state as such but to reach God beyond all states
and
virtues (This is foreign to the teaching
of Christ. Christ
taught that the Father
chooses who will come to Him.). But to reach the Transcendent
beyond the
virtues, man must first possess the virtues; to reach the station of
annihilation and subsistence in God, man must have already passed
through the
other stages and stations. (Nasr,
Living
Sufism, p.58).
The Sufi who sets
out to seek God calls himself
a 'traveler' (salik), he advances by slow 'stages' (maqamat)
along a path (tariqat) to the goal of union with
Reality (fana
fi'l-Haqq).... The Sufi's 'path' is not finished until he has
traversed all
the 'stages', making himself perfect in every one of them before
advancing to
the next (How can an imperfect being
make himself perfect without the aid of one who is perfect. The only sinless one was
Christ, whom the
Sufi rejects.) and has also experienced whatever 'states' it
pleases God to
bestow upon him. (Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam,
p.28, 29).
The early
mysticism of Islam sought only a path
of self-purification, a character renewal, until the personality was
conformed
to the divine image. (It appears in
Sufism that man must make himself pure.
In Christ, God makes man able to approach God. A person can do nothing
for himself in this
regard. Therefore,
the self is useless
in Christianity). Later
it was
believed that such growth must be accompanied by deliberate ecstatic
experiences, confirming the progress of the soul. The decline of Sufism
in
later centuries can perhaps be attributed to the interest of the masses
purely
in the experimental side of Islamic mysticism and the desire for
emotional
excesses.
The
early mystics of Islam, however, devoted themselves primarily to the
first of
the three stages, that is, Purgation. To the mystics, at-tariq
(the
Pathway) was a method of self-purification acquired through the
cleansing of
the senses and through bodily discipline. Gradually the Sufis began to
develop
the second stage, this is, Illumination. Al-Muhasibi (A.D. 781-857),
who
pioneered with his disciples in the pathways of Purgation, was one of
the first
to declare that as purification brings freedom from the attachments of
this
world the Sufi might expect to arrive at the stage of Illumination and
thence
proceed to the unitive life in God. (Jurji, "Illumination - A Sufi
Doctrine", The Muslim World, Vol.27, p.129).
Pure Sufism,
however, sincerely seeks the fullness
of the knowledge of God. (This is
impossible. God
bestows his knowledge to
man through acceptance of His Son and through grace.
The fullness of the knowledge of God comes
through Christ. If
the Sufis do not let
Christ in, they will never know the fullness of the knowledge of God.
The Sufi
is confused, blinded by what he believes he can do.
No man can come to know God through his own
effort.) Nevertheless it has been universally believed by
Sufis and Muslims
for centuries that such a search must be accompanied by external
manifestations. The goal will be obtained when the worshipper sees God
alone in
all that he contemplates and at the same time feels a total and
ecstatic sense
of his presence.
The
whole of Sufism rests on the belief that when the individual self is
lost, the
Universal Self is found, (This is not
true. The
individual does not coalesce
into the Eternal. The
individual self is
never lost. When
Christ arose from the
dead, was He not recognized by his disciples?
Did they not recognize His voice and His form? Did He not have a physical
body? Did He not
walk on the earth? Was
He then lost to
his individuality? No!
) or, in
religious language, that ecstasy affords the only means by which the
soul can
directly communicate (This is also
false. Did not the
disciples communicate
with Christ on earth? It
is true that
the disciples did not know that they were communicating with God at the
time. Lack of
recognition does not mean
the inability to communicate.)
and
become united with God. (Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam,
p.59).
The Sufi believes (and he is deluded in his belief) that a
person can become the
Perfect Man, one "who has fully realized his essential oneness with the
Divine Being in whose likeness he is made" (Nicholson, Studies
in
Islamic Mysticism, p.78). On the path towards this goal,
therefore, the
Sufi believes (which is again misguided
belief) one must no only go through the progressive stages of
self-annihilation but must also have trance-like experiences in which
his
normal consciousness is to be lost in ecstatic contemplation of the
Divine
Being alone. (When Moses spoke with God,
was Moses in ecstatic contemplation at the time? No.
Is not this proof that a person need not lose
his normal consciousness to speak with God?
It is true that few have met God as did Moses, but it is
also true that
normal consciousness need not be lost.
What the Sufis believe here is not true.) These experiences are the ahwal
(singular hal) mentioned earlier and authenticate
the developing
discovery of the ultimate light and truth.
In
the Sufism of the orders this ecstasy or trance-like 'state' is called
a hal,
though in Sufism proper a hal more strictly refers
to the succession of
illuminations, through experiencing which the Sufi progresses a further
'stage'
(maqtam) towards the goal of spiritual perfection.
(Trimingham, The Sufi
Orders in Islam, p.200).
Such experiences
are, to the Sufis, not to be
regarded as hypnotic phenomena to which the human spirit is susceptible
in
appropriate circumstances but rather gifts from God confirming the
Sufi's
striving for his presence. Each stage reached by the disciple is the
result of
his own effort (Did not I not indicate
that it is in Christ that man is able to come to God?
The Sufis place much emphasis on man’s
efforts to reach God…but man can do nothing to attain to the
knowledge of
God. Nothing. Works are dead. Whenever a
person attempts to
reach God by works he is going to fail utterly.
All depends upon God’s grace, through the
acceptance of Jesus
Christ. The Sufis,
again I repeat,
reject the central core of Christ’s teaching.
Therefore, there is no way that they can gain any
knowledge of God. What
they experience comes from their own
minds and not the “Mind” of God); each
experience is a token of the divine favor
upon the endeavor - "the hal is a spiritual mood
depending not upon
the mystic but upon God" (Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the
Mystics of
Islam, p.75).
The Sufi believes
that a Christian must surely
be affected by the whole nature of Sufism. True Christianity, a Sufi
believes, is
by nature mystical (This statement is
false. How can a
Sufi speak concerning
true Christianity? He
does not recognize
the truth in Christianity but presumes to teach what True Christianity
is? How
presumptuous and how utterly false.
True Christianity is essentially logical and
historical. It is
based on mysticism.)
and anyone born of the Holy Spirit will not only seek to become
conformed to
the image of his Lord but will also experience many proofs of the
Spirit's
presence in his soul. Indeed it is a New Testament principle that where
such a
relationship between man and God truly exists, the formal restraints of
legal
ethics and rituals have no binding effect as the believer has the
motivation
towards truth and right-living within him. [This
above statement is believed by Sufis.
However, the statement is false.
Ethics and rituals do restrain.
No Christian is to denigrate the ethics found in the
teaching of Christ,
nor are the rituals to be thrown into the air as being useless. These keep all Christians
in check. Christians
are not above Christ. Christ
taught that the Law was to be observed
and that ethics had a purpose. They
restrain the element of mysticism that could creep into the faith. You see what the Sufis are
attempting to do
here? They are
attempting to discredit
the Law because in a subtle way they believe that they are above the
Law, that
it is not needed. They
think that they
know God, so they don’t need to view the Law and ethics as
anything of much
importance. They
will not say this to
anyone, but it is evident by the above statement.]
And
so for all the actions of life: no outward law regulates the Sufi (They
do
believe that they can do what they wish…for to them what
they do is in
actuality what God is doing. It
is true
that they do not advocate violence, etc.
But it is also true of Paul that he said that some people,
though they
do not know the Law have the Law written in their
hearts—referring to
non-Jews. The law
of God can regulate
some people—however; this is not what the Sufi here means. The Sufi believes in his
heart that since He
knows God, he does not need the “outward” law, not
even as focal point for
spiritual guidance. The
outward law
does not regulate him. But
from where
did the outward law come. Did
it not
come from God and not man? This
is also
what the Gnostics of passed times believed.)
in regard to them, whether the one way or the other; only
the Golden
Mean and the General Happiness. (Gairdner,
"The Way of a Mohammedan Mystic", The Muslim World,
Vol.2,
p.255).
A prominent Sufi
in Islamic history, Sari
as-Saqati, who lived in Baghdad at the same time as Islam's
arch-conservative
theologian, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and was strongly opposed by him, made a
profound
distinction between the legal formalism of the Muslim masses and the
spiritual
quest and path of the Sufi elite:
"The
way of the multitude is this", said Sari, "that you observe prayer
five times daily behind the imam, and that you give alms - if it be in
money,
half a dinar out of every twenty. The way of the elect is this, that
you thrust
the world behind you altogether and do not concern yourself with any of
its
trappings; if you are offered it, you will not accept it. These are the
two
ways". (Arberry, Muslim Saints and Mystics, p.169).
There is a
remarkable similarity here between
the old and new covenants, the former legalistic, the latter based on
"grace and truth" which came through Jesus Christ (John 1.17). Islam cannot be
regarded as a
stepping-stone to Christianity but Sufism definitely is. Genuine Sufism is Islam's
only endeavor to
raise itself towards the glory of the Christian revelation.
The difference
between the two is this - the Sufi seeks in himself to attain to the
knowledge
of God through a series of spiritual stages and denies the Christ in
doing so;
the Christian acknowledges that his natural tendency towards sin and
separation
from God prevent him from ever attaining such a goal, and he submits
rather to
God's redeeming grace in Jesus Christ, His Son (which
the Sufi refutes) and the regenerating work of the Holy
Spirit within him to enable him to know God fully and become like Him.
3. The
Different Stages in the Sufi Quest.
It is not easy to
define the various stages of
the Sufi path, especially since there is no universal consensus
concerning the
exact identity of each stage or even of the order in which they are
reached. It
is generally agreed that the goal is al-Haqiqah,
"the True
Reality", also known as fana, self-annihilation" or
absorption
in God. Very prominent in the Sufi stages is ma'rifah,
"knowledge" of God, or the gnosis of his essence and presence. In
some cases it is set forth as one of the stages towards the goal, in
others it
is identified with the haqiqah as the object of the quest. These two,
together
with the initial tariqah, "the path", constitute
the three
great stages of Sufism. A Sufi must attain to these after graduating
from the
basic laws of Islam which are set forth, Sufis believe, as a principal
code for
the unenlightened Muslim masses. The foundations of the
shari’ah, the law, and
the three ascending Stages of Sufism towards the goal of complete union
with
God through a loss of self-consciousness are defined as follows:
Nasut
is the natural human state in which one lives following the rules of
the shari'a;
Malakut
is the nature of angels, to reach which one treads the tariqa,
the path
of purification; whilst
Jabarut
is the nature of power, to attain which one follows the way of
enlightenment, ma'rifa,
until one swoons into Fana, absorption into Deity,
the State of Reality
(Haqiqa), often called in the order literature `Alam
al-Ghaib,
'the (uncreated) world of the mystery'. (Trimingham, The Sufi
Orders in
Islam, p.160).
Famous Sufis have
individually been responsible
for identifying and emphasizing different stages making up this
threefold
gradient. In time these became integrated into the catalogue of stages
in the Sufi
quest.
One of the initial
stages is said to be an
attitude of indifference towards good or bad fortune. The Sufi believes
that
adversity, causing discomfort, depression or discouragement is brought
about
through God's deliberate "contraction" (qabdh) and
that
prosperity, joyful circumstances and the like, come from his
"expansion" (bast). He humbly resigns himself to
both, seeking
not to be affected by his circumstances but to fix his devotion purely
on his
Lord and Master. Qur'anic sanction is found for these contrasting acts
of God
and the Sufi's willingness to abide in them.
The
Sufi has submitted himself to God, who says "God contracts and
expands" (Koran II: 245). Thus, whether he gives
contraction or
expansion, the Sufi only desires what is desired by his Beloved.
(Nurbakhsh, Sufism,
p.27).
One is reminded of
Paul's words in Philippians
4.11-13. Another typical stage is that of "gathering" (jam)
in
which the Sufi begins to turn away from the state of separation from
God (tafriqah
- "dispersion"), the distinction being between God himself and the
world
of everything but God.
There are many
different stages, but perhaps
some attention should be given to the ultimate stage - fana
- for all
the intermediate stages are different forms of disassociation from all
that is
"under the sun", to use a Biblical expression (from Ecclesiastes), in
the cause of being absorbed into the consciousness of the Supreme Being. Alternatively,
the Sufi seeks to shake off
the identity of his nafs, his individual soul with
all its ungodly
tendencies, similar to the concept of "the flesh" as it is set forth
in opposition to the way of the Spirit in the New Testament, especially
the
eighth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Fana is the
ultimate goal - dissolution of the Sufi's
consciousness of his own identity through a total absorption in the
knowledge
of God. As a technical term in Sufism, the word annihilation signifies
the
annihilation of the attributes of human nature and their transformation
into
Divine Attributes. In the state of annihilation, the Sufi is completely
immersed in the contemplation of the Attributes of God and oblivious to
his own
self. Sufis
would like to emphasize that
this does not lead to a pantheistic theosophy, but it does.
It is true to say
that the Sufi should never be
able to proclaim that he has reached this stage for his complete
absorption in
God and self-annihilation, his fana fit-tawhid, fil Haqq
("
The
highest stage of fana is reached when even the
consciousness of having
attained fana disappears. This is what the Sufis
call 'the passing-away
of passing-away (fana al-fana). The mystic is now
wrapped in
contemplation of the divine essence. (Nicholson, The Mystics
of Islam,
p.60).
Let us briefly
look at one of the ways in which Sufis
seek to induce a state of ecstasy. Though a means is employed to create
this
state, they insist that the experience itself is from God, which
appears to be
false.
4. Dhikr
- The Remembrance of Allah.
The commonest
means of inducing a state of
ecstasy is the dhikr ceremony. A group of Sufis
will gather together and
begin a series of chants, either of the ninety-nine names of Allah, or
just
simply of the name of Allah himself, until the devotees collapse in a
state of
trance. The famous "whirling dervishes" obtain their name and fame
from this very ceremony. Today it has become customary for numerous
adherents
of Sufism, who know nothing of true Sufism or a deep spiritual quest
coupled
with acts of self-discipline to attain to a higher state of
spirituality, to
seek purely the supposed state of "ecstasy" that can be obtained
through regular concentration on and recitation of the name and
attributes of
Allah.
After
an experience of nearly thirteen years of close contact with Egyptian
Moslems,
I have no hesitation in saying that, as to the bulk of the population
of
The Qur'an
commends the remembrance of Allah in
these words: Wa aqimis-salaah ... wa lathikrullaahi akbar
- "and
establish prayer ... and the remembrance of Allah, which is greater"
(Surah 29.45). Orthodox Muslims take this verse simply to mean that
prayer
without a consciousness of Allah has a very limited value. Sufis
interpret it
to mean that the practice of dhikr through
repetitions of Allah's name
and attributes is greater than the formal acts of the prescribed salaah,
the basic Islamic form of worship.
According
to some this means the mentioning, or the remembering of God
constitutes the
quintessence of prayer; according to others it indicates the excellence
of
invocation as compared with prayer. (Burckhardt, An
Introduction to Sufi
Doctrine, p.101).
A dhikr ceremony
is something to behold, though
Christian observers can be excused if they become bored after a while
with a
monotonous repetition of religious clichés, e.g. la
ilaha illullah -
"there is no God but Allah", which supposedly brings the devotee into
the realm of God and a conscious awareness of his presence simply
because they
result in a trance-like state. In all religions there are those who
seek,
through various means, to enter into such trances and these means are
all very
similar to one another. The end result seems to be a self-induced,
hypnotic
state rather than a God-ordained experience.
5. How
Sufism Relates to the Qur’an and Hadith.
If Sufism is a
later development within Islam
(with roots in Neo-Platonism), how does it reconcile itself with
original
Islam, the religion of Muhammad as set forth in the Qur'an and Hadith?
The Sufi
answer is that this original Islam has the germs of Sufism and that
both the
Qur'an and Hadith contain numerous passages indicating the deeper
nature of
true Islam, that which later blossomed into its great mystical
movement. We
know, though, that Sufism is not the
nature of true Islam.
Expressions such
as these in the Qur'an are
produced by Sufis as proof that Islam is, at heart, a spiritual
religion:
"To God belong the East and the West: whithersoever ye turn, there is
the
Presence of God. For God is All-Pervading, All-Knowing" (Surah 2.115);
and
"We are nearer to him (man) than his jugular vein" (Surah 50.16).
Although Muhammad himself could hardly be described as a mystic, let
alone a Sufi,
there are verses in the Qur'an that do at least support the Sufi
contention,
prompting one scholar to say: "however unfavorable to mysticism the
Koran
as a whole may be, I cannot assent to the view that it supplies no
basis for a
mystical interpretation of Islam" (Nicholson, The Mystics of
Islam,
p.22). As the Qur'an is believed to be the uncreated Word of God it is
little
wonder Sufis seek to authenticate their movement with reference to its
teaching
and it is not surprising that they make much of these verses. "For
these
mystical texts are the chief encouragement and justification of the
Sufi in his
belief that he also may commune with God" (Arberry, Sufism:
An Account
of the Mystics of Islam, p.17).
Another verse
cherished by the Sufis is this
one: "To God we belong, and to Him is our return" (Surah 2.156) as it
seems to synchronize with their whole philosophy that man's objective
and duty
on earth is to strive spiritually until he comes back to the knowledge
of his
Creator. The "return" must therefore be one in which the soul can be
re-united with its Maker through a thorough spiritual devotion.
The
Sufis claim that the whole of Sufism is summed up in this verse, and it
is
often chanted at their gatherings and sometimes repeated a certain
number of
times on a rosary; and in fact, although every believer is necessarily
'for
God' in some degree or other, the mystic may be said to be 'for God' in
a way
which the rest of the community is not. (Lings, What is
Sufism?, p.28).
The Hadith contain
certain "hadith
qudsi" (divine sayings of Allah), allegedly reported from Muhammad
himself
which contain mystical elements even closer to the heart of Sufism than
the
verses quoted from the Qur'an. A famous saying of this kind is:
My
slave keeps on coming closer to Me through performing Nawafil (praying
or doing
extra deeds besides what is obligatory) till I love him, so I become
his sense
of hearing with which he hears, and his sense of sight with which he
sees, and
his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks; and if
he asks
Me, I will give him, and if he asks my protection (Refuge), I will
protect him.
(Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol.8, p.336).
One writer
comments that "the whole of Sufism
- its aspirations, its practice, and in a sense also even its doctrine
- is
summed up in this Holy Tradition, which is quoted by the Sufis perhaps
more
often than any other text apart from the Qur'an" (Lings, What
is Sufism?,
p.74). Another similar saying is: I was a hidden treasure and I desired
to be
known; therefore I created the creation in order that I might be known
(quoted
in Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, p.80).
These traditions are, for the Sufis, their motivation for earnestly
desiring to
know God and their belief that he does indeed desire that his servants
should
thus seek Him. One writer says of the last saying:
This
is called the "self-revealing" (tajalla) of Allah
and is only
really intelligible through the mystical contemplation, which sees all
things
in God, as it sees God in all things. (MacDonald, The
Religious Attitude and
Life in Islam, p.170).
There is, of
course, the possibility that the
hadith quoted are symptomatic of later developments in mystical Islam.
Accordingly they may well have been invented. Nevertheless, for the
Sufis, they
authenticate Islamic mysticism, enabling them to trace it back to
statements
allegedly reported on the authority of Muhammad himself.
6. Some
Famous Sufis in Muslim History.
There are a number
of Sufis who stand out in the
history of Islamic mysticism, all of whom have made their contribution
in one
way or another to the development of Sufism. One of the most famous of
the early
Sufis was Junayd, the head of a large body of disciples, who died in
Junayd, being one
of the early Sufi masters, was
not given to excesses in his mystic devotions and sought chiefly
through a
process of self-denial to discover the way to God. The following
saying, which
seems to be far more Christian than Muslim in origin and emphasis, is
attributed to him: "Sufism is that God makes thee die to thyself and
become resurrected in Him" (quoted in Nasr, Living Sufism,
p.57).
It was this very principle of dying to self that later became the
foundation of
the Sufi concept of fana, being lost in the
consciousness of God, and
Junayd was one of the first to use this expression.
At the other
extreme we find the famous Persian Sufi
master Bayazid al-Bistami, "first of the 'intoxicated' Sufis who,
transported upon the wings of mystical fervor, found God within his own
soul
and scandalized the orthodox by ejaculating, 'Glory to Me! How great is
My
Majesty'" (Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam,
p.54). Sobriety was not at the heart of this man's mystic experiences.
He not
only established the concept of being so united to God that the
identities of
the Creator and creature become one but also gave the ecstatic
character of
this experience its impetus. As was to be expected, he was highly
unpopular
with the orthodox Muslims of his day. He is credited with many bold and
daring
statements, of which the one quoted above is an example. Here is
another:
For
instance, one day Bayazid was in his cell.
Someone came and said, "Is Bayazid in the house?"
He answered, "Is there anyone in the house but God?
(Nurbakhsh, Sufism, p.53).
He also greatly
emphasized the ultimate state of
fana but gave it a far more experimental character.
He is accordingly
regarded as the founder of the "drunken"
Some Muslims say
that a true Muslim on
pilgrimage will see the Casaba the first time, the Casaba and the Lord
of the
House the second and only his Lord on the third. Bayazid went further:
"The
first time I entered the Holy House," stated Abu Yazid, "I saw the
Holy House. The second time I entered it, I saw the Lord of the House.
The
third time I saw neither the House nor the Lord of the House" (Arberry,
Muslim
Saints and Mystics, p.121).
This experience
illustrates the whole meaning of
the fana state - a lost consciousness even of God himself as the Sufi
pilgrim
becomes one with God. Another symbolizing this same concept is:
One
day someone came to Bayazid's door and knocked. The shaykh said, "Who
are
you seeking?" The man replied "Bayazid". Bayazid then answered,
"Poor Bayazid! I have been seeking him for thirty years but have found
no
sign or trace of him". (Nurbakhsh, Sufism, p.97).
Another famous
mystic from the golden age of Sufism
was Abu Sa'id ibn Abul-Khayr, a prominent member of the group of early
masters
who emphasized the doctrine of losing one's human consciousness and
subsisting
in the knowledge of God alone. These men all believed that by
renouncing
earthly pleasures, by mystical hours of devotion, and by seeking out
the higher
virtues of the soul, one could walk the road towards this goal.
Self-love had
to be replaced by a disinterested love for God alone.
Abu Sa'id followed
in the footsteps of Bayazid,
making many bold statements calculated to antagonize the orthodox. On
one
occasion he told one of the fuqaha, the Muslim
jurists, that he could
read his thoughts (many anecdotes have
been recorded of his alleged power to discern the thoughts of men).
The
jurist had thought to himself that he could not find Abu Sa'id's
teaching in
the seven-sevenths of the Qur'an (that
is, the whole Qur an). Abu Sa'id replied that his doctrine
was contained in
the "eighth-seventh" of the book, meaning a special revelation given
by God to his favorite servants. This concept of an independent
revelation
given to a Muslim after the revelation of the Qur'an is diametrically
opposed
to the Muslim doctrine of the finality of prophet hood.
Here
Abu Sa'id sets aside the partial, finite, and temporal revelation on
which
Islam is built, and appeals to the universal infinite and everlasting
revelation which the Sufis find in their hearts. As a rule, even the
boldest
Mohammedan mystics shrink from uttering such a challenge. (Nicholson, Studies
in Islamic Mysticism, p.60).
Among the great
mystics of Islam was a woman,
Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, who lived in
Of
Rabi'a her biographer wrote that she was "on fire with love to God",
and she was one of the first among the Sufis to teach the doctrine of
disinterested love to God. She was asked if she hated Satan, and
answered
"No", and when asked if she loved the Prophet, she said, "My
love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for hating aught,
or
loving any save Him". (Smith, "Rabi'a, The Woman Saint', The
Muslim World, Vol.20, p.341).
The most tragic
figure in Sufi history is
al-Hallaj, one of the "intoxicated" mystics who was also inclined to
complete indiscretion in making bold statements which outraged the
orthodox. He
openly claimed ana'l Haqq - "I am the Truth", and
for refusing
to recant was brutally dismembered and crucified. (It
is striking to find that he suffered the same fate as Jesus Christ
who made exactly the same claim, although more worthily in that Jesus
did show
proofs relating to His deity before His death on the Cross.)
Later Sufi mystics
considered him a true martyr
even though many at the time disowned him. They charged him with
teaching hulul,
i.e. incarnation, in that he suggested that God himself joined in union
with
man (the hypostatic union of Christ?)
in all his essence rather than that man attained to a state of
identifying with
God in his attributes and personality. The later Sufis, however,
endeavored to
interpret al-Hallaj's doctrine as distinct from the concept of hulul
and
"they have also done their best to clear Hallaj from the suspicion of
having taught it (Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam,
p.151).
The
general line taken was that he was right in his teaching, but that he
ought not
to have published abroad the secrets of Sufism, a proceeding for which
he deserved
to be put to death. It must be remembered that later Sufis left out
many of the
distinctive features of Hallaj's doctrine. They discarded the term Hulul,
and they replaced his view of the union of the human soul with God by a
doctrine of monism, in which all created things including the souls of
men, are
merely mirrors reflecting one or other of the attributes of God.
(Thompson.
"Al-Hallaj, Saint and Martyr", The Muslim World,
Vol.19,
p.401).
Although Abdul
Qadir al-Jilani is held to be the
founder of the Qadariyya, the greatest school in Sufism, the extent of
his
devotion to Sufism cannot be ascertained fully. He was a dedicated
follower of
the legalistic
After the heyday
of Sufism in the early
centuries of Islam the movement began to lose credibility and it took
the great
Islamic scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali to give it a more sober image and
respectability among the general public. Al-Ghazzali was a renowned
orthodox
theologian and, after a period of cynical agnosticism and depression,
he
declared himself a champion of Sufism, claiming to have found peace and
purpose
at last through a personal experience of refuge in God alone. His
mysticism was
chiefly of a less emotional kind than his predecessors, concentrating
on
intellectual insight and understanding, and it is therefore not
surprising that
"he is not regarded as being a practicing Sufi by the ecstatics and
gnostics" (Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam,
p.52). Yet it was
he who reconciled Sufism with orthodox Islam and a fine example of the
way he
did this is found in his definition of the four stages of the knowledge
of tawhid,
the "unity" of God, in his greatest work:
The
first stage is like the outer cover of a cocoanut, the second stage is
the
inner cover of a cocoanut, the third is the kernel of a cocoanut, and
the
fourth stage the oil of the kernel. The first stage of Tawhid is to
utter by tongue
"There is no deity but God". The second stage is to confirm it by
heart. The third stage is like a kernel which can be seen by inner
light or by
way of Kashf. The fourth stage is like oil in kernel. He sees nothing
but God.
(Imam Gazzali's Ihya Ulum-id-Din, Vol.4, p.238).
Here the orthodox
dogma is almost imperceptibly
fused with the whole foundation of Sufism. Al-Ghazzali's chief
contribution to Sufism
was to remove its stigma in the eyes of the orthodox by tempering its
character
and bringing it more into line with fundamental Islam.
Not only did he
save Sufism from extinction by
softening its dramatic character but at least one writer considers that
he also
delivered orthodox Islam from the dead-weight of formalism: "Had not
mysticism in the course of time acquired a place in official Islam,
chiefly
through the influence of al-Ghazali, the Muslim religion would have
become a
lifeless form" (Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, p.58).
Sufism is a
remarkable phenomenon in Islam and
Christian readers must, after reading this introduction, have
recognized how
similar it is to Christianity in so many of its facets and objectives.
Although
Sufism is similar in some respects to Christianity it must be also be
remembered that in Christianity there is no esoteric and exoteric
teaching as
in Sufism. Jesus
told His disciples that
what the Father taught Him, He in turn taught His disciples. In effect, he held nothing
back, and holds
nothing back as long as an individual asks.
“Ask and you shall receive; knock and the door
will be opened to you,”
are words that came from Jesus’ lips.
The Holy Spirit enables anyone to understand the teaching
of God. All who
accept Christ and wish to know the
truth will be taught by the Holy Spirit.
In Sufism, however, this principle is not readily accepted.
Having written the
above one must admit than in
many ways Sufi spiritual character is far more consistent with
Christianity
than orthodox Islam. The Christian
witness to Islam has here its greatest potential for making its message
heard
and understood.
________________________________________________________________
Below is an
article written by a prominent Sufi
which explains, in essence, that some men and woman can never know God. It is difficult for
Christians to accept the
gist of this statement.
The following
article written by Shah
Nazar Seyed Dr. Ali Kianfar is taken
from the journal Sufism: An Inquiry.
Does everyone have the essential
capacity to accept and
receive the teachings and the principles taught by Sufis? More
precisely, can everyone make the principal focus of their life the
cultivation
of discipline, learning, and advanced morality? (Christians believe so.)
Truthful
Sufis have a consensus on this important, though little-discussed
issue. The
answer is clear in nature: not every human being is capable of
receiving,
accepting, and understanding spiritual teachings. (Christians
do not accept this.)
Sufis believe that everything is
in the hand of Allah. This
might seem to imply that anything and everything is possible (Jesus taught that anything is possible for
God.)-but in truth this fact point highlights the same
conclusion. Allah
has established the harmony of Being, a world governed by laws,
including
spiritual laws. One of the most basic of these is that there must be a
harmony
between the sender and the receiver, both in the world of nature, and
in the
world of the spirit-the two are, for Sufis, one realm of being. In the
spiritual domain, such harmony consists in understanding, and that
depends upon
the inherent capability of the receiver.
The heart of the human being is
the locus of receiving
spiritual truth, and the truth that the individual is capable of
receiving
depends upon the qualities of heart. Just as not every individual may
be a
mathematician, a poet, or an inventor, so also not everyone may receive
spiritual teachings, for many lack the necessary basis of
understanding. (This statement is not true. Christ taught otherwise.)
To admit this
is merely to accept the nature of being, to acknowledge the evidence of
many
years of teaching and the long history of Sufism.
Some people may argue against
this statement by claiming
that everyone is equal, and all can receive spiritual knowledge. But
this is
not really argument, only empty sloganeering. Indeed, to think in this
way is
itself a sign of a lack of essential inward understanding, or a poverty
of
heart. (This is not true. Anyone who
accepts Jesus can receive the Holy Spirit, who does the teaching. Please do not fall for
what this Sufi is
saying.) Those
who would make
everyone equal deny the uniqueness of heart, the reality of humanity,
and
reduce the human being to the uniformity of a thing. Such people do not
practice reason, but instead express their own anger at Being. (…Again, this Sufi is subtly making
false
statements. All are
enabled by God to
know Him. All they
need do is ask. Beware;
he is discussing approaching God and
being taught. We
are not discussing the
physical body here, or one’s temperament.
We are examining the ability of a man/woman to understand
spiritual
teaching. God is
not exclusionistic in
this regard. Anyone
who comes to Christ,
to God, was drawn by the Father and will be accepted and taught by the
Holy
Spirit.) They
question God for His
supposed lack of compassion-as if to make everyone the same were to
show Divine
compassion. In so doing, they merely expose their own lack of
understanding:
the God that is accused in such a court and by such people is indeed
unknown to
them.
There is a story told by a Sufi
that may be mentioned here:
A group of bandits once infested
the mountains, waiting for
passing caravans to rob. A king who lived in a nearby city gathered the
best of
his soldiers and sent them to the mountains to find the robbers. The
soldiers
found their hiding places, and waited for the bandits to fall asleep.
With
nightfall, the robbers fell asleep one by one. In the middle of the
night the
soldiers attacked, captured them, and brought them back to court. The
king
ordered all to be executed. There was a very young man among these
thieves, and
the king's minister, taking pity on this youth, asked the king to spare
him.
Perhaps such a young man could be exposed to a good environment,
brought up in
a good family, and given teachers to help him to grow to be a better
man. The
king warned his minister that the boy was a thief, that such was his
identity,
despite his youth. But the minister begged to be allowed to try. So the
king
set the boy free and gave the minister the responsibility of educating
the boy.
Time passed, and in a few years, the boy began associating with unfit
friends,
stealing, and eventually killing none other than the son of the
minister,
running away from the city and joining another group of bandits.
The Sufi storyteller ends with
this warning:
Rain is delicate and pure. It
pours gracefully upon both
field and desert, the field grows flowers, and the desert-thorns. (Do
not
forget that the thorns can be plucked out of the desert. Jesus plucks the thorns
out of the desert of
the mind and with the help of the Holy Spirit, plants flowers.)
My comments…
Sufis enjoy
telling stories. Did
you remark in the
above story that what the Sufi is teaching is that one man is not
capable of
changing his behavior with Divine help. Remember, this Sufi is
discussing spiritual
truth. The story is
attempting to show
that people cannot change.
“Once a
thief always a thief,” is the gist of this story. Christians know this to be
wrong. The
acceptance of Christ in one’s life has
changed the lives and behaviors of many spiritually errant men and
women. You see here
that the Sufi is rejecting
relevant facts to further what he believes to be true about man. This Sufi does not know
Christ, has not had
the experience of Christ, is not aware of the power of the Holy Spirit,
and,
regrettably, as it appears, could care less.
No man can teach spiritual truth without accepting the
truth of
Jesus. The
attitudes of men do change
under the influence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This
Sufis’ belief that only the few can know
divine truth shows that he still is planted in what the Sufis
themselves call
“nafs”.
Let us get one
thing perfectly clear in reading Sufi literature.
Sufis, for the most part, are still
Muslims. As a whole
they do not accept
the teachings of Christ. They
do not
accept His return. They
do not accept
the resurrection body. They
do not
understand the Trinity, and what it means.
They speak of love but deny the source of that love, which
is Jesus, who
is God. They do not
have a
conceptualization of the sublime power of the Holy Spirit to change the
lives
of men and women. Al
Hallaj, a Sufi in
which I referred to in the introduction, because he professed his
profound love
for Christ, was crucified by the religious authorities of his day. Al Hallaj identified
himself with
Christ. He said
that he and Christ were
one. (Jesus, in John 17 prays to the Father that we all become one in
Him as He
is one in Father). He
recognized that
Jesus was in Him and He was in God and God in him.
And, like Jesus, was crucified for the
utterance of affirming that Truth.
Sure
that was many years ago; however, Sufis still cling to Islam, and Islam
denies
that Jesus is the Son of God.
In this paper,
please remember what I have written above.
Sufi teaching is very appealing to the Christian because
it mirrors much
of what Christ taught. This
is the most
important point to remember: Sufi teaching denies the centrality of who
Jesus is—Love incarnate, the Son of God, and God.
I will go over once again the
fundamentals of Sufism with my
comments. After
this, I will quote
heavily from what Sufi masters teach and rebut those teachings with the
wisdom
and Truth of Christ. At
the end of this
paper, the reader may (I formerly placed high stock in this Sufi hocus
pocus)
come to the conclusion that the Sufi way is not The Way
to Truth. One
cannot deny what Jesus taught about
Himself and ever hope to approach Truth in all its Light.
From a former Buddhist, Bahai,
and Sufi, now in Christ…Let us
begin--
The fundamental tenets of Sufism
are very similar to the
basic beliefs of all Moslems. The
Sufi
creed can be written:
I believe in God, And in
God’s angels, And in the Holy
Books, And in God’s Messengers, And in the Day of
Resurrection, And in destiny,
That all good and bad come from God, And that there is life after this
life.
Let’s review this
creed.
Sufis claim to believe in the Holy Books.
However, they gloss over what Jesus taught
about Himself in the New Testament.
Sufis
do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He made claims to
Deity. Let it be
known that this is exactly what
Jesus claimed. Sufis
claim to believe in
the Holy Books. Do
they accept The New
Testament? No, they
do not accept the
writings of Paul, nor St. Peter, nor
Do Sufis actually accept what is
taught in the Holy
Books? Sufis state
that we have to
believe in all of the prophets, but they in effect determine who is a
prophet. Jesus did
not claim to be a
prophet—His claim was to Deity.
Mohammed
claimed to be a prophet and the last of the prophets.
According to Islam, there are no prophets
coming after Mohammed. Sufis
do not
agree with this…they say that Minor Prophets have come after
Mohammed and can
arise at any time. Sufis
teach what is
not in the Koran. They
teach what is not
in the Bible, especially the New Testament.
So, do Sufis actually accept what is taught in the Holy
Books? No.
Sufis claim to believe in God. What they do not say is
that they believe in
what they believe God to be. If
Sufis
truly believed in God, would they then not accept Jesus with open arms,
for He
claimed deity to Himself? To
accept
Jesus means, and this is fundamental, to accept what He taught about
Himself
and about God. This
the Sufis do not
do. How do I know
this? I was for
some time a student of Sufism, as
well Bahai and Buddhist (I wanted to know the truth and sought it
wherever
someone claimed to have the answers.
Yes,
at one time I left Christ to seek truth not knowing at that time that
in Christ
resides the Truth. I
thought I could
find God, not knowing that God all the while was attempting to find me. This is my humble
confession.) I
believed in the casuistry and subtle
sophistry of the Sufis. I
became adept
at playing their games--and most of what the Sufis teach is nothing
more than amusing
stories that titillate individual’s minds—the
stories are quaint, even risible,
but have no sound basis in Truth.)
Am I
harsh in what I say? The
Truth can be a
two-edged sword, can it not?
Sufis claim to believe in
God’s Messengers. What
they do not say openly is that they
falsify the claims of one Jesus of Nazareth.
They claim that Jesus is only a prophet, yet fail to make
mention that
Jesus claimed that there was more than a prophet in his appearance. The Sufis gloss over what
Jesus taught about
Himself and only cite as truth what bolsters their claim that the Koran
is the
final Holy Book come to earth through the mouth of Mohammed, and still
teach
what Mohammed did not say. To
arrive at
Truth-- the Truth--one cannot pick and choose.
There is Truth, which by the way Jesus claimed to be, and
there is
falsehood. No one
can come to the Father
unless one accepts all of what Jesus taught.
One must pass through Jesus to reach the Father. Without that acceptance
one reaches the
epitome of his/her own imaginings.
Sufis claim to believe in the
Resurrection. Do
not be confused here. Jesus
said that He is the Resurrection and
the Life. Sufis do
not believe this. When
they refer to the term Resurrection,
they point to the last day when all will arise to be judged according
to deeds,
whether good or evil. Sufis
do not
believe that Jesus is God, that he arose from the dead, or that he was
able to
bring back to physical life the boy from Nain, Jairus’
daughter, or
Lazarus. Sufis use
subterfuge and
nuances of meaning to attract unsuspecting people and they fill these
people’s
minds with half-truths.
Stop and think a minute.
Can both good and evil come from God?
Does not good come from God and evil come from man? Can God sin?
Does not evil originate from sin?
How then can good and evil come from the same source? If Sufis accepted the
teachings of the Bible
and the teachings of Christ they would know that evil cannot come from
God. God is love. There is no evil in Love. To say that both good and
evil come from God
is to say that evil comes from Love.
Good comes from Love, but evil does not.
Do not fall prey to Sufi casuistry and false teaching.
Sufis believe that there is life
after this life; however,
they also believe that this life is as a dream and true life begins in
the next
world. This is
blatantly a
falsehood. This
life is not a
dream. It has
importance. What we
do in this life determines what our
future life will be. This
life is a
training ground for the next life, not a dream without any significant
meaning. A dream
does exist only in the
mind. But this life
exists even outside
of the mind. Again,
please be cognizant
of the Sufi ploy. They
do not understand
the Truth in its essence and cannot because they reject the embodiment
of Truth
in the life and teaching of Christ.
They
will say that they do not reject Jesus; however, to not accept
Jesus’ words is
to reject His life.
The fundamentals of Sufism
reside in Islam. A
person cannot be Sufi if he or she does not
accept Mohammed as a prophet come from God.
Sufism is Islamic mysticism.
I
can say without hesitancy that a Christian could never ever become a
Sufi and I
can also add that such a person would not wish to become a Sufi. Jesus is God and Love. Why think about a movement
the teaching of
which rejects what Christ taught?
This
is stupidity, is it not? There
is
absolutely nothing in Sufism that Christ did not teach, and there is so
much
more in Christ that the Sufis do not even consider.
Sufis state that there are four
stages, or levels, to coming
to know God, to understand Truth.
The
first stage is shari’a; the second, tariqah; the third,
haqiqah; and the
fourth, ma’rifa or Gnosis.
The first stage is
shari’a, Islamic law. The
Sufis say that trying to follow what they
teach, which is supposed to be the Truth, without following Islamic law
is like
trying to build a house on a foundation of sand.
Is this true?
No, it is not true. Jesus,
who Sufis
and Moslems do claim was the first Moslem, never advocated any legal
code
different from that prescribed by Moses.
Jesus taught that not one Iota of the Law would be
repealed, but that He
came to fulfill the Law of God. (Don't
misunderstand why I have come.
I did not come to abolish the Law of Moses or the writings of the
prophets. No,
I came to fulfill them. I assure
you, until heaven and earth disappear, even the smallest detail of
God's law
will remain until its purpose is achieved. So if you break the smallest
commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be the least in
the
Think about this.
Jesus taught that fulfillment of the Law would come
through Him. Does
this not shatter Islamic law? God’s
law would not come through even a
prophet that might come after Jesus.
Jesus came to fulfill the Law.
Is
there a need for more law after the law has been fulfilled? Remember, Moslems and
Sufis reject what Jesus
taught about Himself. Think
about
this. Sufis and
Moslems base their Holy
Law on what is supposedly the truth.
Anyone who has even a modicum of knowledge of the Bible is
aware that
Jesus said that He is the way, truth and life.
The Truth. But
the shari’a states
that it is absolutely forbidden to call oneself the truth. Sufis are aware of what
Jesus said about
Himself. So are the
Imams of Islam. They
may not believe it, but they are
cognizant of it. Jesus
did not abrogate
any of the Law but He did fulfill the Law of God. In
other words, Jesus completed the Law. What
is this shari’a of the Sufis and Moslems then?
Another Law of God after the Law of God had already been
completed? Why
would this law be necessary? Would
a law of God deny Jesus’ claims about
Himself? Is it a
law coming from man and
not God? Those who
have minds,
think!
The second stage of Sufism is
tariqah, which refers to the
inner practices of Sufism, those practices to train the mind. A Sufi needs a teacher to
help him on his way
to Truth. We all
need someone to show us
the way. But you
know, Sufis have many
so-called masters who practice different ways to arrive at what they
believe is
the end of their journey—the Truth.
And
you know, not one of these Sufi masters believe what Christ said about
Himself,
that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Not one. How
do I know this? Think
about it. If these
Sufi masters accepted Christ they
would have to follow Him and give up what they teach.
These Sufi masters, though they may say that
they have experienced fana al fana, have not so experienced this. (Fana
al fana
means essentially to have no self—complete selflessness. It is said that a few Sufi
masters possess
this quality, which is highly suspect.
How can one teach if there is no self to be taught and no
self that does
the teaching?) Is
this not something to
ponder in your mind?
Why go to a Sufi master?
Did not Jesus teach that the Holy Spirit that is within
you (speaking to
those who have accepted Him) will teach one what he needs to know at
the proper
time and the proper place? Yes,
Jesus
taught this. There
are few who believe
it, but He did teach this. So,
we have
Jesus who claimed to be Deity and proved it by the works He performed
saying
that when He was gone the Holy Spirit would be able to teach. Does this not imply that
the only teacher one
would need is Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit? Does not Jesus make these
Sufi masters
redundant? Could
this be one reason why
these Sufi masters cannot accept Jesus?
I am not saying that one does
not need a director to show
one the way to go. We
all need
this. However, when
the director points
to the teacher of Truth, the director is no longer needed. When a person comes to
Jesus Christ through
the direction of a minister, life’s struggles, or other
person who is a
Christian, and comes to know Jesus, sees life barren without Him and is
willing
to trust Him, is baptized as an outward show of an inner reality change
of
thinking, and becomes renewed in life with a broader, deeper purpose
(some call
this becoming reborn), the Holy Spirit teaches what is needed for that
particular person to know. The
Holy
Spirit teaches much more thoroughly than can any human teacher. How do I know this? Think.
Did I now just prove that Sufi
masters are not needed to
arrive at Truth? One
more point. Remember,
Sufi masters reject that Jesus is
the way, truth and life. If
a person
rejects any part of what Jesus taught, either in His teaching or about
Himself,
that person, does he/she not reject Jesus in His entirety? You cannot pick and
choose. Sufis do
this. Moslems do
this. Therefore,
Sufis reject the Truth that they
are trying to direct their students to.
Is this not a sign of folly and ignorance?
Is it not?
(I have yet to see or know or hear of a Sufi who has
reportedly come
back to life after having died. Not
even
Al-Hallaj, a Sufi who admired Jesus, did this.
If a Sufi has resurrected, would it not have been reported
by someone,
somewhere, at some time? Yet
we have
Jesus who did do just that, came back after having died on a cross. Over 500 people at one
time together
witnessed Him on earth after His crucifixion. This is not hearsay, it
is the
truth, and it has been verified. How
do
I know this? Through
study and reading…I
did not take this at face value…Seek and you shall
find….I sought and found.)
The third stage of the Sufi
training is Truth, haqiqah. Sufis
claim that by a person’s own effort one
will be able to arrive at haqiqah.
There
is a methodology to all this. Now,
again
this is not the truth, sorry to say.
To
arrive at Truth first, as Jesus said, the Father must beckon that
person. In other
words, a person has no say in who is
chosen, nor can he/she do anything to further his cause to arrive at
Truth. God
determines; man surrenders, and the Holy Spirit
teaches. Does not
surrender imply no
longer doing anything? There
is no
method to practice to arrive at Truth.
This is the sham of all mystics.
It is not man’s choice who is allowed to
experience the Divine in any
manner, shape or form. It
doesn’t work
that way. Sufis are
showing that they
know nothing of Truth when they attempt to formulate a plan to get to
God--totally
benighted, this attempt; and vain.
The fourth stage in the Sufi
way, the highest stage, is what
is called ma’rifah, or Gnosis.
Gnosis is
superior wisdom or knowledge of spiritual truth.
If Truth is one, can truth be divided into
stages? Superior
wisdom implies inferior
wisdom. Superior
knowledge of truth
implies truth that can be inferior.
There is no superior or inferior wisdom or knowledge of
truth. To state
this is to state an absurdity. God
is Truth.
Can God be divided into inferior and superior compartments? Of course not. Plotinus taught this many
years ago. And you
know this from what I have written at
the introduction to this paper. The
Sufis,
whether they know it or not, are only reiterating what Plotinus taught.
Can a person have direct
knowledge of God…know God
completely…be absorbed into God?
No, of
course not. To
state that man can be
absorbed into God is to make God equal to His creation, that man can be
equal
to God (being one with God doe not mean being equal to God). God, in His
benevolence, does allow man to
view glimpses of His splendor. Man
cannot, however, become equal to God.
Absorption into God is another way of saying becoming one
with God. God and
his creation are separate and will
always be so. The
attempt to become one
with God, to absorb oneself into God, is the highest form of
self-deception. The
Sufis claim to
practice to aim at the destruction of self.
How can a not-self be absorbed into God.
Is not this Sufi logic faulty?
The four stages of Sufism cannot
lead one to the Truth. Jesus
the Christ said that He is the Way, the
Truth and the Life and that none can come to the Father save through
Him. Islam and
Sufism deny the central core of the
teaching of Jesus, that he is Son of Man and Son of God. The shari’a is
not law based on God’s
truth. It cannot be. The basis of this law
denies the claims to
deity that Christ declaimed.
Is Sufism bad?
Even
the scraps from the kitchen table will feed those who eat them. The Sufi teaching with
regard to love is
good. One must open
one’s heart to the
truth, which is love. However,
man must
also open the mind to Truth, which the Sufis fail to do. Sufis claim that their
teaching will
culminate into absorption into God.
I
have explained that this cannot happen, but if it could, the mind and
heart
would have to accept the gist of that Truth.
The mind and heart must love as one and recognize Truth. The Sufi mind and heart do
not love in
unison. The heart
loves, but the mind
does not. Love
originates from God. The
personification of God is Jesus, which
the Sufi mind cannot accept. How
can one
claim to love and fail to recognize love when it is before
one’s eyes?
The Sufis will say what I have
written is not true, that
they love as deeply as can any Christian who is in Christ. I beg to differ. To love another means to
know what is love,
to accept love, to adore love, to worship love.
To love the source of love is to recognize when that
source is
perceptible to the human mind and heart.
Sufis are blind to that love.
They see with their hearts but fail to make the
distinction with their
minds. They teach
half-truths believing
that what they teach is the whole truth.
Are Christians then to denigrate Sufis?
Of course not. A
Christian in
Christ cannot but Love the Sufi.
Christians in Christ must gently show Sufis the error of
their way of
thinking.
Sufis point to Rumi as one of
their Sages. He was
a poet. His poetry
is exquisite. However,
in one of his poems he states that,
“all I’s and thou’s should become one
soul and at last should be submerged in
the Beloved.” This
is not true. We
cannot become as one soul as I explained
earlier. Why should
we try when we
cannot? We cannot
be submerged in the
Beloved. Becoming
one with Jesus and
with God as Jesus taught does not mean that we become merged into God. What Jesus taught is this: He wants man to understand
that when the Father
and the Son are equally in a person, that person has the same emotive
element
resident in his soul. The
soul of the
man does not merge with Christ or God.
It can be explained as a person in a family. There is a father and son
and brother in a
certain family unit. Then
there is a
person who is outside that family unit (which can be classed as one
family). This
person learns of the
particular family unit, comes to understand something about that family
unit. The person
soon is invited into
that family unit. If
the person accepts
the invitation to become one with that family (the invitation coming
from the
father through the son), that person then can be viewed as being united
to that
family. He does not
become absorbed into
the family, does not lose his identity, but that person does become one
with
that family. The
family grows in members
but remains one in identity. The
Sufis
teach absorption into God. This
implies
that the identity of the individual is obliterated. This teaching is
misleading. No
absorption takes place.
Sayings of Sufis
and My Comments
Below you will read sayings of
some famous Sufis. I
will include the saying, make reference to
the author, and follow with comments.
You will come to know the flaws in these Sufi
Master’s words.
Let us begin…..
“The Sufis are folk
who have preferred God to everything, so
that God Has preferred them to everything.”
–Dhu-I-Nun.
What is wrong with the above
statement credited to
Dhu-l-Nun? If the
Sufis preferred God to
everything, would they not accept Jesus Christ’s teachings in
its
entirety? Since
they do not prefer
Christ to everything, in fact denigrate aspects of His teaching, they
cannot
prefer God to everything. Also,
God does
not prefer the Sufi over the Christian who is in Christ. This statement is absurd. Why would God prefer a
Sufi who does not
recognize Jesus as His Son, who states the Jesus is only a prophet, and
who
denies Jesus’ bodily resurrection?
Make
know mistake, Sufi’s do not recognize that Christ is the Son
of God, that he is
Immanuel, With-us-God, and that He died on the Cross and was
resurrected
bodily. To do this,
as I stated several
times in this paper, to see Christ as He truly was (and is) would
compel the Sufi
to cast aside Sufi teaching and teach what Christ taught in its
entirety. Dul-I-Nun’s
statement is therefore not true.
“Whatever you have in
your mind—forget it; whatever you have
in your hand—give it; whatever is to be your
fate—face it!” Abu Sa’id ibn
Abi-I-Khayr.
What is wrong with the above
statement attributed to Abu
Sa’id ibn Abi-I-Khayr? God
does not
require us to forget what we have in our mind.
That is absurd. Christ
did not
teach this. He
taught that we should
learn from what we have in our mind, to reflect on our experiences, to
grow from
them, and to pass on what we have learned to others.
If we forget what we have in our mind, how
can we edify anyone? How
can we keep
others from making the spiritual mistakes we have made? How can we
teach? How can we
learn even from our own mistakes?
This statement to forget whatever we have in
our mind is absurd.
Whatever we have in our
hand—give it. What
is wrong with this statement? It
sounds “good” on the surface.
Again, however, this is not spiritual
teaching. We are to
share what we have in
our hand--to give some and yet keep some for ourselves.
We are not to be greedy and we are not to act
foolishly. We do
not love by giving
everything away. If
we do this, we
forget to love ourselves. We
are to
share with others of what we have, which includes to share what we have
with ourselves. This
Sufi’s statement shows lack of spiritual
insight and lack of love--love for oneself.
It is an absurd statement that shows lack of insight into
the human
condition.
Whatever is to be our
fate—face it! What
is wrong with this statement? Think
about it. Do we
know what our fate is to be? Can
any normal person read the future? Does
anyone who is human know the mind of God?
No. We
are to learn from the
conditions that beset us in life and change them for the better if we
can, and
if we cannot, go to someone who is able to assist us.
The statement seems to infer that we have to
face life head on without help, does it not?
Do we have to accept life’s vicissitudes? Can we not work around
them with the help of
others and with the assistance of God?
Can we not corporeally pray to God?
Christ never taught to accept passively what the world
throws at
us. We are to be
proactive. Whatever
is to be our fate—face it.
This is not correct.
Whatever we experience in life live it with
the love of Christ—this is correct.
We
do not have to beard life’s challenges alone.
We are never alone in Christ.
The
body of Christ is a power few tap.
Those
we do this so called fate has not sting.
The statement above by Abu
Sa’id ibn Abi-I-Khayr is
therefore false. The
statement shows
this Sufis lack of understanding of the spiritual power of Christ and
the human
condition.
“I have heard tell of
a seeker who went to ask a sage for
guidance on the Sufi way. The
old man said
to him: ‘If you have never trodden the path of love, go away
and fall in love;
then come back and see us.”—Anonymous
What is wrong with the above
Sufi maxim? It
appears sound, does it not? One cannot
love without knowing love. The
Sufi,
though he believes in his heart that he knows love, does not know the
pinnacle
of love. God is
love. Jesus is love. God and Jesus are one. This is what Jesus
taught—I and the Father
are one. You cannot
reach the Father
except through Me. The
Sufi does not see
Jesus in this light. The
Sufi does not
accept this teaching. The
Sufi does not
know love in its plangency. And
yet the Sufi
teaches that he knows love and can lead one to the path of love. The Sufi is not on the
path of Love. What
a Sufi teaches is only a mirroring of
love. Love comes
from Jesus, from
God. To know love
one must walk the path
of Jesus, learn from Him and become more like Him everyday.
The above Sufi statement is
therefore false. Why?
The
Sufi is not on the path of love and cannot teach love while walking on
a side
path. The Sufi does
not accept the Love
emanating in Christ. The
Sufi is not in
Christ, so he/she cannot experience Love at its source and cannot teach
it. If only the
Sufi would “empty their
mind of falsehood” they could see the truth and the truth
would set him
free. Freedom is
frightening to the Sufi. This
is why the acceptance of Christ is hard
for them. They want
love, think they
have love, but are walking on the path of their own imaginings.
“Now I am
called the shepherd of the desert, Now a Christian monk, Now a
Zoroastrian. The
Beloved is Three, yet One: just
as the
three are in reality one.”
--Ibn El-Arabi
What is
inherently wrong with the statement above?
Do you have any clue?
The three
religions above do not believe the same thing.
There are differences.
When there
are differences there can be no oneness.
The Sufi above is using the Christian teaching of the
Trinity stealthily
by stating that God, the Beloved is Three, yet One and implying that
the three
religions he mentions are really one religion seen in three aspects. This is false. The Christian teaching and
the Zoroastrian
teaching are not the same. They
are not
one. All people who
seek God do so from
an inner impulse. That
impulse comes
from God. However,
the seeker and the
sought are not one and the same as Sufis so readily claim.
In the above
statement, who is this “I” that is called
“the shepherd of the desert, a
Christian monk, a Zoroastrian”?
The
Bible and the Koran teaches this, that man is not to identify
God’s creation
with his creator. Who
then is this Sufi
referring to? The Beloved is three but One?
Is the Beloved the three men? That cannot be the case
because God is not
his creation. God
transcends his
creation. The three men in reality are not one. The three religions are
not in
reality one. The
men and the religions
have a common core in that they attempt to address who/what is God. However, and I repeat, God
and His creation
are separate as are the religions mentioned in the Sufi statement.
Sufis claim
to gnosis, a mystical experience of God.
Christians also have had such mystical experiences.
On
Religion --
“All
religion, as theologians - and their opponents - understand the word,
is
something other than what it is assumed to be. Religion is a vehicle.
Its
expressions, rituals, moral and other teachings are designed to cause
certain
elevating effects, at a certain time, upon certain communities. Because
of the
difficulty of maintaining the science of man, religion was instituted
as a
means of approaching truth. The means always became, for the shallow,
the end,
and the vehicle became the idol. Only the man of wisdom, not the man of
faith
or intellect, can cause the vehicle to move again.” -
Alauddin Attar
What is
wrong with the above short paragraph?
Attar is stating that only the man of wisdom can cause
religion to move
again? Only the man
of wisdom? Does
this ring true? No. It
is not true. Wisdom
cannot be separated
from faith or intellect. It
takes faith
to believe in God. Socrates,
a wise man,
also had faith in an intellect greater than his own.
The Sufi here is separating faith, wisdom and
intellect. They are
not separable. Intellect
is required to acquire wisdom, and
wisdom without faith (it takes faith to reach out to something not able
to be
seen) is not wisdom at all. Jesus asked his disciples (and in effect is
asking
us) where is your faith? He
did not ask,
“Where is your wisdom”?
To me, faith is
more important than wisdom, and a man of Faith in God will move
humanity more
than a man of wisdom. An
example is Pope
Paul, the pope who died recently.
Was it
his wisdom that moved men and women?
Was
it not rather his faith in Christ shown through the way he conducted
himself that
moved humanity? Wisdom
does not move
man. Evincing an
indomitable faith in
God moves man. This
is why Jesus has
moved billions over the centuries.
Let
us get real. This
Sufi does not know
what he thinks he knows. Wisdom
without
faith can move nothing. The
statement
that only wisdom can move the vehicle of religion is not true. (Most categorical
imperatives such as this are
not true.)
The Unity of Knowledge—
“What I have
learned as a Sufi is something that man cannot credit because of what
he has
already been taught. The easiest thing to grasp in Sufism is one of the
most
difficult for the ordinary thinker. It is this: All religious
presentations are
varieties of one truth, more or less distorted. This truth manifests
itself in
various peoples, who become jealous of it, not realizing that its
manifestation
accords with their needs. It cannot be passed on in the form because of
the
difference in the minds of different communities. It cannot be
reinterpreted,
because it must grow afresh. It is presented afresh only by those who
can
actually experience it in every form, religious and otherwise, of man.
This
experience is quite different from what people take it to be. The
person who
simply thinks that this must be true as a matter of logic is not the
same as
the person who experiences that it is true.” - Khwaja
Salahudin of
This
statement by Khwaja Salahudin of
Also,
can one not experience logic,
thinking? It is
true that thinking about
God is not experience of God; however, to experience God one must have
some
type of awareness as to what and or who God is.
This awareness comes from logical thinking processes. Let not the Sufi fool you. No man can know God
without thinking, without
the implementation of the logical process of thought.
This Sufi is using thought to express what he
implies cannot be experienced by way of thought.
By this Sufis
own admission, religious truth expressed is distorted.
Does this not also imply that the Sufi’s
expression of what he avers to be true may also be distorted? Sure it does.
So what is this Sufi saying?
This Sufi is
also saying that the truth manifests itself in various peoples. Does he mean that various
peoples experience
one truth, or that various peoples experience truth in various ways? There is no variety in
Truth.
This Sufi
also is stating that truth cannot be reinterpreted, that it most grow
afresh? Why? Why must Truth, which does
not change, grow
afresh? It is true
that truth cannot be
reinterpreted because Truth does not change.
Since Truth does not change it need not grow afresh. This Sufi, in my
estimation, does not know
what he is talking about. He
is rambling
without any foundation.
Khwaja has
also stated that all religious presentations are varieties of one Truth. This is false. There can not be varieties
of Truth. There is
truth and there is falsehood. Jesus
stated while on Earth that he was the
Way, the Truth (not a truth), and the Life.
He did not make the claim this Sufi above makes, and since
this Sufi
above has not “proved” that he is in a position to
make Truth claims, why take
his statements as Truth.
There are
contradictions when one compares a religion with another religion. Truth does not reside in
contradiction. One
religion must be right and the other
religions when compared to that one right religion must be wrong. No other religion other
than Christianity has
as its prototype a man who claimed to be more than a prophet, a man who
claimed
that he would rise from the dead and did so.
This man was Jesus the Christ.
The Truth resides in and is of Christ.
There is but one Truth which is the Truth of the teaching
of
Christ. Sure, there
are other religions
that claim their foundation is in Truth.
How can this be, though, when other religions discount
what Christ
taught and the tasks that He performed while on earth?
The founders of other religions can not claim
to have raised anyone from the dead—they do not make such
claims. The
founders of other religions did not die
and rise again, as did Christ. God
is
all-powerful. God
is love. God is
Truth. Jesus said
that he was the Truth. Jesus
claimed to be God. He
showed his power through miracles,
etc. The founders
of other religions did
not have the power of God resident in them as did Christ.
One more
point—This Sufi states that truth can only be presented as
fresh by only those
who have experienced the Truth in every form, religious and otherwise. Experienced the Truth in
every form? Truth
is one and does not have
compartments. This
Sufi is in effect
implying that only the Sufi has direct experience of God. (How
does one ever know if another has had direct experience of God, even if
it is
attainable, which is suspect. When
Moses
“met” God his face was afterwards glowingly white. Does a Sufi evince a
glowing white face?
No. Any body can
say he/she has direct
experience of God, but that does not make it true.)
God cannot
be experienced by any method, Sufi or otherwise.
In the Bible it is stated that only Christ is
able to designate to whom He desires His Father to be known. Only Christ.
Since the Sufi is outside the ambit of Christ by his own
volition, how
can he speak concerning the experience of Truth?
When Christ is denied, so is Truth denied.
Why listen
to Khwaja Salahudin of
On Emptiness--
“Everyone in
the ordinary world is asleep. Their
religion - the religion of the familiar world - is emptiness, not
religion at
all.” - Sanai, Hadiqa
What is
wrong with the above statement? For
one
thing, the statement is a categorical statement.
Not everyone in the “ordinary” world
is
asleep. Christians
in Christ are not
asleep, although the Sufi here is making the blanket statement that all
in the
world basically are asleep that adhere to beliefs different than that
of
Sufis. The
Christian does not claim that
all who do not follow Christ are asleep.
They claim, which is what Jesus said, that all who do not
follow Him
will die in their sins. This
is not
emptiness, as the Sufi claims. Far
from
it. If what Jesus
stated is taken to
heart, a person who is “asleep to the truth of
Christ” will wake up and run to
Him. I think that
this Sufi is asleep
and befuddled by his own thought, which is not God’s thought.
Another
thing wrong with the statement declaimed by the above Sufi is that the
religion
of the “ordinary” world (what does this mean
really—the Sufi is in an
extraordinary world?) is not emptiness.
Those who believe in the God and study the Bible are not
living in
emptiness. Their
religion and faith is
not empty. They are
living and feeding on
the Word of God, which this Sufi must not understand.
On Worship--
“Mankind
passes through three stages. First
he
worships anything: man, woman, money, children, earth and stones. Then, when he has
progressed a little
further, he worships God. Finally
he
does not say: 'I worship God'; nor: 'I do not worship God.' He has passed from the
first two stages into
the last.”- Rumi
What is the
matter with the above statement by Rumi?
It is true that man worships first what he sees that he
thinks will make
him better off in this world. When
he
learns the emptiness of this, he turns to God and worships Him. The Bible indicates that
we should worship
God and God alone. The
final stage
enumerated by Rumi is not true. Is
the
last stage emptiness? Has
the self been
obliterated? Man
can not merge into
God. This is
impossible. Christ
never taught that man would merge into
God and that the individual man would be no more.
However, this is what Rumi is teaching
here. Rumi is
teaching falsehood here.
He is in effect stating that there will come
a time in this life when the spiritual man will not know what he is
doing. After all,
man will not say that he is
worshipping God nor will he say he is not worshipping God. Does it not logically
follow that such a man
does not know what he thinks he knows and does not think he knows what
he does
not know? Silly
isn’t it? God
does not befuddle our mind in such a
fashion. We will
always know that God is
superior to us at all times and in all ways.
Only He is worthy of worship.
There is not drop merging into the sea as so many Sufis
believe in
regards to man being the drop and God being the sea.
On Evolution--
“First of
all he came into the inert world. From
minerality he developed into the realm of vegetation. For
years he lived thus. Then
he passed into an animal state, yet
bereft of any memory of his being vegetable - except for his attraction
to
Spring and to blossoms. This
was
something like the innate desire of an infant for its mother's breast,
or like
the affinity of disciples for an industrious guide. When the shadow is
no more,
they know the cause of their attachment to the teacher.
From realm
to realm man went, reaching his present reasoning, knowledgeable,
robust state;
forgetting earlier forms of intelligence. So
too shall he pass beyond the current form
of perception. There are a thousand other forms of Mind. . . But he has
fallen
asleep. He will say: 'I had forgotten my fulfillment, ignorant that
sleep and
fancy were the cause of my sufferings.' He says: 'My sleeping
experiences do
not matter.' Come, leave such asses to their meadow. Because of
necessity, man
acquires organs. So, necessitous one, increase your need.” Rumi
These
statements taken by a whole are false. Totally false.
He is stating that man was first a mineral, and
then an animal, then a vegetable, then man evolved to his present state. First off…Rumi
is denying that God created
man. He is denying
the creation of
Adam.
And secondly,
was the Holy Spirit in the mineral, the animal, then the vegetable,
then the
man? It is true
that God created Adam
from mineral elements and breathed into man His breath.
However, Rumi here is not stating this.
He is stating that man was first a mineral,
then an animal or vegetable, and then evolved into man.
I do not believe and it is ludicrous to
believe that a mineral contained the seed of man.
The above
passage by Rumi cannot be accepted by a rational human being, whether
he/she
believes in God or not. It
is too far
fetched to give any credence to.
On
Teaching and Instruction--
Junaid once
saw a man strolling by the edge of the River Euphrates.
He asked him why he was strolling there.
“I am waiting for a boat to ferry me across
to the other shore,” the man replied.
“Come,” said
Junaid, “let me take your across.”
When
the fellow asked him how he could do that, he said, “By
remembering Allah.”
Then he said, “Take care not to say anything except
‘As the Sheikh says’”.
He took the
man by the hand, and they started walking on the water together. The venerable Junaid was
saying, “Allah,
Allah,” while the fellow beside him kept repeating the words
“As the Sheikh
says, as the Sheikh says.”
They were
halfway across, and the venerable Junaid still went on saying,
“O Allah, O
Allah, O All-Powerful, O All-Powerful!”
The other man began to wonder shy he should confine
himself to saying,
“As the Sheikh says.”
He decided to try
invoking Allah, too, But as soon as he said, “O Allah, O
All-Powerful,” he
began sinking into the river.
The
venerable Junaid pulled him to safety, then chided him:
“Do you think yourself competent to mention
the names of Allah? Because
I knew your
mouth was not ready for that, I told you to say nothing but
“As the Sheikh
says.’”—Sheikh Muzaffer
The above is
a quaint story meant to convey that in Sufism a pupil is to do exactly
what his
mentor, his sheikh, tells him to do with no exceptions.
It can be said that the pupil becomes the
slave of the sheik. What
is wrong with
this? One must
remember that a Sufi
master does not follow the teaching of Christ in its entirety. A Sufi regards Jesus as a
prophet subservient
to Mohammed even though at the same time Sufis (and Muslims) aver that
Jesus
was the first Muslim, one who submitted to God completely. They will not admit this
in public; however,
this is what a Sufi teacher believes in his heart--Mohammed is above
Jesus. They do not
believe that Jesus died on the
Cross and that He came back from the dead.
They claim that Jesus did not die on the Cross. We know this to be a false
claim. Jesus even
said before His death that He
would be resurrected. Since
Sufi masters
do not accept what Christ taught about Himself, and since they do not
accept
this truth as taught by Christ, how then can they teach what is true to
their
pupils concerning things spiritual?
A
pupil of a Sufi master is in effect a slave to false teaching.
The story
above does not pass muster. There
is
only one person who was ever seen walking on water, and that was Jesus
when He
was on this earth 2000+ years ago.
The
story above is fabricated using the backdrop of two men walking on
water. Subtly they
are referring to the Christ’s
evinced power while He was visibly with us.
We all know that a sheik cannot walk on water and
certainly a pupil of a
sheik cannot.
Why do Sufis make use of
such stories? I
will indicate to you why
this is so. Sufis
attempt to convey in
the sophism that they are steeped in that they are close, if not
united, to the
spiritual realm. They
supposedly know
what Christians do not know. This
is falderal. They
do not know what Christians in Christ
know, but they attempt to foist what they know onto an uneducated world
audience and perpetrate it as the truth.
Another
nuance before I leave this story to go to another.
The sheik in the story chides his pupil
because the pupil supposedly should not mention the name of Allah,
implying
that only a sheik knows God. This
is
false. We as
Christians should know that
God is not a respecter of persons.
A
teacher of the Sufi persuasion is not above his pupil, he only knows
more
intellectually than his pupil. The
Holy
Spirit does the teaching; the teacher only opens the mind to the
prospect that
God is resident in him/her. When
one
accepts Christ, and only then, the Holy Spirit performs His teaching. Since the Sufi does not
accept Christ, is he
able to convey anything concerning that which is foundationally
spiritually
true to his pupil? Think
about
this. I would say
and emphatic no. I
would say that what a Sufi teaches lacks concrete
spiritual authority. Do
not
misunderstand me here. I
am not saying
that a Sufi cannot help an individual on his/her spiritual quest. He may, but he cannot
teach what he himself
cannot accept…the truth.
Jesus is the
way, the Truth and the Life. The Way, The Truth, The Life. He said He was
this—I am not making this
up. A Sufi, no
matter how educated, cannot
say that he is the way, the truth, and the life.
Why go to a Sufi master when there is only
one Master, who is Jesus, who is the Truth.
Go to Jesus---He will free you from being a slave to false
teaching. Make no
mistake; what the Sufis
teach is not the Truth. If
it is not the
Truth, then it must be a lie, correct?
And if it is a lie, which is it, then how can one expect
to arrive at
Truth by following the teaching of any Sufi, whether he is a sheik or a
pupil
of a sheik? They
are blind men trying to
teach what they do not know and have not seen.
But how do I know this?
Why believe
what I write? My
reader, remember I was
a Sufi. I know what
they believe, I know
what they teach. What
Sufis teach can be
of benefit to man, but it will not bring one any closer to the truth
than would
adhering to the teaching of psychologist like Dr. Phil.
They do not know the Truth…so a Sufi cannot
lead one to The Truth.
On
Teaching—
O ignorant
fool. You fail to
take these words to
heart and prefer to be in your private cell in the company of your mind
and
desire and passions. First
of all, you
need to seek the company of true sheikhs.
You need to conquer your mind, desires, karmic habits, and
everything
else besides God Almighty. You
need to
become a regular attendant at their doorsteps—I mean the true
sheikhs. Learn at
their hands. Only
after that may you move to your
hermitage and be alone with God Almighty.
Once you satisfy these conditions, then you may become a
cure for
people’s illnesses, a guide by God’s leave.
However, your tongue sounds pious, but your heart is
rebellious. Your
tongue sings God’s praises, but your
heart protests against His decree.
Outwardly you are a Muslim, but inwardly you are a
disbeliever. Outwardly
you are a monotheist, but inwardly
you are a polytheist. Outwardly
you are
an ascetic and religious, but inwardly you are like the mildew on
bathroom
walls, a lock at the door of a garbage dump.
–Abdul Qadir al-Jilani
Why do we
need to seek the company of true sheikhs?
Anyone who teaches as a Sufi steeped in Islamic teaching
cannot teach
the Truth. Again,
and I am hammering
this point, Sufi sheikhs do not accept what Jesus taught about Himself. If any do, they do not
confess it openly.
It is true
that we, as people, need to conquer habits, wrong thought patterns, etc. But we cannot conquer
these things. We
give them over to a higher power,
Jesus/God and allow Him to assist us.
If
one should attempt to conquer the mind, desires, and what this Sufi
calls
karmic habits, the attempt only strengthens the self.
One cannot conquer anything without
surrendering to God, as taught by the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. So a person does not do
the conquering, Jesus
does. We can do
nothing spiritually
without Christ. The
Sufi here does not
know this.
We do not
need to go to a sheikh and learn at their doorsteps.
If one goes to Christ, then the Holy Spirit
teaches one what is needed for individual spiritual growth. The statement of this Sufi
is false.
We need also
rid ourselves of the desire for God at some point on the spiritual
journey. This Sufi
does not know this,
apparently. No one
knows God, and what
we desire of God is the aspirations of our mind.
We desire for what we do not know and what we
can never know. When
the desire for God
leaves, then the Trueness of God comes to us.
There is awe in this because what we learn is not of what
we thought we
would learn, what we see is not of what we thought we would see, what
we hear
is not of which we thought we would hear, and the beauty of it is
overwhelming. The
Sufi here does not
know this…again he, as being a Sufi, does not accept the
profundity of the
teaching of Jesus, the Christ. He
cannot
know this. He is,
in effect, blind
attempting to teach what he does not know.
Another
point. When one
knows God, one does not
seclude in a hermitage. The
image of God
is man. When one
knows God, one realizes
that man is God’s image and that one must go to man to be at
one with God. Those
who do not know seclude themselves in a
hermitage. If this
Sufi knew Christ,
which he does not, he would realize that Christ is in everyman. To Worship God is to come
to man and love him
with all his heart, soul, and mind.
To
Love God one must love his/her fellow man.
This is a tenet of Christianity.
One cannot love God and hide from man in a hermitage.
This Sufi
also writes about himself. However
his
words sound pious, his heart is in rebellion—rebelling
against the truth of
Jesus and who He said he was/is. However,
his tongue sings God’s praises, but his heart protests
against His decree—that
Jesus is the way, truth and life, and that no one can come to the
Father
without recognizing the Son in all His splendor.
Outwardly he is a Muslim, but inwardly he is
a disbeliever—inwardly he disbelieves the truth as Jesus
walked on earth some
2000 year ago yet does confess that Jesus was the first Muslim. Outwardly he is an ascetic
and religious, but
inwardly he is like the mildew on bathroom walls, a lock at the door of
a
garbage dump. Yes,
this Sufi is just
that. He appears to
be oblivious to the
fact that he was referring to himself when he wrote the lines above. When one denies the Truth
as Truth, one
begins to rot spiritually.
Revolution
against religious confinement
To those who
seek truth in conventionalized religion:
Until conege and minaret have crumbled this holy work of
ours will not
be done. Until faith becomes rejection and rejection becomes belief
there will
be no true believer.--Abu Said
What is
wrong with this statement? Reread
it, if
you will. How does
one reject God in
faith if one is searching for God in earnest?
Is this a logical statement this Sufi proffers as a
statement of truth? One
requires faith to believe in God.
When faith becomes rejection it is no longer
faith.
When
rejection becomes belief? When
has
rejection ever become belief. Belief
in
what? When one
rejects so-called
conventional religion where God is present even if one does not see
Him, one is
also rejecting God. Is
this Sufi saying
that to believe in God one must reject Christianity and Islam? If so, what does one
accept? God is
found in the teachings of Christ, and
intimations of God are present in the teachings of the Koran. Even the Sufi accepts
Mohammed as a prophet
of God.
According to
this Sufi, a true believer in God cannot accept the teaching of
Christianity
nor the Koran. Nothing
is gained by the
rejection of tradition. Jesus
taught
that one must accept the tares along with the wheat for fear that in
“rejecting” the tares the good wheat would also be
rejected. There are
problems in Christianity (and
Islam, assuredly) that need to be addressed.
But, they cannot be addressed if this so-called faith
rejects “the baby
with the bath water.”
This Sufi’s
wisdom is not wisdom. It
is foolhardy
prattling coming from one who does not know truth.
Why does he not know truth?
I think you know. The
Sufi here does not know the Christ in His
essence.
Sufi Stories
Sufis convey many of their
teaching in stories. Christ
used parables in many instances; Sufis
have relied (and do) on stories. Some
of
the stories composed by Sufis are humorous which, in one way or
another, depict
human nature even though in many instances animals do the actual acting
out of
a situation. All
are meant to
edify. The stories
below are a sampling
of the many stories that one can read that have been composed by Sufis. The stories, though from
another tradition
other than Christianity, do instruct.
I
see no harm in them—they do not convey Sufi or Islamic
doctrine. One must
remember, however, that these
stories do not originate in the purlieu of Christ’s love and
therefore cannot
fully convey the depth of the wisdom and love of Christ.
The Frogs
A group of frogs were traveling
through the woods,
and two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered
around the
pit. When they saw how deep the pit was, they told the unfortunate
frogs they
would never get out. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to
jump up
out of the pit.
The
other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead.
Finally,
one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and
simply gave
up. He fell down and died.
The
other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd
of
frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and suffering and just die. He
jumped even
harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs asked
him,
"Why did you continue jumping? Didn't you hear us?"
The
frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were
encouraging him
the entire time.
This story
holds two lessons:
1. There is power
of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is
down can
lift them up and help them make it through the day.
2. A destructive
word to someone who is down can be what it takes to kill them. Be
careful of
what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path.
The power of
words... it is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word
can go
such a long way. Anyone can speak words that tend to rob another of the
spirit
to continue in difficult times.
Special is the
individual who will take the time to encourage another.
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
WHY ARE YOU
HERE?
One
day Nasrudin was walking along a deserted road. Night was
falling as he
spied a troop of horsemen coming toward him. His imagination
began to
work, and he feared that they might rob him, or impress him into the
army. So strong did this fear become that he leaped over a
wall and found
himself in a graveyard. The other travelers, innocent of any
such motive
as had been assumed by Nasrudin, became curious and pursued him.
When
they came upon him lying motionless, one said, "Can we help
you?
And, why are you here in this position?"
Nasrudin,
realizing his mistake said, "It is more complicated than you
assume.
You see, I am here because of you; and you, you are here because of me."
[Traditional Sufi Story]
The
Birds Experiment
"Representatives of all the
various kinds of
birds decided to find out which species was able to fly highest. They
formed a
council to judge, and experiments were started. One by one they dropped
out,
until only the Eagle was left. He continued his upward flight higher
and higher
until, when he was at his maximum, he exclaimed: ‘See, I have
reached the
highest point, leaving everyone else behind!'
At that moment a tiny Sparrow,
which had been riding
on his back, leapt off his wing and flew even higher because he had
conserved
his strength.
The Council met to decide the
winner. 'The Sparrow',
they declared, 'gets a prize for being the cleverest, but the
recognition for
attainment must still go to the Eagle. And in addition, he gets a prize
for
endurance, for he outdid all the other competitors with the Sparrow on
his
back!'"
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
A Cliff
A
man was chased off a cliff by a tiger. He fell, and just managed to
hold onto a
branch. Six feet above him stood the tiger, snarling. A hundred feet
below, a
violent sea lashed fierce-looking rocks. To his horror, he noticed that
the
branch he was clutching was being gnawed at its roots by two rats.
Seeing he
was doomed, he cried out, "O Lord, save me!"
He heard a Voice reply, "Of course, I will save you. But first, let go of the branch!"
[Traditional
Sufi Story, this
version from: Perfume of the Desert, Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom,
compiled by
Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut, Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing
House,
THE
FOUR MEN AND THE
INTERPRETER
Four
people were given a piece of money. The
first was a Persian. He said: 'I will buy with this some angur.' The second was an Arab. He
said: 'No, because
I want inab.' The
third was Turk. He
said: 'I do not want inab, I want uzum.'
The fourth was a Greek. He said: 'I want stafil.' Because
they did not know what lay behind the
names of things, these four started to fight.
They
had information but no knowledge.
One
man of wisdom present could have reconciled them all, saying: 'I can
fulfill
the needs of all of you, with one and the same piece of money. If you
honestly
give me your trust, your one coin will become as four; and four at odds
will
become as one united.'
Such
a man would know that each in his own language wanted the same thing,
grapes.
[- taken from the
Sufi Jalal-Uddin Rumi (d.1273)]
[No title]
There
were 4 towns. In each town, people were starving to death. Each town
had a bag
of seeds.
In
the first town, no one knew what
seeds could do. No one knew how to plant them.
Everyone starved.
In
the second town, one person knew what seeds were and how to plant them,
but did
nothing about it for one reason or another.
Everyone starved.
In
the third town, one person knew what seeds were and how to plant them.
He
proposed to plant them in exchange for being declared the king or
ruler. All
ate, but were ruled.
In
the fourth town, one person knew what seeds were and how to plant them.
He not
only planted the seeds, but taught everyone the art of gardening. All
ate, and
all were free and empowered.
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
Repaying a Debt
The Hodja (teacher) was selling
olives at the market
and business was slow. He called to a woman who was passing by and
tried to
entice her. She shook her head and told him she didn't have any money
with her.
"No problem," the Hodja grinned.
"You
can pay me later." She still looked hesitant, so he offered her one to
taste.
"Oh no, I can't, I'm fasting,"
she
responded.
"Fasting? But Ramadan was 6
months ago!"
"Yes, well, I missed a day and
I'm making it up
now. Go ahead and give me a kilo of the black olives."
"Forget it!" shouted the Hodja. "If it took you 6 months to pay back a debt you owed ALLAH, who knows when you'll get around to paying me!"
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
[No
Title]
Nasrudin, ferrying a pedant
across a piece of rough
water, said something ungrammatical to him.
"Have you never studied grammar?" asked the scholar.
"No."
"Then half of your life has been wasted."
A few minutes later Nasrudin turned to the passenger. "Have you ever
learned how to swim?"
"No. Why?"
"Then all your life is wasted - we are sinking!"
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
THE NAIL
A man and a
nail had a conversation.
The nail
said: "I have often wondered during my years sticking here in this
panel,
what my fate is to be."
The man
said: "Latent in your situation may be a tearing out with pliers, a
burning of wood, and the rotting of the plank -- so many things."
Said the
nail: "I should have known better than to ask such foolish questions!
Nobody can foresee the future, let alone a variety of them, all so
unlikely."
So the nail
waited, until someone else came along, someone who would talk
intelligently,
and not threaten him.
So do we
really want to know our fate, or even our present situation?
[Traditional
Sufi Story]
THE
MAN AND THE TIGER
A
man being followed by a hungry tiger, turned in desperation to face it,
and
cried: "Why don't you leave me alone?"
The tiger answered: "Why don't you stop being so appetizing?"
[Traditional Sufi
Story]
[No
Title]
There was a donkey that went into a sea of salt. The donkey was eaten by the salt which destroyed him, eating his bones and flesh. Whilst there was even one hair of the donkey remaining it could still be called 'donkey' but when even the last hair of the donkey had been eaten by the salt there was no more donkey - only salt.
[Story by Rumi]
[No
Title]
Nawob
Saheb came under criticism by
some religious persons for sometimes taking people to the local cinema
(in the
days before television and videos). When one person made this
particular
criticism to him Nawob Saheb invited that person to go with him to a
film. On
return that person professed himself nonplused – though he
had gone to see an
ordinary film he had found that it appeared to him that he was watching
nothing
but the conversations of saints.
[This Sufi Story,
purportedly actually happened, but questionable because not
substantiate.]
[No Title]
Zahurmian was very ill and forced to remain in bed for a long period of time. One evening a disciple sat with him for several hours - nothing was said for a very long time, but in his company many wonderful things appeared to his consciousness apparently from within. After several hours he became mentally tired and was ready to turn in. Suddenly Zahurmian sat upright in bed and described to him how as a boy he had an English man who was a teacher at his school. That teacher encouraged him always 'to go the extra mile'. With that he lay back down. The disciple understood that he wanted him to make more mental effort and remained with him for some time longer. When he eventually did take his leave of him to retire - though hardly any words other than those had passed between them—Zahurmian turned to his disciple, smiled and said, "Well, we had a good time, didn't we!"
[This Sufi Story
is said to have actually occurred to Zahurmian]
[This
following Sufi Story has not been confirmed for its veracity. It is a tale written by a
disciple concerning
his teacher. There
is must reverence
toward the Sufi teacher from students.
Christians can learn something from this
devotion…respect for those who
teach the Christian message. We
should
never idolize Christian teachers, but we should always respect them.]
The Urs (death anniversary) of
Khawaja Muinuddin
Hasan Chishti had just formally concluded with the recitation of the
Qur'an,
cleaning of the tomb, and a short qwaali (music) session in the main
Mehfil
Khana. Those attending from the Sufi order had enjoyed moments of
spiritual
elevation mixed with hard formal discipline that actually underlie such
events.
I cannot say for sure but
perhaps some
self-satisfaction with having passed six nights in the hot and
demanding
conditions had crept in. Or it may have been for some other reason that
Khawaja
Saheb showed us a fitting lesson.
As we made our way back to
Sharib House we went round
a different route from normal in order to attempt to miss at least some
of the
vast throng of people who made it difficult to make any progress, even
in a
sizeable group as we were. This route took us across a marbled area -
it was
midday and very hot – the marble burnt almost instantly into
the feet, (hot
beaches are nothing by comparison), and it took every ounce of self
discipline
to maintain any attempt at composure as we walked across that furnace.
However
as we did so I became aware of the fact that all around us on that
burning
marble the villagers, the poor, and the country people who visit in
their
hundred thousands every year - were lying on the marble resting or
sleeping
with nothing more than the thinnest of cotton sheets under them.
In an instant the real devotion
that Khawaja Saheb
inspires from the unsophisticated people, the real hardship they
undergo to be
there at that time burnt into our brain even more than the heat of the
marble
burnt into our feet.
What can we say of a soul that
inspires that
so may hundreds of years after his apparent death?
We can only say one thing - he is no other
than Khawaja Muinuddin Hasan Chishti.
[Missing the
Point]
A shopkeeper
had a cask of oil, which he sealed with his ring-impression after
filling it
full. His assistants, however, found that they could steal oil by
drilling a
hole near the bottom of the barrel and plugging it until they wanted to
draw
off the oil from there.
When the
shopkeeper opened his cask and found that, although the top was secure,
the
level had gone down, he was baffled. He asked a wiser man, who was a
customer
at his shop, what this might mean.
The wise man
said, 'Some has been drawn off from the bottom: why don’t you
look there for
the source of your problem?'
'Fool!'
shouted the shopkeeper: 'I am talking about the oil that is missing
from the top!'
What is the
shopkeeper missing (besides some of his oil)?
[Sufi Story taken
from Idries Shah's, The Commanding Self]
Sufi
Practices—overview
The chief purpose
of Sufi
practices, such as meditation and healing, is the restoration of
wholeness in
people. The Sufi
masters, therefore,
prescribe different medicine to their followers in the form of
different kinds
of practices with different intensities according to an
individual’s condition.
It is found that
every Sufi Order has
its own particular invocation, its own chanting and recitation, and its
own
ceremonies and methods of sitting or standing. As well as the practices
which
are done collectively, the Sufi teacher often prescribes specific
remedies for
particular individuals, for example, if one of his close followers is
ill or
needs specific treatment, such as intense periods of night vigils or
watchfulness. Whatever
their apparent differences,
one element that is found in common in all of the Sufi Orders is a deep
relationship between the spiritual master and the close follower. The relationship is based on
trust, love and
obedience to the master. It is said that the best follower for a master
is like
a rag in the hands of a washerman. It is through such submissiveness
and
obedience that the meaning of the teaching of the spiritual master is
quickly
absorbed.
Sufis believe that
any
meditation or divine adoration and invocation or recitation is
spiritually
helpful. It is like
taking a general
tonic that helps everyone, whatever their ailments may be. However, in the case of
acute or chronic
illness, a tonic only brings temporary and limited relief, and the
services of
a skilled physician are required. The
various forms of remembrance of Allah of every Sufi Order is said to be
of
assistance. Every
recitation that has
come from the genuine spiritual master supposedly has some benefit,
even for
the one who recites them without having had them prescribed for him,
but when a
specific form of remembrance of Allah is individually prescribed by a
spiritual
master, and is transmitted from heart to heart, then an effective step
towards
freedom has been taken, as the Sufi believes.
Numerous Sufi
masters and
saints have come up with certain invocations, recitations, chants and
supplications that are believed to help the seeker to purify and uplift
himself. Circles
and gatherings of remembrance
of God (dhikr) are held to help purify the self by means of abandoning
thought
and concern with mundane affairs. Sufis
believe that much help comes by concentrating on a special, specific
sound
repeatedly, much as in some forms of Buddhism. Sufis
believe that the energy that emanates
from the presence of many people in a circle of remembrance of Allah
creates
'openings' to the 'heart' and produces light-heartedness in the
seekers. It is
believed by Sufis that different
spiritual masters, according to different circumstances and times, have
brought
about different remedies for curing the maladies of the self.
Most of the Sufi
Orders
practice remembrance of Allah by chanting or singing, with the
occasional use
of musical instruments, especially drums. Music has entered into the
practices
of the Sufi Orders in a very limited way, and often for a temporary
period
under the guidance of a spiritual master. In
the case of the Indian sub-Continent, the Sufis
found that the Hindus were already very fond of music, so they also
used music
in order to bring them to the path of self-awareness, remembrance of
God and
joyful abandonment. So although musical instruments were used for that
purpose
and with that intention, they were however generally considered to be
unnecessary distractions. Most of what is sung is concerned with the
spiritual
path and has no relationship to ordinary songs. They are often
descriptions of
how to liberate oneself from one's own shackles and how to be awakened.
The Sufi believes
that an
enlightened master sees the entire cosmos in his heart.
The enlightened master regards his heart as
the sacred house of worship of God at the center of the cosmos. He sees Allah's trace at all
times everywhere.
However, for a lay
person, in spiritual
maters, it appears as if God is more present at certain times and in
certain
places than at other times or places.
It is believed by
Sufis that
the ultimate purpose of all genuine Sufi practices is the experiential
awakening into the infinite realities as they unfold in their own
natural way
within each heart. The
scintillations of
light that emanate from within are innumerable and infinite in their
combination and permutation, engulfing all attributes, and yet their
essence is
one. The real Sufi will not rest until he is established in the
knowledge of
the essence, and when that occurs, all other lights, manifestations and
glorious
attributes fade in the effulgence of that inner awakening.
Specific
Sufi Practices—
{In
reading
what is below, remember what I wrote about the Sufi subtleties. (The teacher is the Holy
Spirit. In the Book
of John it is stated that one
needs no other teacher but the Holy Spirit of Truth, after a person has
accepted Christ. This
does not mean one
does not need counsel. What
it means is
that the Holy Spirit is resident in a person.
As a person grows in Christ, the Holy Spirit is enabled to
teach that
person more and more. The
Holy Spirit is
not static. It
teaches a person as that
person grows in Christ. In
effect, no
one teaches another. The
Holy Spirit
does the teaching. Other
Christians are
conduits of the Holy Spirit. Sufis
do no
teach this. This is
a Christian
concept.) Do not be
misled by the
casuistry and sophisms of the Sufi.}
One Sufi Teaching Order……..(edited with comments by R. Coleman, DD)
The Naqshbandī Golden Chain
An explanation by Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
The
head of every lecture is:
Obey
God, obey the Prophet (s), and obey those in authority among
you. (
By
obeying God you are obeying the Prophet (s), and by obeying the Prophet
(s) you
are obeying God. Therefore always keep your Lord and the
Prophet (s) in
your heart; and when you obey your teacher, it means that you are
obeying the
Prophet (s).
A
teacher is very important and everyone must have a teacher.
Without a
teacher, no one can progress and no one can find his way and his
path.
Even the Prophet (s), and all messengers that God has sent to this
world, had
teachers. They had the angel Gabriel who was a teacher for
them.
That is why we have to take a teacher that will show us the way to the
Prophet
(s) and to God. Don’t think that you can arrive
anywhere without one; it
is impossible. By yourself you can never arrive anywhere
because if you
lose the way, you will be truly lost. So use someone who
knows the way,
who has traveled that way before and is experienced. He will
take you by
the hand and lead you directly to your goal without going here or there
to get
lost.
That
is why we have a Golden Chain. That chain of teachers and
masters related
to each other goes back without interruption to the Prophet
(s). [The chain does not go back to
Christ. Did you
catch this subtlety? There
is no referring back to Christ. Do
not be deceived.] This is what we
need: a direct chain. We don’t want a
chain that is broken
somewhere. A pipe carrying water underground from one village
to another
has to be completely whole. If there is one hole somewhere,
the water
will never come. If that chain of saints is broken you can
never arrive
to the Prophet (s). [Again,
remember the
Sufis are not including Christ in this chain.
Therefore, the weakest link in this chain is that Christ
is not
present.]
Some
people say, “We are following Sufism, Buddhism, or Hinduism,
or Christianity,
or Judaism, or yoga, reiki, or transcendental meditation” or
any other kind of
religion or belief. If you ask them, “Who is your
teacher?” they will
answer, “So-and-so." And who is
So-and-so’s teacher? Now, we are not
saying anything against any kind of belief for all beliefs will take
you to the
destination you seek; but understand what we are asking: who
is your
teacher’s teacher? That person will not know what to
answer. {The Christian will know
who is Jesus’
teacher. Since
Jesus is God, He is his
own teacher. Do not
be deceived by what
this Sufi is saying. Remember,
Christ is
not in this Sufis’ realm of thought, therefore, what he is
saying is not based
on Truth or on Wisdom’s essence.}
Someone
might say, “His origin comes from 2,000 years, or 3,000
years, or 6,000 years
of mystic teaching and saints." Then what is the condition of
that
“pipe” of several thousand years’ length?
Who are the teachers that form it,
the masters and grandmasters that transmitted it? No one knows; they
know two
or three or four teachers, then that knowledge stops.
A
tree that doesn’t have roots doesn’t give
fruit. A tree that is only
slightly rooted in the ground will be thrown down by the first
wind. Its
grounding is too weak. A teacher must never be
“grafted onto,” therefore,
without one knowing who is his teacher, his grand-teacher, his
great-grand-teacher,
and so on, until the origin of your path. That is why true
Sūfī
teachers are the most connected ones and the most powerful masters in
this
world: they have true connection, they know their
origin. {They are not connected to
Christ…how then
can their connection be true?}
If
you don’t know your origin, you are not connected anywhere,
or you don’t know
where you are connected.
Can
you give us a sequence of teachers from the founder of your way up to
the
present? Do not simply mention a name from 3,000 years ago.
We want an
uninterrupted chain, without a single one missing. You cannot
find such a
chain, in any path of spirituality or philosophy, except in Sufism
there is
such a chain. And without such a chain you cannot go anywhere. {This
is false, again. God
speaks through the
teaching of the Holy Spirit which was given by Christ at Pentecost. This Sufi, in denying
Christ, is making
unfounded statements with no truth in them.} That
is why you need a
Sūfī teacher to take you to your destination.
{One
does not need a Sufi teacher to take one to the source of Truth. Remember again, Sufis do
not accept Christ as
coming from the Father. They do not accept the Truth, so how can they
even
claim to be able to take one to the Truth.
Christ said that He is the way, the Truth, and the Life. NO ONE can come to the
Father save through
Him. NO ONE! }
[The
following is interesting reading,
but of no import for one who is serious about wanting to learn the
truth. Remember,
this is written by a person who
does not believe the core of what Christ taught about
Himself….R. Coleman, DD.]
Here is knowledge taken from the
heart of the Prophet
(s) and handed down through that chain of teachers. You
cannot find it in
any book.
Our Grandshaykh said, God bless
his secret, relates
that the Prophet (s), shortly after he was born, was immediately taken
by the
angels from his mother. As they took him, they were present
in the blink
of an eye in the Ocean of Al-Hayy. God has 99 Names and
Attributes, and
every attribute is an endless ocean of knowledge which no one can
comprehend.
One of those oceans of knowledge is from the Name Al-Hayy, the Living
One. Whoever knows the secret of that name never
dies. He lives
always – not by himself, but with everyone, because everyone
is living through
the light of God in his heart. When you are swimming in the
attribute of
that Name of God, it means that you are possessing that light, which
you are
with every person and know what every person is doing. That
is where the
Prophet (s) was taken by the angels, who were ordered to bathe his
heart in “Ma’ul
hayat,” the Water of Life. As soon as
they put his heart in the Water
of Life, he immediately possessed and was dressed with “An-Nūr
al-Ilahi,”
Divine Light. And when he was dressed with that Divine light,
from that
very time everything was opened to him, no veils were left.
After that,
the Prophet (s) was dressed from God’s
The Prophet (s) therefore
received three attributes
as he came out from Ma’ul hayat:
First, he was washed with the
Water of Life and given eternal Life. Second, he received
Divine
Light. At that time, as we said, he was feeling with everyone
and being
with everyone. That is the meaning of the verse,
“Wa'lamu anna
fikum Rasūlullāh”
(al-Hujurāt 7). “Know that the Prophet (s) is with
you, among you,
inside you,” because he was dressed with that Divine
Light. That is why
the Prophet (s) can know what you are feeling, what your future is,
what you
are doing, and what is going to happen both here and
hereafter. God has
given him that power.
Third, the Prophet (s) received
the Divine power of
God’s
God has given to the Prophet (s)
that Ocean of Power,
with which he can say to anything, “Be!” and it
will be – without having to go
back to God to ask for permission, for he is swimming in that
Ocean. The
Prophet (s) said, “Whatever God has poured into my heart I
have poured into the
heart of Abū Bakr as-Siddīq (r),” then Abū Bakr gave
everything
to Salmān al-Fārsī (r), Salmān to Qāsim,
Qāsim to Ja'far, Ja'far to Tayfur [Bistami], Tayfur to Sayyidinā
Khidr (as) – and that secret is coming down to this day to
Grandshaykh, and
from Grandshaykh to Mawlānā Shaykh Nāzim.
When God has given something, He
will not take it back.
He is al-Karim, the Generous. The meaning of true generosity is that
when you
give something, you do not take it back and you do not regret giving
it; if you
do, you are not generous. God gave this power to the Prophet
(s), to say
“BE!” to anything and it will be, and he is keeping
it for the last Day, in
order to bring everyone to
After these three attributes
come the five levels of
the heart. As God dressed him, the Prophet’s (s)
heart was immediately
endowed with the Divine power of five positions of the heart one after
another
in quick succession. The first level is the Station of the
Heart; then
the Secret; then the Secret of the Secret; then the Hidden; then the
Most
Hidden.
Grandshaykh and Mawlānā Shaykh
Nāzim
said that, after the Prophet (s) had been dressed with all these
levels,
whatever sins and bad manners come from this nation, even if the sins
of every
person are innumerable, and even if the sins are of the number of the
Community
of the Prophet (s) – according to Sūfī teachings, 400 billion
– it is
the same, for the Prophet (s), as something one cleans off with a
little bit of
water. Such is the light that God has given to the Prophet
(s) that he
can clean all these sins for the benefit of this Community, through the
power
of intercession God has granted him, as if nothing had happened.
"You are the best Nation that
God has sent forth
to mankind,"
Allah revealed to
the Prophet (s).
And the Prophet (s) said,
“The best nation, the most
favorite nation, is the last nation."
You are the last
nation. According to
Grandshaykh, this world has no more than fifty years left.
After fifty
years, something is going to happen the like of which you have never
heard
about. Judgment Day is after these fifty years by another
forty.
All is finished ninety years from now. Through those mercies
with which
the Prophet (s) has been dressed, all sins of human beings are going to
be
taken away.
Grandshaykh said that, even if
every person has four
hundred billion sins, it would be nothing; even if it were to amount to
the
number of God’s creations, universes, and beings.
Even then it remains
easy for the Ocean of the Prophet (s) to take away all these sins as if
nothing
had touched you.
The Prophet (s) said, "My
intercession is for
those who commit major sins in my Community."
Those who commit minor sins will
receive Allah's
Forgiveness, for they were worshipping, keeping their obligations and
repenting
from what they did. Those who committed major sins (kaba'ir)
are in need
of the Prophet's (s) shafa`a, his intercession, and
with it they are
saved.
Do not think that God has
created this creation and
left it just like that. God is going to dress His saints, and
to dress
the Prophet (s) from His attributes and from His lights in order to
take
everyone from miseries and sins to the highest levels in the hereafter.
When Salmān al-Fārsī
(r), one of
the greatest Companions who came after Sayyidinā Abū Bakr
as-Siddīq (r), came from
When the Prophet (s) was brought
to this world by his
mother, Sayyidinā Salmān al-Fārsī (r) heard the happiness
of wild animal saying, “Allāhu Akbar!”
for everyone in this
universe was happy, including animals, trees and stars, because the
last
prophet was coming, and everyone knew that God was going to dress him
with His
lights – all knew and were happy except us human
beings. Human beings are
jealous of the Prophet (s) and say, “Why has God chosen
him?”
Grandshaykh said, “I
am speaking from that
If Mawlānā is speaking as if
from the hole
of a needle, then what we are saying now is nothing compared to
reality.
What is going to come is something concerning which you are going to
lose your
minds.
This is the explanation of
Sayyidinā Abū
Hurayrah's (r) affirmation in hadīth: “The Prophet
(s) has put in my
heart two kinds of knowledges. One knowledge I have
disseminated among
the people; but if I tell the other knowledge they will cut my
neck." What Grandshaykh says is of the second type of
knowledge –
something extraordinary which is going to be spread in
Mahdī’s time, but
which today is kept in the heart of Allah's chosen servants.
Grandshaykh
said that these things have been opened
on the heart of the Prophet (s) from the time of his birth and that his
heart
is like a glass of water, transparent from all sides. His
heart was so
transparent from the light of God that wherever the Prophet (s) looked,
he
could get knowledge and wisdom and therefore speak from knowledge and
wisdom.
Grandshaykh said that when the
Prophet’s (s) soul was
taken away from his physical body by angels to the presence of his
Lord, after
his mother gave birth to him, his mother was afraid that he had passed
away
because the body did not move for a full hour. But the angel
Gabriel¡
quickly came and said to her, “Don’t be afraid and
don’t tell anyone; leave it.
God has taken his soul in order for his heart to be washed, and in
order to
open to him the attributes of the 99 Names – all the Oceans
of all the Names of
God." According to the Islamic religion, God has 99 names:
each Name covers an Attribute and each Attribute is an
Say: "If the ocean were ink
(wherewith to write
out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than
would the
words of my Lord, even if we added another ocean like it, for its aid."
(18:109)
God washed the
Prophet’s (s) heart with “Bismillah
al-A'dham,” the Greatest Name. Until
today every saint is trying to
know what the Greatest Name of God is, but no one can know, for that
secret has
not been opened to anyone yet, except to the Prophet (s) who has
received that
Name in his heart. No veil was left on the heart of the
Prophet (s) when
God washed his heart with the
“We have
given you the Kawthar. (Kawthar, 1).
”If anyone bathes in it,
his
heart will never die."
That is why the Prophet (s)
said, “I am alive and
fresh in my grave.”
When he was only one hour old,
the Prophet (s) asked
God as He was washing him, “O my Lord, what about my nation?
Aren’t you going
to wash my nation also with the water of this river? If not, I am not
accepting
to be washed alone. I must have my nation with me; I cannot
be without my
nation." According to the Prophet (s), when he asked this
from God,
God washed his entire nation with that
We are a forgiven Nation. God
has entrusted us to the
Prophet (s) with His Mercy. You are going to hear more and
more of these
lectures. Yet what we have said is child’s
play. When Grandshaykh
gives permission to talk from such knowledge, these lectures are not
for
everyone to hear. They are special and that subject can only
be opened
with permission from Grandshaykh and Mawlānā Shaykh Nāzim.
After the Prophet (s) accepted
his Nation with their
light, and after God showed him the sins they were going to commit, the
Prophet
(s) asked for helpers. God immediately gave him 7,007
Naqshbandī
saints to help him clean the nation. Out of these he gave him
313 of a
higher level. Out of these He gave him 40 masters of the
Golden Chain:
our link to the Prophet (s). Our forty masters are
trying their
best to clean everyone of their sins with the light that God has given
to their
hearts. You are lucky that you are in the hands of one of
these masters –
the last master in this chain, the fortieth master.
What is Kawthar? According to
scriptural tradition it
is a river in
Grandshaykh and our Master
Shaykh Nāzim asked,
Why has God given prophecy to the Prophet (s)? Just for him?
Grandshaykh is
saying, "No: God has given that power and dressed him with
the
manifestations of the 99 Divine Names and Attributes and all this
light, for
the sake of this Nation, His Community. All that is in order that the
Prophet
(s) would dress each one of us with similar light, to share with us all
the
attributes of the Prophetic character, the Sunnah,
in its outward and
inward manifestations. God has told the Prophet (s), 'O my
beloved
Prophet, I am going to ask you personally – I want everyone
of this nation of
my servants similar to you....' It is a great and tremendous secret
that the
Prophet (s) is under this responsibility: to make everyone of
us,
everyone of his Community, similar to him. In worship, he is
going to
share with us all his worship; in order to clean and dress us with all
that he
has been dressed with, and to present us to God clean and pure, through
the
power of intercession (shafa`a) that God has granted
him. This is
his duty.
Grandshaykh and Mawlānā Shaykh
Nāzim
said, In every moment the Prophet (s) is progressing a redoubled
distance in
the Divine Presence, “Yataraqqa mithlayni mithlayn,”
in growing
geometrical sequence, each moment doubling the previous
progress.
He is progressing, and at the same time taking his Community by the
hand with
him – without discrimination and without
differentiation. This Community
is a Community of servants, and servants are servants. Slaves
are slaves!
There is no difference between them! All of them are slaves before God,
and the
Prophet (s) is looking at them as one and taking them by the hand.
The Prophet (s) said, an-naasu
sawaasiyyata ka
asnaan al-mashti - "mankind are equal like the teeth of a
comb."
This knowledge is going to be
opened in Mahdī’s
(as) and Jesus' (as) time. Now this is only a smell
of the knowledge
of what is going to happen later. When people speak to tell
you about Sufism,
what are they talking about? They are children in relation to that
Golden Chain
who is taking from the Prophet’s (s) heart. What is
going to be opened
will dwarf what all these people calling themselves Sufi masters are
saying. They are going to find themselves as
children. Their
knowledge will be as nothing. That is why Sayyidinā
Muhiyyuddīn
Ibn al-'Arabi, after writing Al-Futūhāt al-Makkīyyah
said, “I don’t know what I wrote." He
used to sleep with a pen by
his side; when he woke up he found that the pen had written.
That is also
how he wrote Fusus al-Hikam and all his
books. Even he did not
understand, and now they are “explaining” what even
he did not
understand. What are you going to understand of what he said?
This degree
of high knowledge in Sufism cannot be opened, even if you think you see
it:
if you have a television you can see something but you do not
feel.
In Sufism, if you don’t feel and live the event, you can
never reach the level
on which it is described.
Sufism is “dhawq,”
taste. You have many
kinds of food. People take the best food and they try to
taste it from
here [points to mouth] to here [points to top of throat].
After that
point all foods are the same. Similarly, when you look at the
television,
it is as if “from here to here." You are neither
tasting nor feeling
anything. If you cannot feel or taste, it is not Sufism, but
a mirror
reflection of Sufism, an image. And all these
“Shaykhs” – they cannot be
called by that name in fact, because a Shaykh is high – all
these people that
are explaining Sufism are not tasting nor feeling. Yet
feeling and
tasting are the most important matter in Sufism. Now you will
say, “You
are speaking also like them. Why are you not feeling and
tasting?” I will
tell you that there is not yet permission to take you by the hand and
make you
taste and feel. This is only when Mahdī (as) comes.
Otherwise
this world could not carry you. If you give a child a candy,
he would
trade a diamond for it and lose the diamond. If you are going
to be given
such knowledge, you are going to waste it if there is no support from
Mahdī, who is coming very soon. That support is
needed.
Without it, you will never have the door of feeling and tasting opened
for you.
A Sufi leader must have 'Ilmu‘l-Yaqīn,
'Aynu‘l-Yaqīn, Haqqu‘l-Yaqīn –
the Knowledge of Certainty, the
Vision of Certainty, the Truth of Certainty. First is the
“knowledge of
certainty,” which is the necessity to know that there is such
knowledge and to
hear about it. When you hear it, you go to the second level,
but you have
to hear first. That is why God in Qur’ān, as well
as all the Sufi
masters, from Jalāluddīn Rūmī to Ibn al-Hishām, to
Hallaj, to Abā Yazīd al-Bistāmī, mention hearing as the
first thing. Knowledge cannot come by seeing first but from a
teacher
that is heard, even for a blind man. A deaf person, on the
other hand,
cannot even begin to get knowledge. When the Archangel
Gabriel (as) came
to the Prophet (s), the first thing he said to him
was “Read,” and
the Prophet (s) was hearing and listening. That is why Sufism
is giving
orders which one fulfills by hearing, not by seeing.
This first level is not achieved
by hearing and not
caring, but by hearing, accepting and fulfilling through action! If
your Shaykh
says to go to the mountain and stay there until I come, and he does not
show
up, you will stay there for years, until he appears, if you do not do
that, you
are still a child in Sufi knowledge. In the Naqshbandī order
you
have to obey, and obedience comes through hearing. If you do
it, then you
move up to the second level.
Once, Grand-Grandshaykh Shaykh
Sharafuddin said, in a
meeting of big masters, as Grandshaykh was on his way to meet them
– still a
teenager at the time – as they sat in a remote place far
outside the city:
“My son ‘Abdullāh Effendi has reached a
level where no one has set
foot yet – not myself, nor all the Golden Chain
masters. He is only 18
and I am 60, yet he has reached a level that is higher than mine and
all the
Golden Chain masters that have passed away. If I am going to
send him a
child of seven years to tell him, “Your Shaykh is ordering
you to direct
yourself to Mecca for pilgrimage,” from Daghestan here in the
middle of Russia,
he will immediately think, without coming and asking me for
confirmation
whether this is true or not, “Who is making that child speak?
My Shaykh has to
know even before I know. Otherwise, how have I accepted him
as a Shaykh
and yet represent him as not knowing anything? If my Shaykh
doesn’t know, who
will know?” Immediately he will believe the child, and
without going back to
his house to tell his mother or his wife that he wants to go to
pilgrimage;
without taking any clothes, money, or food, he will direct himself to
Makkah
which is 10,000 miles away, walking, without asking anything.
He will
know the order comes from me and will simply change the direction of
his walk.”
This is “Wahdatu‘l-af'al,”
Unification of
actions or deeds or words – you must see everything as coming
from God.
This is a higher level in Sufi knowledge. You cannot see
people doing
anything anymore, but you must consider them instruments in the hands
of
God. Leave the child – if Shaykh Nāzim comes to you
and says, “Go to
Mecca,” you will say, “Okay, my Shaykh, but I have
to buy a ticket, and I have
to see if my wife gives me permission..." In the Naqshbandī
order you cannot do all this. You have to move immediately.
The second level is 'Aynu‘l-Yaqīn,
the
true vision. At that time you are going to see things around
you, but
without feeling. It will be like a screen which is lifted
only in the
third level, Haqqu‘l-Yaqīn, the reality
of truth – you are there
and living that incident. If Grandshaykh is saying what we
were saying
before about the Prophet (s), how he was taken and how his heart was
washed, at
hearing this you are going to live that event as if you were living and
feeling
everything at that time. If Mawlānā Shaykh Nāzim is
talking about an incident which happened 500 years ago, for example,
you are
going to live as if you were living at that time, hearing, seeing and
feeling
what they were hearing, seeing and feeling, juts as if you were one of
them.
This is the Sufi taste and the
knowledge of the
Naqshbandī order which connects its seekers to the Golden
Chain.
This cannot be opened until the time of Mahdī (as) – unless,
for some
special followers, Mawlānā Shaykh Nāzim opens it with permission
from the Prophet (s). It is not common to all. The
rest must wait
for the support of Mahdī's power to enter that level; otherwise people
will be condemned for speaking about what they see.
In the Naqshbandī order the
Shaykh can never
make you be different from people and this is the perfect order:
you see
the Shaykh who has all this power, feeling everything and living all
the
events, and describing them, yet behaving as an ordinary
person. The
Shaykh will therefore never accept to open knowledge for you if you are
not
ready and if he sees that you are going to show what he gave you to the
public. That is why there is no permission yet for that door
to be
opened.
Below
are some Sufis who have supposedly
passed on what they teach is the Secret of the Golden Chain. This list of Sufis here
who have passed on
the Secret is not exhaustive.
Prominent
Sufis and their Sayings, those who have passed on
the Secret of the Golden Chain.
Tayfur
Abu Yazid al-Bistami
May Allah Be Well Pleased With Him
"I have
planted love in my heart
and shall not be distracted until Judgment Day.
You have wounded my heart when You came near me.
My desire grows, my love is bursting.
He has poured me a sip to drink.
He has quickened my heart with the cup of love
Which he has filled at the ocean of friendship."
Attributed to Bayazid.
His
Life
Bayazid's
grandfather was a Zoroastrian from
He
urged his students (murids) to put their affairs in
the hands of Allah
and he encouraged them to accept sincerely the pure doctrine of tawhid
(the Oneness of God). This doctrine consisted of five essentials: to
keep the
obligations according to the Qur'an and Sunnah, to always speak the
truth, to
keep the heart free from hatred, to avoid forbidden food and to shun
innovations (bid`a).
His
Sayings
One
of his sayings was, "I have come to know Allah through Allah, and I
have
come to know what is other than Allah with the light of Allah." He
said,
"Allah has granted his servants favors for the purpose of bringing them
closer to Him. Instead they are fascinated with the favors and are
drifting
farther from Him." And he said, praying to Allah, "O Allah, You have
created this creation without their knowledge, and You have placed on
them a
trust without their will. If You don't help them who will help them?"
Bayazid
said the ultimate goal of the Sufi is to experience the vision of Allah
in the
Hereafter. To that effect he said, "There are special servants of Allah
who, if Allah veiled Himself from their sight in
He
said about Allah's love for His servant, "If Allah loves His servant He
will grant three attributes that are the proofs of His Love: generosity
like
the generosity of the ocean, and favor like the favor of the Sun in its
giving
of light, and modesty like the modesty of the Earth. The true lover
never
considers any affliction too great and never decreases his worship
because of
his pure faith."
A
man asked Bayazid, "Show me a deed by which I will approach my Lord."
He said, "Love the friends of Allah in order that they will love you.
Love
his saints until they love you. Because Allah looks at the hearts of
His saints
and He will see your name engraved in the heart of His saints and He
will
forgive you." For this reason, the Naqshbandi followers have been
elevated
by their love for their shaikhs. This love lifts them to a station of
continuous pleasure and continuous presence in the heart of their
beloved.
Many
Muslim scholars in his time, and many after his time, said that Bayazid
al-Bistami was the first one to spread the Reality of Annihilation (fana').
Even that strictest of scholars, Ibn Taymiyya, who came in the 7th
Century
A.H., admired Bayazid for this and considered him to be one of his
masters. Ibn
Taymiyya said about him, "There are two categories of fana':
one is
for the perfect Prophets and saints, and one is for seekers from among
the
saints and pious people (saliheen). Bayazid
al-Bistami is from the first
category of those who experience fana', which means the complete
renunciation
of anything other than God. He accepts none except God. He worships
none except
Him, and he asks from none except Him." He continues, quoting Bayazid
saying, "I want not to want except what He wants."
It
was reported about Bayazid that he said, "I divorced the lower world
thrice in order that I could not return to it and I moved to my Lord
alone,
without anyone, and I called on Him alone for help by saying, 'O Allah,
O Allah,
no one remains for me except You.' At that time I came to know the
sincerity of
my supplication in my heart and the reality of the helplessness of my
ego.
Immediately the acceptance of that supplication was perceived by my
heart. This
opened to me a vision that I was no longer in existence and I vanished
completely from myself into His self. And He brought up all that I had
divorced
before in front of me, and dressed me with light and with His
attributes."
Bayazid
said, "Praise to Me, for My greatest Glory!" And he continued saying,
"I set forth on an ocean when the [earlier] prophets were still by the
shore." And he said, "O My Lord, Your obedience to me is greater than
my obedience to You." This means, "O God, You are granting my request
and I have yet to obey You."
He
said, "I made four mistakes in my preliminary steps in this way: I
thought
that I remember Him and I know Him and I love Him and I seek Him, but
when I
reached Him I saw that His remembering of me preceded my remembrance of
Him,
and His knowledge about me preceded my knowledge of Him and His love
towards me
was more ancient than my love towards Him, and He sought me in order
that I
would begin to seek Him."
Adh-Dhahabi
quoted him in many great matters, among which were "Praise to Me, for
My
greatest Glory!" and "There is nothing in this robe I am wearing
except Allah." Adh-Dhahabi's teacher Ibn Taymiyya explained, "He
didn't see himself as existing any longer, but only saw the existence
of Allah,
due to his self-denial."
Adh-Dhahabi
further relates, "He said, O Allah, what is your Fire? It is nothing.
Let
me be the one person to go into your Fire and everyone else will be
saved. And
what is your
Ibn
Hajar said, in reference to Bayazid's famous utterances, "Allah knows
the
secret and Allah knows the heart. Whatever Aba Yazid spoke from the
Knowledge
of Realities the people of his time did not understand. They condemned
him and
exiled him seven times from his city. Every time he was exiled,
terrible
afflictions would strike the city until the people would call him back,
pledge
allegiance to him, and accept him as a real saint."
Attar
and Arusi relate that Bayazid said, when he was exiled from his city,
"O
Blessed city, whose refuse is Bayazid!"
One
time Bayazid said, "Allah the Most Just called me into His Presence and
said to me, 'O Bayazid how did you arrive in My Presence?' I replied,
'Through zuhd,
by renouncing the world.' He said, 'The value of the lower world is
like the
wing of a mosquito. What kind of renunciation have you come with?' I
said, 'O
Allah, forgive me.' Then I said, 'O Allah, I came to you through tawakkul,
by dependence on You.' Then He said, 'Did I ever betray the trust which
I
promised you?' I said, 'O Allah forgive me.' Then I said, 'O Allah, I
came to
you through You.' At that time Allah said, 'Now We accept you.'"
He
said, "I stood with the pious and I didn't find any progress with them.
I
stood with the warriors in the cause and I didn't find a single step of
progress with them. I stood with those who pray excessively and those
who fast
excessively and I didn't make a footstep of progress. Then I said, 'O
Allah,
what is the way to You?' and Allah said, 'Leave yourself and come.'"
Ibrahim
Khawwas said, "The way that Allah showed to him, with the most delicate
word and the simplest explanation, was to 'leave your self-interest in
the two
worlds, the dunya and the Hereafter, leave everything other than Me
behind.'
That is the best and easiest way to come to Allah Almighty and Exalted,
the
most perfect and highest state of affirming Oneness, not to accept
anything or
anyone except Allah the Most High."
One
of the followers of Dhul Nun al-Misri was following Bayazid. Bayazid
asked him,
"Who do you want?" He replied, "I want Bayazid." He said,
"O my son, Bayazid is wanting Bayazid for forty years and is still not
finding him." That disciple of Dhul Nun then went to him and narrated
this
incident to him. On hearing it Dhul Nun fainted. He explained later
saying,
"My master Bayazid has lost himself in Allah's love. That causes him to
try to find himself again."
They
asked him, "Teach us about how you reached true Reality." He said,
"By training myself, by seclusion." They said, "How?" He
said, "I called my self to accept Allah Almighty and Exalted, and it
resisted. I took an oath that I would not drink water and I would not
taste
sleep until I brought my self under my control."
He
also said, "O Allah! it is not strange that I love You because I am a
weak
servant, but it is strange that You love me when You are the King of
Kings."
He
said, "For thirty years, when I wanted to remember Allah and do dhikr I
used to wash my tongue and my mouth for His glorification."
He
said, "As long as the servant thinks that there is among the Muslims
someone lower than himself, that servant still has pride."
They
asked him, "Describe your day and describe your night." He said,
"I don't have a day and I don't have a night, because day and night are
for those who have characteristics of creation. I have shed my self the
way the
snake sheds its skin."
Of
Sufism Bayazid said: "It is to give up rest and to accept suffering."
Of
the obligation to follow a guide, he said: "Who does not have a sheikh,
his sheikh is Satan."
Of
seeking God he said, "Hunger is a rain cloud. If a servant becomes
hungry,
Allah will shower his heart with wisdom."
Of
his intercession he said, "If Allah will give me permission to
intercede
for all the people of my time I will not be proud, because I am only
interceding for a piece of clay," and "If Allah gave me permission
for intercession, first I would intercede for those who harmed me and
those who
denied me."
To
a young man who wanted a piece of his old cloak for baraka
(blessing),
Bayazid said: "Should you take all Bayazid's skin and wear it as yours,
it
would avail you nothing unless you followed his example."
They
said to him, "The key for
1) a tongue which
doesn't lie nor backbite;
2) a heart without betrayal;
3) a stomach without a doubtful provision;
4) deeds without desire or innovation."
He
said, "The ego or self always looks at the world and the ruh
(spirit) always looks at the next life and ma`rifat
(spiritual
knowledge) always looks at Allah Almighty and Exalted. He whose self
defeats him
is from those who are destroyed, and he whose spirit is victorious over
his
self, he is of the pious, and he whose spiritual knowledge overcomes
his self,
he is of the God-conscious."
Ad-Dailami
said, "One time I asked `Abdur Rahman bin Yahya about the state of
trust
in Allah (tawakkul).
He said,
"If you put your hand in the mouth of a lion, don't be afraid of other
than Allah." I went in my heart to visit and ask Bayazid about this
matter. I knocked and I heard from inside, "Wasn't what `Abdur Rahman
said
to you enough? You came only to ask, and not with the intention of
visiting
me." I understood and I came again another time one year later,
knocking
at his door. This time he answered, "Welcome my son, this time you came
to
me as a visitor and not as a questioner."
They
asked him "When does a man become a man?" He said, "When he
knows the mistakes of his self and he busies himself in correcting
them."
He
said, "I was twelve years the blacksmith of my self, and five years the
polisher of the mirror of my heart, and for one year I was looking in
that
mirror and I saw on my belly the girdle of unbelief. I tried hard to
cut it and
I spent twelve years in that effort. Then I looked in that mirror and I
saw
inside my body that girdle. I spent five years cutting it. Then I spent
one
year looking at what I had done. And Allah opened for me the vision of
all
creations. And I saw all of them dead. And I prayed four takbiras
of janaza
(funeral prayer) over them."
He
said one time: "If the Throne and what is around it and what is in it
were
placed in the corner of the heart of a Knower, they would be lost
completely
inside it."
Of
Bayazid's state, al-`Abbas ibn Hamza related the following: "I prayed
behind Bayazid the Dhuhr prayer, and when he raised his hands to say
'Allahu
Akbar' he was unable to pronounce the words, in fear of Allah's Holy
Name, and
his entire body was trembling and the sound of bones breaking came from
him; I
was seized by fear."
Munawi
relates that one day, Bayazid attended the class of a faqih
(jurisprudent)
who was explaining the laws of inheritance: "When a man dies and leaves
such-and-such, his son will have such-and-such, etc." Bayazid
exclaimed:
"O faqih, O faqih! What would
you say of a man who died
leaving nothing but God?" People began to cry, and Bayazid continued:
"The slave possesses nothing; when he dies, he leaves nothing but his
own
master. He is such as Allah created him in the beginning." And he
recited:
"You shall return to us alone, as we created you the first
time"
[6:94].
Sahl
at-Tustari sent a letter to Bayazid which read: "Here is a man who
drank a
drink which leaves him forever refreshed." Bayazid replied: "Here is
a man who has drunk all existences, but whose mouth is dry and burn
with
thirst."
His
Death
When
Bayazid died, he was over seventy years old. Before he died, someone
asked him
his age. He said: "I am four years old. For seventy years I was veiled.
I
got rid of my veils only four years ago." The 39th Sheikh of the Golden
Chain, Sultan al-Awliya Sheikh `Abdullah Daghestani, referred to this
saying in
his encounter with Khidr, who told him, as he was pointing to the
graves of
some great scholars in a Muslim cemetery: "This one is three years old;
that one, seven; that one, twelve."
Bayazid
died in 261 H. It is said he is buried in two places, one is
Abul
Hassan `Ali ibn Ja`far al-Kharqani
May Allah Sanctify His Soul
"Mayest Thou deign to be
sweetness and let life be bitter!
If Thou art content, what matter that men be angry?
Let everything between me and Thee be cultivated,
Between me and the worlds let all be desert!
If Thy love be assured, all is then easy,
For everything on earth is but earth."
Anonymous.
He was
the Ghawth (Arch-Intercessor) of his time and
unique in his station. He
was the Qiblah (focus of attention) of his people
and an
He emptied
himself of everything except Allah's Oneness, refusing for himself all
titles
and aspirations. He would not be known as a follower of any science,
even a
spiritual science, and he said: "I am not a rahib
(hermit). I am
not a zahid (ascetic). I am not a speaker. I am not
a Sufi. O Allah, You
are One, and I am one in Your Oneness."
Of knowledge and practice he
said:
"Scholars
and servants in the lower world are numerous but they don't benefit you
unless
you are engaged in the satisfaction of Allah's desire, and from morning
to
night are occupied with the deeds that Allah accepts."
About being a Sufi he said:
"The Sufi
is not the one who is always carrying the prayer rug, nor the one who
is
wearing patched clothes, nor the one who keeps certain customs and
appearances;
but the Sufi is the one to whom everyone's focus is drawn, although he
is
hiding himself."
"The Sufi
is the one who in the daylight doesn't need the sun and in the night
doesn't
need the moon. The essence of Sufism is absolute nonexistence that has
no need
of existence because there is no existence besides Allah's existence."
He was asked
about Truthfulness (Sidq). He said,
“Truthfulness is to speak your
conscience."
Of the heart he said:
"What
is the best thing? The heart which is always in Remembrance of God (dhikr
Allah)."
"The
best of hearts is the heart which contains nothing but the presence of
Allah,
Almighty and Exalted."
"Today
it will have been 40 years that Allah has been looking in my heart and
has seen
nothing except Himself. I have had nothing in my heart nor my breast
except
Allah for 40 years; and while my ego is asking for cold water and a
drink of
milk, I have not allowed it that for 40 years in order to control
myself."
"The
vision with the eyes of the head doesn't bring happiness, but the
vision with
the eyes of the heart and the secret that Allah gives to the soul will
bring
out that happiness."
Of Bayazid he said:
"When
Abu Yazid said, 'I want not to want' that is exactly the wanting which
is real
desire (irada).
He was asked,
"Who is the appropriate person to speak about fana'
(annihilation)
and baqa' (permanence)?" He answered, "That is
knowledge for
the one who is as if suspended by a silk thread from the heavens to the
earth
and a great cyclone comes and takes all trees, houses, and mountains
and throws
them in the ocean until it fills the ocean. If that cyclone is unable
to move
the one who is hanging by the silk thread, then he is the one who can
speak on fana'
and baqa'."
One time
Sultan Mahmoud al-Ghazi visited Abul Hassan and asked his opinion of
Bayazid
al-Bistami. He said, "Whoever follows Bayazid is going to be guided.
And
whoever saw him and felt love towards him in his heart will reach a
happy
ending." At that Sultan Mahmoud said, "How is that possible, when Abu
Jahl saw the Prophet
and
he was
unable to reach a happy ending but rather ended up in misery?" He
answered, "It is because Abu Jahl didn't see the Prophet
but
he saw
Muhammad bin `Abdullah. And if he saw the Messenger of Allah he would
have been
taken out of misery into happiness. As Allah said, "You see
them
looking at you but without clear vision" [7:198]. He
continued with
the saying already quoted, "The vision with the eyes of the head..."
Other sayings of his:
"Ask
for difficulties in order for tears to appear because Allah loves those
who
cry," referring to the advice of the Prophet
to
cry
much.
"In
whatever way you ask Allah for anything, still the Qur'an is the best
way.
Don't ask Allah except through the Qur'an."
"The
Inheritor of the Prophet
is
the one
who follows his footsteps and never puts black marks in his Book of
Deeds."
Abul-Hasan
al-Kharqani died on Tuesday, 10th of Muharram in 425 H. (1033 CE). He
was
buried in Kharqan, a village of the city of
Abu `Ali
al-Farmadhi
at-Tusi
"O child! said Luqman
the Wise,
Do not let the rooster be more watchful than you,
calling Allah at dawn while you are sleeping."
He is right, he who said:
"The turtle-dove wept on her branch in the night
And I slept on--what lying, false love is mine?
If I were a true lover, never would turtle-doves overtake me.
I am the dry-eyed lover of his Lord, while animals weep!"
Ghazali, Ayyuha-l-walad.
He is
called the Knower of the Merciful and the Custodian of Divine Love. He
was a
scholar of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence and a unique `arif
(endowed with spiritual knowledge). He was deeply involved in both the
School
of the Salaf (scholars of the First and Second
Centuries) and that of
the Khalaf (later scholars), but he made his mark
in the Science of Tasawwuf.
From it he extracted some of the heavenly knowledge which is mentioned
in
Qur'an in reference to al-Khidr: "and We have taught him from
our
Heavenly Knowledge" [18:65].
One time he
said, "I entered behind my teacher, al-Qushayri, to the public bath,
and
from the well I took for him a bucket of water which I had filled from
the well
myself. When my teacher came he said, 'Who brought the water in the
bucket?' I
kept quiet, as I felt I had committed some disrespect. He asked a
second time,
'Who brought the water?' I continued to keep quiet. He asked a third
time, 'Who
filled that bucket with water?' I finally said, 'I did, my teacher.' He
said,
'O My son, what I received in seventy years, I passed to you with one
bucket of
water.' That meant that the heavenly and divine knowledge which he had
struggled for seventy years to acquire he passed to my heart through
one glance."
On behavior towards one's
master he said:
"If you
are true in your love of your shaykh, you have to keep respect with
him."
On spiritual vision he said:
"For
the `arif (Knower) a time will come wherein the
light of knowledge will
reach him and his eyes will see the incredible Unseen."
"Whoever
pretends he can hear, yet cannot hear the glorification of birds, trees
and the
wind, is a liar."
"The
hearts of the people of Truth are open, and their hearing is open."
"Allah
gives happiness to His servants when they see His Saints." This is
because
the Prophet
said,
"Whoever sees the face of a knower of God, sees me," and also,
"Whoever sees me, has seen Reality." Sufi Masters have named the
practice of concentrating on the face of the sheikh (tasawwur),
and it
is done to the end of fulfilling that state.
"Whoever
looks after the actions of people will lose his way."
"Who
prefers the company of the rich over the company of the poor, Allah
will send
him the death of the heart."
Imam Ghazali
reports, "I heard that Abul Hasan al-Farmadhi said, 'the Ninety-nine
Attributes of Allah will become attributes and descriptions of the
seeker in
the way of Allah.'"
He died in
447 H. and he was buried in the village Farmadh, a suburb of the city
of
Abu
Ya`qub Yusuf ibn Ayyab ibn Yusuf ibn al-Husayn
al-Hamadani
"Think not that there
are no travelers on the road,
or that those of perfect attribute leave no trace.
Just because you are not privy to the secrets,
Do you think that no one else is either?"
Rumi, Fihi ma fihi.
He was one
of the rarest Knowers of God, a Pillar in the Sunnah of the Prophet and
a
unique saint. He was an imam (religious leader), an
`alim
(religious scholar), and a `arif (spiritual knower
of God). He was the
master of his time in raising the stations of his followers. Scholars
and pious
people used to flood in huge numbers into his khaniqah
(retreat) in the
city of
Born in
Buzanjird near
He was so
brilliant a jurisprudent that he became the marja`
(reference) of his
time for all scholars in that field. He was known in
Later in his
life he secluded himself and left the world behind. He became an
ascetic and
engaged in constant worship and mujahada (spiritual
struggle). He
associated with Shaykh Abdullah Ghuwayni and Shaykh Hasan Simnani, but
his
secret was given him by Shaykh Abu `Ali al-Farmadhi. He made progress
in
self-denial and contemplation until he became the Ghawth
(Arch-Intercessor) of his time. He was known as the Rain of Realities
and Truth
and Spiritual Knowledge. He finally settled in Merv. Through him
countless
miraculous events occurred.
From
His Supposed Miracles
He reflected
the Divine attribute of Severity (al-Qahhar) with
those who opposed the
dissemination of spirituality. Following are two of his miraculous
deeds in
that respect:
One day he
was holding an association in which he was enlightening the listeners
with
heavenly knowledge. Two literalist scholars who were present said,
"Keep
quiet, because you are devising innovation." He said to them, "Do not
talk about matters that you do not understand. It is better for you to
die than
to remain." As he spoke these words they immediately fell dead.
Ibn Hajar
al-Haythami records in his book Al-Fatawa al-Hadithiyya,
"Abu Sa`id
Abdullah ibn Abi `Asran, the Imam of the School of Shafi'i, said, 'When
I began
a search for religious knowledge I accompanied my friend, Ibn as-Saqa,
who was
a student in the Nizamiya School, and it was our custom to visit the
pious. We
heard that there was in
'We entered
his association. He veiled himself from us and we didn't see him until
after
one hour had passed. He looked at Ibn as-Saqa angrily and said, without
having
been informed of his name, 'O Ibn as-Saqa, how dare you ask me a
question when
your intention is to confound me?' Your question is this and your
answer is
this!' Then he said to Ibn Saqa, 'I am seeing the fire of kufr
(unbelief) burning in your heart.' He looked at me and said, 'O
`Abdallah, are
you asking me a question and awaiting my answer? Your question is this
and your
answer is this. Let the people be sad for you because they are losing
as a
result of your disrespect for me.' Then he looked at Shaykh 'Abdul
Qadir
al-Jilani and said to him, 'Approach, my son. I am going to bless you.
O `Abdul
Qadir, you have satisfied Allah and His Prophet
with
your
proper respect for me. I see you in the future sitting on the highest
place in
Ibn Hajar
al-Haythami continues, "`Abdul Qadir has been lifted up and all that
shaykh al-Hamadani said about him came to pass. There came a time when
he did
say, 'My feet are on the necks of all the awliya
(saints),' and he was a
reference and a beacon guiding all people in his time to their
destinations."
"The
fate of Ibn as-Saqa was something else. He was brilliant in his
knowledge of
the Law of Islam. He preceded all the scholars in his time. He used to
debate
with the scholars of his time and overcome them, until the khalif
called him to
be a member of his court. One day the khalif sent him as a messenger to
the
King of Byzantium, who in his turn called all the priests and scholars
of
Christianity to debate him. Ibn as-Saqa was able to defeat all of them
in
debate. They were helpless to give answers in his presence. He gave
them
answers that made them look like mere students in his presence.
"His
brilliance fascinated the King of Byzantium so that he invited him to
his
private family gathering. There Ibn as-Saqa's eyes fell on the daughter
of the
King. He immediately fell in love with her, and asked her father, the
King, for
her hand in marriage. She refused except on condition that he accept
her
religion. He did, leaving Islam and accepting the Christian religion of
the
princess. After his marriage he became seriously ill. They threw him
out of the
palace. He became a town beggar, asking everyone for food, yet no one
would
provide for him. Darkness had come over his face.
"One
day he saw someone that had known him before. That person relates: 'I
asked
him, 'What happened to you?' He replied, 'There was a temptation that I
fell
into.' The man asked him, 'Do you remember anything from the Holy
Qur'an?' He
replied, 'I only remember rubbama yawaddu-l-ladheena kafaru
law kanu
muslimeen ('Again and again will those who
disbelieve wish that they
were Muslims' [15:2]).
"'He
was trembling as if he was giving up his last breath. I turned him
towards the
Ka'aba (the West), but he kept turning towards the East. Then I turned
him back
towards Ka'aba, but he turned himself to the East. I turned him a third
time,
but he turned himself to the East. Then as his soul was passing from
him, he
said, 'O Allah that is the result of my disrespect to Your
Arch-intercessor
Yusuf al-Hamadani.'"
Imam
Haythami continues: "Ibn `Asran said, 'I went to
From
His Sayings
Yusuf al-Hamadani's (q)
aphorisms illustrate his high station among the saints. He said:
"The
opening of the faculty of Spiritual Hearing in the Friends of Allah is
like a
Message from Reality, a Chapter in the Book of Allah, a blessing from
the
Knowledge of the Unseen. It is the beginning of the opening of the
Heart and
its unveiling -- good tidings from the Heavenly Stations! It is the
dawn of
understanding of Divine Meanings. This hearing is sustenance for the
spirit and
life for the heart. It is the Subsistence (baqa) of
the Secret (sirr).
Allah makes Himself Witness for the visions of His Chosen Servants, and
dresses
them with His blessed acts and decorates them with His Attributes.
"Of his
saints, He makes one group hear through His Exalted Witnessing (shuhada
at-tanzih); He makes others hear through His Unique Oneness (wahdaniyya);
He makes another group of them hear through His Mercy (rahma).
And He
makes some hear through His Power (qudra).
"Let it
be known to you, O Man, that Allah has created from the Light of His
Manifestations 70,000 angels and assigned them to various stations
between the
Throne (`arsh) and the Chair (kursi).
In the Presence of
Intimacy (uns), their dress is green wool, their
faces are like the full
moon, they stand in His Presence in awe, fainting, drunk with His Love,
running
endlessly from the Throne to the Chair and back because of the emotion
and the
mercy which is burning in their hearts. Those are the Sufis of the
Heavens and
Israfil (the angel who will blow the Trumpet on the Judgement Day) is
their
leader and their guide, and Jibril is their president and their
speaker, and
al-Haqq (Allah) is their King. Allah's blessings are upon them."
This is how
Yusuf al-Hamadani (q), the Shadow of God on Earth, used to describe the
heavenly reality and exalted stations of the Sufis. May Allah bless his
soul
and sanctify him.
He died in
Khorasan, between
He passed his secret to Abul
`Abbas.
Abul
`Abbas, al-Khidr
"Whoever
enters the Way without a guide will take a hundred years to travel a
two-day
journey. The
Prophet said, 'In this Way,
you have no more faithful companions than your works.'
How can these works and this earning in the
way of righteousness be accomplished without a master, O father? Can you practice the
meanest profession in
the world without a master's guidance?
Whoever
undertakes a profession without a master becomes the laughingstock of
city and
town."
Rumi, Mathnavi.
Abul `Abbas
is Khidr, whom Allah mentioned in the Holy Qur'an [18:65f.] as the
servant of
Allah who met with the Prophet Musa. He preserved and maintained the
Reality of
the Golden Chain until the next link in the Chain, `Abdul
Khaliq, could assume his destined station.
Imam Bukhari
relates in the Book of Prophets that the Prophet
said, "Al-Khidr
('the Green Man') was so named because he sat on a barren white land
once,
after which it turned luxuriantly green with vegetation."
The
important role of Khidr as the murshid (initiator)
of saints may be
illustrated by the importance of his role as the murshid of prophets,
particularly of the Prophet Musa. Moses was a highly powerful prophet,
one of
the five greatest ones whom Allah sent to this world: Noah, Abraham,
Moses,
Jesus, and Muhammad, Peace and blessings be upon them. Yet despite
Moses'
elevated knowledge, Allah caused him to be in need of Khidr, even
though Khidr
was not a prophet. This is to teach us, as Allah said in the Holy
Qur'an, that "Above
every knower there is a greater knower" (Yusuf, 76).
The story of
Moses' encounter with Khidr is related in
They took a
boat and crossed the
"O
Moses, what we do is what Allah tells us to do. First I caused this
boat to
sink because there is a tyrant who is seizing every boat from the poor
people
on this side of the city. In order for these people not to lose their
boat, I
made it sink. That tyrant is going to die tomorrow, and tomorrow they
can
retrieve their boat and use it safely. I killed the child because Allah
did not
want that child to cause his parents, who believe in you, to leave and
run away
from your religion. Allah will give them better children than him. I
built the
wall which belonged to a man who was in life very generous to the poor.
When he
passed away, he left a treasure buried under the wall for his two
orphans. Were
that wall to come down, people would see the treasure and take it. I
restored
it in order for the two children to receive their treasure later. You
did not
understand God's wisdom."
That was
Moses who, with the entire honor bestowed on him by God, found himself
ignorant
before Khidr. How can we, who know so little in comparison to Moses,
consider
ourselves knowledgeable if Moses himself, with all his knowledge in the
Divine
Presence, was unable to understand certain things? This is a lesson in
humility
for human beings, and particularly for scholars and religious leaders:
"Your knowledge is not worth mentioning. There are others more and
highly
more knowledgeable than you. As high or deep as you travel into
knowledge,
there is deeper depth and higher height than where you stand."
That is why,
when someone sits to give advice, he must sit with complete humbleness
and
complete respect for the listener. He cannot consider himself higher
than them;
otherwise that light will never reach their hearts. That is also why
each is in
need of a guide, as was shown by the Guide of guides himself, the
Prophet, when
he took Jibril as a guide for Revelation, and when he took a guide in
traveling
to Madina.
This is how
Ibn `Arabi (q) in Fusus al-hikam explains
the three acts of Khidr
witnessed
by Musa:
"Moses
was tested 'by many ordeals' [20:41] the first of
which was the murder
of the Egyptian [28:14-15], an act which he committed by Divine
impulsion and
with the approbation of God deep inside him, without however, his
perceiving
it; nevertheless he felt no affliction in his soul for having killed
the
Egyptian, although he himself was not acquitted until he had received a
Divine
revelation on the subject. For all prophets are interiorly preserved
from sin
without their being conscious of it, even before they are warned by
inspiration.
"It is
for that reason that al-Khidr showed him the putting to death of the
boy, an
action for which Moses reproached him, without remembering his murder
of the
Egyptian, upon which al-Khidr said to him: 'I have not done it of my
own
initiative,' recalling thus to Moses the state in which he, the latter,
found
himself when he did not yet know that he was essentially preserved from
all
action contrary to the Divine Order.
"He
showed him also the perforation of the boat, apparently made to destroy
the
people, but which has, however, the hidden sense of saving them from
the hand
of a 'violent man.' He showed this to him as an analogy to the ark
which hid
Moses when he was thrown into the
"Moses
arrived then at Madyan, there met the two girls and for them drew water
from
the well, without asking from them a salary. Then he 'withdrew to the
shade,'
that is to say to the Divine shadow, and said: 'O my Lord, I am poor
with
regard to the blessings Thou bestowest on Me'; he attributed, then, to
God
alone the essence of the good that he did and qualified himself as poor
(faqir)
towards God. It was for that reason that al-Khidr reconstructed before
him the
crumbling wall without asking a salary for his work, for which Moses
reprimanded him, until Khidr reminded him of his action of drawing
water
without asking for reward, and other things too, of which there is no
mention
in the Koran; so that the Messenger of God -- may God bless him and
give him
Peace! -- regretted that Moses did not keep quiet and did not remain
with
al-Khidr, so that God could tell him more of their actions."
Of Khidr's
sayings to Sahl at-Tustari (q) according to Ibn `Arabi:
"Allah
created the Light of Muhammad from His Light... This Light stayed
before Allah
for 100,000 years. Allah directed His Gaze upon it 70,000 times every
day and
night, adding to it a new light from His Light every time. Then, from
that
Light, He created all creations."
When the
Prophet left this world and condolence came, they heard a voice from
the corner
of the house saying, "Peace, God's mercy and blessings be upon you,
members of the Family of the Prophet!" `Ali (r) then asked if they knew
who this was, and he said it was Khidr. Bayhaqi transmitted it in Dala'il
an-Nubuwwa.
Ten Principal
Sufi Thoughts
There are
ten principal Sufi thoughts, which comprise all the important subjects
with
which the inner life of man is concerned. I
have provided these thoughts, and among
these thoughts I have included my comments to elucidate that these
thoughts do
not lead to The Truth.
I
There is One God, the Eternal,
the Only Being; none
exists save He.
The God of the Sufi is the
God of every creed, and the God of all. Names make no difference to
him. Allah,
God, Gott, Dieu, Brahma, or Bhagwan, all these names and more are the
names of
his God; and yet to him God is beyond the limitation of name. He sees
his God
in the sun, in the fire, in the idol which diverse sects worship; and
he
recognizes Him in all the forms of the universe, yet knowing Him to be
beyond
all form: God in all, and all in God, He being the Seen and the Unseen,
the
Only Being. God to the Sufi is not only a religious belief, but also
the
highest ideal the human mind can conceive. (This
is totally false. There
is one God but
God is above His creation and is not in it.
This is pantheism, which is not what Christ taught, not
what the Old
Testament taught, and also, not what Mohammed taught in the Koran.)
The Sufi, forgetting the self
and aiming at the attainment of the divine ideal, walks constantly all
through
life in the path of love and light. In God the Sufi sees the perfection
of all
that is in the reach of man's perception and yet he knows Him to be
above human
reach. He looks to Him as the lover to his beloved and takes all things
in life
as coming from Him, with perfect resignation. The sacred name of God is
to him
as medicine to the patient. The divine thought is the compass by which
he
steers the ship to the shores of immortality. The God-ideal is to a
Sufi as a
lift by which he raises himself to the eternal goal, the attainment of
which is
the only purpose of his life. (The Sufi sees God in everything, but we
know God is not in everything. The
world
is not God. It is
true that God created
the world and all that is in it; however God is not in his creation. A man may create a work of
art, and even
though his thought process help create that work of art, the man is not
in the
art. God is in the
world but not of it,
just as those in Christ are in the world but not of it.
All things in life do not come from God.
For one, evil does not come from God, it comes
from man’s sin. God
did not create sin.)
II
There is One Master, the
Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly leads His followers towards
the
light.
The Sufi understands that
although God is the source of all knowledge, inspiration, and guidance,
yet man
is the medium through which God chooses to impart His knowledge to the
world.
He imparts it through one who is a man in the eyes of the world, but
God in his
consciousness. It is the mature soul that draws blessings from the
heavens, and
God speaks through that soul. (As we
know, God speaks through the Word of God found in the Bible and in
Jesus. Man receives
intimations of God via the world
around him, but does only receive the Word of God, His and
Christ’s teaching,
through the Bible.) Although the tongue of God is busy
speaking through all
things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is
necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this
all
through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been
this
Guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. (This
is not correct. It
does
not follow that God inspired all the teachers of the past. One teacher, who was more
than a teacher, was
God incarnate as he dwelled on earth in and of the human body. This man was Christ.) The Sufi believes
(erroneously) their human
guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared
to be
different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna on the one side,
Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed on the other; and many more, known or unknown to
history, always one and the same person. (The
Buddha, Rama,
Those who saw the person and
knew Him recognized Him in whatever form or guise; those who could only
see the
coat went astray. To the Sufi therefore there is only one Teacher,
however
differently He may be named at different periods of history, and He
comes
constantly to awaken humanity from the slumber of this life of
illusion, and to
guide man onwards towards divine perfection. As the Sufi progresses in
this
view he recognizes his Master, not only in the holy ones, but in the
wise, in
the foolish, in the saint and in the sinner, and has never allowed the
Master
who is One alone, and the only One who can be and who ever will be, to
disappear from his sight. (Jesus said that we are to have no master,
no teacher, save God alone. He
taught
that if a person would come to Him, not to another, He would lead that
person
to truth by opening up the Holy Spirit to this person.
How then can a Sufi recognize his Master in
a sinner or a saint, in a wise man and/or in a foolish man? If the Sufi means that God
created these
individuals, that it true. However,
is
the Master recognizable in a fool who does not regard God? Or the sinner who is
averse to God and denies
Christ? The Sufi
also denies the
teachings of Jesus in their entirety.
Should a person look to one who denies much of what Christ
taught as
being any kind of Master a wise man would want to learn at the feet of? I should think not. The Sufi is blathering
nonsense to an
unsuspecting public. Muslims
and
Christians should banish this type of falderal from their minds. This teaching leads down
the wrong path, the
path of disillusionment. Jesus
came so
the blind could see. The
Sufi teaching
obfuscates the eyes of those who wish to see.
I am writing from experience.
As
I wrote earlier, at one time I thought Sufi philosophy to be true. It, however, is not true. I repeat that it is not
true. Go to Christ
to find the truth, and His
teaching will set you free from the spiritual nonsense the Sufis
espouse.)
The Persian word for Master
is Murshid. The Sufi recognizes the Murshid in all beings of the world,
and is
ready to learn from young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and
poor,
without questioning from whom he learns. (Is
this wise? Ask
yourself this. What
can a person learn from an atheist
concerning truth? What
can a person learn
from a thief? The
Sufi is saying that we
are to go to anyone and learn from them?
Learn what? Think
about it. If a
person desires to know the truth, would
not that person go to the embodiment of truth?
Who is that embodiment?
Is it not
the Christ? He
claimed to be the Truth
and no one to my knowledge has been able to refute that claim. Do you know of anyone who
can refute the
teaching of Christ? I
do not mean make
derogatory claims against Him. I
mean, can
anyone unbiasedly claim that Christ was not what He claimed to be. I have read extensively
concerning this
because I needed to know. No
one has
made a credible claim to refute what Christ taught.
No one.
I repeat…No one.) Then he begins to
see the light of Risalat, the
torch of truth which shines before him in every being and thing in the
universe. Thus he sees Rasul, his Divine Message Bearer, a living
identity
before him. Thus the Sufi sees the vision of God, the worshipped deity,
in His
immanence, manifest in nature, and life now becomes for him a perfect
revelation both within and without.
It is often for no other
reason than clinging to the personality of their particular teacher,
claiming
for him superiority over other teachers, and degrading a teacher held
in the
same esteem by others, that people have separated themselves from one
another,
and caused most of the wars and factions and contentions which history
records
among the children of God. (This is not true.
Christ never claimed superiority over
another. He claimed
to be Truth. There
is no superiority concerning
truth. In Christ
there is no clinging to
a person. What is superior to Truth? Truth is truth.
Christ is Truth. It
follows that those who teach one to follow
another way are teaching what is not Truth.
It is the Sufi who denies the truth in Christ. What claim can the Sufi
make to espouse what
is truth when they deny the message of Christ, that He is God, that He
resurrected in bodily form, that He died on the Cross?
The Sufi is espousing a philosophy, remember,
that is based on the teachings of Plotinus, which is pantheism.)
What
the Spirit of Guidance is can be further explained as follows: as in
man there
is a faculty for art, music, poetry and science, so in him is the
faculty or
spirit of guidance; it is better to call it spirit because it is the
supreme
faculty from which all the others originate. As we see that in every
person
there is some artistic faculty, but not everyone is an artist, as
everyone can
hum a tune but only one in a thousand is a musician, so every person
possesses
this faculty in some form and to a limited degree; but the spirit of
guidance
is found among few indeed of the human race.
A Sanskrit poet says, 'Jewels
are stones, but cannot be found everywhere; the sandal tree is a tree,
but does
not grow in every forest; as there are many elephants, but only one
king
elephant, so there are human beings all over the world, but the real
human
being is rarely to be found.'
When we arise above faculty
and consider the spirit of guidance, we shall find that it is
consummated in
the Bodhisattva, the spiritual teacher or divine messenger. (The bodhisattva is a mind-hero in
Buddhism, one who has conquered the self, who has attained Nirvana. The bodhisattva does not
recognize a God;
therefore he does not claim to be a divine messenger.
The bodhisattva does not claim to teach anything;
therefore he is not a teacher. This Sufi is relaying falsehood here.) There is a saying that the
reformer is the
child of civilization, but the prophet is its father. This spirit has
always
existed, and must always exist; and in this way from time to time the
message
of God has been given. (This also is not true.
It is true that the Holy Spirit has no
beginning and no end; however, the Holy Spirit was introduced to man at
the
behest of Christ.)
III
There is One Holy Book, the
sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the
reader.
(This
is also not true. Although
one can learn
somewhat of what God is like by way of nature, one cannot learn the
character
of God by way of nature. Knowledge
of
God comes through the Word of God found in the Bible.
One would not know that God is love merely by
reading nature.)
Most people consider as
sacred scriptures only certain books or scrolls written by the hand of
man, and
carefully preserved as holy, to be handed down to posterity as divine
revelation. Men have fought and disputed over the authenticity of these
books,
have refused to accept any other book of similar character, and,
clinging thus
to the book and losing the sense of it, have formed diverse sects. The
Sufi has
in all ages respected all such books, and has traced in the Vedanta,
Zendavesta, Kabah, Bible, Qur'an, and all other sacred scriptures the
same
truth which he reads in the incorruptible manuscript of nature, the
only Holy
Book, the perfect and living model that teaches the inner law of life:
all
scriptures before nature's manuscript are as little pools of water
before the
ocean. (This again is false.
The manuscript of nature is corrupt.
Death is everywhere to be seen.
Killing is the norm—beasts feed on other
beasts. There is no
compassion in
nature. How can man
learn compassion
through nature alone?)
To the eye of the seer every
leaf of the tree is a page of the holy book that contains divine
revelation,
and he is inspired every moment of his life by constantly reading and
understanding the holy script of nature.
When man writes, he inscribes
characters upon rock, leaf, paper, wood or steel; when God writes, the
characters He writes are living creatures. (Can we honestly learn
love, peace, joy,
wisdom by reading the actions of a lion, a bird, a dog, a cat, or even
the
actions of some human beings? We
cannot,
can we? What do we
learn from a lion
that is coincident to God’s Love and Wisdom or Sovereignty? Think about this. Think!)
It is when the eye of the
soul is opened and the sight is keen that the Sufi can read the divine
law in
the manuscript of nature; and that which the teachers of humanity have
taught
to their followers was derived by them from the same source; they
expressed
what little it is possible to express in words, and so they preserved
the inner
truth when they themselves were no longer there to reveal it. (It is true that man can read the Divine
Law through nature. However,
Christ is
the fulfillment of that Law. We
can not
come to Christ by reading nature.
Christ
and those in Christ are above nature.
We
are in the world but not of it. Does
this not imply that we no longer belong to nature?)
IV
There is One Religion, the
unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal, which
fulfills
the life's purpose of every soul. (This
in syncretism, which is also what Bahais believe.)
There can only be one religion because there
is only one God. Jesus
claimed deity. Can
there be any other religion than what
Jesus espoused? Jesus
stated to follow
Him because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Any faith claim that denies the essence of
what Christ taught denies God, and is not religion, a system, if you
will, that
will bring us back to our Creator.
Sufis
claim to point one in the direction of God, yet pay short shrift to
what Jesus
claimed concerning Himself. There
is no
point in following a Sufi to arrive at God because a Sufi who denies
Christ’s
teaching denies God. Make
no mistake—Sufis
as a whole deny the claims of Christ.)
Religion in the Sanskrit
language is termed Dharma, which means duty. The duty of every
individual is
religion. (This is not true.
The duty of every individual is to know
himself. This
knowledge will then direct
him to God. One
need not be religious to
come to Christ. The
man who was
crucified with Jesus and recognized him for who he was, the Son of God,
was
accepted by Christ without having known any religiosity whatsoever. What this Sufi is saying
is not what is
true.)'Every soul is born for a certain purpose, and the
light of that
purpose is kindled in his soul', says Sa'adi. This explains why the
Sufi in his
tolerance allows every one to have his own path, and does not compare
the
principles of others with his own, but allows freedom of thought to
everyone,
since he himself is a freethinker. (One
may be a freethinker, but being such does not necessarily lead one to
the
truth. Hitler was a
free thinker. So
was Nero.
Freedom of thought can lead to anarchy, severe hatred and
despotism. Thought
must be directed to a
higher purpose, to one path that leads to the epitome of truth. There can be only one path
to Truth. Sorry to
say, this path is not to be found in
the Sufi philosophy. Philosophy
in
itself, also does not necessarily lead one to the Truth. Philosophy without Christ
lighting the way is
foolosophy.)
Religion, in the conception
of a Sufi, is the path that leads man towards the attainment of his
ideal,
worldly as well as heavenly. Sin and virtue, right and wrong, good and
bad are
not the same in the case of every individual; they are according to his
grade
of evolution and state of life. (This is stupidity.
Right and wrong are not relative
constructs. If they
were, one would not
know what is right and what is wrong.
This statement, as I have written, is stupidity.)
Therefore the Sufi
concerns himself little with the name of the religion or the place of
worship.
All places are sacred enough for his worship, and all religions convey
to him
the religion of his soul. 'I saw Thee in the sacred Ka'ba and in the
temple of
the idol also Thee I saw.' (If one can see truth in an idol, which
leads one away from truth, one is seeing nothing but, again, stupidity. Sufis attempt to twist
words to make a person
believe that what he/she is saying has plausibility.
I have yet to know of a Sufi who could mince
words to one in Christ and get away with it.
The Holy Spirit is with one in Christ.
The Holy Spirit teaches the truth.
The Sufi lacks the Holy Spirit because, as I have repeated
affirmed, and
the Sufi cannot deny this, The Sufi does not accept the complete
message of
Christ.)
V
There is One Law, the law of
reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience, together
with a
sense of awakened justice. (There is more than this one law.
The law of reciprocity is that of the law of
Karma, which states that what is done to a person will be done in like
measure
(or more) to the perpetrator of the act.
Christ threw this law out the window with his teaching. What did Christ teach? He taught that if someone
should strike you a
blow, not to return it, and forgive that someone for doing this act. His teaching, therefore,
requires that one
live above the law of karma or the law of reciprocity.
The Sufi does not know this, for how could it
be said that there is only the law of reciprocity if the Sufi did know
this. The
fulfillment of the law in
Christ supersedes all other laws.
Those
in Christ do not persecute, do not retaliate for a harm suffered. There is no need to do so. God deals out justice to
the man in Christ
who suffers an injury from anyone.
And
the man in Christ beseeches his God not to harm the perpetrator of
injustice
towards him.)
Man spends his life in the
pursuit of all that seems to him to be profitable for himself, and when
so
absorbed in self-interest in time he even loses touch with his own real
interest. Man has made laws to suit him, but they are laws by which he
can get
the better of another. It is this that he calls justice, and it is only
that
which is done to him by another that he calls injustice. A peaceful and
harmonious life with his fellow-men cannot be led until the sense of
justice
has been awakened in him by a selfless conscience. As the judicial
authorities
of the world intervene between two persons who are at variance, knowing
that
they have a right to intervene when the two parties in dispute are
blinded by
personal interest, so the Almighty Power intervenes in all disputes
however small
or great.
It is the law of reciprocity
which saves man from being exposed to the higher powers, (This
is debatable. What
does
this Sufi mean by this law of reciprocity?
If there is an injustice committed between two men, or
even between
nations, God will exact just justice.
There is no escape from justice.) as a
considerate man has less
chance of being brought before the court. The sense of justice is
awakened in a
perfectly sober mind; that is, one that is free from the intoxication
of youth,
strength, power, possession, command, birth, or rank. It seems a net
profit
when one does not give but takes, or when one gives less and takes
more; but in
either case there is really a greater loss than profit; for every such
profit
spreads a cover over the sense of justice within, and when many such
covers
have veiled the sight, man becomes blind even to his own profit. It is
like
standing in one's own light. 'Blind here remains blind in the
hereafter.'
Although the different
religions, in teaching man how to act harmoniously and peacefully with
his
fellow-men, have given out different laws, they all meet in this one
truth: do
unto others as thou wouldst they should do unto thee.
(This is a Christian concept.
This is not a concept found in Islam, or I may add, in
Buddhism. In Islam
the concept is do unto others what
others do unto you. In
Buddhism the
concept is, since there is not a self to do harm to then it is
foolhardy to
attempt to exact punishment or blessing onto another.
Who punishes or blesses what, if there is no
self to act upon? So, this Sufi is attempting
to state that all
religions adhere to the basic teaching of Christ…but they do
not. Therefore,
what this Sufi is stating is not
the truth.) The Sufi, in taking a favor from another,
enhances its value,
and in accepting what another does to him he makes allowance.
VI
There is One Brotherhood, the
human brotherhood which unites the children of earth indiscriminately
in the
Brotherhood of God. (This is also not a true statement.
None of the religions of the world teach
this. Christ did
not teach this, that
there is one brotherhood and all men belong to that one brotherhood. It is true that all men
have been created by
God; however, all men do not accept God.
For example, there are atheists, there are agnostics. They do not accept God as
a viable entity by
which they were created.
God does not
indiscriminately accept all men into His Kingdom.
He can only accept those who accept him.
God does discriminate, but it is because of
man’s discrimination concerning the non-acceptance of truth. Anyone who does not accept
Christ as the Son
of God, and does not accept what He taught concerning Himself,
discriminates
against himself. There
is no free ticket
into the
The Sufi understands that the
one life emanating from the inner Being is manifested on the surface as
the
life of variety (this is pantheism,
which is false doctrine, as was explained earlier in this paper);
and in
this world of variety man is the finest manifestation, for he can
realize in
his evolution the oneness of the inner being even in the external
existence of
variety. But he
evolves to this ideal,
which is the only purpose of his coming on earth, by uniting himself
with
another.
Man unites with others in the
family tie, which is the first step in his evolution, and yet families
in the
past have fought with each other, and have taken vengeance upon one
another for
generations, each considering his cause to be the only true and
righteous one.
Today man shows his evolution in uniting with his neighbors and
fellow-citizens, and even developing within himself the spirit of
patriotism
for his nation. He is greater in this respect than those in the past;
and yet
men so united nationally have caused the catastrophe of the modern
wars, which
will be regarded by the coming generations in the same light in which
we now
regard the family feuds of the past.
There are racial bonds which
widen the circle of unity still more, but it has always happened that
one race
has looked down on the other. (Sufis
also are smug in that they believe that what they know is the truth,
when in
fact, they do not know the truth.
Christians have also been accused of this by Sufis;
however, Christians
have factual evidence based on historical fact which allows them to
make truth
claims. Sufis do
not have this. Sufis
cannot point to historical facts to
support their claims to knowing Truth.
Their truth claims are based on subjectivity. Christian’s
truth claims are based on
objective evidence and inner wisdom.)
The religious bond shows a
still higher ideal. But it has caused diverse sects, which have opposed
and
despised each other for thousands of years, and have caused endless
splits and
divisions among men. The germ of separation exists even in such a wide
scope
for brotherhood, and however widespread the brotherhood may be, it
cannot be a
perfect one as long as it separates man from man. (Why
can it not be? Not
all men will accept
the Truth. Does
this not create ipso
facto separation between men? The
Sufi
is making a categorical imperative that cannot be substantiated. Did I not indicate that
Sufis attempt to
hoodwink people into believing that they know the truth, when they do
not? This Sufi is
making truth claims that he is
not qualified to make. And
why is
this? Sufis do not
accept the truth
claims of Christ and what He said about himself.
They do not believe that Christ died on the
Cross. They do not
believe that He
resurrected bodily. The
claim to accept
Christ; but in fact, they do not accept him.
They make him to be a liar because Christ said he would
resurrect
bodily; but the Sufi states that Jesus did not resurrect bodily.)
The Sufi, realizing this,
frees himself from national, racial, and religious boundaries, uniting
himself
in the human brotherhood, which is devoid of the differences and
distinctions
of class, caste, creed, race, nation, or religion, and unites mankind
in the
universal brotherhood. (The Sufi cannot unite man into a universal
brotherhood based on Truth. The
Sufi
does not accept the Truth. The
Sufi
accepts their version of Truth, but not the truth.
Oh, Sufis teach forms of truth, but if you
would take the time to analyze what they teach, you would see that
Sufis
subtract from and add to what Christ taught.
Their central message is the same message of Christ;
however, what they
teach is not what Christ taught in its entirety.
This is what appeals to many Christians.
Many Christians sense the beat of Christ in
the Sufi message, but they fail to hear the words of the Sufi and fail
to make
distinctions between what they feel and what they hear coming from the
mouth of
the Sufi. Many
Christians do not know
that Sufis make Christ to be a liar; they do not see the subterfuge of
the
message of the Sufi. There
is no
compatibility between the Sufi message in its entirety and the
Christian
message in its entirety. The
Sufi
message leads one away from Christ.
Christ was God incarnate.
If the
Sufi message leads one away from Christ, and it does, that message
leads one
away from God. Anything
that leads one
away from God cannot be from God.
Therefore, the message of the Sufi is not of God. This is simple logic, yet
so hard to
see. Do not be so
blind that you cannot
see what the Sufi teaches. The
blind
leading the blind, will they not all fall into the pit?)
VII
There is One Moral, the love
which springs forth from self-denial and blooms in deeds of
beneficence.
There are moral principles
taught to mankind by various teachers, by many traditions, one
differing from
the other, which are like separate drops coming out of the fountain.
But when
we look at the stream, we find there is but one stream, although it
turns into
several drops on falling. There are many moral principles, just as many
drops
fall from one fountain; but there is one stream that is at the source
of all,
and that is love. It is love that gives birth to hope, patience,
endurance,
forgiveness, tolerance, and to all moral principles. (This
is not correct. Faith
gives birth to hope, patience, endurance, forgiveness, tolerance, and
to all
moral principles. Love
is included in
faith and is paramount to faith; however, Love does not give birth to
hope, or
patience, or endurance, or tolerance.
Faith in a power greater than self gives birth to hope,
love, patience,
endurance, and to all moral principles.
God is the source of love.
Faith
in God actuates the latent love in the heart of man.
It is faith in God that one should point to
as the source of all moral principles.
Love is the supreme product of faith in God. This is why
People
call love blind, but love in reality is the light of the sight. The eye
can
only see the surface; love can see much deeper. All ignorance is the
lack of
love. (This is not true.
This Sufi is using another categorical
imperative here. There
can be people who
are ignorant yet abound in love. Lack
of
love does not cause all ignorance.) As fire when not kindled
gives only
smoke, but when kindled, the illuminating flame springs forth, so it is
with
love; it is blind when undeveloped, but, when its fire is kindled, the
flame
that lights the path of the traveler from mortality to everlasting life
springs
forth; the secrets of earth and heaven are revealed to the possessor of
the
loving heart, the lover has gained mastery over himself and others, and
he not
only communes with God but unites with Him.
(This is also false. God is always above and
separate from his
creation. Being one
with God should not
be misunderstood as to being united with Him. )
"Hail to thee, then, O
love, sweet madness! Thou who healest all our infirmities! Who art the
physician of our pride and self conceit! Who art our Plato and our
Galen!” says
Rumi. (Love does not heal all are infirmities, but it does
allow us to abide
with them vanguishingly.)
VIII
There is One Object of
Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshippers through
all
aspects from the seen to the unseen.
It is said in the Hadith,
'God is beautiful, and He loves beauty.' This expresses the truth that
man, who
inherits the Spirit of God, has beauty in him and loves beauty,
although that
which is beautiful to one is not beautiful to another. Man cultivates
the sense
of beauty as he evolves, and prefers the higher aspect of beauty to the
lower.
But when he has observed the highest vision of beauty in the Unseen by
a
gradual evolution from praising the beauty in the seen world, then the
entire
existence becomes to him one single vision of beauty.
Man has worshipped God,
beholding the beauty of sun, moon, stars, and planets; he has
worshipped God in
plants, in animals; he has recognized God in the beautiful merits of
man, and
he has with his perfect view of beauty found the source of all beauty
in the
Unseen, from whence all this springs, and in Whom all is merged. (This is a false statement.
God is not merged in the world around
us. He is not in
his creation in the
sense that when one seas a beautiful landscape one cannot say, in
truth, “That
is God.”)
The Sufi, realizing this,
worships beauty in all its aspects, and sees the face of the Beloved in
all
that is seen, and the Beloved's spirit in the Unseen. So wherever he
looks his
ideal of worship is before him. 'Everywhere I look, I see Thy winning
face;
everywhere I go, I arrive at Thy dwelling-place.' (One
should not worship beauty. Beauty
is
created by God, as is a tree. We
are not
to worship beauty any more than we are to worship trees. God is beyond what is
beautiful. When one
attempts to worship beauty, one is
not worshipping God. The
Sufi is wrong
to worship beauty, just as wrong as if he were to worship the Sun, the
moon, or
a lake.)
IX
There is One Truth, the true
knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all
wisdom.
Hazrat All says, 'Know
thyself, and thou shalt know God.' It is the knowledge of self which
blooms
into the knowledge of God. (This is not
in accordance with what Sufis teach.
The
Sufi teaches that it is desirable to reach a state of Fana-al-fana,
which is a
form of knowing in which the self is realized as not-self, which in
turn makes
one, as the Buddhist would say, “Blown out.”
According to the Sufi one is subsumed into God and nothing
of a mental
construct of self remains. This
Sufi is
refuting what Sufis actually teach.
There can be no self-knowledge when the self, in essence,
according to
Sufi philosophy, is not individualized.)
Self-knowledge answers such problems as: whence have I
come? Did I exist
before I became conscious of my present existence? If I existed, as
what did I
exist? As an individual such as I now am, or as a multitude, or as an
insect,
bird, animal, spirit, jinn, or angel? What happens at death, the change
to
which every creature is subject? Why do I tarry here awhile? What
purposes have
I to accomplish here? What is my duty in life? In what does my
happiness
consist, and what is it that makes my life miserable? Those whose
hearts have
been kindled by the light from above, begin to ponder such questions
but those
whose souls are already illumined by the knowledge of the self
understand them.
(The Sufi should be referring to Christ,
but he (they) does not. There
is no
“they” who impart the truth about man, about life,
about God. Only one
man did this, Jesus Christ. He
was (and is) more than man. In
hypostatic union he is God.)It is they
who give to individuals or to the multitudes the benefit of their
knowledge, so
that even men whose hearts are not yet kindled, and whose souls are not
illuminated, may be able to walk on the right path that leads to
perfection. (The Sufi (s) believes that many
men have
been able to lead man to perfection.
This is not true. Men
cannot lead
men to perfection because all men are and ever will be imperfect unless
they
claim to deity and can prove that deity.
Only that person should be followed as one knowing truth. Perfection is of
God….Christ claimed deity
and proved His divinity by the works he performed while he was on earth. May I ask, “What
works have the Sufi’s
performed that can be objectified?”
If
they publicly performed miracles, would not these miracles have been
bruited
around the world? Is
there any
objective, historically verifiable evidence that even one Sufi has done
what
Christ has done? I
have read of
none. I have heard
of none. If any
Sufi were as was Christ while He lived
among us in the flesh, would this Sufi not have shown himself so that
humanity
would be able to see this Sufi God-man?
A
philosophy such as Sufism is difficult to fathom for many. This is not proof that the
words and the
teaching are from God and in following this teaching one will come to
God. Remember what
Christ said, “Let the children
come to me.” Children
need not study and
practice philosophy to come to, and recognize, the Truth. Christ did not say that we
are to come to a
philosophy and system, a method. He
said, “Let the children come to me.”
Come to Me! To
Christ and none
other.)
This is why people are taught
in various languages, in various forms of worship, in various tenets in
different parts of the world. It is one and the same truth; it is only
seen in
diverse aspects appropriate to the people and the time. It is only
those who do
not understand this who can mock at the faith of another, condemning to
hell or
destruction those who do not consider their faith to be the only true
faith. (This
is entirely false. Logically
there is
only one truth. There
is only one path
to that Truth. There
can be only one
person who can teach that one truth, and that person is the one who
came from
that truth. These
Sufis do not claim to
have come from God. They
falsely claim
that one can be absorbed into God.
These
Sufis do not claim that they came from and are going back to God. Only Jesus has claimed
this. Why do not
the Sufis want to know the truth
of Christ’s claim? Do
they desire to
know the Truth, or do they wish only to teach what they think is the
Truth? I have
studied Sufism, Bahai, Islam,
Buddhism, Toa, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. I know what these
‘isms’ teach.
Not one religious leader in any of these
‘faiths’ claimed to have been one with God before
the world was, came to earth,
and was going to return to God. Only
Jesus made such a claim. His
life and
works justified that claim. Only
Jesus
resurrected after he was killed on a cross.
No other can make such a claim.
Only Jesus is Truth.)
The Sufi recognizes the
knowledge of self as the essence of all religions; he traces it in
every
religion, he sees the same truth in each, and therefore he regards all
as one. (The Sufi cannot see the same Truth
that
Jesus espoused in viewing Islam or Buddhism.
The teachings are not the same. It is true, the goal of
various
religions appear to be the same—to come to God.
There is only one Truth, which is true.
If there is only one Truth, how is it possible to arrive
at this one
truth while believing in different teachings?
It is not possible, not even probable.
Jesus said that He was the Way, the
Truth, and the
Life. He did not
say that He was a way,
a truth, and a life. The
article “the”
is exclusionary.) Hence
he can
realize 'the saying of Jesus, 'I and my Father are one.' (Jesus did not
say
that you or I and the Father are one, did He?
This Sufi is not stating correctly what Jesus said His
followers would
become. A disciple
would be like his teacher,
would not be one with Him, but would be like Him.
Jesus did say that his disciple would have
Jesus dwelling within Him and God would be in the disciple. Jesus did not say we could
or would become
God or become Jesus. Being
one with Jesus
and one with God is should be interpreted as a relational reference,
not an inclusionary
reference. Here again, the Sufi does not understand the gist of
Christ’s
teaching. ) The difference between creature and Creator remains on his
lips,
not in his soul. This is what is meant by union with God. It is in
reality the
dissolving of the false self in the knowledge of the true self, which
is
divine, eternal, and all-pervading. 'He who attains union with God, his
very
self must lose,' said Amir. (Here again,
there is no dissolving of the false self in the knowledge of the true
self. Man does not
dissolve into God,
into Truth. He is
always separate from
God. The man cannot
become God. If man
could become God, Jesus would have
taught this since only Jesus claimed and proved through His
life’s work and
teaching that He was the Son of God.
Even Jesus prayed to the Father.
For Jesus not to be a person distinct from the Father, He
would not have
prayed many times to the Father. Jesus
never dissolved into the Father, nor did the Father dissolve into the
Son. The Sufi would
know this if only he would
study the Bible and put his “false” self behind him. A false self teaches a
false truth. This
is why Jesus said that His true
disciples would know his voice…His sheep will not follow the
words of one who
is not of the fold. The
sheep, so to
speak, know Christ’s voice.
The Sufi
voice is not of Christ.)
X
There is One Path, the
annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the mortal to
immortality, in which resides all perfection. (Again,
there is no annihilation of the false ego, the individual. When one sees this truth,
then all of what
Sufism teaches can be seen as it is, empty falderal.)
'I passed away into
nothingness--I vanished; and lo! I was all living.' All who have
realized the
secret of life understand that life is one, but that it exists in two
aspects.
First as immortal, all-pervading and silent; and secondly as mortal,
active,
and manifest in variety. The soul being of the first aspect becomes
deluded,
helpless, and captive by experiencing life in contact with the mind and
body,
which is of the next aspect. The gratification of the desires of the
body and
the fancies of the mind do not suffice for the purpose of the soul,
which is
undoubtedly to experience its own phenomena in the seen and the unseen,
though
its inclination is to be itself and not anything else. When delusion
makes it
feel that it is helpless, mortal and captive, it finds itself out of
place.
This is the tragedy of life, which keeps the strong and the weak, the
rich and
poor, all dissatisfied, constantly looking for something they do not
know. The Sufi,
realizing this, takes the path of annihilation (Think
a moment. Why would
one
want to annihilate his individuality in order to not become captive to
his
mind? Would it not
be better to come to
one who can attenuate the anxiety of the mind and still provide for
one’s
individuality? Christ
never taught
annihilation; however, He did teach the way to Peace.
Christ was-and is-the personification of
Wisdom. It is not
wise to annihilate the
ego to learn of truth. It
is not
necessary, and the attempt is foolish—it can lead to
insanity.) , and, by
the guidance of a teacher on the path, finds at the end of this journey
that
the destination was himself. As Iqbzl says:
I wandered in the pursuit of
my own self; I was the traveler, and I am the destination. (Guidance comes from the Holy Spirit and not a Sufi
Master. Jesus
taught that we are to call no one on
this earth teacher in reference to spiritual truth.
There is only one teacher, and that is Christ,
because there is only one way to Truth, the way of Christ Jesus. Those who accept His
teaching may become like
Him; but they will never become Him.
That is the teaching of Christ.
Of course, Sufis have their own teaching, which will not
help one come
to God, to know Him as He would be known.)
The Role of Breathing in Sufism
Sufis hold (we
can readily understand that this is true) that Breath is the most
important
nourishment for all levels of our existence. Physically, one can live
three to
four weeks without solid foods, two to three days without water but
only 3-5
minutes without air. Oxygen is the necessary fuel to sustain life at
the
cellular level and the universal level. Breath is life and affects our
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects.
Studies do indicate
that diseases such as cancer, heart disease, lung disease and AIDS can
be
dramatically improved through proper oxygenation of the cells.
Breathing well
is the most important ingredient in healthy living. Deep breathing
affects the
way one looks, feels, thinks, acts and does wonders for the mind, body
and
spirit by harmonizing and uniting a person with the deepest life-giving
energies.
Sufis
believe that breathing is a strategic intermediary between mind and
body.
Breath is the bringer of consciousness and energy. According
to the Sufi, breath is the only
physiological process that is both voluntary an involuntary (some Hindus and Buddhist would disagree
with that statement). Most of the time people take this
breath of life from
the “giver of life” for granted. However, Sufis
believe that learning to breathe
consciously and deliberately can be the key to mastery of both emotions
and the
mind. In Sufism, students of meditation, or breath work, are often
amazed at
how quickly they can gain control over their emotions.
In Sufi
breathing practice a person would usually breathes 2-3 hours through
one
nostril while the tissues of the other are engorged, then through the
opposite
nostril for 2-3 hours with a brief period when both nostrils are open.
When the
right nostril is clear, the right side of the body and left hemisphere
of the
brain are predominant. This can result in clear thinking,
assertiveness,
increased metabolism and alertness. On the other hand, when the left
nostril is
clear and the right hemisphere is predominant, the physiology and mind
are
inclined towards rest, relaxation and receptivity. When the breath is
flowing
equally through both nostrils, a sense of balance, integration, joy and
freedom
may be noted, which is, according to Sufis, like being in touch with
the basic
rhythm of the universe.
Sufis
maintain that on the mental level breathing exercises are very helpful
for
increasing concentration abilities, improving clarity of perception and
in
balancing the brain hemisphere activities. Peace or disturbance of the
mind is
very dependent on the condition of the respiratory system. A Sufi
believes that
in learning to breathe correctly a person can gain control and balance
in his
life.
Sufis
maintain that chronic hyperventilation, or over-breathing, is the prime
suspect
in a number of emotional or psychological disorders such as anxiety,
panic
attacks, depression and irrational fears. Any emotional stimulation can
set off
shallow over-breathing whether it is excitement, fear, anger or worry.
Oxygen
deprivation switches on the “fight or flight”
response of the nervous system,
creating a physical sensation of nervous arousal, which interferes with
the
action of the brain. This brain imbalance may manifest itself as
agitation,
poor concentration, panic, and as already mentioned, anxiety. These
imbalances,
tensions and stored emotions can be unlocked and released through the
powerful
transformation of breath work.
For these
reasons, breathing plays a vital role in Sufism. Numerous breathing
techniques
have been passed down through the ages and have always been an integral
part of
Sufi meditation practices. Physics texts tell us that humans breathe in
trillions of molecules of oxygen with every breath, molecules that were
once
part of everyone who ever lived on this earth.
Sufis hold that people are actually breathing each other
every time a breath
is taken. According to Sufis, each and every one of us contains
molecules from
everyone else who ever lived.
________________________________________________________________
Breathing
Techniques in Sufism-Breathing is an important practice in
Sufism. It is said
to calm the mind and
affords the atmosphere for deep meditation.
One
Sufi Breathing Practice
For
heart-singing (a breathing practice) it is as necessary to develop and
control
your breath as it is for your bodily wellbeing in general and essential
for
your spiritual clarity.
According
to Sufis this Sufi breathing practice is simple and effective, as well
as sacred
and mystic. Sufis
hold that it will
develop balance and control and will offer concentration and devotion. It will always be a joy to
perform and a priceless
blessing to may practice.
This
element-breathing practice consists of breathing in and out through the
nose
respectively with the mouth, along with certain movements of the arms
and
hand-gestures and with the mental concentration on the elements.
Sufis
say that this will create a balance between the creative forces in our
being,
on which our moods, our health, our thoughts and our deeds depend so
much.
The breathing
practice proceeds as follows:
Start
by standing at ease and in balance, the air and atmosphere around must
be as
pure as possible, preferably in open air or near a window with not too
cold
fresh air.
A.
The Nayaz Prayer for Purification
is
said, chanted or sung.
B.
The hands are held open
before the breast:
Beloved Lord,
Almighty God! Through the rays of the Sun, trough the waves of the Air,
through
the All-pervading Life in space, purify and revivify me, and, I pray,
heal my
body, heart and soul. Amen.
With
Amen both hands are moved over the head.
The hands are held open on breast-high or held up on
shoulder-high
during all the element-phrases of the exercise.
The invocation is
said with hands held folded.
The invocation is
first attentively said or sung with a moment of silence after that it
is said:
I
(or we) invoke the presence of God.
The
earth element with the mystical color
yellow.
The
element-phrase for the earth is said,
chanted or sung.
O all-productive Mother Earth,
we humbly offer our homage to
Thee.
Breathing with
five times inhaling and
exhaling through the nose.
1. Inhaling through
the nose, in five beats, the arms move from loose down to circling
upward with
the hands open to heaven, as to receive the vitality of the earth
meanwhile
mentally repeating during this movement: "O all-productive Mother Earth
".
2. Holding the
breath for a moment and looking up, the hands held open upwards.
3. Then exhaling
through the nose, also in five beats, with the arms going downwards,
crossing
before the breast to a bowed posture with the hands sideways
outstretched open
to the earth to connect and exchange the Earth energy through ourselves
to all;
one may repeat mentally: "I humbly offer homage to Thee ".
4. Holding the
breath for a moment while standing bowed in devotion. The hands are
held firmly
stretched open up and down and act perceptible as connectors for what
Sufis
believe is the earth-magnetism.
Continue the
practice for the other elements
in a similar way.
The
water element with the mystical color
green.
O
all-purifying Water, I willingly offer our homage to Thee.
Breathing occurs with
five times inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.
- Inhaling through the nose: " O
all-purifying Water";
- Holding the breath for a moment.
- Exhaling through the mouth, like
blowing through a straw: "I willingly offer..
- Holding the breath for a moment.
The hands are held
as if water-drops are shaken off the fingers when coming down.
The
fire element with the mystical color
red.
O
all-consuming Fire, I wholeheartedly offer our homage to Thee.
Breathing occurs with
five times inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the nose.
- Inhaling through the mouth like
sucking at a straw: "O all-consuming Fire ";
- Holding the breath for a moment.
- Exhaling through the nose: "I
wholeheartedly offer homage to Thee ".
- Holding the breath for a moment.
The hands are
held over-stretched with
fingers spread when held up and down.
The
air element with the mystical color
blue.
O
all-pervading Air, I gladly offer homage to Thee.
Breathing with
five times inhaling and
exhaling through the mouth.
- Inhaling, as sucking, through
the mouth: "O all-pervading Air".
- Holding the breath for a moment.
- Exhaling, as blowing, through
the mouth: " I gladly offer homage to Thee ".
- Holding the breath for a moment.
The hands are
waving like wings of a
butterfly while moving up and down.
The
ether element with the mystical color
grey.
O
Ether, essence of all, I passively offer homage to Thee.
Breathing occurs through
the nose without noticing the breath-stream or any rhythm.
To keep time
one may repeat five times
mentally the phrase: "O Ether ...
The hands are
now held crossed on the breast
left over right.
G. The
Prayer for new life may be said, chanted or sung.
The hands are
again held open during the
prayer and the Amen ends as before.
O Thou, who abides in our
hearts, most merciful and
compassionate God, Lord of heaven and earth; we forgive others their
trespasses
and ask Thy forgiveness of our shortcomings.
We begin new life with a pure
heart and clear conscience,
with courage and hope; help us to fulfill the purpose of our lives
under Thy
divine guidance. Amen.
All
life long you may do this breathing practice, beneficial as it is for
all
periods of life.
Sufis
state that the breathings of the specific elements can also be done
without
being perceived on moments when we are in need for some help and
inspiration.
We just may sigh a little for more earth, water, air, fire or ether as
desired
to restore the balance in ourselves or in the situation to open new
ways of
progress or to change conditions.
O Elements,
Servants of God, purify and
revivify us!
Reasons for Sufi Practice
I. Psychological Healing
According to the Sufi, a person
needs
to be whole to take the journey. The point of this, according to Sufis,
is to
get your basic self in tune with your higher self. According
to Sufis, a person can become quite
advanced in many ways and yet at a certain point find it necessary to
self-destruct
because she/he has not made a true accommodation in her/himself to
sustain
realization. Sufis state that many have started on the path even
sneering at
the psychological aspect of things, but had to go back to do such
things as
address our inner child, align the three selves, do a 12 step program,
or some
form of individual or group therapy.
II.
Prayer Opening
the self for the action of God in your life - ongoing communication and
realization
For the Sufi there are different
types
of prayer. What is meant by prayer in this general sense includes far
more than
repeating certain established phrases aloud. Some of the things prayer
would
include as a category of Sufi practice are: the central experience of
thanksgiving, ritualized movements accompanying words, a practice of
contemplation of phrases from prayers, and an opportunity for devotion,
the
opening of an ongoing inner colloquy or dialogue with God.
III.
Concentration
This key element can be simply
described as the ability to maintain a steady focus on the object of
concentration and ultimately to gain the secret of that object and to
merge
with it. Sufis teach the development of this faculty through the
awakening of
interest, feeling, and love for the object. Concentration practice is
equivalent
to practicing musical scales in the elementary stages. It is a building
block
for attainment of all kinds. For example, the ability to maintain one's
purpose
as a disciple on the spiritual path or to sustain a meditation depends
upon
concentration. Some elements of Sufi concentration practice are:
holding simple
images and symbols, maintaining steadiness of interest with eyes open
and with
eyes closed, moving from the dot to large fields of concentration,
doing
imaginatively enhanced concentrations.
IV.
Vision
Sufis believe that a most
essential
component is the development of intuition. Put another way, it is the
ability
to seek guidance and to recognize it when it comes. What is the inner
voice
"which constantly cometh from within"? According
to Sufis, when power leads and vision
follows the
waters of life are muddied and our enterprise fails but when vision
leads and
power follows our success is assured. Many Sufi practices are given to
encourage the development of this faculty.
V.
Wazifa practice Working with
the Divine Attributes
Sufis state that the qualities
of God
can be evoked and seen through the repetition of Wazifas
(the Divine
Names and Attributes) aloud, in thought, and simply holding the quality
itself
up to the view of consciousness. Initiators and dance leaders must
learn how to
use wazifas to meet the needs of an individual or a group. We must,
according
to the Sufi, learn to recognize divine attributes in nature, to
recognize their
function in ourselves and in others.
VI.
Zikr practice Working with
the Divine Essence
For the Sufi, this is part of
coming to
an understanding of the Absolute nature of God. Part of this process is
recitation of the Zikr (divine
remembrance)-chanted, sung, in groups,
alone, in thought, in pure contemplation. Sufis become continuous
practitioners
of Zikr.
VII.
Breath Practice [Remember that Christ
taught openly. There
should be no
esoteric teaching in Christianity.]
This is another vast subject in
the
inner science of Sufi Ryazat (esoteric practice).
Briefly, a few of the
elements contained in this area are: the Healing Breaths, forms of kasab,
shaghal, and amal, learning the
difference between refined and
coarse breathing and how that affects things, as well as the difference
between
a breath which emphasizes right or left nostril, inhalation or
exhalation. Sufis
believe that one learns breath as darood
for walk, as an aid for various physical and mental activities, as an
aid for
vision, as a doorway for deep meditation, as a source of prana
(life
force), as an oracle.
VIII.
Contemplation
As distinct from Concentration,
where
the individual focuses on and ultimately merges with an object, Sufis
believe
that Contemplation is a technique by which the practitioner experiences
her/himself as absorbed (Remember that
Christ did not teach any of this.
This
will not lead one to God.) in a greater reality and as part
of the
functioning of that greater reality. In other words, you don't
experience
yourself as a person feeling compassion; you experience yourself as a
part of
the great
IX.
Study
This is not to be ignored. The
Sufis
are asked to study the world scriptures, the esoteric teachings. [Again, there are no esoteric
teachings. Christ
taught openly. The
Holy Spirit will teach what one needs to
know and when.]
X.
Love
Mevlana Jelal-ed-din Rumi says several
times in his Masnavi "when I came to write the word
love my
pencil broke." The Sufis state that the realization of this may be the
single most distinctive mark of the Sufi. (Christians
look to Christ’s love and the way He died to learn of love. Sufis do not do this, to
their own detriment.) How
can we truly develop the love quality?
How does it become the instrument for the transmission of blessing as
in the Dances
of Universal Peace, for example? Love is the secret of
support for all
assemblies of spiritual seekers. We find God as nearest friend, as
guest, as
lover. (We find the truth of love only in Christ. Sufis do not see this.)
XI.
Light—
Christ is the light for the
world. Those who do
not see this light in Him dwell
in self-perpetuated darkness. Sufis,
however, believe that the light is developed through contemplation and
meditation
on the nature of light. The Sufi states that a person will ultimately
learn to
use Light as a vehicle of spiritual transmission and realization. An
example of
this is through the use of the Glance, as in the Sufi Tawajjeh
(sharing
atmosphere, magnetism, and a spiritual state through the eyes and the
breath)
or the Darshan.
XII.
Tassawuri Working
with
Attunement
According to Sufis, Tassawuri
includes
learning to attune to the great beings through the development of fana
(self-effacement), learning how to accommodate their atmosphere within
your
atmosphere thereby giving you an enhanced field of operation. The Sufi says "united with
all the
illuminated souls" when the Sufi wishes to express the basic
orientation
with the recitation of the Sufi Invocation.
In addition to the processes of fana-fi-sheikh, fana-fi-rasoul,
and fana-fi-lillah
(effacement in the being of the living, personal teacher, in the being
of a
World Teacher, in the being of Allah), part of this subject refers to
the
development of attunement in all aspects of life. According to the
Sufi, the
self learns through practicing a kind of focused emptiness, yet one
finds a
self in the midst of attunement. The Sufi believes that Fana does not
mean
becoming mindless.
XIII.
Baka
Baka, which is sometimes called
self-realization, is according to the Sufi, an ultimate stage which is
pretty
much beyond description. When Baka arises, one is supposed to discover
that one
is God, that one’s action is the action of God. Christians
know this to be false. This
is pantheistic teaching and was not
taught by Christ, the Apostles, Paul, or even Mohammed.
Comparing
Sufism and Christianity
Sufism
is an outgrowth of Islam, but Sufis have a higher regard for the
teachings of
Jesus than most Muslims. At one extreme, a book by the Sufi master
Javad
Nurkhbhsh of the Nihmatullahi order called Jesus in the Eyes
of the Sufis,
says that Sufis look to Jesus much more than to Mohammed for
inspiration,
guidance and as their example! Most Sufis would not say this, and all
Sufis do
not recognize that Jesus is any more divine than anyone else can be. They also do not accept
all the teaching of
Jesus. There is
really no comparison
between Sufism and Christianity. There
are similarities of expression, but the teachings of Sufism are at
variance
with what Christ taught, as you well know by now.
Both
Sufi and Christianity focus on experience. Below is a sampling of
Christianity
and Sufi expression.
Central Focus
"O
LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:1
David is speaking)
"I
am the well-preserved tablet" This is interesting, because Sura
85:20-22
says it is the Qur’an that is preserved on a tablet [in
Heaven].
"I
said LORD you are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing," (Psalm
16:2
)
He
also said, "I saw the Ka’aba walking around me." Of God it is
said,
"Your obedience to me is greater than my obedience to You."
(Said by
Bayazid Bestami (died 874/877 A.D.)
and taken from The Essential Rumi p.288.)
"Remain
in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it
must
remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am
the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he
will
bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." Jesus in John
15:1:4-6
View of
Ourselves
"Do
nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility
consider
others better than you. Each of you should look not only to your own
interests,
but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same
as that
of Jesus Christ" (Paul is speaking in Philippians 2:3-5a.)
"Praise
be to me… How great is my majesty/glory … I am
your Lord … My banner is greater
than that of Mohammed." (Bestami d.874/877.)
Seeking
"I
seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I
have
hidden your word in my heart that I might no sin against you." Psalm
119:10-11
"O
God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my
body
longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." (Psalm
63:1 David is speaking from the
"This
drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that
place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I’m like a
bird from another continent,
sitting in this aviary." (From the Safa Anthology,
taken from The
Essential Rumi p.2)
"Show
me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and
teach me,
for you are God my Savior and my hope is in you all day long. Remember,
O Lord,
your great mercy and love, for they are from of old." Psalm 25:4-6
(David
is speaking.)
Prayer and
Meditation
"Listen
to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. Morning by
morning,
O LORD, you hear my voice; morning by morning I lay my requests before
you and
wait in expectation." (Psalm 5:2-3 David is speaking)
"May
the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in
your sight,
O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." (Psalm
"Ali
was told a secret doctrine by Mohammed and told not to tell it, so he
whispered
it down the mouth of a well. Sometimes there’s no one to talk
to. You must just
set out on your own." (The Mathnawi 4:275-486, taken
from The
Essential Rumi p.195)
Metaphors of
Wine
"You
have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new
wine
abound." (Ps 4:7)
"I
am the wine drinker and the wine and the cupbearer" (said by Bestami
who
died 874/877 A.D, from The Essential Rumi p.288)
"Do
not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled
with the
Spirit." (Ephesians 5:18)
"Happy
is my head: and with loud shout I speak, saying,
“Life’s breeze from the cup I
seek.” On the face of wine sickness, sits not the sullenness
of austerity. The
disciple of the khirka, dreg-drinker, pleasant of disposition, I am.
… Wine,
bring that, by Hafiz’s decision, down from the pure heart,
Hypocrisy’s dust,
with the goblet’s grace, I may wash." (Divan of Hafez
p.399.)
Metaphors of
Food and
Giving
"My
soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips
my mouth
will praise you." (Psalm 63:5)
A dervish knocked
at a house to ask for a piece of dry bread, or moist, it
didn’t matter.
"This is not a
bakery," said the owner.
"Might you
have a bit of gristle then?"
"Does this
look like a butcher shop?"
"A little
flour?"
"Do you hear a
grinding stone?"
"Some
water?"
"This is not a
well."
Whatever
the dervish asked for, the man made some tired joke and refused to give
him
anything.
Finally
the dervish ran in the house, lifted up his robe, and squatted as
though to use
the bathroom.
“Hey,
hey!"
"Quiet,
you sad man. A deserted place is a fine spot to relieve oneself, and
since
there’s no living thing here, or means of living, it needs
fertilizing."
(The Essential Rumi p.116-117 from The Mathnawi 6:1250-1257)
Addendum:
I have included the excerpt below from the writing of a modern Sufi to only provide a glance into Sufi mental purification. These few pages are for the curious; but, I should admonish the reader that what is contained in this excerpt will not lead one to Christ. If you read closely and think deeply you will see that what is being taught is a means by which man can effectuate his own mental purification. There is no reliance on God, in essence.
The Sufi Message
of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Vol. 4 -
HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD PART III, MENTAL
PURIFICATION
Chapter
XV
The Secret of Breath
It is clear even to those who do not
know medical science
that the whole mechanism of the body stops when the breath has
departed. That
means that however perfect the mechanism of the body may be, in the
absence of
breath the body is a corpse. In other words, what is living in the
body, or
what makes it living, is breath. How few of us realize this fact. We go
on day
after day, working, busy with everyday life, absorbed in the thoughts
we have,
occupied with business, pursuing motives, and yet ignoring the
principle upon
which the whole of life is based. If someone says, 'Prayer is a very
important
thing', people may think, 'Yes, perhaps.' If one says, 'Meditation is a
great
thing', people may say, 'Yes, it is something.' But when one says,
'Breathing
is a great secret', the reaction is, 'Why, I have never thought about
it. What
is it really?'
As far as science goes, breathing is
known to be air
breathed in and breathed out. When it is breathed in one gets oxygen
from
space, and when it is breathed out one throws carbonic acid into space.
When
one goes still further one knows that breathing keeps the lungs and the
organs
of breath going, that digestive gases are drawn in, and that one gets a
greater
digestive power. On the basis of that principle people are beginning to
use
breathing in physical exercises to make the body healthier. For some
years now
voice-producers have given greater importance to breath. In reality the
breathing itself is voice, and the whole voice-construction depends
upon
breathing. Then again some physicians are beginning to see that many
illnesses
of the nerves, of the lungs, or of different nervous centers can often
be
helped by breathing. There seems to be a general awakening to the
science of
breath. And those who have practiced breathing in connection with
physical
culture or for the improvement of their particular condition, illness,
or
weakness, have found wonderful results. It is thus far that the science
of breath
has reached.
But when we come to the mystery of
breath, it is another
domain altogether. The perceptible breath which the nostrils can feel
as air
drawn in and air going out is only an effect of breathing. It is not
breath.
For the mystic, breath is that current which carries the air out and
brings the
air in. The air is perceptible, not the current; the current is
imperceptible.
It is a kind of ethereal magnetism, a finer kind of electricity, the
current of
which goes in and comes out, putting the air into action. This is what
the
mystic calls Nafs, which means the self. Breath is the self, the very
self of
man. Also Atman means the soul, and in German the same word is used for
breath.
This shows (Sufis believe) that if there is any trace of the soul, it
is to be
found in breath.
Naturally, breath being the self, it is
not only the air
which one exhales but it is a current which, according to Sufi mystics,
runs
from the physical plane into the innermost plane; a current which runs
through
the body, mind, and soul, touching the innermost part of life and also
coming
back; a continual current perpetually moving in and out. This gives
quite a
different explanation of the breath and shows the importance of
something that
very few people consider important; and it makes one understand that
the most
important part of being is breath, which reaches the innermost part of
life and
also reaches outwards to the surface, which means touching the physical
plane.
But the direction of breath is in a dimension which the science of
today does
not recognize, a dimension which is recognized by Sufi mystics as being
the
dimension 'within'.
One day I was lecturing in
To give a philosophical explanation of
this dimension, one
can take as an example the simile of the eyes: what is it in these eyes
of ours
that can accommodate a horizon of so many miles? The size of the eyes
is so
small, and they can accommodate such a large horizon. Where is it
accommodated?
It is accommodated within. That is the only example one can give. It is
a
dimension which cannot be measured, but which is accommodating, which
is an
accommodation. The accommodation of the eye is not a recognized
dimension, yet
it is a dimension. In the same way there is a dimension of mind. One
can think
deeply and feel profoundly; one can be conscious of life and be more
deeply conscious
still; but one cannot point to it, because this dimension is abstract.
If there
is any word, it can only be called 'within'. And through that dimension
a
current runs from the innermost plane to the physical plane and there
it keeps
life living. That is why one can say that breath is the soul and soul
is the
breath. It is important to understand that one does not inhale like a
straight
line going in and coming out the same way, as one imagines it to be.
The real
action is that of a wheel, a circle; from the nostrils it makes a
circle and
the end of the circle is again in the nostrils.
The third point to understand about
breath is that, just
like an electric wire, it shows a glow; and as the heat and light are
not
confined to that glow but are around it too, in the same way the
radiance of
this circle of breath which goes on through the body touches every part
of the
body.
Another rule to be observed is that with
every direction in
which the current of breath goes, it causes a different action and a
different
result. For instance, contracting, stretching, blinking, all these
actions are
the play of the breath going in different directions. (Sufis
believe this; however, this is not verifiable.) So it is
with every natural action one does during the day. Also coughing,
yawning,
heaving a deep sigh, all these are different actions of breath.
Besides, the
ability to eat and drink, the ability to expel all that one has in the
body,
are all results of different directions through which breath works. And
if the
breath does not work in one direction, then that particular activity of
the
body is stopped. It is a science that has yet to be explored by
scientists and
physicians. And the more it is explored the less necessity there will
be for
operations and many other dreadful things that doctors have to do or to
give to
their patients. Also the tendency to lung diseases, the pain of
child-birth,
and early death, all these will be avoided when the science of breath
is well
understood by the scientists of the day, and practiced by the
generality.
The picture of God and of souls is that
of the sun and its
rays. The rays are not different from the sun; the sun is not different
from
the rays. Yet there is one sun and many rays. The rays have no
existence of their
own; they are only an action of the sun. They are not separate from the
sun,
and yet the rays appear to be many different rays. The one sun gives
the idea
of one center. So it is with God and man. What is God? The Spirit which
projects different rays; and each ray is a soul. (This
is not true. This
has been
dealt with previously in this paper.) Therefore the breath is
that current
which is a ray, a ray which comes from that Sun which is the spirit of
God. And
this ray is the sign of life. What is the body? The body is only a
cover over
this ray. When this ray has withdrawn itself from this cover, the body
becomes
a corpse.
Then there is another cover which is the
mind. The
difference between mind and heart is like the surface and the bottom.
It is the
surface of the heart which is mind, and it is the depth of the mind
which is
heart. The mind expresses the faculty of thinking, the heart of
feeling. This
is an inner garb, a garb worn by the same thing which is called breath.
Therefore, if the ray which is the breath has withdrawn itself from the
body,
it still exists, for it has another garb, it has a garb within. The
outer garb
was the body; the inner garb is the mind. The breath continues to
exist, and if
it is lost in that garb which is called mind, then there is another
garb finer
still, called the soul. Because breath runs through all three: body,
mind, and
soul.
Seen from this point of view one will
realize that man has
never been separated from God; that with every breath man touches God.
He is
linked with God by the current of breath. Just like people drawing
water from a
well, the rope in their hands and the jug of water in the well. The jug
has the
water, but the rope is in the hand. In so far as our soul is in the
spirit of
God, it is the ray of the divine sun, while the other end of it is what
we call
breath. We only see it reaching so far and no further, because it is
only the
higher part of the physical body that touches different planes. The
breath goes
there, but we do not see the action of breath. The action of breath in
our body
is limited; but in reality this current, this breath, connects the body
with
the divine Spirit, connecting God and man in one current.
The central current of our mind is also
breath. That is why
we do not only breathe through the body, but also through the mind, and
through
the soul too. Furthermore, death is only the departing of the body from
this
main current which we call breath. But when the body has departed the
mind
still adheres to it, and if the mind is living, the person is living
also. This
is what gives us the proof of the hereafter. Many will say, 'How
uninteresting
to live after death not as an individual, a body, but as a mind!' But
it is the
mind which has made this body; the mind is more self-sufficient than we
can
imagine. The mind is in a sphere in which it has its own body, just as
this
physical body belongs to the physical sphere.
The body of the mind is as
sufficient and even more
concrete as the body we have in the physical world, for the reason that
the
physical body is very limited and subject to death and decay. The body
of the
mind which is ethereal lasts long, being less dependent upon food and
water; it
is maintained more by breath than by anything else. We are maintained
even in
this physical world chiefly by breath, although we recognize bread and
water
and other food as our sustenance. If we only knew that bread and water
are not
even a hundredth part of our sustenance compared with what breath does
in our
life! We cannot exist five minutes without breath; we can be without
food for
some days.
Since breath has such great importance,
the greatest
possible importance, it is clear that the way to bring order and
harmony to our
body, to bring order and harmony to our mind, to harmonize mind with
body, and
to harmonize body and mind with soul, is by the breath. It is the
development
of breath, knowledge of breath, practice of breath which help us to get
ourselves straightened out, to put ourselves in tune, to bring order
into our
being. There are many who without proper guidance and knowledge
practice
breath. Year after year they go on and very little result is achieved.
Many go
out of their minds, and very often the little veins of the brain and
chest are
ruptured by wrong breathing. There are many who have experienced this
by not
knowing how to breathe. One has to be extremely careful; one must do
breathing
practices rightly or not do them at all.
One cannot speak fully of all that can
be accomplished with
the help of breath. If there are men living in the world today who
while
standing on the earth witness the inner planes of existence, if there
are any
who really can communicate with the higher spheres, if there are any
who can
convince themselves of the life in the hereafter and of what it will be
like,
it is the masters of breath, and not the students of intellectual books.
The Yogis have learnt very much about
the secret of breath
from the serpent; that is why they regard the serpent as the symbol of
wisdom.
Shiva, the Lord of Yogis, has a serpent around his neck as a necklace.
It is
the sign of mystery, of wisdom. There are cobras in the forests of
tropical
countries, especially in
The serpent, too, is so strongly built
that without wings it
flies and without feet it walks. Also, if there is any animal which can
be
called the healthiest animal of all, it is the serpent. It is never
ill; before
it becomes ill it dies, yet it lives a very long time. It is said by
those
living in tropical countries that cobras can take revenge after as much
as
twelve years. If you once hit a cobra, it will always remember. That
shows its
memory, its mind. Music also appeals to the cobra as music appeals to
intelligent men. The more unintelligent the man, the less music appeals
to him;
music is closely related to intelligence. This shows that every sign of
intelligence, of wisdom, and of power is to be seen in the cobra.
The mystics have studied the life of the
cobra and they have
found two wonderful things. One is that it does not waste energy. Birds
fly
until they are tired; animals run here and there. The cobra does not do
so. It
makes a hole where it lives and rests. It knows the best way of repose,
a
repose which it can continue as long as it wishes. We cannot do this.
We human
beings, of all creatures, know least about repose. We only know about
work, not
about repose. We attach every importance to work, but never to rest;
this is
because we do not find anything in rest but everything in work. The
work of
rest we do not see.
Besides, the natural breathing capacity
of the cobra is such
as no other creature shows. That capacity goes as a straight line
throughout
its body. The current which it gets from space and which runs through
it, gives
it lightness and energy and radiance and power. Compared with the cobra
all
other creatures are awkwardly built. The skin of the cobra is so very
soft and
of such silky texture, and in a moment's time it can shed its skin and
be new,
just as if born anew. The mystics have learnt from it. They say, 'We
must go
out of our body just as the cobra goes out of its skin; we must go out
of our
thoughts, ideas, feelings, just as the cobra does with its skin.' They
say, 'We
must be able to breathe as rhythmically, to control our breath as the
cobra
does. We must be able to repose and relax in the same way as the cobra
can. And
then it will be possible to attain all we desire.' As Christ has said,
'Seek ye
first the
When we look at life more keenly, we see
it is the same. Our
worry about things seems to be our nature, our character; we cannot
help it. It
becomes such a part of our nature to worry that if we had no worry we
would
doubt if we were really living! Mystics, therefore, for thousands of
years have
practiced control of the breath, its balance, its rhythm, the
expanding,
lengthening, broadening, and centralizing of the breath. By this great
phenomena have been accomplished. All the Sufis in
For a person who really knows how to
work with breath, if he
is not lazy, there is nothing he cannot accomplish; he cannot say of
anything
that it is impossible. Only it requires work; it is not only a matter
of
knowing the theory, but it requires the understanding of it. That is
why the
adepts, the mystics, do not consider breathing only as a science or as
an
exercise; they consider it as the most sacred thing, as sacred as
religion. And
in order to accomplish this breathing a discipline is given by a
teacher.
But there is a great difficulty. I have
found sometimes in
my travels, when I have been speaking about these things that people
come with
preconceived ideas. They are willing to learn, but they do not want
discipline.
But in the army there is discipline; in the factory, in the office
there is a
certain discipline; in study at the university, everywhere there is
discipline;
yet in spiritual things people do not want it; when it comes to
spiritual
things they make difficulties. They think so little of it that they do
not want
to make any sacrifice. Because they do not know where it leads to, they
have no
belief. Besides there are false methods which are taught here and
there, and
people are commercializing that which is most sacred. In that way the
highest
ideal is brought down to the lowest depth; and it is time that the real
thing
should be introduced, seriously studied, experienced, and realized by
practice.
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