Key Sufi Concepts (II)

THOSE ASTONISHING SUFIS (cont'd.)
Adilbai Kharkovli
(1980)


Sufi mystery attracts people with an overdeveloped

taste for it, as the Sufis themselves admit.

They insist, however, that the fact of mystery brings

out this proclivity and enables the Sufi to diagnose it

and consequently to subtract such people from his following.

Read any collection of real Sufi stories and you will see

how frequently this is done. Again, the instrumental function

of Sufi literature, when revealed, annoys a large proportion

of superficialists, and this in turn helps the Sufi to

shed them by performing what is nowadays called 'aversion therapy. '

The effect of fanaticism to destroy a person's

sense of humour is well known. The Sufis make use of this,

too, in their insistence that those interested in their

Way should study and understand jokes and humorous recitals.

This causes useless people, the kind of mind which cannot

really approach the Sufi truth, to shun the Sufis, thus

pleasing both parties.

Self-realization is the Sufi goal. What is this

self and how is it realized?

First, the Sufis are operating in the field of

religion: which means that they are committed to belief in

a meaning for human life, the existence of a divine power

and a transmission of the knowledge of that meaning, that

power and certain opportunities for mankind.

It has been said that there is no human community

yet known which has no religious system. Certain it is that

everyone who comes across the Sufi activity in any form

will relate it to what he (or she) already assumes to be

religion; or, more likely, the real religion. A study of

the words and doings of the Sufis, however, seems to show

that they will at one point appear to be supporting the

local religious expression, and at another opposing it.

The confusion arises simply because the Sufis are teaching,

not promoting beliefs. Where their teaching accords

with local beliefs, they will appear to support these;

where it deviates, it will appear to oppose the religious

structure of belief.

The Sufis themselves are frequently on record as

teaching in this vein: though their attitude is generally

expressed in terms which were better understood in the

past. As an example, the phrase "Sufism is the inner

aspect of religion" can quite easily be seen as meaning:

"Sufi teachings, over a period of time, become covered by

social, emotional and other accretions which are stabilized

into religions. The living tradition of the Sufis, however,

continues. Viewed from the religionist's standpoint, of

course, the Sufi element is the inward component, and the

rest is the balance of the religion."

Put even more succinctly, the Sufi is saying:

"Sufism is a teaching designed to re-establish a link of

humanity with the divine. From time to time this is revitalised

when religious systems have become too covered

with accretions to operate as teaching entities and have subsided

into organisations of social action, power-seeking

or mere panoply."

This emphasis is strongly to be noted in the words

of a Sufi who has said: "The harmonization of the inward

part of humanity, the Real Self, with the Ultimate Truth

is actually disturbed when the social or emotional activity

becomes too strong. The coarse drives out the finer."

Hence when the Sufi says: "People do not want to

learn, they want to feel", he is referring to this degenerative

trend, the dilution of the spiritual dimension by

too much sentiment, ritualism and so on.

He does not mean that people should not feel and

should learn instead. He means that feeling is not learning,

and that people should at some point arrive at the capacity

to distinguish between them.

Seen in this way, the Sufi analysis of human confusion

and lack of awareness of perception being distinct

from emotion is so very modern in tone that it has both

been misunderstood in the past and not even caught up with

in the present. Sufis have been regarded as promoters of

generosity as a virtue because they decry miserliness.

But few observers have noted that the Sufi encouragement

of generosity is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The end is that, in Sufi assertion, miserliness is harmful

to deeper perceptions, generosity is the way leading

to a development of much higher capacity. Generosity

has a social and emotional value. Beyond it lies a spiritual

triumph.

Introducing such a concept - reintroducing it

would be a better term - among contemporary human communities

where it is believed that doing good is a key to heaven,

not a way of opening a path to understanding, is an uphill

task and not one which is rewarded by the community or

its institutions. All societies, including 'modern' and

'free' ones,have their blinkers. There is no law or secret

police which prevents people from examining such options

as the Sufis offer. There is an even more effective mechanism:

that of the culture itself, which offers no inducement

to look at things with which it has almost never concerned

itself.

It cannot be denied that the Sufis have a defensible

point of view when they say that the norms, customs

and principles which are commonly employed to establish

and to maintain human communities may have their limitations.

It is a commonplace to observe the ultimately destructive

effect of 'principles' carried to excess, even

to extremes. As a contemporary Sufi puts it: "The difference

between a democrat and a Sufi is that the democrat

says, with Winston Churchill, 'Democracy is not perfect,

but it is the best system which we have '; while the Sufi

says, 'Keep it if it works, but work your very hardest to

find the perfect: otherwise you are a disguised pessimist.'"

Since all other human associations depend for

their ultimate effect and solidity upon the community spirit

and transference of emotions from one person to another,

people who join Sufi groups soon find themselves disorientated.

At first they may find friends, and are then told

that the purpose of the group includes not avoiding friendship

, but realising its limitations so that something higher

may be attained. Only too often they find this very hard to

understand. Like the 'democrats', they- have been taught that

there is nothing higher than friendship. The effect of this

belief (unsupported though it may be) is to regard anyone

questioning it as attacking the institution itself. But

the Sufi, to quote another master, is in reality saying:

'Friendship' is certainly needed and wonderful. But its place

in higher perceptions is another matter.'

One student who spent many years among Sufis in the

East and the West has noted that members often complain

that they 'never seem to get anywhere'. It was three decades

before he discovered that those who do indeed 'get somewhere'

always say that they have not learned anything. The

reason for this is not to disturb those still waiting to

be selected for special training: those not yet 'ripe'.

In the past it has been assumed that Sufis say that there

is nothing to be gained from Sufism to deter curiosity-mongers

or to discourage unsuitable applicants. The real

reason, however, is mainly to preserve the laggards from

anxiety which disturbs their concentration.

There are, it is true, Sufis who go by the name

of Malamati ('the people of blame') who deliberately incur

opprobrium and bad reputations so as to avoid the invasion

of hypocrites and poseurs, and sometimes, too, to have their

resilience tested, but these are a different case.

Another revelation about the Sufis recently recorded

by an investigator renders many outsiders' opinions and

assessments of them virtually useless. This is the study,

made by Alexander Dixon, of the Sufis' habit of attacking

fixed ideas. People hear - and read - of Sufis opposing

this opinion or that, removing or assailing beliefs and

practices so that the onlookers assume that the Sufi in

question is 'against' this religion or that, this person or

that one, this idea or that. But a close examination of the

content of the words and actions of a number of Sufis over

a long period revealed that the attacks served to soften up

the fixations, reduce the dependence upon prejudice and

ingrained affirmation on many levels and divers directions,

which themselves render minds inflexible and inefficient.

Very often this technique is carried out in a 'shock'

manner, when the most dearly-loved assumptions of the

student are contradicted head-on. Many devices are employed

to cause this effect. Sufi jokesters, conjurers and even

snake-handlers 'defy reason' by applying a shock through

their performances, thus liberating 'congealed attention'

which has all but paralysed the effective mentation of the

victims. This procedure is so little known in most societies

that it is in general confined by interest-groups to

purveying their own contradiction of others' beliefs.

The Sufis take it to the degree of a fine art. In so

doing, of course, many of them have gained reputations

as mischief-makers or irrationals. This is because someone

who is opposing a belief which is greatly cherished gets

the former name, and someone who seems to contradict himself

from one moment to another, the latter. Of one eminent

contemporary Sufi, for instance, it is often said that he

cannot make up his mind whether he likes or dislikes a

certain book, whether he is for or against certain prejudices.

People simply have not noticed that he is working

against fixations wherever he finds them. His own opinions

are not involved. For this latter reason, of course, Sufis

have been called 'objective',

though few people seem to
realise the extent to which this objectivity is carried on.