Key Sufi Concepts (III)

Those Astonishing Sufis (conclusion)
 (1980)


The Sufis, then, are quite astonishing in their

behaviour and supposed ideas if they are looked at from

conventional, or even from receividly unlikely, points of

view. You can only understand what the Sufis are doing if

you have the requisite perception or, in a smaller way,

information.

To summarise, we can only examine their activities

with any hope of success if we note that they are not interested

in externals, and if we remember that externals

are the major source of stimulus to most other people.

Again, we have to accept that they claim that emotional

stimulus has a place and that that place is not always

where we, from custom and training, imagine it to be.

Thirdly, our fixation on history or personalities is held

by Sufis to be a barrier to understanding, if carried too

far: and they show quite clearly that they hold that we

do carry it too far, thus attenuating the chances of our

own progress.

Further, the idea of elective operation: teaching

people at the right time and place and in the right manner

and company, with its corollary that teaching may take

almost any form; these items are so far removed from the

mechanical approach to religion and cults within our

civilization that it may well be beyond the grasp of most

people to visualise such a system without a great effort.



The question of Sufi tales and other literature

as containing a preparation ingredient, and not simply being

there to produce belief or disbelief, not there for cultural

colouring, not there for their externals: these

concepts require a good deal of digesting before even the

most intelligent individual can take advantage of whatever

dynamic they might contain.

The employment of certain techniques - such as

frustrating the intellectual approach, or increasing

bafflement to focus attention upon the teacher and his

ability to point the way - these are aspects of Sufi operation

which, even in a modern sophisticated society, we have

not yet learned to handle. As for the contention that real,

and higher, perceptions, come after carrying on activities,

and not necessarily as part and parcel of them: this needs

the most careful attention. The function of mystery to

cause mystery-minded people to reveal themselves and hence

make it possible for them to be dealt with is more

readily understandable, and probably provides one of

the paths to understanding the Sufi mentality. Similar

techniques, for instance in eliciting forms of behaviour

in order to study their bases, exist in modern psychology -

however unexpected it may be to encounter them in

'ancient' lore like that of the Sufis.

The equation of humour with frivolity and hence

lack of 'seriousness' is more difficult for us to understand.

But if it is true that our culture has lost its

way in labelling humour as superficial or unimportant,

we shall have to understand it sooner or later. The contention

about re-establishing a contact between a human

'real self and the Divine is also easy enough for us to

grasp in theory, though the realization that what we have

assumed to be the major 'self might in fact turn out to

be at least in part a social artefact, might be more

difficult to swallow even theoretically, for members of a

culture that at least until recently has assumed that it is

superior to all others precisely because it has taken such

an interest in this secondary self as the primary aspect

of man.

That teaching is different from promoting beliefs

is a well-known concept in modern culture, and the Sufis

should have little difficulty in persuading us of its

importance. The only problem here is that our way of

thinking, while admitting that teaching should be free

from bias, inwardly insists that this does not apply in

religion. This startling evidence of internalized regulation

has not yet been absorbed by Western society, though

it has been pointed out often enough during the past

few decades.

The conception that 'Sufism is the inner component

of religion', too, should be acceptable enough

if it is seen from enough examples that religion is often

mainly an accretion of superficialities around an ancient

core which may be reclaimed; but the corollary, that

'social and emotional activity actually disturbs higher

perceptions' is unlikely to pass unchallenged, especially

by those who believe themselves to be imbibing spirituality

with every prayer or operatic aria. Naturally, such people

will be less likely to assail this contention than to

ignore it, to the detriment of future valuable research

on the subject.

The much-repeated theory (for we can see it only

on that level until it is verified by experience) that

'virtues' are not keys to heaven but essential steps which

clear the way to higher understanding, is perhaps the

most attractive of all the Sufi statements. There has

always been,both in the East and the West, an uneasiness

about believing that something done from fear or hope

should be rewarded by paradise; or that ordinary human

duties, carried out even by the most primitive peoples,

should be represented as things which a highly-evolved

religious system proclaims as part of advanced religious

thinking.

This involves, of course, rethinking many of the

values to see whether they are not, indeed, pitched at too

low a level, rather than, as fashionable theoreticians

affirm, too high. 'The best that we have' in institutions

may be insufficient, not a matter for self-congratulation.

This applies to the various forms of human relationship

which have been in the past regarded as sublime, but

which research might well show to confirm the Sufi claim

that they are valuable but only on a lower level.

The Sufi habit of dissimulation ('I haven't learnt

anything') does take some integrating into our way of

thought, even if only because the book-bound individual,

the theorist and historian, will now have to re-examine

his materials to determine whether something was indeed

said at some time because it represented the beliefs or

feelings of someone, or whether it was said for another

reason. But we can only gain if we find in the end that

people whom we imagined to be contradicting themselves

were only shifting ground to look at things from different

perspectives, or only attacking fixed ideas, which, surely,

we are united in realising to be of increasing peril to

the human race.


Adilbai Kharkovli