excerpt from Alone in Arabian Nights, by Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah (1969 revision)
Have you noticed that people who belong to cults and religions, systems and programmes, constantly foist them upon you? That, or else they are being mysterious about them.
Point one: the Sufis are not a cult, so... you will have noticed , I have not said much about the Sufis in [this book]. If you are not at all interested in them or their way of life, now is your chance to stop reading this book....
Others may note that almost anything which they may have read (especially in learned books) about the Sufis is very inaccurate.. .
In the West especially, people.... have amalgamated bits and pieces of Sufi ideas and observances into their own religious and other systems: this is an activity which is totally wrong if results are to be expected.
In contemporary terms, the Sufis can be seen as people who, initially, work against the evils of coercive organized religion and restrictive cults; then try to help expand the
understanding of those who are interested: strictly according to the potential of the people and the times.
This latter contention is.. unacceptable to the vast majority of people, who cannot feel happy with it at all... because they always need the reassurance of tradition and of the
familiar. If they don't know what to reject, they may deify it.
If the Sufi is teaching by means of modern concepts, the traditionalists are appalled. The modern-minded ones, by contrast, will recoil from what are to them old-fashioned ideas. In Sufic terms, such people do not really exist as far as their potential for development is concerned.
I made my journeys at the behest of the Sufis, in order to bring some of these conceptions to individuals and to communities throughout the Middle Eastern countries visited.
Some were interested, some were excited. Mostly, they were appalled.
Perhaps it was I who benefited most.
You can probably imagine the consternation, even the utter dislike, on the part of groups of friends, companions , earnest seekers of the truth, when told that the groups' composition was useless because, according to Sufi experience, self-collected learning classes could not harmonise.
And, of course, there was a vicious circle situation when they demanded to be shown what that precise experience was...
Most associations of people ... have their own power structure, with some in authority, and some gaining their satisfactions by being controlled or influenced by those in authority.
Point one: the Sufis are not a cult, so... you will have noticed , I have not said much about the Sufis in [this book]. If you are not at all interested in them or their way of life, now is your chance to stop reading this book....
Others may note that almost anything which they may have read (especially in learned books) about the Sufis is very inaccurate.. .
In the West especially, people.... have amalgamated bits and pieces of Sufi ideas and observances into their own religious and other systems: this is an activity which is totally wrong if results are to be expected.
In contemporary terms, the Sufis can be seen as people who, initially, work against the evils of coercive organized religion and restrictive cults; then try to help expand the
understanding of those who are interested: strictly according to the potential of the people and the times.
This latter contention is.. unacceptable to the vast majority of people, who cannot feel happy with it at all... because they always need the reassurance of tradition and of the
familiar. If they don't know what to reject, they may deify it.
If the Sufi is teaching by means of modern concepts, the traditionalists are appalled. The modern-minded ones, by contrast, will recoil from what are to them old-fashioned ideas. In Sufic terms, such people do not really exist as far as their potential for development is concerned.
I made my journeys at the behest of the Sufis, in order to bring some of these conceptions to individuals and to communities throughout the Middle Eastern countries visited.
Some were interested, some were excited. Mostly, they were appalled.
Perhaps it was I who benefited most.
You can probably imagine the consternation, even the utter dislike, on the part of groups of friends, companions , earnest seekers of the truth, when told that the groups' composition was useless because, according to Sufi experience, self-collected learning classes could not harmonise.
And, of course, there was a vicious circle situation when they demanded to be shown what that precise experience was...
Most associations of people ... have their own power structure, with some in authority, and some gaining their satisfactions by being controlled or influenced by those in authority.
Just picture such a grouping.... when a beardless youth, albeit with the best credentials, appears in their midst, contradicting what they accept as the very cement of their organization!
And there is more.... Can you imagine telling almost anyone that excitement, physical activity of certain accepted kinds, some music even, run counter to their best interest?
Or that self-selected study is useless since it is like asking a drug addict to nominate his own poison?
Or that 'idolatry', 'intoxication' and 'addiction' can exist in the most supposedly holy or materialistic people, more powerfully than if they had a clay idol, a bottle of spirits or a hypodermic of heroin?
'...Get the hell out of here!' That is the message I was often invited to take back to my principals; even when we were only responding to a cry for help.
Above all, the bugbear of the Sufis is not, as one might imagine, to struggle against materialism. It is to handle two very powerful distortions in the customary thinking of
people everywhere.
The first of these is to accumulate ideas, especially from the East, in the belief that these must be of some value, when many of the most popular ones frankly originate from fraudulent or now irrelevant, inoperative sources, however ancient.
The second is to imagine that, because there is no such thing, for the most part, in mystico-religion or philosophy in the West, an understanding beyond normal human knowledge cannot exist.
It is this last-named barrier which proved, and still proves, most difficult...
And there is more.... Can you imagine telling almost anyone that excitement, physical activity of certain accepted kinds, some music even, run counter to their best interest?
Or that self-selected study is useless since it is like asking a drug addict to nominate his own poison?
Or that 'idolatry', 'intoxication' and 'addiction' can exist in the most supposedly holy or materialistic people, more powerfully than if they had a clay idol, a bottle of spirits or a hypodermic of heroin?
'...Get the hell out of here!' That is the message I was often invited to take back to my principals; even when we were only responding to a cry for help.
Above all, the bugbear of the Sufis is not, as one might imagine, to struggle against materialism. It is to handle two very powerful distortions in the customary thinking of
people everywhere.
The first of these is to accumulate ideas, especially from the East, in the belief that these must be of some value, when many of the most popular ones frankly originate from fraudulent or now irrelevant, inoperative sources, however ancient.
The second is to imagine that, because there is no such thing, for the most part, in mystico-religion or philosophy in the West, an understanding beyond normal human knowledge cannot exist.
It is this last-named barrier which proved, and still proves, most difficult...
... if that which is called spiritual elsewhere, is only emotional excitement, the Sufis cannot use this to communcate with, since it does not carry information, let alone enlightenment.
And all of this is not to mention the vast stock of 'ideas' which are buffering ones: put into circulation over the centuries by Sufis in order to prevent 'psychic burglars' from causing trouble...
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