Sufi Studies Today (II)

by William Foster

(from 1968)

Sufis have been bracketed together with Mystics of various

religious persuasions, as a matter of convenience, by almost all

observers. This is undoubtedly because they speak of transcendental

experiences, ecstasy, discipleship and religious formulation.

But examination of Sufi groups and literature show that Sufic

organisation, teaching and personalities alike carry on a far

wider series of activity than those which we would normally

recognise as of a 'mystical' type.

There seems to be some method of procedure, known to the

Sufi teacher, which commands what kind of training and study

an individual and/or a group should follow. And, in addition,

that procedure will often be found to have no easily-seen relationship

with mystical method or religious thinking.

An analysis of the themes used by Sufi classical authors and

exegetists of the past thousand years shows that each preceptor

will instruct his pupils in a manner which seems to be chosen

with some kind of regard for the natures of the disciples: not

from the standpoint that the individuals are to go through a

standard ceremony or course of study. It is precisely this

'strangeness' of approach which baffles the systematic mind. All

the questions which we are asking become invalidated when we

say, for instance:

'What is your system?'—if the system is peculiar to the

community in question; or,

'Where did you get this knowledge?'—if the source is said

by the teacher to be unimportant, or directly acquired from

another source in another modality of thought.

When the foremost authority on Sufism, Idries Shah, published

a book (The Sufis, Doubleday, N.Y., 1964) and revealed

the Sufi origins and usage of the Mulla Nasrudin stories,

specialists in Sufism, admittedly outsiders, replied that this was

not so. And yet, three years later a Westerner (Raoul Simac,

Hibbert Journal, (London) Spring, 1967) recorded a sojourn with a Pakistan Naqshbandi (founded 14th century) group which used nothing else but this figure in their studies. The appearance of this piece in a distinguished religious journal clinched Shah's point: but supposing Simac had not been there, or had not published?

This information problem besets most students of Sufism. I

have been able to find hardly a publishing student of Sufism

who is an initiated Sufi, or who has not been inducted into some

very derivative or narrowed group which would not have been

regarded by the classical masters as Sufi-inspired at all.

Some of the most profound Sufi teaching, though translated

into Western languages, is so concealed in its inner significance

that nobody understands more than a distorted part of it. This

is surely true of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

Professor Robert Graves and Agha Omar Ali-Shah have

completed (Rubaiyyat, London, 1967, Cassell & Co.) a completely new translation of the Quatrains, with a Sufic interpretation.

Sufi thought and activity is comparatively hard to assess,

and is only slowly becoming understood, because of the fact

that the figures known to researchers, the literature which is

avowedly Sufic, the organisations carrying the label, are claimed

by Sufis themselves as representing only a small part of the total

Sufi activity. Sufis are not secret: their work tends to be private,

or iceberg-like because they believe that 'for every ounce which

is visible there must be a ton which is active, but not perceived

by the ordinary man'.

We, especially in the West, are not accustomed to dealing

with things which cannot be trotted out in front of us for instant

examination. And yet it could easily be claimed that this attitude

is itself based upon a presumption: 'Nothing which cannot be

measured by my tools, preferably here and now, can possibly

be of any account'.

Typical of the Sufis' claims about their work is this poem, translated in 1962 by a member of the American University of Beirut from Al-Ghazzali (A.D. 1058-1 111):

'Many are the roads, but truth is a single path. And those

who tread this way are few. They pass unrecognised, their

goal unknown, while slowly and steadily they press along.

Men do not know for what they were created, and most

of them fail to see the path of truth.'

But there are manifestations of Sufism available for study

which are becoming better known once the key is available.

An example is Professor Rom Landau's work on the arabesque designs.

These existed for a thousand years at least before

anyone bothered to look at them from the point of view that

they might, as claimed, be special forms of diagram-teaching.

(Reference: Prof. R. Landau). In 1955 the American Academy

of Asian Studies brought out a monograph on the arabesque. The

establishment in the fourteenth century of a Sufi Order called

the Designers (Naqshbandia). specialising in teaching-design

stimulated no academic nor aesthetic interest outside its ranks

until the American Academy took up the point six hundred years

later! And this in spite of the fact that the Naqshbandi Orders

of Sufis is one of the most important in documented Sufi and

Eastern history. (Reference: Arberry.)"

Sometimes there is too much imitation and too little understanding

of Sufi materials. Because of its dramatic effect, and

perhaps because the Russian mystagogue Gurdjieff made some

play of contact with it, 'dervish dancing' of the Sufis found its

way into the West as recently as the nineteen-sixties. But the

supposed calisthenic and other effects of these exercises having

been carefully prescribed for use only by special people and for

limited purposes—not for attunement with the Infinite or creating

excitement nor calm—was forgotten.

In 1957 (reference: Lewis) a translation of a 17th century

Sufi's book was published in London, warning against the cultish

or random use of 'whirling or turning'. This was before its

introduction into Britain and America as something of a cultish

fashion:

'The Khilwati have turned their ordained music and their

obligatory motions, which their ancient founders prescribed

for a sound purpose and which ought to be freely permitted

to those worthy, into bait for the trap of imposture and a

snare for disreputable fools.'

While Sufi practices, probably torn from context, have been

introduced in the West by mystical 'masters' rather following

the pattern of the Hindu gurus who have abounded in the

United States since the nineteenth century (see reference;

Thomas, W.) it is only in certain instances that Sufism in the

West has fallen into the trap of becoming a cult.

To be sure, the followers of this or that Sufi-inspired cult

leader or that 'mystical master' trumpet their message as loud

as possible. But there are increasing indications that Westerners

studying or practising Sufism under more typical and genuine

Sufis do not display the proselytising nor conversion-syndromes.

This is evidenced by the way in which they write or speak of

Sufism, and also by their use of Sufic materials in their everyday

work.

Recent examples of Western personalities approving of Sufism

or influenced by it in some way which have been published

include the novelist Doris Lessing (reference: Lessing); the

actor ('Flint') James Coburn and his wife (reference: Coburn)

the poet Ted Hughes (reference: Hughes); the late Secretary-

General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold (reference:

Hammarskjold); Robert Graves (reference: Graves); the film

producer and artist Richard Williams (reference: Williams);

the historian and orientalist John Hamilton (reference:

Hamilton); and the psychologist Erich Fromm (reference:

Fromm).


References:

 

ARBERRY, ARTHUR J.,

Sufism,
London (Allen & Unwin), 3rdimp. 1963, pp. 130ff.

LEWIS, G. L. (translator)

The Balance of Truth, by KatibChelebi, London (Allen & Unwin), 1957, page 43f.

THOMAS, WENDELL,

Hinduism Invades America, The BeaconPress, New York, 1930. p. 227.

LESSING, DORIS, in

The Spectator (London) 18 Sept. 1964,p. 373ff.

COBURN, JAMES, in the London

Evening Standard, 8 Sept. 1967,p. 8. cols. 1-3.

HUGHES, TED, in

The Listener (London), 29 Oct. 1964, pp.677ff.

HAMMARSKJOLD, DAG,

Markings, London (Faber) 1964. passim&p. 95.

WILLIAMS, RICHARD, see Shah,

Exploits of the IncomparableMulla Nasrudin,
London (Cape), 1966 and 1967.

GRAVES, ROBERT, in London

Weekend Telegraph, 21 May 1965,p. 37.

HAMILTON, JOHN,

Baraka, in Hibbert Journal, (London), July,1957.

FROMM, ERICH, Introduction to A. Reza Arasteh's

Rumi thePersian,
Lahore (Pakistan), 1965.

Note:

This is documentation, not necessarily recommendedreading.