SUFISM AND THE INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES
by Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah (1962)
The very great strides which have been made in
modern Western psychology towards an understanding of
the human mind, together with the tireless researches
of Western scholars in the field of Orientalism have
created within the last few decades a most important
situation in the field of cultural research and
understanding. In the first place, modern psychology
in the West, which has been feeling its way through
practical experiment towards establishing itself
as a recognised 'science, has come to resemble more
and more in shape if not in terminology, the
Oriental teachings about the potentialities of the
human mind. Professor Rom Landau, in a recent book
on the Spanish-Arabian philosopher Ibn el-Arabi,
mentions that Freudian interpretations of dream symbolism
were known to the ancient sages of the
East. Again, Professor Jung, the founder of the
other major school of psychology, the school of
analytical psychology, was of the opinion that
modern - that is, Western - pioneers in the study
of the human mind had not attained the maturity of
the thinkers of the East.
"Analytical psychology" he says, in his most
important book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (London,
1959 edition, page 62) - "is no longer bound to the
consulting-room of the doctor; its chains have been
severed. We might say that it transcends itself, now
advances to fill that void which hitherto has marked
the psychic insufficiency of Western culture as
compared with that of the East. We Occidentals had
learnt to tame and subject the psyche, but we knew
nothing about its methodical development and its
functions. Our civilisation is still young, and we,
therefore, required all the devices of the animal-tamer
to make the defiant barbarian and the savage
in us in some measure tractable. But when we reach
a higher cultural level, we must forego compulsion
and turn to self-development."
Well, Western psychology has forsaken the
clinic and come back to self-development: to philosophy
as it is understood in the East; as something
which can develop mankind and make man - and woman -
realise the higher destiny of the individual and of .
the community. In this respect we differ from the
partial thinkers who have in all times passed for
philosophers. I refer to the logicians, speculative
theologians and traders in words who have sought,
always in the end unsuccessfully, to teach that man
can arrive at objective truth through juggling with
words, or through using reason as opposed to his
inborn ability to distinguish truth and reality.
"Know thyself," which the psychologists
postulate as the first essential, has always been a
part of Indian as of Sufi philosophy: whether used in
the Sanskrit term of Jnana, knowledge; or the Arabic
phrase Man arafa nafsahu, arafu Rabbahu. It is
through the path of self-knowledge that ultimate truth
and real reality is reached.
Before we go any further, we have to make a clear
distinction between the inner philosophy of the Sufis
as well as of the Indian schools and the philosophy of
religion. The difference, briefly, is this: in all
forms of ordinary organisational religion, there are
certain beliefs and certain practices which, taken
together, are considered to be sufficient to imply
that the practitioner is a believer in that religion.
But the members of the initiatory schools go very
much further than this. First, they say, you must
know what religion really is. Then you will know
whether you believe in it or not. Buddha's teaching
was clearly calculated to make the disciple conscious
of himself first; so that subsequently he would be
able to banish 'self.' It is obvious that in order to
banish a thing, you must first recognise it. In order
to recognise it, you must develop within yourself
the ability to assess it.
There is no golden key to enlightenment. Both
the Sufi and the Indian schools teach that man must
be capable of receiving a teaching before he can be
taught. There can be no attaining any enlightenment
until the individual is ready for it. It is to produce
these favourable conditions for understanding that, in
both the Indian and the Sufi systems, there is the
institution of the human guide or teacher, whose
first task is to prepare the disciple for the
knowledge of himself, so that he is able to become
enlightened.
The Sufi path of development is not a process
or a philosophy foreign to India. Some of the
greatest of Sufi teachers lived and taught in India;
and many of them are buried in India. Sufism, in one
sense, came to India; so did the Aryan invaders.
Sufism, again, is not regarded by its practitioners
as something which originated at a specific place
in space, or at a point in time. "Before there were
vines on this earth," the great Master Jalaluddin
Rumi reminds us, "the Sufis drank the wine of Wisdom,
the spiritual wine of knowledge." Another master
says: "Sufism is too sublime to have had an origin."
This was Hujwiry, the author of the Sufi classic
Kashf al Mahjub, who was buried on Indian soil and is
revered by people of all faiths as a great teacher
under the honorific of Data Ganj Bakhsh.
The philosophical stream from which the common
root of Sufism and Indian philosophies stemmed may
conveniently be termed Tarika: a way of travelling,
and also a method of doing a thing. To divide it and
categorise it as 'Yoga' and 'Sufism' is useful only
in a limited, and not in an ultimate, sense. In such
books as the Cultural History of India, Sufism is
claimed to have inspired the founder of the Sikh
religion, Rabindranath Tagore, Kabir and scores of
others. Again, a superficial belief is that Sufism
was itself originally influenced by Vedantism. The
division is in the eye of the beholder. When there
is a mighty river which branches into smaller
streams, these streams may be called separate rivers.
But equally they may all be fed by the melting snows
of some colossal mountain which is the goal of the
search.
The organisation, procedure, methods and ideas
of the followers of the truth, as of the followers
of any objective reality, must be very similar, and
there is an end to it. That there is cultural interchange
between the followers of truth is inevitable,
desirable and necessary. To make this contact the
main object of one's attention is absurd. The buyer
of 'halwa' is interested in what it tastes like and
not where its ingredients came from and how. Even
this parallel is inadequate, for to us the origin of
sugar is sweetness and there, as I have said, is an
end to it.
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