Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Wisdom of Sufic Humor

The Wisdom of Sufic Humor

by Idries Shah

[From "Human Nature" April 1978. ]

Prayers, rituals, and religious exercises may not be the best paths to spiritual development. Sufis have found that jokes can assist the traveler.


Sufism is a rich mystical tradition that arose in the Middle East, a tradition that promotes an experience of life through dealing with life and human relations. Historically, as much research has shown, the Sufis have profoundly influenced Jewish, Christian, and Hindu literature and attitudes. In so doing, the Sufis have played a unique part, for no other body of thinkers has had an analogous effect on this group of major belief systems.


Instead of presenting a body of thought in which one must believe certain things and reject others, Sufis try to provoke the experience in a person. Why provoke or develop experience instead of teaching dogmatic principles or processes? The Sufis assert that knowledge comes before ritual. Rituals may become outworn, may not function as intended when practiced by communities for which they were not designed. If rituals and practices are, as Sufis believe them to be, specially developed psychological methods, only those who have the knowledge that lies behind them can confirm whether historically notable ones are still functional. Hence priority is given to knowledge and understanding over feeling or belief.


Sufis are often compared with the products of other mystical systems, but there is little inward resemblance. For Sufis, there are many more dimensions, more sides, to the attainment of higher consciousness than are found in other systems. Where Sufis insist that ecstatic experience is a contaminated by-product, a distortion of experience that never happens in an enlightened person, other systems often strive for this ecstasy alone. Where Sufis insist that there are all kinds of emotions and that a certain degree of emotion, whether perceived as religious or not, is harmful to spiritual perceptions, others include many who believe that extreme emotionality, when religiously tinged, must be better than anything less intense. Where the Sufis state that there are stages in mystical appreciation, and that one must not attempt the developments that accompany one stage before completing the preparedness that comes from attaining the one before it, numerous other systems make no such provisos.


Sufis see many traditional prayers and processes, today more familiar than ever to most Westerners, as relics of specific, scripted, and measured formulas designed in the past to help people in the past to attain knowledge of the absolute and of their real selves. The existence of repetitious and automatistic chants, phrases, and dances was often pointed out by the Sufis in the past as being the ignorant perpetuation of formerly effective instruments. Technical knowledge, instead of being applied, tends to become sacroscant and used for a low level of autohypnosis and even ideological and community indoctrination: the very reverse of the original Sufic intention.


Sufis maintain that anyone who says that by prayer and exercise he or she will storm the gates of heaven is someone not prepared to prepare. Such an assault essentially tries to abolish the problem of intricacy by denying that it exists: It is like solving the problem of a missing button by sewing up the buttonhole.


Sufis do not stress the primacy of teaching, exercises, or dressing people in odd clothes. For the Sufis, humanity is already full of misconceptions and unsuitable, counterproductive habit patterns that must be attended to before there is a fair chance of progress toward a more objective understanding. "You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean" is one of the ways they put it.


Since most people's spiritual life is really their emotional-psychological-social life renamed, Sufis start with this aspect when trying to clear up the confusion that is the usual condition of most people's minds.


Their natural allies are modern psychology and sociology, which have pointed out something similar. In the past, Sufis lacked the support of such parallel research and therefore often had to teach in secret. Hysteria was often considered sacred; monomaniacs were sometimes regarded as saints. Only recently have most societies accepted the idea that greed, say, is sure to be greed, even if it is greed for enlightenment; or that emotion, no matter what kind it is, may be harmful.


Sufis traditionally address themselves to the actual social-psychological situation, while those who do not understand the priorities clamor for "spiritual" teachings. Such teachings are useless if floated on top of the psychology of the ordinary individual, however useful that psychology is for limited purposes.


Sanctimoniousness, vanity, and self-will must be set aside in Sufi studies. For this reason, a person's illusions of self-esteem may have to be deflated. Many people cannot endure such an approach, and the result is that some leave and set up synthetic Sufi systems, some turn against the Sufis, and some become servile because they mistake humility for self-abasement. A few, on the other hand, understand what is going on and profit from it. The Sufi has no responsibility to work with people who reject his attitude. In fact, he is incompetent to do so. This rejection is often unconscious, since many would-be learners in reality are seeking social stabilization, comfort, or attention, not knowledge and understanding.


A few examples, taken from contemporary situations, illustrate how great things depend on small beginnings, and how the base is the foundation of the apex. From such entertaining and cynical stories we can also learn something about the illustrative value of ordinary tales and jokes in spiritual studies.


Two hillbillies are talking. One asks the other how little Jake is getting on at school. "Not so well," says the other, "because they are trying to teach him to spell 'cat' with a C instead of with a K."


This story reflects the inaccurate expectations of people who have learned things somewhat askew, as well as the need for context and grounding. In this case, that need is reflected in the fact that it is essential to know the alphabet before rendering a mature judgment.


Another tale shows how beliefs and ideas rooted in the mind often function only for certain purposes -- and do not help the person who suffers from them. This miniature parable is also linked with the effects of vanity.


One woman says to another, "Poor Maisie really has suffered for what she believes in."
"And what DOES she believe in?" asks the other.
"She believes that you can wear a size six shoe on a size nine foot."

For the purposes of Sufism, several elements in the human mind must be aligned before the interference that prevents higher understanding can be stilled. People are always supposing that they can realize their full potential if they can only discover the way, the key, the method, and apply it. But applying the method may involve taking care of all the things within them that are not helping them, such as the habit of applying fashionable though ineffective techniques to a problem. A key works only in a lock.


A friend of mine once went to see the chief of state of a certain country. When they were walking on the grounds of the presidential place, a large and fierce-looking dog tore the loincloth off a Hindu guru who was also present and, barking loudly, cornered him by a wall. Now this guru had the reputation of being able to tame tigers with a glance, but he obviously had no such way with dogs, and he called out to my friend to do something.
The visitor said, "A barking dog does not bite."
"I know that and you know that," the guru shouted back, "but does the dog know that?"

This replay of an old joke presents the structure of a mental state; unless the three elements in a mind are aligned (the guru, the visitor, and the dog, as they are called in this picture of it), the situation is, to put it mildly, unpromising.


This "dog" in the mind is what stands in the way of developing the tiny potential that people are always trying to realize.


The painstaking approach of the sufi may seem tedious, but enlightenment that is too easy is suspect.


Until that potential is strong enough to be realized, it remains latent and so inconsequential that if people were to have their potential removed, the operation would be minor. To increase it would produce not a flourishing plant, but a giant, unviable weed.


In the Sufi system, as in any field of learning, when a person has insufficient information or does not know what questions or actions will yield productive answers or reactions, the situation must be corrected as soon as possible. One quite useful joke incarnates the circumstances that occur when this has been done.


A recruit was asked by a training instructor, "Give me an example of how to fool the enemy."
The recruit answered, "When you are out of ammunition, don't let the enemy know -- keep on firing!"

One of the most important aspects of the initial stages of Sufism is that the learner often has to experience higher perceptions so that he can recognize their individual flavor. Once he can do that, he can stabilize his state when these perceptions occur and can avoid imagining that useless, subjective experiences are spiritual ones. He or she can now seek the flavor again and stabilize it. This is the doctrine called "He who tastes, knows," but the value of the taste depends in part on the irreplaceable presence and activity of the spiritual equivalent of taste buds.


From the Sufis' perspective, derivative or inauthentic spiritual systems are disoriented and they usually have unrecognized problems. Their adherents do not know the parameters or the places to test and perceive because they cannot tell a spiritual from an emotional experience. Neither do they usually realize in what order various experiences have to be stimulated, or even that there is such an order.


The tale about two less-than-brilliant countrymen who hired a boat and went fishing illustrates this situation. The men caught some fine fish. When they were going home, one said to the other, "How are we going to make our way back to that wonderful fishing place again?" The second said, "I thought of that -- I marked the boat with chalk!" "You fool!" said the first. "That's no good. Supposing next time they give us a different boat?"

When they hear it spelled out, of course, many people regard the Sufis' seemingly painstaking approach as tedious. But anything that needs careful attention seems tedious if you look at it impatiently. People who offer enlightenment by easier methods have neither the responsibility nor the problems of people who have made enlightenment a science. Remember that if a bald man gets a free comb with a bottle of hair restorer, it does not necessarily follow that he will ever be able to use the comb for its intended purpose.


The subjective self, which is made up of part ordinary human training, part instinct, and part obsession or conditioning may answer well enough for many purposes, but it must be possible to set aside that self in order to get to the real thing. Sufi teaching often has to resort to indirect methods in order to eliminate the destructive effect of those activities that give great pleasure to the individual but actually inhibit his potential -- as well as annoy everyone else around.


Such a situation is described in a contemporary joke: There was once a small boy who banged a drum all day and loved every moment of it. He would not be quiet, no matter what anyone else said or did. Various people who called themselves Sufis, and other well-wishers, were called in by neighbors and asked to do something about the child.

The first so-called Sufi told the boy that he would, if he continued to make so much noise, perforate his eardrums; this reasoning was too advanced for the child, who was neither a scientist nor a scholar. The second told him that drum beating was a sacred activity and should be carried out only on special occasions. The third offered the neighbors plugs for their ears; the fourth gave the boy a book; the fifth gave the neighbors books that described a method of controlling anger through biofeedback; the sixth gave the boy meditation exercises to make him placid and explained that all reality was imagination. Like all placebos, each of these remedies worked for a short while, but none worked for very long. 

Eventually, a real Sufi came along. He looked at the situation, handed the boy a hammer and chisel, and said, "I wonder what is INSIDE the drum?"


Incidentally, a lot of diversionary activity such as musical assemblies, dressing up, and incantations -- well but erroneously know in the West and among ignorant people in the East as "spiritual" or "esoteric" -- originates in attempts to satisfy the demand for "real mysticism" by unsuitable people (or by suitable people who are thinking wrongly). Sometimes the only shortcoming is that they lack the right information.


One of the subjective attitudes that effectively keeps one from the possibility of mystic learning is a mind filled with thwarted acquisitive aspirations. People are greedy, but they are told that they should not be. So, all unknowing, they sometimes render avarice in the form of greed for "higher things." There is an excellent Western story that freezes this situation on a lower, illustrative level, allowing us to see the relative absurdity of meanness and also its comparative unproductivity.


There was once a miserly man from Aberdeen who was learning golf. His teacher suggested that his initials be put on the ball, so that anyone who found it could return the ball to the clubhouse where he might later claim it. The Aberdonian was interested. "Yes,' he said, "please scratch my initials, A.M.T., for Angus McTavish, on the ball. Oh, and if there is room, add M.D., as I am a physician." The instructor did this. Then McTavish scratched his head. "While you are about it," he said, "you might as well add, 'Hours,11:30 to 4' "

A lot of the stories that seem to be aimed against gurus are not really antiguru. They are only meant to remind us of ways in which real teachers can be distinguished from practitioners who are interested only in gathering tribes of followers.


As an example, there is the one in which two mothers talk about their sons.
One says, "And how is your boy getting on as a guru?"
"Just fine," replies the second. "He has so many pupils that he can afford to get rid of some of the old ones."
"That's great," says the first. "My son is getting on so well that he can afford NOT to take on everyone who applies to him!"

One of the values of such narratives is seeing whether gurus themselves can laugh at these stories; if they cannot, then they should not be considered spiritual teachers at all, because they are so insecure. Paranoid behavior, too, is often seen in the manifestation of hostility towards such tales, when the listener thinks that he or she is being challenged by what sounds like an antiguru story. Would-be disciples who do not enjoy such jokes are often rejected by genuine Sufis.


Greed for higher things is as great an obstacle to mystic learning as is greed for money or material possessions.


There is another story that infuriates some second - rate teachers: One guru tells another, "Always say things that cannot be checked." "Why?" asks the second guru. "Because," replies the first guru, "if you say 'Mars is peopled by millions of undiscernible beings, and I have met them,' people will not dispute it. But if you say, 'It is a nice day today,' some fool will always reply, 'But not as nice as it was yesterday'. And if you put up a sign saying WET PAINT, who will take you at your word? You can tell how few by the number of finger marks the doubters leave on it."

Rationalizations whereby people interested in psychological and spiritual things maintain, at the expense of truth, their version of how things are, produce situations in which these people have to be shown up as absurd.


An old tale told in India has it that, on the evening of a wild-duck shoot, the follower of a guru went to get his blessing. This was no vegetarian guru, but a Tantric type with more than a dash of Kali, the goddess of destruction, in his thoughts. The blessing was given, but no ducks appeared at the shoot.
The disciple went back to the guru the next day. The guru asked him how he had got on: "I expect you shot many ducks?" "No," the disciple answered, "but it was not the shortcoming of my aim, but rather that Mother Kali had decided to be merciful to the birds."


Western psychology will not advance very far in the East while such mental mechanisms as rationalizations continue to be described as recent Western discoveries, for this knowledge has been common in the East for centuries. If we do not admit this, we miss the meaning of many valuable Eastern teachings.


People often express surprise that Sufis have for at least a thousand years insisted that scientific and scholastic methods are often blind to their own limitations. You may have to take the Sufis' word for this initially, but you can, little by little, taste the disabling subjectivity of many people who are often regarded as objective or scholarly repositories of wisdom.


One absurdity, advanced by confused thinkers, is that spirituality or mystically minded people cannot think lucidly.


I do not say that they are all like this, or that you will find in life an exact counterpart to the following joke, but it will enable you to identify the tendency when it crops up.


The scientist says to the logician, "I have determined statistically that all geniuses are totally vain, even if they oversimplify and don't talk much."
The logician answers, "Nonsense. Geniuses vain and terse? What about me?"


The absurdity of many assumptions of society often obscures the fact that these assumptions exist only to please those who make them, and are not meant to take anyone or any idea a stage further.


Mental mechanisms that are recent discoveries of Western scientists have been known for centuries in the East.


Sufis, like others in the field of education, use assumptions either as launching pads or as something to be challenged, not as dogma.


Look from a different perspective, for a moment, at what people regard as laudable and altruistic acts and thoughts.



One day a Westerner was watching a Chinese gentleman burning bank notes before the tablets of his ancestors. The Westerner said, "How can your ancestors benefit from the smoke of paper money?"
The Chinese bowed courteously and said, "In the same way in which your dear departed relatives appreciate the flowers you put on their graves."


Yet similar assumptions drench our spiritual thinking.
So, the Sufis say, there is nothing wrong or bad in doing something that gives you pleasure. But to think at the same time that the act is doing something else is, at best, irrelevant to human progress. All human progress comes through NOT thinking that one thing is, in fact, another; that is, through right judgment.


You can find lucid people who really can tell one thing from another, and are in fact able to separate the two. But generally when they manifest this ability in the form of behavior, people tend to think that they are either great sages, humorists, or idiots. My three collections of Nasrudin jokes give many such examples, partly to illustrate this characteristic and training, and partly to help you make it, as it were, your own property.



Americans have an excellent home-grown example of lucidity in a tale about the statesman Daniel Webster. He was being sued by a butcher for a debt when he ran into the butcher on the street. Webster immediately asked the butcher why he had not come for any order lately. The butcher said he had thought that Webster would not, under the circumstances, want to deal with him. But Webster, showing this perfectly lucid attitude said, "Tut, tut. Sue all you wish -- but, for Heaven's sake, don't try to starve me to death."


The argument that spiritually or mystically minded people should not think lucidly, a proposition often advanced by confused thinkers, is an absurd misunderstanding. A confused person will, and often does, choose a confused and confusing series of inapplicable techniques to approach higher understanding.


The wisecrack aspect of jokes is, of course, a degeneration, perhaps due to surfeit -- which is one reason why Sufi masters have actually given and withheld permission to jest from their disciples, as Ghazali reminds us in a major book written almost a thousand years ago.


There are affinities among the wisecrack, ignorance, and the stream-of-consciousness approach that I do not yet find clearly understood in the West, though I came across a combination of all three when I last went to Jerusalem.



A man with a curio shop was trying to sell to a female tourist what he described as "a very important embossed-metal picture of the Last Supper." I stood riveted to the spot when I heard her say, "What's so wonderful about the Last Supper, anyway? Now if you had a picture of the First Supper, that might be something. Besides, when is the Next Supper?"


Rationalizations, association of ideas, and lack of humor often go together and can usually be disentangled.

I was once standing at a corner of the huge market street called the Bhindi Bazaar in Bombay, when a bus stopped and a troop of determined Western seekers-after-truth descended and clustered around an old man who was squatting on the side of the road. They photographed him and chattered excitedly. One of the visitors tried to start a conversation with him, but he only stared back, so she remarked to the guide, "What a sweet old man; he must be a real live saint. Is he a saint?"
The Indian, who had a sense of humor as well as an interest in not wanting to tell a lie and a need to please his clients, said, "Madam, saint he may be, but to us he is the neighborhood rapist."
She immediately replied, "Oh, yes, I've heard of that; it involves their religion. I guess he must be a Tantrist!"


In Sufi study and understanding, ignorance is crippling, paranoia is ridiculous, right alignment and respect (for materials, for students and teachers) are essential; servility and vanity are harmful. The proper focus is almost everything. A comprehensive understanding is essential. Offering premature "enlightenment" is irresponsible. Paradoxically but inalienably, the fact is that only by wanting to serve each other can the two elements -- the teaching and the learning -- be harmoniously, and therefore correctly, brought together.


-- Idries Shah


also see Idries Shah audio/video

Friday, July 13, 2012

Contemplation Themes


Solitary Contemplation Themes

Solitary Contemplation Themes are chosen from great Sufis' sayings and
writings because they are held by Sufi teachers to contain the materials
which are best suited to individual study. Their secondary use is in
company, after they have been well digested by the student.



************

Being a Sufi is to put away what is in your head-- imagined truth, pre-
conceptions, conditioning-- and to face what may happen to you.
                              Abu Said


*************

         WHAT MUST COME

To those who seek truth in conventionalized religion:
      Until college and minaret have crumbled
      This holy work of ours will not be done.
      Until faith becomes rejection
      And rejection becomes belief
      There will be no true believer.
                              Abu Said



*************

 Lord!
 If I worship you from fear of hell, cast me into hell.
 If I worship you from desire for paradise, deny me paradise.
  
                              Rabia


**************


                          THE DOOR

 Salih of Qazwin taught his disciples:
   `Whoever knocks at the door continually, it will be opened to him.'
   Rabia, hearing him one day, said:
   `How long will you say: "It will be opened"? The door has never
 been shut.'



**************

                    LIKE CALLS TO LIKE
 


Hasan of Basra went to see Rabia. She was sitting in the midst of a
number of animals.
   As soon as Hasan approached, they ran away.             .
   Hasan said:
   `why did they do that?'
   Rabia answered:
   `You have been eating meat. All I had to eat was dry bread.'



**************



 FRUIT AND THISTLES

             To an ass, a thistle is a delicious fruit.
             The ass eats the thistle. It remains an ass.
 
                                                 Habib el-Ajami



***************

           WHEN AVICENNA MET ABU SAID

When the philosopher and the Sufi met, Avicenna said:
   `What I know, he sees:
   Abu Said remarked:
   `What I see, he knows.'




***************

            THE SUFI CALL



Answer the Sufi Call, as best you are able, in this world, with a loving
heart and honestly. Then you are truly safe in this world and in all the
other worlds.

                           Salik Hamzavi





**************

              BREAD

 
If you are entertaining a dervish, remember that dry bread is enough
for him.
                          Harith Muhasibi


***************

              BENEFIT

 
Most of humanity do not know what it is in their interests to know.
They dislike what would eventually benefit them.
                             Al-Nasafi


***************

           POINT OF VIEW

        To the sinful and vicious I am evil;
        But to the good-beneficent am I.
 
                       Mirza Khan, Ansari

***************

     TEACHERS, TEACHINGS, TAUGHT

       Teachers talk about teachings.
       Real teachers study their pupils as well.
       Most of all, teachers should be studied.
  
                         Musa Kazim

****************

     SERVICE AND MASTERSHIP


He who does not know about service knows even less about Mastership.
                  Tirmizi

***************

    PERCEPTION AND EXPLANATION

For him who has perception, a mere sign is enough.
 For him who does not really heed, a thousand explanations are not
enough.
                Haji Bektash


****************
  
   TO A WOULD-BE DERVISH

My heart has become confused from the world and what is in it.
Within my heart there is nothing but the Friend.
If perfume from the rose-garden of Unity comes to me
My heart, like a rosebud, will burst its outer skin.
Speak to the recluse in his solitude and say:
Because the very edge of our prayer-niche is as the curve of the
 Eyebrow
There is no real difference between the Kaaba and the idol-house
-Wherever you may look, there equally is HE.
The being of a dervish is not in what his beard and head are like:
The Path of the dervish is in qualitative exactitude.
A dervish may easily shave his head without regrets
But he is a dervish who, like Hafiz, gives up his head.
  
           Khwaja Hafiz of Shiraz

***************

         SUFISM

      Sufism is truth without form.
    
             Ibn el-Jalali
        
**************

     BECOMING WHAT ONE CAN BECOME

To be a Sufi is to become what you can become, and not to try to
pursue what is, at the wrong stage, illusion.
 
It is to become aware of what is possible to you, and not to think that
you are aware of that of which you are heedless.


 Sufism is the science of stilling what has to be stilled, and alerting
what can be alerted; not thinking that you can still or alert where you
cannot, or that you need to do so when you do not need it.
 
The following of the Dervish Path is pursuing a concealed Unity in
spite of, and not by means of, the claims of diversity.


 It is taking into account the means which are presented in diversity,
without thinking that the externals of diversity are important in
themselves.
 
It is approached by studying the factors of learning how to learn; not
by trying to gain knowledge without correct practice in approaching it.
 
You come closer to being a Sufi through realizing that habit and
preconception are essentials only in some studies; not by forming habits
and judging by means of unsuitable preconceptions.
 
You must become as aware of insignificance as you think you are of
significance; not seek feelings of significance alone.
 
The humble are so because they must be so; and worst of all men or
women are those who practise humility for the purpose of pride, not
as a means of travel.
 
The method of Sufism is as it always has been, to adopt that which is
of value, when and where it is of value, and with whom it is of value;
not to imitate because of awe, or to copy because of imitativeness.
 
The success of man in raising himself higher comes through the right
effort and the right method, not merely by concentrating upon the
right aspiration or upon the words of others directed to yet others.
 
It is as it were a trap laid for the ignoble element in you when a man,
a book, a ceremonial, an organization, a method, appears, directly or by
recommendation, to have something which is applicable to all, or
attracts you strongly though incorrectly.


                        Sayed Imam Ali Shah

****************

      GOOD AND EVIL

`Being' is absolutely good.
    If it contains any evil, it is not Being.
                 Shabistari

***************

        REMEDY

Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it.
Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.
                Hazrat Ali

*****************

      THE WORLD

  The world has no being except as an appearance;
  From end to end its state is a sport and a play.
 
           Shabistari, Gulshan-i-Raz

****************

       DIRECTION

If your teacher so directs, dye your prayer-carpet with wine.
The Seeker should not be ignorant of the techniques of the Stages.
  
                Hafiz
***************

      SUFI LITERATURE

There are three ways of presenting anything.
The first is to present everything.
The second is to present what people want.
The third is to present what will serve them best.
If you present everything, the result may be surfeit.
If you present what people want, it may choke them.
If you present what will serve them best, the worst is that, misunder-
standing, they may oppose you. But if you have served them thus,
whatever the appearances, you have served them, and you, too, must
benefit, whatever the appearances.
  
                      Ajmal of Badakhshan

**************

             RESEARCH

Only the bird understands the textbook of the rose:
 For not every reader knows the inner meaning of the page.
 O you who would learn the section on love from the book of
knowledge -
 I fear that you do not know how to fathom it by research.


                                                                   Hafiz

***************

              DUMBNESS

He takes the tongue from those who share the secret:
 So that they may not again speak the king's secret.
 
                              Nizami

****************

              THE PEARL

What do ordinary people know of the value of the precious pearl?
 Hafiz (protector), give the unique essence only to the elect.
                                Hafiz

*****************

         HAPPINESS AND SADNESS

Whoever gets some knowledge, however little, is happy. Whoever has
it taken from him is sad.

                         Ibn-Idris El-Shafai

 
****************

                     REAL GOODNESS

Better than being what you imagine to be good is to be with those who
really are good.
Worse than doing something evil is to be with those who are evil.


                 Bayazid
  
******************

      DEATH

Sleep with the remembrance of death, and rise with the thought that
you will not live long.
               Uwais el-Qarni


******************
  
  COMMENTING ON A RECLUSE

    He has established himself upon a mountain
   So he has no Work to do.
    A man should be in the market-place
    While still working with true Reality.
  
                Sahl
  
*****************

  EIGHT QUALITIES OF THE SUFI

In Sufism, eight qualities must be exercised. The Sufi has:
Liberality such as that of Abraham;
Acceptance of his lot, as Ishmael accepted;
Patience, as possessed by Job;
Capacity to communicate by symbolism, as in the case of Zacharias;
Estrangement from his own people, which was the case with John;
Woollen garb like the shepherd's mantle of Moses;
Journeying, like the travelling of Jesus;
Humility, as Mohammed had humility of spirit.


              Junaid of Baghdad
 
*****************

            WHERE IT WENT

 
       I saw a child carrying a light.
       I asked him where he had brought it from.
       He put it out, and said:
       `Now you tell me where it is gone.'
  
                         Hasan of Basra

*******************
   
           AFFINITIES

People who are alike feel an affinity. The attraction of opposites is a
different case. But people who are alike are often mistaken by super-
ficialists for people who are unalike. As an example, one is greedy for
love, another is greedy to love. The uninformed or outward thinker
will immediately imagine and proclaim that these are opposites. The
converse, of course, is the truth. The common factor is greed. They are
both greedy people.

 The famous man and his follower are sometimes the same. One wants
to give his attention, the other to attract attention. Both being chained
by an obsession with attention, they fly together, `pigeon with pigeon,
hawk with hawk'.

                                Simabi
 
****************
               RICHES

Aim for knowledge. If you become poor it will be wealth for you: if
you become rich it will adorn you.
  
                   El-Zubeir son of Abu-Bakr

****************

             DISCIPLESHIP

     With a Guide you may become truly Human.
     Without a Guide you will remain mainly Animal
     If you can still say: `I could not submit to any man'
           -You are still worthless for the road.
            But if you say: `I wish to submit', in the wrong way
            -The road will never find you, and you are lost.


Zulfikar son of Jangi

****************

Knowledge proceeds from:
   `What am I?
   To: `I do not know what I am.'
   To between `Perhaps I am not' and `I will find myself'; to between
`I will find myself' and `I am', to `I am what I know myself to be', to
`I am'.
                                       Abu-Hasan el-Shadhili


*****************

                              SMALL CHANGE

When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is
not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small
change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end, it will
become an end.
                                                                         Ibn Ikbal


*****************

                      WHAT LOOKS AFTER YOU

Knowledge is better than wealth. You have to look after wealth;
knowledge looks after you.
                                                                                   Ali
******************


                                DESTRUCTIVE

                 Three things in this life are destructive:
                 Anger, Greed, Self-esteem.

                               The Prophet Muhammad
                                         




from The Way of the Sufi, by Idries Shah

Friday, July 6, 2012

Sufi Thought

by Imdad Hussein al-Qadiri


For untold centuries Sufi thinkers have claimed (and they continue to emphasize) that Sufism is not, as others imagine with zealous facility, a religious cult as normally understood. Sufis have repeatedly referred to their operations as a science: "the science of man" and "the science of certainty" are among the names they have given to this pursuit.


But in an atmosphere where the concept of science as a necessary and specific method of investigation and a tool for the betterment of man was almost wholly eclipsed-- in the East largely and until very recently in the West-- the interest called "the science of man" could find acceptance and fair hearing only in small groups.


Indeed, until almost "the other day," if we speak in historical terms, the study of anything that was not avowedly devoted to the service of the state or the prevailing ideological commitment (generally a theological one) was regarded as odd. Sometimes such a study was feared, as it tends to be feared in all closed systems, and easily labeled subversive.


Sufis responded to this oppressive environment by cloaking their teachings and their activities in the outward garb of religion, which they saw as largely a diluted, imitative form of a branch of Sufism itself. They also adopted cultural pursuits which in totalitarian societies afforded the nearest approach possible to free activity and which provided a means of maintaining communication with people at all levels of society. It is for the latter-reason that the Persian-speaking Sufis as good as monopolized the classics. Almost every Persian classics, valued for its beauty and originality, is a Sufi textbook as well as a work of art.


The prestige gained by the Sufis, in spite of the enormous obstacles imposed by dogmatism, fanaticism and sterile scholasticism, caused them to have to endure imitators-- so many imitators, indeed, that the only forms of Sufism publicly known in many areas are the imitative ones. These groups often took the form of collections of people, attracted by the reputations of Sufism who operated as mere therapeutic entities or social circles and who found in their "Sufism" outlets for their emotional needs and psychological fantasies.


The true Sufis, however, maintained their centers of learning through the centuries and continued to develop organs of communication with the community at large which sometimes outwardly appeared to be based on principles acceptable to the current intellectual and dogmatic climate.


Setting up institutions for cultural research and development, imitated in this form of expression, and then turning to another, caused great furor and confusion among the uninitiated students and the "specialist" but ignorant pedants, as well as in the ranks of the public, entrenched interests, and mawkishly emotional imitators. First of all, in the East, scholars did not know what to make of the imitation Sufis who abounded. Then the imitators, themselves now wedded to the idea that they were Sufis indeed, did not know what to make of the proliferation of Sufi groups that were genuine but that used the puzzling symbolism of, say, alchemy, beauty, or even physical and mental exercises.


At a later stage the confusion of the Eastern scholars was transmitted-- by their commentaries and by the inevitable reproduction of mistakes that accompanies partial understanding-- to the European and finally the American Orientalists. Many of these optimistic academics, who now have Eastern pupils of their own, are at a stage where they cannot decide exactly what Sufism is, how it should be studied, and why the Sufis-- who should by definition be "seeking God" if they are mystics-- should be engaged in so many apparently diverse activities.


The main difficulty is that these experts of the past and present, of the East and West, judge everything according to criteria of their own invention. Little wonder that they are baffled-- like the child who cried when he found a cat with a tail because he had seen only tailless cats before. He is reported to have sobbed inconsolably, "It has no right to have a tail!"


With the passage of time and the ordinary flow of knowledge and practice from one place to another, Sufim in both the legitimate and imitative forms moved westward. In the period known in Europe as the Middle Ages, Spain was a flourishing center of Sufi activity. From here both brands of Sufism were imported by the West, whose scholars were as omnivorously hungry for advanced knowledge and as undiscriminating as today's ambitious would-be scholars in the East.


In later years imitation Sufi cults and well-meaning emotionalists offering release from tensions, giving assurance and comfort and ease, carried what they imagined to be Sufism to the confines of Western Europe, Britain, and both the Americas, as well as to many other places. Many of their followers, in defiance of traditional Sufi teaching and in the absence of local spiritual teachers who gave them what they wanted, remained centered around the memory and works of their "masters". Such cults are, of course, heavily influenced by primitive religious-social groups.


Meanwhile, after a number of false starts, Orientalism was developing into an accepted discipline in the West, and scholars encountered similar problems-- when trying to deal within arbitrary limitations with Sufi materials-- as had their academic predecessors in the Saracen lands.


At the time of this writing [1969], the propaganda of the cultists and the efforts of the scholars provide the main body of literature of Sufism available in the West, and even in large areas of the East. Not only has the false coin all but driven out the true, but the false has come to be regarded as true by sheer pressure of quantity and the incessant litanies of the adherents.


Yet Sufism continued. In the West and elsewhere, especially in those cultures currently styling themselves as "open societies", the climate exists wherein Sufi studies can be presented in a form intelligible to the ordinary man or woman. This is largely because there are comparatively few barriers to the dissemination of ideas and thoughts, and because the people in general are thirsty for knowledge. They no longer care where they get it, because of the the collapse of the dominating sources of learning which until today claimed, overtly or by implication, to be the regular, canonical, perfect, efficient, necessary, and correctly formed sources.


When public interest was aroused in the roots of psychology and the study of man, as a result of the failure of established institutions to give the people what they had been promising, it was inevitable that educated and interested people would study the claims of the Sufis to be possessed of a special science and the tools with which to develop and impart it. This stage, which preceded the present widespread interest, was reached just after the First World War in Europe.


Sufi teachings continued to penetrate into the West, but Sufis did not compete in the Press and in public lectures with the cultists All Sufi activity, for practical purposes, was private.


Sufi experience showed that few people paid any attention to non-cultist Sufis like Colonel Wilberforce Clarke, or Sir Richard Burton, and that only the imitation cults really thrived.


It fell to the lot of the Russo-Armenian philosopher Gurdjieff to emphasize the existence of a "dervish science" located by him somewhere in Central Asia, and having links with ancient forms of Christianity and even earlier systems.


This personage, indeed, appears to have tried to create a "school" somewhat on the lines of Sufi enterprises in certain tekkias. Various circumstances inhibited its development. His foremost disciple, the Russian philosopher Ouspensky, made an attempt to transmit Sufic ideas through lectures and books.


Following these psychologically-oriented philosophers certain other figures (including Dr. Maurice Nicoll and Dr. Kenneth Walker in Britain) tried to expand, explain, describe, systematise and impart what they could of the Russian's materials.


Parallel with this development, followers of Sufi thought, who were actually devotees of the outward expression of the thought, collected around various authority figures or organised themselves to study translations or derivations of genuine Sufic literature.


The result of all this effort-- including bizarre expeditions to the East, watched with amusement by Sufis there-- was the cause of the formation of collections of people who were united only by custom and habit, and whose Sufic potential was largely untouched. This was inevitable, given the absence of any discrimination in the culture between emotional feelings of an undifferentiated kind and the characteristic experiences of Sufi progress.


The next major development in the story of Sufic study was the operation under the direction of Hadrat Sayed Idries Shah. In private conversations and through his monumental book The Sufis, he offered the rationale which connected the lingering rumours of a knowledge still lingering in the East, the connection with other religions, the use of inner exercises, and the blunders of the scholars, to mention but a few points.


The importance of the revelations which were made by this book and its succeeding volumes can hardly be exaggerated. The object of the operation was plainly nothing less than that of showing that a legitimate Sufi tradition continued to function, illustrating the stages of degeneration of scientific knowledge into folklore, and making available certain means of taking up the study again in a coherent, purposeful and effective form.


But whereas the expectations of the members of the followers of Sufi thought were by now focused upon the possible appearance of a messianic figure who would adapt their studies slightly or transform them with a talisman, leading them forward into a new era of glory, the Sufic objective soon became visibly otherwise.


Idries Shah steadfastly decline to accept the leadership and direction of groups as already constituted, stating that his task was initially to communicate with those who might be interested in understanding what Sufism had to offer. He would not confine himself to working within what was in effect a closed society imagining itself to have a monopoly of materials or destiny. He went so far as to state that such materials as were generally being used were inoperable in the culture in which they were so greedily practiced and hoarded.


The result of Idries Shah's writings can only be described in superlatives. Every single one of his books published in English (and not all of them on Sufism) as if by some magic spell, rapidly became accepted as a significant work in the field with which he dealt. Poets, scientists, professors of physics and literature, anthropologists, each in his own area claimed that here was something of undoubted value.


Orientalists and other scholars, who had until then regarded the study of Sufism as their peculiar preserve, were amazed to find that Idries Shah's books, unlike those of the "specialists" were being reviewed with enthusiasm in the mass-circulation Press. But this was not all. Solemnly serious sociological journals averred that this material, formerly supposed to belong to a vanishing cult, was of prime importance in solving current human problems in advanced societies. In book after book, Idries Shah revealed Sufic facets and theories which were seized upon by the most unlikely variety of readers, both specialist and otherwise, as being of  significance to social, scientific and other fields today.


Finally, stressing that Sufic knowledge was basically of importance to everyone, and that it had a vital place in educational matters, Idries Shah collaborated in the setting up of a learned Foundation for the study and dissemination of human ideas. This body, whose basic document of formation was approved by the British Department of Education and Science, linked a number of distinguished thinkers and organisations.


In spite of some initial confusion as to the aims of the Society, due entirely to the misplaced enthusiasm of cultists hoping for a new form of an old pastime, it rapidly became evident , through the official recognition and the organisation's power to attract the attention of individuals of the highest calibre throughout the world, that here was a completely new and unsuspected discipline, capable of forming a legitimate part of contemporary life in its own right. In other words, the Foundation was not just another eminently respectable scholastic institution. It was more: one which possessed tools, theories and testing procedures which could operate as effectively and constructively in modern society as any trumpeted academic discipline of the older sort.


The present position is that Sufi study, interpretation and analysis of the human condition is now as good as established as a real and continuing part of the apparatus of the social, educational and psychological working of a modern society. Sufism is imagined to be "declining" or to be studied through pedantic works only by the few hidebound scholars whose attitudes have been overtaken by events.


Sufism has thrown off its Oriental and cultist accretions. Only those who want primitive thought are unlikely to be able to welcome back into the fold a science which offers, as the sociological journal New Society put it, "real possibilities and practical alternatives to our present ways of operating... relevant, fruitful and urgent for our present society."



from the Introduction to Mahmud Shabistari's The Secret Garden trans. Johnson Pasha (Octagon Press, 1969).