The Visionary Recital (I)

excerpts from the introduction to The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  by W.M. Thackston, Jr.:



...what the neophyte must achieve is a release of the soul from the material world of the senses, the "bottomless pit" of this temporal world, into which the soul of man has been cast and where his atemporal, spiritual nature is held captive, so trapped inside the strictures of gross matter, the stuff of which this world is made, that the soul becomes like the king's peacock in Treatise VII that was placed under a basket: it forgets entirely its original home and thinks that this world is all it has ever known.



While in this state of forgetfulness, the soul cannot extricate itself if
it is attached to any of the goods this world has to offer, be they
material like property and wealth or immaterial like position and renown.

The process of detaching oneself from the material... is often expressed as a journey or pilgrimage-quest, which can take the form either of an external journey out of the material world or of an internal journey into the self and thence out of this world.





THE EXTERNAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE MACROCOSM:



The external journey leads the pilgrim up through the celestial spheres
that encompass the totality of spatial and temporal creation. Everything
that is subject to human sensorial perception is contained within the
concavity of the celestial spheres. What lies outside them is, in terms of
created matter, nothingness. This "nothingness" which is beyond the
encompassment of created spatiality and temporality, is the spiritual realm,
the true home of the soul. From there, the atemporal world of eternality,
came the divine part of man's soul, and it is there that the aspirant seeks to return.



To effect this type of return, the seeker travels figuratively out of the
sublunar region , the earthly realm and across the celestial spheres of the
macrocosm ...



[Suhrawardi] is too subtle in his treatment to be interested in simple
cosmological allegory, for he constantly weaves his narrative fabric from
the warp of the external cosmos and the phenomena of the celestial spheres and from the weft of the internal cosmos, the microcosm of man's inner "celestial" configuration...



A brief survey of the physical cosmos as generally accepted by the
traditional Islamic world:



Suhrawardi's main allegorical descriptions of the heavens reflect the
standard Ptolemaic universe inherited by Islamic civilization from the
Hellenistic world. In this geostatic view of the celestial order, the earth
stands in the concavity of nearly immaterial spheres which contain the
heavenly bodies that revolve around the earth on the ecliptic.



The number of the spheres, though conceptually constant, is variously given by Suhrawardi, depending upon how he is considering them.



They are, from highest to lowest:

1. The Great Sphere of Diurnal Motion, the primum mobile of Latin
cosmography: it revolves westerly once every 24 hours and is responsible for the movement of all the other spheres.

2. The Sphere of Fixed Stars including the 12 Signs of the Zodiac..

3. Sphere of Saturn

4. Sphere of Jupiter

5. Sphere of Mars

6. Sphere of Sun

7. Sphere of Venus

8. Sphere of Mercury

9. Sphere of the Moon

10-11. Spheres of Ether and Zamharir, part of the sublunar realm of gross
materiality and properly reckoned as the boundary of Earth.



When Suhrawardi alludes to a cosmological 'eight', he means the spheres that contain one or more heavenly body (i.e., Fixed-Stars to the Moon); 'nine' spheres will include the Great Sphere; 'seven' is the number of planetary bodies plus the Moon; and 'eleven' is the total number, including the two sublunar spheres to balance the two highest non-planetary spheres.



The Sun is always said to be in the middle.



In the most cosmologically detailed of the treatises, he gives the allegorical number of the "old men"-- the Intellects of the spheres-- as ten, i.e., the nine upper spheres plus one for the sublunar region.



As Suhrawardi explains, the Great Sphere, represented by the first old man of Treatise II, is much too subtle materially to hold onto the light that emanates from the Creator from without the realm of temporal existence: this sphere is the intermediary or bordeline between being and non-being and thus has but a shadowy hold on materiality so that the emanating light passes through it without being captured.



The dual nature of this sphere is also expressed in terms of the
Suhrawardian symbol of Gabriel's wings: the right wing being an abstraction of the relation of the Prime Intellect (Gabriel) to God's being, is pure "light", i.e. without any taint of "darkness" or materiality, and it is divine in attribute, and represents absolute being.



The left wing, on the other hand, is the essential realization of non-being
as posited in the soul. Thus the Great Sphere (or right wing), with regard to form , is as near to "nothing" as anything can be and still be "something"; while in terms of attribute or predication of God, it is the most "something" that exists. In ontological terms, the Great Sphere is the intermediary between material, temporal and spatial existence and immaterial existence.



It is symbolically represented by Mount Qaf, the mythic mountain range that surrounds the earth.



As the light emanating from the Creator reaches the second sphere, it is
shattered into myriads of small bits, much as a globule of mercury breaks up on a large spinning plate. These small bits of light are the Fixed Stars of the Constellations and Signs of the Zodiac, the primal "workshops" of Treatise III.




Because this sphere is close to the first, it is still too diffuse in force
to capture much light, for which reason the stars of this sphere appear dim
in relation to the light of the planets, which, having much smaller spheres,
are made of coalesced fragments of the light that escape from the sphere
of the fixed stars.



The greatest amount of luminosity belongs to the Sun by virture of its
middle position, where the equilibrium provides the resistance necessary to generate the force to hold enormous luminosty.



From the Sun down to the Earth, the amount of luminosity decreases until
the Moon is reached. In its position as the farthest from the source of
light, and because it has no sphere in its convex, the Moon has no
luminosity of its own and merely reflects the light it receives from the
Sun...



The realm of temporality and spatiality, represented cosmollogically by
the celestial spheres, is finite in extent. Beyond the Great Sphere there is
nothing of matter; and it is this very immaterial, atemporal and non-spatial
realm that the soul must strive to attain in order to regain the original
homeland.



Thus the bird-soul of Treatise I crosses eight mountains to reach the court of the great king, so also must the hawk [Treatise III] traverse the eleven mountains of Qaf when delivered of its bondage.



In all cases, it is matter composed of the four elements (fire, water, earth
and air) and what is coincident with it, that have fettered the soul and
prevent it from escaping its temporary imprisonment.



That which is conjoined with the material, a divisible thing... necessarily
temporal, cannot by its nature comprehend the immaterial eternal.



If we think in Avicennan terms of a vertical orientation ...an orientation
such that "down here" (this corporeal world) is the "west" of this world and
"out there"(the spiritual realm beyond the senses) is the "east" (*mashriq,
lit. "the point whence the dawning rays of the sun emanate) of the "other
world", i.e., the world of the unseen from which the rays of the spiritual
sun arise, then the quest of the soul to regain that original "east" will be
expressed in an external , "vertical" pilgrimage up through the spheres and
ultimately out of the created universe.



In this manner the birds of Treatise I make their quest across the mountains, each representative of one of the celetial spheres, until they finally come to the cities atop the last mountain, where the [beautiful King] dwells... symbolic of the Prime Intellect. The king tells the birds that the remants of the fetters that have clung to their legs since they were trapped by the senses in the oblivion of the material world can be removed only by those who put them there in the first place.



The pilgrimage of the individual soul must inevitably end thus. Although
the soul may attain its goal of finding the "king",  it must return whence it
came and conquer the materiality that has ensared it from the beginning.



Note:  Suhrawardi uses the Arabic word latif to describe the substance of the spheres. In order to avoid the ambiguous term "immaterial", the word "subtle" has been used throughout the translation...




(from The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  translated and introduced by W.M. Thackston, Jr., Octagon Press, 1982.)

Joining 'Sufi' Groups

Q & A with Idries Shah from Learning How To Learn (1978)

    Journeys to the East


Q:  Do you want us to go to the East, or to join Sufi groups?


A : I have said and written so much about Sufism and the
Sufis that some people imagine that I am trying to influence them
to join a cult or a religious grouping.

  It is, in fact, not possible for me to mount such a campaign, as
I will now explain to you.


  Hearing and reading what I have had to say about the Sufis has
caused hordes of the religious-minded to flow towards the often
grotesque versions of Sufism in the East. It has also, with equal
force, caused masses of the curious and greedy to flock around
the guru-ist cults of the West.


  This leaves those who are uninformed, those who want to learn
more of what Sufism is, and those who are unconcerned.


  This operation has been highly successful, but this part of it
has had no higher function for the majority than any other instru-
ment which sorts things - or people - out.



        THE AIM AND THE DESTINATION


A mere journey to the East generally has the effect of the jingle:
`Two men looked out from prison bars/One saw mud, the other
stars.' What is the wayfarer like, quite apart from the road or the
destination? Sheikh Saadi reminds us: `I fear that you will not
reach Mecca, O Traveller, for you are on the road to Turkestan!'


  Take heart from the fact that this tendency to wander about
looking for knowledge, and to set off for distant destinations (sup-
posedly for knowledge but in reality just to get moving) is a very
human tendency. There are plenty of examples of it and of its
consequences, in my Tales of the Dervishes, and how this charac-
teristic cropped up again and again in the lives of the classical
Sufis and their disciples.


  So we have to assess who it is that is proposing to go to `The
East', when this person wants to go, with whom - if anyone - and
to where.


 More people go to the East and find nothing than ever realise
any heart's desire, because they do not know how to structure
their enterprise.


        CAN YOU WAIT 150 YEARS?


Have you heard how Mulla Nasrudin heard that some parrots
live to 150 years -and bought a young one to check whether this
would turn out to be true?


`Joining Sufi groups' is unlikely to be useful to people who
find groups that they have the option to `join', without being ad-
mitted after assessment as to whether they could usefully join.


 One would have to know about the `Sufi group' before giving
an answer which implied that people are likely to encounter real
Sufi groups among the derivative `orders' or `schools' or `teachers'
which have set themselves up publicly ...



        VARIETY OF STATEMENTS


Whether studying in groups or travelling to the East, or whether
otherwise engaged, I note that not many people seem to heed a
wide enough variety of Sufi statements.

 One such which would repay deeper study before searching is
the advice of the illuminate Mumshad Dinwari [recorded in Tadhkirat
al-Awliyya by Faridudin Attar]:


 You learn, he says, by association with a realised teacher. But
you can gain nothing from such a person if you bring a sense of
personal pride.


 The widespread compulsion to do things for which one is 'not
fitted, and also to assume that one's choice of action is appropriate,
is seen everywhere, in all epochs.


In the contemporary world there is an excellent opportunity to see
this working in the human behaviour reported in the daily and
weekly Press. Take this almost random example. It shows be-
haviour which underlies such things as unthinking group-joining
or journeys to the East. Are they the product of spiritual aspira-
tions or of sheer non-thinking elevated into a virtue?


 A cat-burglar, who climbed girders and houses to steal, and
who carried out at least forty-one thefts, was caught and brought
to court. Of course he was caught, in spite of his great skill:
because he happened to have no legs, having had them amputated
years before.*



*Daily Telegraph (London) 9 September 1977, p, 19, col. 3.



from Learning How To Learn (1978) by Idries Shah, pgs. 50-52. 

Study Points

Q & A with Idries Shah, from Learning How To Learn

Q : May I have any brief aphorisms or statements which I can 
register and study, which will help to progress on the Sufi path?


A : If you are not a viable unit in the ordinary world, you will
not become one elsewhere. If you have a poor capacity for making
human contacts, we cannot offer you the substitute of a community
where `we understand one another'. That belongs to play-life,
what some, of course, generally call real life.


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


  If you are accustomed to being supported and kept going by
social, psychological and other pressures in the everyday world,
there is a sense in which you do not really exist at all. The people
who collapse in the often unpressured-dervish atmosphere and who
slack, become tiresome to others, or seek to attract or obtain
attention: they will fall to pieces and one cannot help them.


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


 Try to remember; and, if you cannot remember, try to become
familiar with this idea:


 Lots of people who imagine that they are with us because they
are physically present, or because by the ordinary tests (feelings
of loyalty, indoctrination) are ostensibly present, lots of those
people are not effectively here at all. If you are one of those
people, there is nothing we can do for you. If you are like an
ordinary person: that is, if you have the tendency to `be here'
only for limited and primitive amusement, but have it only as a
tendency and not a way of life: then we can perhaps make some
progress.


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


 Remember that the human being is so intensely standardised
 that an outside observer, noting his reactions to various stimuli,
need not infer an individual controlling brain in each person. He
would be more likely to infer the existence of a separate, outside
brain, and the people as mere manifesters of its will.


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


  Register the fact that:

  Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means
of your greed. They attract you because what they say or do
appeals to your greed. This is concealed only by their appear-
ance. If you stop listening to their words and look at the effect,
you will soon see it.


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


  Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy. So,
if someone says: `Do not be greedy, be generous', you may in-
wardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a
greed for generosity. This, however, remains greed.

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


  There are some things which you have to do for yourself.
These include familiarising yourself with study-materials given to
you. You can only really do this - and thus acquire real qualities
- if you suspend the indulgence of desire for immediate satis-
factions.


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

  All members of contemporary societies, with few exceptions,
are in need of graduating from primitive morality to a higher one.
The primitive one is the one which tells you, like a child, that
honesty will make you happy, make you successful, get you to
higher things. Honesty, you may now be informed, is essential as
an instrument, not to be worshipped as a seldom-attained
emotion-loaded ideal.


******************
               
Sufis have their own methods of deterring unsuitable people. 
You may only know one or two ways. Pay attention to the tech- 
niques which, for instance, deter by compelling people to conclude that they are worthless.


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


What you may take to be attractive, or even spread out by us 
to be attractive to you, may well not be intended in this manner at 
all. That which attracts you, or others, about us may be that 
which is laid down by us as a tool which enables us to regard
you (or others) as unsuitable.


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

One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, 
sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think 
that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you 
seek some mark of favour or `promotion', know that you are not 
ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is 
irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you 
are fit for it.


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


Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if 
you are unfit for it.


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


You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a 
source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the con-
tact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of 
formal effort.


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


You can learn and equip yourself with latent knowledge, whose 
development comes at a later stage. Only those who insist upon 
instant attention want anything else.


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


The role of the teacher is to provoke capacity in the student, to 
provide what there is when it will be useful, to guide him towards
progress. It is not to impress, to give an impression of virtue,
power, importance, general information, knowledge or anything
else.


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

Systematic study or behaviour is valuable when it is of use.
When it is not, it can be poisonous.


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

Those who seek consistency as a major factor, in people or in
study materials, are seeking system at a stage where it is not indicated. Children and savages do this, when they ask for in-
formation which will explain or make possible `everything'. Con-
sistency is, however, on offer from those people whose business it
is to offer comfort and reassurance as objectives.


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

If you seek illumination or understanding when what you really
need is information or rest from pressures, you will get none of
these things. If you know what you want, you should go and get it.


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

If you carry the habit of judging things into an area where it does not apply, you will judge in a manner which will not
correspond with your needs.


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

 You cannot work on a higher level entirely with the concepts,
language and experiences of a lower level. Higher level work is in
a combination of manners and relationships.


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


 The ultimate absurdity, incapacitating from real learning beyond   the stage you have reached, is to imagine that one thing is an-
other. If you think that a book is a sandwich, you may try to eat
it, and will not be able to learn what a book can teach. If, too,
you imagine that you are being `open' or `working' or eager to
learn when you are only playing a social game, you will learn
nothing. The people who refuse to play that game with you will
also, of course, sooner or later annoy you.


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

 Human organisations can take two forms: entities which are
set up to express or attain the aspirations of their members; and
those which exist in order to acquire or provide something which
is needed. Wants and needs are not the same. The difference is in
information. If people know what they need, they do not have to
confuse wants with needs.


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

 If you do not know already the difference between opinion and
fact, you can study it in the daily and weekly newspapers.




from Learning How To Learn (1978) by Idries Shah, pgs 157-161.

The Path, the Duties & Techniques (IV)

excerpts from "The Path and the Duties and Techniques"

by Idries Shah

 As we continue with our consideration of Sufi theoretical and
practical approaches to inner knowledge, we will be able to note
two things which are of present-day interest. The first is that the
setting up of a group of concepts, to enable the mind to approach
something, can easily become, in insensitive hands, stabilized as a
cult. Second, that, in approaching the cultivation of deeper
awareness, the Sufis have postulated and employed sequences of
experiences based on the ever-deeper and successively superseded
ranges of understanding. In most more familiar systems we have,
on the contrary, only one form of `higher consciousness': for the
Sufis there are at least five.

          THE FIVE SUBTLETIES

 This brings us to the conceptual framework of the Five
Subtleties. The human being is stated, in Sufi presentation, to
contain five elements of the `relative' and five of the `absolute'.
Five, that is, which belong to secondary things, referred to as The
World, and five which are beyond limitation or dimensions, and
which refer to the different manifestations of the various levels of
consciousness beyond ordinarily recognizable physics.

 There are said to be five centres of spiritual perception,
corresponding to these ranges of experience. They are conceived of
as having physical locations in the human body.

 These Five Subtleties (Lataif-i-Khamsa) do not exist literally.
They are located in the body because the postures of extending
attention to these areas are held to orientate the mind towards
higher understanding and illumination.

 The secondary, or `Commanding' self - which rules the person-
ality most of the time and which provides the barrier against
extra-dimensional perception - is not one of these Subtle organs,
but it has a `location', in the area of the navel. Concentration on this
spot may be said to be connected with the attempt to transform this
Self.
 

But we are dealing with the higher faculties. They are named as
follows:

MIND, on the left side, whose `field' is approximately where the
 heart is. Called QALB = the Heart centre;

SPIRIT, on the right side, opposite MIND. This is known as
 ROUH, sometimes translated as the Soul centre;

SECRET, the first stage of higher consciousness, located between
 the first two, in the solar plexus. The original term is SIRR,
 which has been called `inner consciousness';

MYSTERIOUS, in the forehead between the eyes but just above
 them. Its name is KHAFI, which carries the connotation of deep
 secrecy;

and finally comes
THE DEEPLY HIDDEN, which is resident in the brain and
 whose `field' of operation may move between the brain and the
 centre of the chest. Its technical name is AKHFA, which stands
 for `most hidden'.
 

The organ of stimulation of the Five Centres is the transformed
consciousness, the personality originally found in the form of the
Commanding Self, when it has been through its refining process.

 The concentration upon certain colours helps to awaken them:
MIND is equated with yellow, SPIRIT with red; SECRET
(consciousness) with white; MYSTERIOUS with black and
DEEPLY HIDDEN with green.
 

We must always remember that this is descriptive, and that the
student has to go through with the experience of it. It is not enough
to memorize, as many people do, this kind of material, and imagine
that one knows something. It is harmful to experiment with these
centres.

 This imagining that one has knowledge because one has a
description of an instrument is common in all cultures. It is well
known in the teaching of Western-type knowledge in the East,
where people may take your word for things you want them to
work through.

      WHAT THE TEACHER KNOWS

 In a story about this, one Eastern student said to another:
 `I don't think that our new American geometry teacher knows
much.'
 `How come?' asks his friend.
 `Well, he said "The square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares an the other two sides",
and I said "Yes". But he couldn't have been very sure of his facts, 
for he then said: "Now YOU prove it!" '

 Just as there are several forms of consciousness, which have to be 
awakened and experienced, to avoid distortions or failure, in a
certain manner, carefully researched, there are four types of
so-called miraculous happenings. Again, the Sufis - unlike other
extant schools - do not merely seek wonders or label them all as
significant. They work with them in accordance with certain scales
of value...

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

            A FLOWERLESS GARDEN

These schemata, as I have said, part of an ongoing and complete
tradition, are of little value simply on the printed page, and even
less when merely adopted without the technical knowledge and
total situation necessary. But to record them and display some part
of the pattern is just about worthwhile. It certainly shows how
other systems look like partial derivations from these very
schemata. But looked at without activity one can say of them
something like that man said when he was shown a certain garden:

`Take away the flowers and design, and what have you got, after
all?' 

When there is a Sufi school, it has its own pace of travelling, and
its carefully-balanced character must be preserved. People always
want more for less, always seek stimulation from materials and
hardly ever think of the enormous amount of work which lies
behind many a successful human (and every single spiritual)
operation.

       GOING FASTER ...

I often think about a certain story, when I remember that the
Sufi activity must remain coherent in the sense of being one whole,
which you cannot desert, or simplify, without dismantling it. This   
is why, however much you might like an easier ride with this

subject, I can't give it to you. This story is about the man in a slow

train which had stopped, for the hundredth time, at a wayside

 station. He jumped out of his carriage and ran to the driver.

`Can't you go any faster?' he roared at him.

'Yes, Sir, I can certainly go faster - but I am not allowed to leave the train!' 

from A Perfumed Scorpion by Idries Shah (1978)

The Path, the Duties & Techniques (III)

excerpts from "The Path and the Duties and Techniques"

by Idries Shah

 

 In a Sufi training system, there are rules which the members are
expected to follow in that part of their development which comes
within their own purview. The one which is most often quoted
comes from the ancient teachings of the `Masters of the Design', to
which my own background is referred. I find that it has direct
connections with the conditions of the mind of people in both the
East and West of today. Perhaps that is why the system I am about
to describe is called the `Everlasting Necessities':

  THE ELEVEN RULES OF THE NAQSHBANDIYYA
        (MASTERS OF THE DESIGN)

 Eleven mnemonic phrases refer to the framework within which
the Sufic development takes place in the school often called the
original teaching system of the Sufis. The Naqshbandiyya,
although they have a chain of succession of mentors, believe that
not all masters were public figures, but that all teachers are in
inner, call it telepathic, communication.

 The Naqshbandis are associated with: reviving and updating the
teachings periodically; being recognized as competent to interpret
all forms of Sufism; being able to initiate into all orders; using
ordinary clothes and entering into the ordinary activities of the
world, through which they carry on part of their work, and
initiating methods which others often copy as the externals of cults.

[The manner in which the Rules are presented will vary in accordance to the state of the student's 'self', and also with reference to the characteristics of the culture in which the teaching is projected]

 In the psychological sense, the Eleven Rules may be looked at
in this way: 

             

 1. Awareness of Breathing. Linked with remembering and
exercise of reaching forward for subtle perceptions.

 2. Gaze on the Steps. Awareness of actions, watchfulness of
everything which one does; concentration.

 3. Travel in One's own Land. Exploration of the student's own
mind by himself, establishing the watchfulness connected with the
transformation of the Self.

 4. Solitude in Company. The ability to remove one's conscious-
ness from company, as well as to re-attach it.

 5. Remembering. Conceiving that there is an `interrupted'
contact between humanity and the beyond. The posture of
reaching mentally to it helps to restore the contact; dedication.

 6. Restraint. Literally, `pulling back', a technical term for prayer
in a certain form.

 7. Watchfulness. The exclusion of distractions and alertness for
subtle perceptions.

 8. Recollection. Also termed `noting', this stands for becoming
aware of Absolute Truth as in some sense present.

 9. Pause of Time. Reprise of thought and action, and other
pauses in time.

 10. Pause of Numbers. Awareness of the number of repetitions of
a certain formula; certain forms of counting.

 11. Pause of the Heart. Visualization of the heart; special exercise
of an identification of the individual with the ultimate.

 The way in which these exercises are carried out is a matter for
personal tuition. The teacher monitors and prescribes for altera-
tions in awareness which follow these practices. They are subject
to careful adjustment and cannot be automatically performed.

Certain special movements and visualizations, combined with
other factors, are employed in various schemes of the Sufis to help
to develop subtler stages of consciousness.

Luckily, most people who involve themselves in imitations of
these studies on their own initiative stay at the stage where they do
little harm to themselves or to others. It is, in fact, far better that
they should play at being mystics than that they should become
obsessional or fall into the hands of charlatans.

       BEARD, CLOAK AND ROSARY

 I cannot resist, thinking of ancient formulae, referring to the
story of the man with a bushy beard, wearing a rosary around his
neck, dressed in a hooded cloak, with long and greasy hair, who
was anxious, recently, to tell everyone that he was `A Sufi'.

 Someone - who really was a Sufi - asked him why he was
behaving like that. He said: `I am following the instructions and
information contained in this ancient handbook for disciples.'

 `But', said the real Sufi, `that cannot apply now - it was written
several centuries ago . . .'

 `That may well be' said the new `Sufi', `But I only found it last
month!'

 The schemata just given will indicate that the Sufi approach is
characterized by a systematic dealing with a succession of
developments in the learner, to avoid distorted results. Many of the
supposedly magical and mystical procedures which are found in
books, ascribed to other teachings, have been recognized by Sufis
and others as having been based on a partial understanding of these
processes, or ones similar to them. This may reinforce the Sufi
assertion that there is essentially only one method of carrying on
these investigations, and that that method - prominent features of
which I am now citing - itself emerges from the insight obtained
from penetrating beyond normal limitations. It is, in short, the
 original framework of what has been called the `science of man',
 certainly for centuries before the phrase became current as `the
 human sciences'.

 As a recent example of this assessment, made by someone
 looking at Sufi ideas and practices objectively (in the sense that he
is not an occultist, orientalist or Sufi) we can observe the view of the
well-known poet Ted Hughes, who wrote - after a consideration
of the published materials:

 `One often comes across references to the "secret doctrine",
 some mysterious brotherhood that is said to hold the keys to
 everything in the West outside Christianity, that touches the
 occult: tarot cards ... secret societies, Rosicrucians, Masons,
 The Kabbalah. (It is now clear) that in fact all these things
 originated among the Sufis and represent degenerate, strayed
 filterings of the doctrine . . .(thus) many forlorn puzzles in the
 world ... suddenly come into organic life . . .'*

[See Ted Hughes, in The Listener (London) October 29, 1964]

 Two points are worth making here. First, most of the external
formulations referred to by Hughes, and many more, have been
traced to temporary teaching groups in the Middle East by scholars
and others, and the materials have been in print for a good number
of years. The Sufis do not claim to have originated all of them, but
they traditionally have claimed that, at the point of higher
consciousness attained to by various mystical formulations, the
Sufi experience and that of such `other' frameworks is identical.
There is very little doubt, either, that this kind of grouping is to be 
found at the present time, in general, only in a very defective and
overgrown form, as mere cults.


Second, the reference to Christianity is rather wide of the mark, for the Sufi understanding of Christianity is so deep that Sufis are often called `secret Christians'  in the East, and esteem Jesus as a Teacher of the Path, combining the instrumental and prophetic functions. As already noted, Sufis were regarded as authorities on Christianity in the Middle Ages in the Christian West. They believe, however, that dogma and liturgy are bases, not ultimates, and that direct experience of religion is the objective of which externals are stepping-stones. The cargo-cult  was in operation in the West long before the New Guinea people discovered it ...




From A Perfumed Scorpion (1978) by Idries Shah 

The Path, the Duties and Techniques (II)

excerpts from "The Path and the Duties and Techniques"

by Idries Shah

THE STATIONS AND THE STATES

 Now we may turn to the exercises and the concepts which
surround them. First of all there is the Station, called Maqam. This
is the word for the quality which, at any given moment, the student
is cultivating, under the instructions of his director. He may be
expected to stabilise himself on, say, Taubat (turning back,
repentance) until his teacher assigns him to another developmental
exercise. It is a posture, and so is termed `an act'. In one sense it is a
`stage', a word which has also been used for it.

  But a Stage is not a State. `States' are episodes of altered
consciousness which come upon the individual without his being
able to control them. The `State' is also known as a'gift'. The main
objective of Sufis experiencing these flashes is to get beyond them.
The eminent teacher Junaid of Baghdad emphasises that `States are
like flashes of lightning: their permanence is merely a suggestion of
the lower self'.[Quoted by Hujwiri, in the Revelation of the Veiled]

 This means that their filtering through the
unaltered ego causes delusions. If they can be felt, and are valued

instead of conducting to the stage of perceptual breakthrough, the
student is in a rut.

 Being in one or other `Station' is seen as a sort of necessary
bondage, part of the training of the Commanding Self, and a time
comes when this is no longer necessary. Similarly, the `States'
indicate a contaminant in the person, who should instead (and
eventually will, it is hoped) experience knowledge instead of
intoxication or dazzle. The passage in Hujwiri's book, the first one
in Persian on Sufism, goes like this:

 `All the Teachers of this Path are agreed that when a man has
escaped from the captivity of Stations, and got away from the
contamination of States, and is liberated from the abode of change
and decay [dependence upon time and place] and becomes
endowed with praiseworthy qualities, he is disjoined from all
qualities. That is to say, he is not held in bondage by any
praiseworthy quality of his own, nor does he care about it, nor does
it make him conceited. His state is hidden from the perception of
intelligence, and his time is exempt from the influence of
thoughts.'*

The Sufi director knows by the behaviour of the student what
the condition of his secondary, `commanding' self is at any given
time.

 In countries where Sufi studies are full of prestige, and yet where
only the `circuses' take on almost all comers as members, there is
some pressure on real Sufis to accept disciples.

    TALE OF THE AMAZING EXPERIENCES

 One joke about this is that of the would-be disciple who, full of
what he had read in books and heard from the members of
excitatory `orders', went to talk of his experiences to a real Sufi.

 `Master', he cried, `I have had amazing experiences of a spiritual
sort, which prove to me that I am destined to become an
illuminated Sufi, and you must therefore take me on as a pupil - in
fact I already have students of my own!'

 The Sufi smiled, and said: `Brother, forget all this talk of
"amazing experiences". The real candidates for self-realization are

those who have felt nothing at all or who do so no longer. Now what
was amazing about your experiences?'

 `The amazing thing is', said the dauntless applicant, `that these
were experiences in which I experienced absolutely nothing at
all.'

 This is the unaltered, commanding self, in action, though such
behaviour usually takes place silently, within the person, and we
don't often get opportunities of seeing it externalized as beautifully
as this.

 Let us look at this part-conditioned, part-uncontrolled self in its
various stages:

   THE CONDITIONS OF THE HUMAN SELF:

 The Self, called the Nafs, goes through certain stages in Sufi
development, first existing as a mixture of physical reactions,
conditioned behaviour and various subjective aspirations.

 The seven stages of the Self constitute the transformation
process, ending with the stage of perfection and clarification. Some
have called this process the 'refinement of the Ego'.

 The stages are:

 The Commanding Self
 The Accusing Self
 The Inspired Self
 The Tranquil Self
 The Satisfied Self
 The Satisfying Self
 The Purified and Completed Self

 Each one of the words given above signifies. a major characteris-
tic of the Self in its upward ascent, hence, in Sufi eyes, most people
in all cultures are generally familiar only with the first stage of the
self as represented in their ethical systems as something which
seeks only its own interests. The ordinary person, staying at the
level of ordinary religious and moral teaching, is at the stage which
the Sufis would regard as only struggling with the Commanding
Self, with, in action, the Accusing Self reproaching itself for its
shortcomings. It is because of this scheme that observers have
 styled Sufi development as going five stages beyond that known to
the ordinarily `Moral' person.

 It cannot be denied that in Sufi eyes the stages of human service,
for instance, and concern for others, are regarded as not very great
achievements, though lauded to the skies in moralistic-centred
systems as almost impossible of attainment. Hence when Saadi
says in the 13th century:

 All Adam's sons are limbs of one another,
 Each of the self-same substance as his brothers,
 So, while one member suffers ache and grief,
 The other members cannot win relief.
 Thou, who are heedless of thy brother's pain,
 It is not right at all to name thee man ...
                    (Gulistan, tr. Browne)

he means that the Sufis, though recognizing its vital importance,
still keep the door open for many stages of greater function for
humankind. They maintain that to regard human well-being,
though essential, as the highest possible, the sublime, achievement
of humanity, is to limit oneself so much that it is, effectively, a
pessimistic and unacceptably limited stance. Again, the desire for
human well-being is the minimum, not the maximum, duty of
humanity.

 The Commanding Self is the origin of the individual controlled
by a composite consciousness, which is a mixture of hopes and
fears, of training and imagination, of emotional and other factors,
which make up the person in his or her `normal' state, as one would
ordinarily call it. It is the state of most of the people who have
not undergone the clarification process.

 The Accusing Self is the state of the Self when it is able to
monitor its behaviour and perceive the secondary nature of so
many things formerly imagined to be primary, the actual relativity
of assumed absolutes, and so on. This part of the man or woman is
both the check on imperfect action and also the area through which
the legitimate reproach of others or of the environment gets
through to the individual. This is the stage of ordinary conscience.
Most people stop and mill around here.

 When the depraved or commanding self and the reproaching or
accusing selves have done their work, the organ of perception and
action becomes susceptible to the entry of perceptions formerly
blocked. For this reason it is termed the Inspired Self. In this stage
come the first indications, albeit imperfect ones, of the existence
and operation of a reliable higher element, force, power or
communications system.

 Although people have often translated the word Nafs, which we
call `Self' here, as `soul', it is in fact not such at all, but what might
be called the real personality of the individual. The word for soul is
`rouh', spirit.

 The so-called lower self, the Nafs, passes through the stages in
which it is said to `die', and be transformed. Since it also is held to
die on physical death, the phrase for this process is `dying before
you die'. Hence the death and rebirth cycle takes place in this life
instead of being assigned, as in the Hindu model, to supposed
literal reincarnation births and deaths.

 Attempts to cause the self to operate out of sequence; that is, to
receive perceptions when the third stage has not been reached, or
to provoke and benefit from mystical experience before the fifth
stage, produces the sort of confusion - and sometimes worse -
which is reflected in some current literature of experimenters who
choose their own sequence of events, and may cause developments
which they cannot handle.

 It also makes people crazy or nearly so. Many of these imagine
themselves to be spiritual teachers, and some of them convince
others that they are, too.

 The inner psychological problems of people who try to force
developments in their psychic life are a matter for clinical, or even
experimental, psychology. But there are many who stop short of
this, who have not even got to the stage where they realize that their
superficial interest in metaphysics bars them from something
deeper, and who try exercises mechanically or spasmodically. No
wonder they try to store up with emotion.

 Some of these are often otherwise quite nice people. They get
superficial delusions, because of a rationalizing tendency.

       THE INVISIBLE TEACHER
 

I remember one such, whose supposed mystical career was
attributed by him to `fate' for just this kind of reason.

 I lived quite near to him, and began to hear that he was passing
on messages from an `invisible teacher'.

 One evening, however, he confessed to me that the teacher did
not really exist.

 I said: `How could you plot such a deception? Lots of people
believe you. You must be very unprincipled.'

 `No,' he said, `It is Fate. I have been chosen by a strange and
mysterious method. This is how it happened.'

 He had written to someone he called a `Holy Dervish' (presum-
ably as distinct from an unholy one) and asked him to come for a
visit, to speak to a group of people in his town. He had already
informed everyone he could that the great man was coming, when
the appointed date arrived with no answer and no dervish. The
people collected, and my friend sat on a platform before them, in
silence, waiting. When everyone had been there some time, one of
the local people stood up and said: `I have understood your
meaning. The Holy Dervish has not come because he is invisible
and you are his representative. We accept you!'

 `Well,' continued my friend, `if that was not me being chosen as a
teacher, through the inner working of fate, what is? I could never
have planned such a thing!'



From A Perfumed Scorpion (1978) by Idries Shah 

The Path, the Duties & Techniques (I)

excerpts from "The Path and the Duties and Techniques"

by Idries Shah

 ...The duty of the teacher is, notes Ghazzali in his Book of Wisdom, 

that "he shall not withhold any advice needed by the student;
neither may he allow him to try to reach any stage until he is able to
master it, or to permit him to attempt anything intricate until he
has perceived the simple things which precede it . . ." [You can't
get very far with someone who takes a prayer book back to the
book-store `because it doesn't work'!].

He must make sure that the student realizes that this knowledge cannot endure together with competitiveness, boasting or a desire for power in respect to it.

[See Ghazzali, Kitab Al-Ilm (Book of Wisdom).]

The protection of knowledge, affirms Ghazzali, from those who
might distort it, is more important than teaching itself. And the
operation of teachership is so important, as Aflaki notes, so vital
that a learned man who does not act is - effectively - an
ignoramus [Munaqib].

 There are many characteristics of the teacher noted by this
standard author, but the Duties of the Student are those which
tend to interest newcomers to this field. There are ten of them:

     THE TEN DUTIES OF THE STUDENT

1. The first duty is that the student must make himself inwardly
clean. This means that he must be able to operate without the
distorting effects of anger, greed, envy, and so on, which are not
really regarded by Sufis as human, but rather as pre-human.

2. The second duty is to have worldly interests, but only to the
extent that they are needed by the social environment. The
watchword here is that `Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he
gives everything to it.'

3. The third duty is of complete submission to the teacher. This is,
of course, part of a contract of mutual and total respect. Ghazzali
illustrates this with a story about a time when the secretary of the
Prophet Mohammed, was about to mount a mule. Ibn-Abbas, a
member of the Prophet's family, came forward to hold the stirrup.
The Secretary said: `O Cousin of the Prophet! Do not trouble
yourself'. Ibn Abbas answered: `We have been commanded to treat
thus the Wise.' Then the Secretary kissed the hand of Ibn Abbas,
saying: `And we, too, have been commanded to revere the
Apostolic Family'. Knowledge cannot be attained except through
humility. This relationship is quite different from the guruist
submission system.

4. The fourth duty is not to concern oneself with apparent
differences in formulation and opinion of the various studies. The
student must follow and acquire the form which is that of his
teacher.

5. The fifth duty is that the student should familiarise himself with
areas of laudable knowledge, apart from his own field. This is
because knowledge is interrelated, and because ignorance of other
branches of learning so often produces bigotry and scorn.

6. The sixth duty is that the student should study whatever he is
following in its due order. Sufi knowledge is the most advanced
knowledge, it is noted here. It is quite different from mere
repetition and assuming various beliefs handed down by one's
predecessors. This is as true in religion as in anything else.

 

7. The seventh duty is not to approach one part of study before that
which comes before it has been completed. This is because each
stage prepares for the next.

 This caution about doing things in the right succession can be
illustrated by the tale of the illiterate peasant who learnt to read.
Someone stopped him in the street and said: `Well, friend, I
suppose you're reading the Bible now?' `Bible?' demanded the
peasant indignantly, `I got past that months ago. I'm on the
horse-racing results now . . .'

8. The eighth duty is to understand the relative ranking of the
 various studies. Inner development, for instance, is higher than
 those studies which do not deal in human durability.

 
 

 9. The ninth duty is that the aim should be self-improvement, not
 visible power, or influence, or disputation. Neither should one
despise such external studies as are carried out by others, which
 might include law, literature and religious observances.

 10. The tenth duty is to know the connection between the various
 studies, so that one should not concentrate closely on relatively
 unimportant things at the expense of perhaps distant though
 significant ones. What is really significant is of real importance to
 the student.

  

 From A Perfumed Scorpion (1978) by Idries Shah 

Counsels

Counsels of Bahaudin Naqshband
Translated by Idries Shah


FIRST

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

SECOND

Never rely upon what you believe to be inner experiences because it is only when you get beyond them that you will reach knowledge. They are there to deceive you.

THIRD

Never travel in search of knowledge unless you are sent. The desire to travel for learning is a test, not a command.

FOURTH


Never trust a belief that a man or a community is the supreme one, because this feeling is a conviction, not a fact. You must progress beyond conviction, to fact.

FIFTH

Never allow yourself to be hurt by what you imagine to be criticism by a teacher, nor allow yourself to remain elated because of praise. These feelings are barriers in your way, not conductors of it.

SIXTH

Never imitate or follow a man of humility who is also mean in material things, for such a man is being proud in material things. If you are mean, practice generosity as a corrective, not as a virtue.

SEVENTH

Be prepared to realize that all beliefs which were due to your surroundings were minor ones, even though they were once of much use to you. They may become useless and, indeed, pitfalls.

EIGHTH

Be prepared to find that certain beliefs are correct, but that their meaning and interpretation may vary in accordance with your stage of journey, making them seem contradictory to those who are not on the Path.

NINTH

Remember that perception and illumination will not at first be of such a character that you can say of them 'This is perception' or 'This is illumination.'

TENTH

Never allow yourself to measure everything by means of the same time measurement. One thing must come before another.

ELEVENTH

If you think too much of the man, you will think in a disproportionate manner about the activity. If you think too much about yourself, you will think wrongly about the man. If you think too much about the books, you will not be thinking correctly about other things. Use one as a corrective for the others.

TWELFTH

Do not rely upon your own opinion when you think you need books and not exercises. Rely less upon your belief when you think you need exercises and not books.

THIRTEENTH

When you regard yourself as a disciple, remember that this is a stage which you take up in order to discover what your true distance is from your teacher. It is not a stage which you can measure, like how far you stand from a building.

FOURTEENTH

When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you. If you imagine that you should not go on, it is not because you are not convinced or have doubts. It is because you are failing the test. You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.

FIFTEENTH

Banish doubt you cannot. Doubt goes when doubt and belief as you have been taught them go. If you forsake a path, it is because you were hoping for conviction from it. You seek conviction, not self-knowledge.

SIXTEENTH

Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands. It is a question of whether he can help you to help yourself, for you have too little means to do so. Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it. Believing that one can trust is a false belief. If you wonder, 'Can I trust?' you are really wondering, 'Can I develop a strong enough opinion to please me?'

SEVENTEENTH

Never mistake training for ability. If you cannot help being what people call 'good' or 'abstemious', you are like the sharpened reed which cannot help writing if it is pushed.

EIGHTEENTH

When you have observed or felt emotion, correct this by remembering that emotions are felt just as strongly by people with completely different beliefs. If you imagine that this experience - emotion - is therefore noble or sublime, why do you not believe that stomach ache is an elevated state?

NINETEENTH

If a teacher encourages you, he is not trying to attach you to him. He is trying, rather, to show you how easily you can be attracted. If he discourages you, the lesson is that you are at the mercy of discouragement.

TWENTIETH

Understanding and knowledge are completely different sensations in the realm of Truth than they are in the realm of society. Anything which you understand in an ordinary manner about the Path is not understanding within the Path, but exterior assumption about the Path, common among unconscious imitators.


from Thinkers of the East, by Idries Shah, 1971

The Sacred Knowledge (XII)

Miscellaneous excerpts from The Sacred Knowledge, by Shah Waliullah of Delhi (d. 1762); translated & edited by G.N. Jalbani and David Pendlebury (Octagon Press 1982)




The Intellect & the Inner and Outer Senses


... if we try to use external senses to perceive anything other than
their own objects they will not understand them at all. On the contrary;
as far as the senses are concerned, anything else simply does not exist... if we used them to try to perceive hunger, anger or shame, it would take these things to be totally non-existent and would be able to gather nothing whatsoever about them.


*********


... the inner senses, such as imagination, fantasy and volition, also have
their own perceptions... If these faculties are used for perceptions other
than these , they will merely become bewildered, and their own properties
will be disturbed...


The intellect, which is the tongue of the sublime spirit , has a certain
range of perceptions, within which it may freely move and act . But once the intellect moves beyond the range of what it can perceive , then it becomes perplexed and its properties are disturbed ...

Men of intellect habitually dispute amongst themselves over subjects such as these; and it even happens that a single intellectual will contradict himself on two separate occasions.

Meanwhile, the knotty problem remains and no progress is made.

The actual cause of the dispute lies beyond the scope of the intellect
and is reckoned, by way of analogy and resemblance, to be one of the
concepts...

The fact of the matter is that it does not belong to any conceptual category whatsoever. The analogies which have been drawn are fallacious, or else are simply some poetical fancy remembered from somewhere or other. It is this that lies at the root of all their disputations; and those who have failed to grasp this point , are as a consequence, forever locked in conflict.

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

An entity cannot perceive other than itself or what is like itself.


***********

... at the very point where multiplicity should be cast aside,
and the unity within unity should be perceived, the intellect is crippled
and handicapped...

There does exist a path from contingent accidents back to their
essential substance . Instinctively, the source extricates itself from the
accidental and approaches the essential....

[the intellect can become] aware of the error of the intellect, and is thus
not deflected from the Path. In short, we may describe the intellect as a
faculty in which primary and secondary concepts are represented . It is here that the analytical teachings and proofs of the law belong. The intellect can comprehend certain realities directly and certain others only behind a veil. However close it may come to subtlety, it is connected and its attention is directed to the faculties of comprehension and thought which have been located in the center of the brain.

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

The intellect is the tongue of the sublime spirit and is one of its
faculties . Whatever involves discrimination and investigation is entrusted
to it. Its inward aspect is the secret faculty. At the time of unification
with the supreme manifestation or the exalted assembly, the intellect
perceives that inward aspect, but its perception is mixed and confused.

When it comes down a little from this state, that same perception becomes the hearing and vision of the spirit. If anyone uses the word intellect instead of the word "taste" , his speech does not accord with conventional language, but there is no harm in that.

According to us the word "taste" is used to describe  perception in which there is no abstraction of concepts and no room for the analytical teachings and proofs of the law. Such a perception is in fact " the presence of a thing by itself, for itself, in itself and of itself."


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

The Universal Soul

There is nothing perceptible to sense or reason alongside the universal soul so that in keeping with the dictum "things are known by their opposites" men's minds might act freely within it and might be able to tell it apart from other things. For all of time it is by itself and in itself never has it turned towards itself with renewed attention. In no circumstance has it ever sought to reinvestigate itself, and yet from all that it is subtlety within subtlety, simplicity within simplicity "... exempt from any taint of attachment" even if the intellect were to try it could never attain to this grace. The only result would be bewilderment.

However those who are endowed with the faculty of taste can in fact
perceive this by way of "the presence of a thing for itself, with itself and
in itself." As a result, their intellect receives a hint of that condition.
Such people are thus like the man who has a squint and yet is aware of the fact.

... philosophers have failed to establish the true common factor between the essential substance and the contingent accident and have thus not recognized the universal soul as the highest genus. The reason for this is the total annihilation which supervenes in the presence of the universal soul. According to their intellect , the testimony of someone concerning that which is witnessed for and by itself and which cannot be known to the intellect is simply not to be credited.


In the world of ideas, accidents become essential substance; and conversely, essential substances become accidents in the domain of imagination with the mental picture accurately matching external existence.


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

When certain people of intuition look deep within themselves, the universal soul appeared to them. They gave it the name of "being" and discerned in it such subtlety and simplicity, far transcending the scope of rational thought, that they supposed it to be precisely the self-existent divine being.

Subsequently, whenever any simple or subtle thing reached them they made it accord with that being and were content to remain forever with this degree of knowledge... These people contented themselves with what was merely one of its aspects and did not encompass all of its dimensions . Had they understood the universal soul in depth they would never have called it the origin of origins. There are others who have passed beyond the universal soul and understood the Pure Essence as the first of the first and the universal soul as the first emanation and unfolding of being into the manifold forms of existence. However, they mixed all of this together, gave it one name and lumped it altogether under one heading. They mixed up some realities with others and classified the most subtle of them as the inward aspects of the others.

***************
Thoughts



Any thought which occurs within a man's mind partakes of one of the
following three situations:

It takes place in the heart alone. Thoughts of this kind are called "states"
and "moments": such emotions as fear, hope, depression, elation, love,
regret and grief.

Alternatively it may take place in the intellect alone, sometimes in the
form of a disclosure of future events , sometimes as a premonition .

The third situation arises when it is located in both the heart and the
intellect. The intellect imagines and formulates a certain thing while the
heart provides the necessary resolution. Such thoughts are known as
impulses. ...

Sometimes the occurrence of a thought is the result of the way in which the intellect, heart and self are constituted-- just as, for example , hunger, thirst, lust or coldness give rise to a particular impulse. It may be that love for someone calls for a meeting; or perhaps the black humour spreads
dark temptations which lead to like actions; or else the yellow humours occasion bilious fantasies, leading to depression, hard-heartedness or garrulousness.

Habit also serves as a cause for the behavior of the self. The intellect has been given the power of perception, while the power of decision and intention is located in the heart; and it is in accordance with this disposition that they exercise control .

However, all of this produces a confused jumble of thoughts which the seeker is at pains to avoid. Indeed, he suppresses and eradicates anything which may hinder the fruitful use of his time.

... ['demonic' impulses] always create melancholy, indecision and hardness of heart, and divert the individual from acts of kindness.... calculated to produce base actions and the breakdown of good order... full of fear and horror and all of it is a sheer deception.

Sometimes thoughts come from the "world of ideas"

[two types of communications from world of ideas]

1. There is a particular conjunction of the stars as a result of which a universal event is represented and established as an ideal with an existence of its own in the presence of the supreme manifestation. In such a case, people say, "God wrote such and such, or decided such and such".
This universal event then descends at the proper time and place. The angels in the service of that descending event strive hard on its behalf and if they intuitively recognize anyone who is by nature equal to that event they bring him closer to it by means alternately of contraction and expansion. Thus from their own aspirations are effective the necessary transmission and aspiration and the desired object is achieved.

2. ... human souls have their own particular destiny. Thus the
universal soul does not come down itself into the particular soul, but
rather adapts itself to the form of the world obtaining on that particular
day. The requirement of the particular soul, which will inevitably be
modeled on the actual form of the world, is called destiny, and each man will fare according to his own particular destiny.

...a decree pours down from universal nature and hosts of angels adapted to that inspiration hasten to be present in the battlefield and control the situation by means of inspiration, transmission, contraction and expansion, until that decree is made manifest and the imagined form comes into existence.

It is according to such a pattern that impulses descend into the hearts of
mankind. Sometimes the angels contrive a stratagem to save someone from destruction, sometimes they make a person aware of the real situation by means of dreams or voices, at other times they may uses someone else as a means to convey some information to the individual or to do something for him....


Most of such thoughts percolate through via the energies of the world of
ideas . The angels make no distinction between good and bad in their work of transmission and inspiration....

In addition to the many angels of humanity , there is also a band of pure
souls who do the work of angels and are thus counted among their number....

The science of talismans, the science of letters, and the science of the
'names of god' all derive from a knowledge of this system, or from a branch of it....


Impulses or thoughts which are numbered among the stages of perfection:


1. The first category is when a thought descends from the major self-hood into the minor selfhood ... When the form of the world changes, and the condition of its basic components also changes , then it follows of necessity that the supreme manifestation should also move from one state to another. This is the meaning implied in the words, "every day He is in a new state". The exalted assembly takes on this same coloring. There can be no affinity with pure goodness except by immersion in this influence. Hence it is essential in this case that human souls should be tinged with the coloring of this holy presence, and that it should permeate them through and through ...

Perfected individuals...  have pores and channels connecting them
with the major selfhood and the supreme manifestation, which last is the
heart, as it were, of the major selfhood. Thus it is that this impulse ,
passing via universal nature, reaches these perfected souls and from there connects up with all other souls.

The aspirations of the exalted assembly, as long as they are not stirred up, they will not stir up by themselves... so long as this general aspiration does not become a particular one, the universal expediency will not descend in the form of a particular expedient act, and the precipitation will not be able to flow.

Such an impulse then selects one of those perfected souls... [there is] an expansion in his pure intellect [which] mingles and associates with the supreme manifestation. The impulse is stamped on his pure intellect.

Then the secret faculty and the spirit become amenable to its will. It goes into the intellect and the heart, colors the premonitions of the mind and the states of the heart. This impulse becomes an authoritative pronouncement and can appear in new forms according to the requirements of
the circumstances.

After that, the impulse descends further to the level of the physical body and induces the people to act in accordance with that truth . Thus a new religion or doctrine or line of succession is organized.

 God then pours down a fresh enhancement into the knowledge of the perfect man and inspires his religion and his doctrine so that they may continue through the ages uneffaced. Successive reformers then revive that religion until eventually the complexion of the supreme manifestation changes and this new aspect appears within the heart of another perfect man. Whatever news he gives of the supreme manifestation will contain a hint of that new coloring.
...

The best interpreter of the Truth is the one whose intellect keeps silent
concerning the premonitions and thoughts which arise spontaneously within his mind by virtue of his own innate disposition . Apart from the impulse which we have described above, nothing stirs his intellect or prompts him to any original utterance. The most perfect exemplification of this is to be found in Muhammad, the seal of the prophets... Jesus Christ proclaimed the unification of the pure intellect with the supreme manifestation, thereby creating a mighty stir... Whatever [Muhammad] said was said calmly and with complete sobriety of mind.

2. The training of human souls has its equivalent in the world of ideas and this is the concern of the universal impulse. However, it is essential that a particular impulse should be joined with it. thus this impulse percolates
down into the hearts of upright people who are continuously devoted to the world of ideas and to the angels who are the bearers of this secret. The desire to carry out this work arises in a great number of people and through them it is brought to completion.

Spiritual leaders, reformers of religion , even the guide who is the very axis of the earth, all drink their fill at this fountain....

It may even be that perfected individuals , likewise receive this secret from the presence of the world of ideas and exert themselves accordingly. But in such a case they would be working below their true capacity.

... sometimes it happens that inspiration is directed towards a certain
person but that the import of that inspiration is conveyed via the speech of
someone else who may or may not know the underlying situation and the
intention behind what he says... The latter would appear to the former to
be one of the angels... It might even be that he is brought to an
understanding of that inspiration through the cooing of a dove, the chirping
of a sparrow, or the sound made by some object or other...

3. The luminous angels appointed to watch over the exercises of praise and submission circle around whoever performs them and some of their splendor falls upon his intellect and his heart. If the heart is uppermost, then the quality of the resultant state is one of intimacy and tranquility. But if the intellect is predominant, the blessing takes the form of premonitions. Or else the resolve of his heart becomes linked with the intention to perform
good actions. Such an intention is consistent with the understanding of the angels and is therefore known as " angelic thought"

Sometimes this same state or thought is represented to the perception of the seeker in sleep in the [case of the heart type] that sleep becomes a dream of splendor and bliss and everything connected with intimacy and tranquility. In the [intellectual] type, it takes the form of an admonition, the substance of which is a command either to perform a certain act or to desist from doing an evil one. This is in fact a revelation of the mind which has appeared in the individual's intellect and created there the form of an
impulse....

from The Altaf al-Quds of Shah Waliullah

Shah Waliullah of Delhi

TRANSLATED BY G. N. JALBANI
REVISED AND EDITED BY David Pendlebury

The Sacred Knowledge is regarded as a fundamental text in both East and West by students of Sufi thought. Through Professor Jalbani’s rendering, the book shows how the 18th century mystic of Delhi discharged his task. In Waliullah’s own words, ‘The purpose behind writing this discourse is that only those problems pertaining to perception and the mystical unveiling are mentioned.’