Sufis and Indian Schools (II)

SUFISM AND THE INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES (cont'd)
By Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah

In Western countries, books on Oriental religion

and philosophy, many of them of a more or less "occult"

nature, are appearing in increasing numbers. A second

major aggregation of books is concerned with psychology.

Western man is facing the crisis of trying to replace

his failing religious values with a personality which

shall give meaning and purpose to his life. Personality,

that much misused word, is derived from the Latin word

persona which signifies "A Mask"; a mask worn during

a stage play, with the intention of conveying to the

audience something of the character portrayed by

the actor. In the East the personality is very far

from a mask. It is the external view of what actually

is inside the man. The objective of practical philosophy

of the Sufi and Indian schools is an inner

transformation.

The diffusion of this sense of the integrated

personality during the period from the Middle Ages

until the present day has been a joint undertaking

of the Sufi and Indian schools of philosophical

thought and action. This task, the methodology and

results of which are abundantly plain in recorded

material, has been carried out in an atmosphere of

struggle. What has this struggle been?

Western philosophy, upon which depend many

of the lines of thinking of the past two centuries,

is built partly upon Greek and Roman philosophy.

In the form in which this philosophy reached the

West, the odds were heavily weighted in favour of

pure speculation and juggling with words. In the

process of transmission of the knowledge of the

ancients to the West, a very curious thing happened.

In the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato, there is

indeed a concentration upon the intellect. But

it is only this one portion which appears in books.

Equating the teachings of the Western classical

world with those of the East will show that the

intellectual exercises which pass for philosophy

are only a part of the picture. The important part -

the actual practice of self-cultivation has been

left out. It survives in the Sufi and Indian systems.

Take the classic syllogism of logic: "Man is a

liar. I am a man. Therefore, I am a liar. Therefore,

when I say 'Man is a liar' I am lying. Therefore,

man is not a liar."

The fallacy is, of course, that the statement

'Man is a liar' does not need to apply to every

situation. This is all very well - as far as it goes.

But it does not go far enough. The purpose of introducing

such ideas into the mind, practised by all

initiatory schools is not to exercise your wits but

to point to the limitations of language. Man cannot,

in the final analysis, rely upon words in order to

arrive at truth.

So the books of the Greeks were not fully

understood. They are still not understood, and people

play with them; like the child who has a book of

problems and no answers. The philosophy which we

share, the practical wedded to the theoretical, is

something of greater completion than the speculative

or rhetorical which has passed for philosophy in the

West.

People like Aldous Huxley in America are now

feeling their way towards an understanding of experiential

philosophy, as opposed to verbal juggling.

Their books seem rather negative, tentative and incomplete.

But the movement has started. They turn

their attention, interestingly enough, towards two

main fields for further support of their feeling

that there is something within man which awaits

realisation and is the ultimate source of truth -

Sufism and Indian philosophy. Zen Buddhism, now in

vogue in the West, is an offshoot of Buddhism - in

other words, the Chinese (Ch'an) and Japanese form

of a school of Indian thought. There is a movement

in the West which looks towards the Vedantic ways

of thought, for the same reason. The influence of

the Sufis upon every branch of Western thought has

been immense and continuous. Nietzsche of Germany

quotes Hafiz as the one who really knows and

experiences. Goethe's work is soaked in Sufism.

And even the Christian Saint John of the Cross

has been found by Professor Palacios to have taken

his ideas and many of his quotations direct from

the Illuminist School (The Ishraquiyya) of the

Sufis, as represented by Ibn Arabi and today the

Shadhiliyya of North Africa.

However, philosophical movements in the West

which are based upon Eastern models rapidly turn

away from the main theme: that of self-realisation.

There is only one reason for this. No school of

human study can survive entirely by means of

theory or the printed page. The continuous and

repeated refreshment of Indian and Sufi teaching has come

about and been maintained only because there has been

a perennial succession of teachers, masters, those who

knew how to carry the disciple from one stage to the

next in this mission of self-realisation.

I have purposely avoided invoking the technical

terms and dogmas which from time to time coalesce

around teaching schools and make them appear different

from other schools. I have done this deliberately,

because the essence of initiatory knowledge,

for the Indian schools and the Sufis alike, has always

been their common denominator: the search for truth

through a blending of theory and practice. I have

set myself the task of explaining what the mediocre

scholastics have made a dreary and footnote-loaded

task, by means of ideas and references which are

easily grasped by all. For if there is to be any

reality in self-development, that reality must ultimately

be a simplicity, not a multiplicity. As one of the

sages has put it, "Unity underlies all multiplicity".

Your attention is only confused by a thousand coloured

sweets, if what you are trying to understand is sugar,

and not the sweets individually. This sense of unity,

and the final unification of experience, is central

to the two initiatory schools of which Yoga and Sufism

are expressions.

What of methodology? How do we go about the

applying of the teaching of self-realisation and

unification? We cannot measure in terms of human

advantage the effect upon countless millions of people

of a succession of teachers of the self-development

schools throughout the milennia. The general effect

has been there to which we may ascribe that 'difference',

that ascendancy, which the East has over the West in

terms of the power of the human spirit, the composure

of the personality. And we disregard it at our peril,

because it is the very basis of our lives.

The second characteristic is that of tolerance.

Indian society today is possible only because of it.

In its political and social expression it takes the

form of secularism. But the secularism of India is

rooted not in modern Western concepts of materialism

or atheism, but in the immemorial concept that the

next man has as much right to his inner experiences

as I. We should never mistake this important source

of tolerance, however much it may superficially

resemble any other form of tolerance.

The man who wishes to enter the path of self-realisation

must practise these virtues in himself

first, before he can accept them from others as his

right. Hence the methodology of the Sufi and Indian

schools insists, each perhaps in its own way, upon

tolerance of others and also upon individual composure

of mind. How is composure attained?

Composure is necessary because the unregenerate

mind is, in fact, not one mind, or 'self. It is

composed of a number of confused, often conflicting

'selves'. These must first be focussed, integrated,

centralised, stabilised. Only when this is done can

the mind work as one entity, capable

of tackling the

larger job of producing the Ideal Man: the man who

lies hidden or rather incipient within us all. This

is where the teacher comes into the picture. He

is the guide who will enable the Seeker to find his

way in life. There are false teachers, just as there

are bad goldsmiths. But inner cognition plus careful

observation tells all but the foolish which is the

master for him.

Far from being old-fashioned, anachronistic,

mumbo-jumbo, the discoveries of the ancient schools

which are represented in the work of the Sufis today,

are the result of enlightened, progressive investigation

into the human mind. Metaphysical elaborations,

meaningless accretions, have surrounded a great deal

of Sufi preaching, and confused, misrepresented even,

the truths of these inner schools. But nothing can

destroy their essential validity.


Originally published in Indo-Asian Culture, 10 (1962) 419-425; revised version published in Sufi Thought and Action, assembled by Idries Shah, 1990.

Sufis and Indian Schools (I)

SUFISM AND THE INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES

by Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah (1962)

The very great strides which have been made in

modern Western psychology towards an understanding of

the human mind, together with the tireless researches

of Western scholars in the field of Orientalism have

created within the last few decades a most important

situation in the field of cultural research and

understanding. In the first place, modern psychology

in the West, which has been feeling its way through

practical experiment towards establishing itself

as a recognised 'science, has come to resemble more

and more in shape if not in terminology, the

Oriental teachings about the potentialities of the

human mind. Professor Rom Landau, in a recent book

on the Spanish-Arabian philosopher Ibn el-Arabi,

mentions that Freudian interpretations of dream symbolism

were known to the ancient sages of the

East. Again, Professor Jung, the founder of the

other major school of psychology, the school of

analytical psychology, was of the opinion that

modern - that is, Western - pioneers in the study

of the human mind had not attained the maturity of

the thinkers of the East.

"Analytical psychology" he says, in his most

important book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (London,

1959 edition, page 62) - "is no longer bound to the

consulting-room of the doctor; its chains have been

severed. We might say that it transcends itself, now

advances to fill that void which hitherto has marked

the psychic insufficiency of Western culture as

compared with that of the East. We Occidentals had

learnt to tame and subject the psyche, but we knew

nothing about its methodical development and its

functions. Our civilisation is still young, and we,

therefore, required all the devices of the animal-tamer

to make the defiant barbarian and the savage

in us in some measure tractable. But when we reach

a higher cultural level, we must forego compulsion

and turn to self-development."

Well, Western psychology has forsaken the

clinic and come back to self-development: to philosophy

as it is understood in the East; as something

which can develop mankind and make man - and woman -

realise the higher destiny of the individual and of .

the community. In this respect we differ from the

partial thinkers who have in all times passed for

philosophers. I refer to the logicians, speculative

theologians and traders in words who have sought,

always in the end unsuccessfully, to teach that man

can arrive at objective truth through juggling with

words, or through using reason as opposed to his

inborn ability to distinguish truth and reality.

"Know thyself," which the psychologists

postulate as the first essential, has always been a

part of Indian as of Sufi philosophy: whether used in

the Sanskrit term of Jnana, knowledge; or the Arabic

phrase Man arafa nafsahu, arafu Rabbahu. It is

through the path of self-knowledge that ultimate truth

and real reality is reached.

Before we go any further, we have to make a clear

distinction between the inner philosophy of the Sufis

as well as of the Indian schools and the philosophy of

religion. The difference, briefly, is this: in all

forms of ordinary organisational religion, there are

certain beliefs and certain practices which, taken

together, are considered to be sufficient to imply

that the practitioner is a believer in that religion.

But the members of the initiatory schools go very

much further than this. First, they say, you must

know what religion really is. Then you will know

whether you believe in it or not. Buddha's teaching

was clearly calculated to make the disciple conscious

of himself first; so that subsequently he would be

able to banish 'self.' It is obvious that in order to

banish a thing, you must first recognise it. In order

to recognise it, you must develop within yourself

the ability to assess it.

There is no golden key to enlightenment. Both

the Sufi and the Indian schools teach that man must

be capable of receiving a teaching before he can be

taught. There can be no attaining any enlightenment

until the individual is ready for it. It is to produce

these favourable conditions for understanding that, in

both the Indian and the Sufi systems, there is the

institution of the human guide or teacher, whose

first task is to prepare the disciple for the

knowledge of himself, so that he is able to become

enlightened.

The Sufi path of development is not a process

or a philosophy foreign to India. Some of the

greatest of Sufi teachers lived and taught in India;

and many of them are buried in India. Sufism, in one

sense, came to India; so did the Aryan invaders.

Sufism, again, is not regarded by its practitioners

as something which originated at a specific place

in space, or at a point in time. "Before there were

vines on this earth," the great Master Jalaluddin

Rumi reminds us, "the Sufis drank the wine of Wisdom,

the spiritual wine of knowledge." Another master

says: "Sufism is too sublime to have had an origin."

This was Hujwiry, the author of the Sufi classic

Kashf al Mahjub, who was buried on Indian soil and is

revered by people of all faiths as a great teacher

under the honorific of Data Ganj Bakhsh.

The philosophical stream from which the common

root of Sufism and Indian philosophies stemmed may

conveniently be termed Tarika: a way of travelling,

and also a method of doing a thing. To divide it and

categorise it as 'Yoga' and 'Sufism' is useful only

in a limited, and not in an ultimate, sense. In such

books as the Cultural History of India, Sufism is

claimed to have inspired the founder of the Sikh

religion, Rabindranath Tagore, Kabir and scores of

others. Again, a superficial belief is that Sufism

was itself originally influenced by Vedantism. The

division is in the eye of the beholder. When there

is a mighty river which branches into smaller

streams, these streams may be called separate rivers.

But equally they may all be fed by the melting snows

of some colossal mountain which is the goal of the

search.

The organisation, procedure, methods and ideas

of the followers of the truth, as of the followers

of any objective reality, must be very similar, and

there is an end to it. That there is cultural interchange

between the followers of truth is inevitable,

desirable and necessary. To make this contact the

main object of one's attention is absurd. The buyer

of 'halwa' is interested in what it tastes like and

not where its ingredients came from and how. Even

this parallel is inadequate, for to us the origin of

sugar is sweetness and there, as I have said, is an

end to it.

Hypnotism (II)

Hypnotism Among the Arabs (cont'd)


III. Typical Procedures of Hypnotic Induction and

Therapy.

A first-hand account by an Oriental of a typical

procedure of a traditional nature may be of interest.

The operator (hypnotist) should possess certain

qualifications. He wears robes, carries a rosary,

may have a wand with which he touches his patients.

He is generally considered to have 'compelling

eyes'. He is, by virtue of his descent or by

constant dedication, possessed of baraka, (magnetic-power.)

 Up to this point, and in some of the

essentials which follow, the reader will not feel

presumptuous in detecting a possible origin of F.A.

Uesmer's procedure.

Certain hypnogenic conditions are always present:

(a) repetition of monotonous phrases, known as Dhikr.

These often take the form of the chanting of words

whose meaning is "cure, protection, health" etc.

They may take the form of an invocation to Allah.

(b) There is a background of music or a repeated

drum-beat. Popular as the musical background is the

air now known in the West as 'Ravel's Bolero',

which is said by musicologists to be derived from

a dervish chant used in North Africa, where the

remnants of the medieval Moorish culture linger.

(c) The patient gazes at a black spot, about 6"

square, on a white ground, inscribed upon cloth and

held about 2' in front of his eyes. The patient may

be given suggestions by the operator or his assistant

as to the esoteric meaning of the gazing-square.

Other hypnogenic considerations almost always

obtain: the subject may be wrapped in a woollen

cloak (warmth); he is instructed to breathe in time

to the drum or the repetitions (hyperventilation);

passes are made before his eyes, or he is touched with

a wand (suggestion aimed at creating expectancy).

Positive suggestions of cure or relief are

made, at a time chosen by the operator, who is

a physician (hakim) within the traditional meaning

of the term. The suggestions are often indirect,

and not addressed to the subject: "This person

will recover from his ailment by virtue of the

power (baraka) which has been passed down to me;

through the force of the secrets (khufiyyat) which I

possess; by the mysteries (asrar) which link all men

and flow even from my hands."

As the operator watches his subject, he motions

for the drum-beat to increase if the man is calm,

and to decrease if he is nervous. As soon as he sees

'a weariness' showing, he says: "It is happening now.

It will continue to happen. The power has manifested

itself in the revolving of the black disc" (suggestion

of hallucination).

In the case which has been summarized above, the

patient - who was sitting down within a circle of

disciples - with the sheikh in.the centre beside him,

swayed from side to side after about ten minutes.

Without suggestions of sleep, he seemed to enter a

state of great lethargy and then slumped forward.

Again using the method of indirect suggestion, the

operator intoned: "He is now asleep. When he awakes,

the paralysis will be gone. It will never return,

for it has been banished forever. Henceforth this man

will enjoy life; he will be as a man reborn. The

burden of living will be light upon him. The paralysis

which had attacked his left leg will be replaced

by a paralysis upon evil actions. Inasmuch

as he was formerly bad, he will now be a good man."

IV. Other Procedures of Arabian Hypnotism

The foregoing by no means exhausts the procedures

of Arabian hypnotism. Itinerant fakirs use a method

of eye-fixation which employs a string of beads,

especially one brought from Mecca. While the

subject's eyes are focussed upon this, healing

suggestions, are. given. Another method is based upon

massage or even pounding the patient for a considerable

period - up to four hours. In this the operator uses

assistants to apply the massage. It is believed that

stroking the head, the legs or the temples will

induce a cataleptic state. To what extent this belief

is a matter of prior suggestion is uncertain. Dietary

requirements are sometimes stressed as a prerequisite to

treatment, but they probably have no more than a prehypnotic

suggestive effect. The method of causing

hypnosis by simple command (introduced into France

by the Abbe Faria in 1813) is recommended with 'docile

or easily handled patients' and the writer has seen it

used with remarkable immediate effects. The patient is

made to lie down in a dark place for half an hour.

The operator then visits him and shouts into his right

ear the command to sleep and remain asleep. The effect

appears to depend upon the extent of the ascendancy

which the operator has been able to command through the

imposing nature of his appearance and probably his

reputation.

Recent research has indicated a possibility that

the techniques and procedures of the Arab hypnotists,

as manifested in current (and perhaps much older)

expressions are deviations from a system which once

had far greater implications.

Briefly, the art as now found among certain important

Sufi groups does not concentrate upon induction

and suggestion. The reason for this is the

belief - or perhaps the fact - that the personality

touched by hypnosis is only a superficial one. The

Sufi will not undertake or undergo hypnosis, it is

said, except at the instance of a Sufi master; and

then only for 'purposes of enlightenment'. The practice

of hypnosis for therapeutic ends, so runs this

assertion, is only a matter for first-aid, as a

general help for people who are not concerned with

the Sufi Way.

The reason for this, in turn., is that experiencing

hypnotic states may cause someone to imagine that

these are touching a really deep area of his consciousness.

A recent Western commentator upon this information

agrees, in great measure. His reason is that modern

practitioners believe that hypnotic states are

associated with role-playing: play-acting if you like.

To play a part is one thing: to play a part and to

imagine that this is something real or significant

is very much something else.

Unfortunately for the general stock of information

on this subject, Sufi practitioners, whether teachers

or not, do not share the general scholarly and

scientific attitude that information is there to be

shared, or that publication is important for the

dissemination or preservation of knowledge.

They believe that the Sufi experience and what they

call 'its reality

1 is one and indivisible, and that

anything that is parcelled out in penny packets

ceases to be a part of the lore. Having ceased to

be part of it, no Sufi will concern himself with it:

because the Sufi must adhere solely to the Sufic pattern.

'Spin-offs' are unknown to the genuine Sufi.

V. Conclusions and Summary

There seems to be little difference in the procedures

adopted by the Arabian schools from those

known in the West, although the operator himself

probably does not believe in the subjectivity of the

phenomena of hypnosis. Indeed, it is widely claimed

that hypnosis is objective and that its power can be

exercised from a distance, upon sleeping persons, can

produce telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. No efforts,

however, seem to have been made to study the subject

in a detached manner. There are reasons for believing

that Mesmer and 'magicians'of the middle ages were

inspired by Arab techniques, which are still taught

in the centres of esoteric training. While therapeutic

hypnosis among the Arabs is not by any means

divorced from seemingly irrelevant studies, hypnotic

treatment is well known and used very

widely indeed. Little experimental work is done

because of the highly traditional character of the

lore. The use of hypnosis among the Arabs is immune

from the ultra-superstitious connotations which

have caused it to be expained as diabolical elsewhere.

This is due to the lack of a well developed

theology in relation to demonic beliefs.



Octagon Press, 1982.

Hypnotism (I)

Hypnotism among the Arabs (1982)

It may be useful briefly to recall the fact that

a strong likelihood attaches to the early diffusion

of hypnotic practices from Moorish (Arabised) Spain

to Western Europe. The first recorded traces of

'miracle-working' and unexplained powers on the

part of the savants who were credited with being

magicians come from those who attended the Arab

schools of Salamanca, Toledo, etc., up to the

fifteenth century when these centres were the recognised

resorts of Western thinkers. Suffice it to

mention in passing Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus

Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, c.1493-1541)

who says: "It is possible that my mind, without the

co-operation of my body, and without a sword, can

stab and wound others." He preceded Mesmer (1734-

1815) in saying that the stars and magnets gave off

a force which could affect man. This is no more

than a quotation from the Arab philosopher, Faris

al-Andalusi, whose theory of the quwwat al-Kawakib

(force of the stars) mentions attraction and repulsion

analogously in human beings, animals and

the planets, and is still quoted by contemporary

Arab sages.



C. Agrippa (Henricus Cornelius Agrippa

von Nettesheim, 1486-1535) studied in Spain under

the Moors, and was undoubtedly an hypnotist. He paid

his bills at inns with hallucinated coins which

soon afterwards 'turned into pieces of horn, etc.'.

He hints at hypnotic phenomena in his Occult

Philosophy: "There is a science - known to very few -

which at one step raises the mind from ignorance....

produced mainly by a kind of artificial sleep in

which a man forgets the present....wicked people

can be divested of power by hidden methods". The

Faust-myth (first traced in written form 1587)

which abounds in apparently hypnotic phenomena -

positive and negative hallucinations, and the rest -

is paralleled by countless legends and traditional

tales in the Arab East.

Dr. van Pelt, whose works on hypnotism are

standard reading, has noted the antiquity of

hypnotic procedures among many peoples. The Arab

civilisation, as is well established by historians,

fell heir to several streams of medical and philosophical

thinking and practice. Among these were

the remnants of Graeco-Egyptian science, the ideas

and activities of the Gnostics, and the meditative

lore of the early Christian and pagan Arab anchorites.

This knowledge, in its Arab synthesis, was carried

Westwards into Spain, where it profoundly affected

Western ways of thought (cf. Hitti, History of the

Arabs, and Guillaume, Legacy of Islam, Encyc. Britannica,

etc.). After the Moslem conquest of the Middle East,

Persian and Indian thought was considerably affected as well.

II. The Schools of Psychotherapy

Among the reflective and philosophical schools

which sprang up in the Arabised East and West alike,

disciplines aimed at producing cures through

'psychic' means flourished. Notable among them

were the schools of Sicily (Ibrahim II, A.D. 902,

and Roger I's Arab School, c. 1100); Bari (Italy,

School of Mohammed ibn Ahmad, c. A.D.800); Southern

Portugal (school of Hakim ibn All Ruli) and Bokhara,

in Central Asia, Kufa, Kazimain (Iraq) and Deobund,

in India. While reconquest has wiped out most of

the remains of the traditional schools in the West,

those of the East (apart from the ones now in the

Asiatic areas of the U.S.S.R.) have generally continued

their teachings and therapeutic activities.

In most cases they use books and traditional methods

attributed to the savants of the tenth to fourteenth

centuries A.D. Setting aside as irrelevant to the

present study the numerous purely philosophical and

theological persuasions, there remain a large number

of schools which may be considered as the hard core

of the medical branch of the Sufi (contemplative)

orders. While their beliefs and practices contain

many elements referable to the medieval concept of

'complete knowledge' there is in most cases a heavy

specialisation in therapeutics. 



Belief in the hereditary hypnotic abilities in certain families,

for example, exists. Notable among these are the family of Hashim (Sayeds or Sharifs) whose power to cure a wide range of diseases is unchallenged in general because of their descent from Mohammed. Among the ruling families of this stock are those of Jordan, Morocco and the Yemen. The hypnogenic procedures and suggestive techniques are passed down to the male members of the families by instruction and through emulation of the ceremonies which take place.

Among the non-hereditary practitioners of

suggestive therapy are the Sheikhs and other

prominent members of the Sufi orders. These bodies

resemble in some ways the Western monkish fraternities,

and practise initiation and mental and

physical exercises. They have profoundly affected

the Yoga system of India. Though the reverse process

has been claimed, historical research has

shown that Sufi practices and ways of thinking

developed independently. Their records are certainly

older than any extant ones of India relevant to this

study.




Octagon Press, 1982

Key Sufi Concepts (III)

Those Astonishing Sufis (conclusion)
 (1980)


The Sufis, then, are quite astonishing in their

behaviour and supposed ideas if they are looked at from

conventional, or even from receividly unlikely, points of

view. You can only understand what the Sufis are doing if

you have the requisite perception or, in a smaller way,

information.

To summarise, we can only examine their activities

with any hope of success if we note that they are not interested

in externals, and if we remember that externals

are the major source of stimulus to most other people.

Again, we have to accept that they claim that emotional

stimulus has a place and that that place is not always

where we, from custom and training, imagine it to be.

Thirdly, our fixation on history or personalities is held

by Sufis to be a barrier to understanding, if carried too

far: and they show quite clearly that they hold that we

do carry it too far, thus attenuating the chances of our

own progress.

Further, the idea of elective operation: teaching

people at the right time and place and in the right manner

and company, with its corollary that teaching may take

almost any form; these items are so far removed from the

mechanical approach to religion and cults within our

civilization that it may well be beyond the grasp of most

people to visualise such a system without a great effort.



The question of Sufi tales and other literature

as containing a preparation ingredient, and not simply being

there to produce belief or disbelief, not there for cultural

colouring, not there for their externals: these

concepts require a good deal of digesting before even the

most intelligent individual can take advantage of whatever

dynamic they might contain.

The employment of certain techniques - such as

frustrating the intellectual approach, or increasing

bafflement to focus attention upon the teacher and his

ability to point the way - these are aspects of Sufi operation

which, even in a modern sophisticated society, we have

not yet learned to handle. As for the contention that real,

and higher, perceptions, come after carrying on activities,

and not necessarily as part and parcel of them: this needs

the most careful attention. The function of mystery to

cause mystery-minded people to reveal themselves and hence

make it possible for them to be dealt with is more

readily understandable, and probably provides one of

the paths to understanding the Sufi mentality. Similar

techniques, for instance in eliciting forms of behaviour

in order to study their bases, exist in modern psychology -

however unexpected it may be to encounter them in

'ancient' lore like that of the Sufis.

The equation of humour with frivolity and hence

lack of 'seriousness' is more difficult for us to understand.

But if it is true that our culture has lost its

way in labelling humour as superficial or unimportant,

we shall have to understand it sooner or later. The contention

about re-establishing a contact between a human

'real self and the Divine is also easy enough for us to

grasp in theory, though the realization that what we have

assumed to be the major 'self might in fact turn out to

be at least in part a social artefact, might be more

difficult to swallow even theoretically, for members of a

culture that at least until recently has assumed that it is

superior to all others precisely because it has taken such

an interest in this secondary self as the primary aspect

of man.

That teaching is different from promoting beliefs

is a well-known concept in modern culture, and the Sufis

should have little difficulty in persuading us of its

importance. The only problem here is that our way of

thinking, while admitting that teaching should be free

from bias, inwardly insists that this does not apply in

religion. This startling evidence of internalized regulation

has not yet been absorbed by Western society, though

it has been pointed out often enough during the past

few decades.

The conception that 'Sufism is the inner component

of religion', too, should be acceptable enough

if it is seen from enough examples that religion is often

mainly an accretion of superficialities around an ancient

core which may be reclaimed; but the corollary, that

'social and emotional activity actually disturbs higher

perceptions' is unlikely to pass unchallenged, especially

by those who believe themselves to be imbibing spirituality

with every prayer or operatic aria. Naturally, such people

will be less likely to assail this contention than to

ignore it, to the detriment of future valuable research

on the subject.

The much-repeated theory (for we can see it only

on that level until it is verified by experience) that

'virtues' are not keys to heaven but essential steps which

clear the way to higher understanding, is perhaps the

most attractive of all the Sufi statements. There has

always been,both in the East and the West, an uneasiness

about believing that something done from fear or hope

should be rewarded by paradise; or that ordinary human

duties, carried out even by the most primitive peoples,

should be represented as things which a highly-evolved

religious system proclaims as part of advanced religious

thinking.

This involves, of course, rethinking many of the

values to see whether they are not, indeed, pitched at too

low a level, rather than, as fashionable theoreticians

affirm, too high. 'The best that we have' in institutions

may be insufficient, not a matter for self-congratulation.

This applies to the various forms of human relationship

which have been in the past regarded as sublime, but

which research might well show to confirm the Sufi claim

that they are valuable but only on a lower level.

The Sufi habit of dissimulation ('I haven't learnt

anything') does take some integrating into our way of

thought, even if only because the book-bound individual,

the theorist and historian, will now have to re-examine

his materials to determine whether something was indeed

said at some time because it represented the beliefs or

feelings of someone, or whether it was said for another

reason. But we can only gain if we find in the end that

people whom we imagined to be contradicting themselves

were only shifting ground to look at things from different

perspectives, or only attacking fixed ideas, which, surely,

we are united in realising to be of increasing peril to

the human race.


Adilbai Kharkovli