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Their real problem was that they assumed themselves able to formulate the questions, and ignored the fact that the questions were every bit as important as the answers.
Islam, unlike any of its predecessors, insisted that truth became available to all peoples at specific times in their development; and that Islam, far from being a new religion, was no more and no less than the last in the chain of great religions addressed to the peoples of the world.
The essential unity of all religious faith is not agreed on throughout the world, say the Sufis, because most of the believers are not at all aware as to what religion itself essentially is.
‘Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life’ — Abu Hanifa.17
Then came the modern period, in which the name exists, but the living of it is difficult, and has had to be adapted to the ‘veiling’ — conditioning — which starts in the cradle and ends almost in the grave.
They accepted atomic theory and formulated a science of evolution over six hundred years before Darwin.
Because the average person thinks in patterns and cannot accommodate himself to a really different point of view, he loses a great deal of the meaning of life. He may live, even progress, but he cannot understand all that is going on.
Logic and philosophy will not help him in attaining perception.
It is looked upon as a taming of the wild consciousness which believes that it can take what it needs from everything (including mysticism) and bend it to its own use.
The story also combats the belief that just because a thing — or person — is old, it is necessarily better than something which is young.
Such people are generally ignored by Sufis, because they have not yet reached the stage where they realise that they are already prisoners of a far worse tyranny (that of the Old Villain) than anything which could be devised for them in a mystical school.
Contact between Sufis sometimes takes place by means of signs, and communication can be carried on through methods which are not only unknown, but could appear incomprehensible, to the mind conditioned in the ordinary way. This, of course, does not prevent the pattern-thinker from trying to make sense out of what seems nonsense. In the end he gets the wrong interpretation, though it may satisfy him.
‘A man wished another man to kill him. Naturally he wished this for everyone else, since he was a “good” man. The “good” man is, of course, the man who wants for others what he wants for himself. The single problem of this is that what he wants is often the last thing which he needs.’
They will plan a meeting for a certain time and place, will start an academic conversation and keep it going under any circumstances, insensitive to the Sufi cognition that only on ‘occasion’, according to the Sufi, can the human mind escape from the machine within which it revolves.
The seventh and last valley is that of Death. This is where the Seeker understands the mystery, the paradox, of how an individual ‘drop can be merged with an ocean, and still remain meaningful. He has found his “place”.’
yet he states that the teachings of the Qur’an are allegorical, and that it has seven different meanings.
The Veil of Light, which is the barrier brought about by self-righteousness, is more dangerous than the Veil of Darkness, produced in the mind by vice. Understanding can come only through love, not by training by means of organisational methods.
The Sufi does not necessarily literally travel from one country to another, seeking religions to study and taking what he can from them. Neither does he read books of theology and exegesis, in order to compare one with the other. His ‘journey’ and his ‘examination’ of other ideas takes place within himself. This is because the Sufi believes that, like anyone experienced in anything else, he has an inner sense against which he can measure the reality of religious systems.
‘Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man.’
Sufi commentator on Ghazali notes that things which are comprehensive experiences ‘cannot be penned by a mumbling wordsmith, any more than he himself would accept a paper copy of a fruit as edible or nutritious’.
Even in the present life the happiness of the right-seekers is incomparably greater than can be imagined.’
Story of el-Zir.
One of the drawbacks of this method was the attempt to apply its working outside its most successful field.
‘Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myriad bits; / while each believes his little bit the whole to own.’ The kind of faith which unregenerate man takes for real faith is so often unmoved and fixed because it is merely what today would be called a conditioning. This false faith stands, ‘and why? Because man’s silly fancies still remain, / And will remain till wiser man the daydreams of his youth disdain.’ This is precisely the thought of Rumi, when he asks when the hearer will stop coveting the sweets of childhood.
Burton spares him little time. Faith is due to an accident of birth; the faith that men normally know is a product of their environment. The author again pits one religionist against another; the Hindu despising the Frank; the Muslim crying about polytheism; the Buddhist calling the Confucian a dog; the Tartar claiming that attention to a future state is betraying the efficiency and duties of man in the world. And the Sufi chimes in: ‘You all are right, you all are wrong,’ we hear the careless Sufi say, ‘For each believes his glimm’ring lamp to be the gorgeous light of day.’
Man’s ignorance of his own ignorance is the real enemy. He must seek truth in the right way, must gladden the heart, ‘…abjure the Why and seek the How’.
Hence the disarray into which some repetitious dervish systems have fallen, as have other bodies of doctrine. Clarke quotes Muhammad: ‘By pious fools my back hath been broken.’
At the same time he knows that ‘Paradise, hell, all the dogmas of religion are allegories — the spirit whereof he alone knows.’
The angels, as other dervish teachers have stressed, are the higher developments of the mind. Some are spoken of here as being of the nature of jamal (beauty), others of the nature of jalal (grandeur).
The Prophet Muhammad and some of his companions showed their adherence to the Sufi Way by their adoption of this garb.
‘My friend, a man once hurt his leg. He had to walk with a crutch. This crutch was very useful to him, both for walking and for many other purposes. He taught all his family to use crutches, and they became a part of normal life. It was a part of everyone’s ambition to have a crutch. Some were made of ivory, others adorned with gold. Schools were opened to train people in their use, university chairs endowed to deal with the higher aspects of this science. A few, a very few people started to walk without crutches. This was considered scandalous, absurd. Besides, there were so many uses for
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