Sufi Thought and Action

SUFI THOUGHT AND ACTION

Books by Idries Shah

Sufi Studies and Middle Eastern Literature

The Sufis

Caravan of Dreams

The Way of the Sufi

Tales of the Dervishes: Teaching-stories Over a

Thousand Years

Sufi Thought and Action

Traditional Psychology,

Teaching Encounters and Narratives

Thinkers of the East: Studies in Experientialism

Wisdom of the Idiots

The Dermis Probe

Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality

in the Sufi Way

Knowing How to Know

The Magic Monastery: Analogical and Action Philosophy

Seeker After Truth

Observations

Evenings with Idries Shah

The Commanding Self

University Lectures

A Perfumed Scorpion (Institute for the Study of

Human Knowledge and California University)

Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas

(Sussex University)

The Elephant in the Dark: Christianity,

Islam and the Sufis (Geneva University)

Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study: Beginning to Begin

(The New School for Social Research)

Letters and Lectures of Idries Shah

Current and Traditional Ideas

Reflections

The Book of the Book

A Veiled Gazelle: Seeing How to See

Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humor

The Mulla Nasrudin Corpus

The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin

The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin

The World of Nasrudin

Travel and Exploration

Destination Mecca

Studies in Minority Beliefs

The Secret Lore of Magic

Oriental Magic

Selected Folktales and Their Background

World Tales

A Novel

Kara Kush

Sociological Works

Darkest England

The Natives Are Restless

The Englishman’s Handbook

Translated by Idries Shah

The Hundred Tales of Wisdom (Aflaki’s Munaqib)

SUFI THOUGHT AND ACTION

assembled by

Idries Shah

ISF PUBLISHING

Copyright © The Estate of Idries Shah

The right of the Estate of Idries Shah to be identified as the owner of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

Copyright throughout the world

ISBN: 978-1-78479-095-0 (Epub)

First published 1990

Published in this edition 2017

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photographic, by recording or any information storage or retrieval system or method now known or to be invented or adapted, without prior permission obtained in writing from the publisher, ISF Publishing, except by a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review written for inclusion in a journal, magazine, newspaper, blog or broadcast.

Requests for permission to reprint, reproduce etc., to:

The Permissions Department

ISF Publishing

The Idries Shah Foundation

P. O. Box 71911

London NW2 9QA

United Kingdom

permissions@isf-publishing.org

In association with The Idries Shah Foundation

The Idries Shah Foundation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom Charity No. 1150876

Contents

1. Sufi Spiritual Rituals and Beliefs

by Idries Shah

2. Sufi Principles and Learning Methods

Seven papers by Humayun Abbas and Others

Trust – Humayun Abbas

Sufi Activity – Emir Ali Khan

Sufi Learning Methods – Benjamin Ellis Fourd

The Sufis on the Scholars – Mohandis el Alouite

The Sufi Meeting Place – Ferrucio Amadeo (Faruq Ahmad)

Avoiding Imitators – Gashim Mirzoeff

The Western Seeker Seen through Eastern Eyes – Alirida Ghulam Sarwar

3. Current Sufi Activity: Work, Literature, Groups and Techniques

by Chawan Thurlnas

Their Work Enterprises

Sufi Use of Literature

Controlling Oneself

Discouraging Potential Recruits: Deflection

The Idea of Organic Enterprises

Entry into a Sufi Group

The Sufis as a Cult

Religion, Evolution and Intervention

Representative Writings: Tradition and Potentiality

4. Ritual, Initiation and Secrets in Sufi Circles

by Franz Heidelberger and Others

Time Spent among Sufis – Franz Heidelberger

The Sufi Adept and the Projection of the Mind

Priest, Magician and Sufi

The Learner’s and the Teacher’s Viewpoints

The Three Major Lessons

The Sufis in Current Idiom

Sufi Orders – Rosalie Marsham

Ritual and Perception

Exercises, Movements, Costumes

The Ineffable Secret

The Chain of Initiation

Founders and Early Masters

Special Selection for Teachings and Students

Effect of Hierarchy and Tradition

Observation of a Sufi School – Hoda Azizian

Primary, Secondary and Deteriorated Schools

Materials, Attunement, Energy and Focus

Extrasensory Perception

Worldly and Spiritual Progress

Tests: True and False Sufis – Judging the Teacher

The Path of Blame and Other Technicalities

Other Works

5. Theories, Practices and Training Systems of a Sufi School

by Canon W.H.T. Gairdner

6. Key Concepts in Sufi Understanding

edited by Professor Hafiz Jamal

Those Astonishing Sufis – Adilbai Kharkovli

The General Principles of Sufism – Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah

Sufism and the Indian Philosophies – Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah

7. Visits to Sufi Centers: Some Recent Research Papers on Sufis and Sufism

by Djaleddin Ansari and Others

Basic Teachings of the Sufis – Djaleddin Ansari

The Dinner-meeting and Other Topics – Abdul-Wahab T. Tiryaqi

Making Sense of Sufi Literature, Experts, Paradox – Andrew C.C. Ellis

Aphorisms of a Sufi Teacher – Hilmi Abbas Jamil

Three Forms of Knowledge, according to the Naqshbandi School – Gustav Schneck

8. The Sufis of Today

by Seyyed F. Hossain

Summary

The Sufis of Today

Reviews and Comments on Sufi Affairs

9. In a Sufi Monastery and Other Papers

In a Sufi Monastery – Najib Siddiqi

Vanity and Imitation – Fares de Logres

Sufis over Two Centuries – Valentino de Mezquita, Sr

What the Sufis Do Not Want Us to Know – Edwin Clitheroe

Two Sufi Lectures – Hafiz Jamal

Religion as Repetition or Experience

Outer and Inner Activity and Knowledge

Conversation with a Sufi Master – Aziza Al-Akbari

Sufi Spiritual Rituals and Beliefs

OBJECT OF SUFI TEACHING:

The object of Sufi spiritual teaching can be expressed as: to help to refine the individual’s consciousness so that it may reach the Radiances of Truth, from which one is cut off by ordinary activities of the world. The term used for illuminations or radiances is Anwar.

MYSTICISM IS NOT MAGIC:

It is a misunderstanding, as – for instance – the book Zia al Qulub (among many others) emphasizes, to think that a mystic either desires, or can achieve, identification with God in the sense of acquiring divine attributes or powers. Such a concept belongs to magical, not mystical, thinking.

In common parlance, as well as in the minds of many who should know better, mystical is bracketed with mystery and mystification in the senses of something confusing or difficult to understand. These secondary meanings, of course, are only due to unconscious illiteracy.

Sufis require the reduction of the effects of material attributes, those things which stand in the way of higher understanding. Many things which repetitious or oversimplified religion presents as spiritual are, when examined, found to be simply aspects of materiality. One example is emotionalism.

COMMON DISTORTIONS IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

However widespread and familiar they may be, many presentations of religion are abbreviated and distorted versions of something of which the original is not known to current practitioners. The outlines can be discerned, more often than not, and examples of some parts of these are given later.

A regression to primitive thinking, and the desire for order, never far from the human mind and often (not always) useful, are the chief culprits.

Where the primitive feeling is allied to equally primitive logic, we get a familiar distortion: the belief that if things material are obstacles, then killing or suppressing the material should lead to enlightenment. Yet this, far from being useful, is essentially magical thinking.

Omar Khayyam has pointed out this fallacy, when (echoing the foolish) he writes: If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion. Quite understandably, this phrase has been misinterpreted, due to the narrow mentality of literalists. They have imagined that Khayyam is himself deriding religion! The poet is a humorist: literalists often, perhaps always, lack this capacity.

Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.

ESCAPE FROM THE INSULATION FROM TRUTH:

Polishing the mirror, or removing the dust are terms in Sufic use, referring to the process of liberation from those elements, natural and acquired, with which the world insulates humanity from the greater Truth.

Sufis, far from being able to build on the mentality of conditioned beliefs, generally have to help detoxify the mind from harmful, deadening or other imaginedly important illusions, fixations or emotion-based ideas.

That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh). Materiality is the term employed for that which weighs down the soul.

The soul is conceived of as a part of a single sea, a Sea of Peace, on the surface of which ripples, waves and storms constitute the effects of materialism, attachment to objects, and negative thought.

Speaking of the primordial unity of being, Rumi, in the first book of his Mathnawi, says:

We were extensive and we were all one substance

Without head or foot we were, all one head.

We were all one substance, like sunshine:

Without knots we were, and clear, like water.

PENETRATION OF PRIDE INTO RELIGION:

Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious. In ordinary religious circles it is so common for no real distinction to be made between spiritual people and the self-deceived that what a teaching such as Sufism offers on this point has been considered vital as a constant reminder and corrective. The most prideful dislike this reminder most. As a consequence, following a common pattern, they attack the Sufis, not their own problem.

Their problem is one which psychologists have long recognized; but, when subsumed in rhetoric or theology, it tends to escape analysis. Ranging from shrugging-off to deeply ingenious malevolence, its consequences reduce the likelihood of correct information circulating.

Considerable hostility can be engendered experimentally to demonstrate this malaise. I have, for example, more than once unnerved specialists by telling them jokes – and delighted others of their kind by providing an appearance of what it is at the moment fashionable to call gravitas.

Everyone is familiar with sanctimonious people, suffering from the effects of materialism; and also with those who have such pride (and are therefore in Sufic terms not spiritual people at all) that they imagine that they alone are right, or that their form of belief alone is absolutely true.

In a seeming paradox dealing with intellectuals, the Sufi poet Mirza Abdul-Qadir Bedil insists that real knowledge is greater than the mechanical sort – and that even the unregenerate may eventually reach it – if they find the path:

You are better than anything your intellect has understood

And you are higher than any place your understanding has reached.

The Sufi affirms that he perceives the reality beyond outward form, in contrast to those who merely fix upon form. Form is useful, but it is secondary. As the great Sufi exponent Ibn al Arabi puts it, in his Interpreter of Desires:

My heart has become able to take on any form

A grazing ground for gazelles, a [Christian] monastery of monks

An idol-house [of the pagans], the [Islamic] pilgrim’s Mecca mosque

The tablets of the [Jewish] Torah and the Qur’an’s pages

I follow the faith of Love: wherever its riding-mounts face, that is my religion and my faith.

This passage illustrates, quite dramatically, that the mystic has a religion and a faith totally different from that professed by those wedded to externals, externals which, to the ignorant, are the religion.

The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk. As Prince Dara Shikoh says, in a Persian poem:

Do you wish to be included with the Lords of Sight?

From speech [then] pass on to experience.

By saying Unity, you do not become a monotheist;

The mouth does not become sweet from the word Sugar.

There are those who believe that the attainment of the perception of Truth can be carried out by unaided effort. They imagine that by unswerving dedication to certain practices, by adherence to rules which are laid down by experimenters or are really only fragmentary, one can complete – or get some way along – the Journey of the Soul.

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

Studying appropriate parts of some literature can provide a basis: it can be an essential prerequisite, a preparation. Beyond a certain point, however, as with every other specialization, someone must diagnose, someone must prescribe, and the prescription must be properly carried out.

Some useful counter-thinking to the magical attitude has indeed been done. If there are magical procedures, why the variety of formulations? If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cozy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?

Constant reformulation, repeatedly bringing the teaching back to its center of gravity, is so consistent a pattern that those who have overcome greed and narcissism enough, have learned from the pattern’s existence that this is central.

It is revealing of the mentality of many would-be metaphysicians that, when faced by this statement, they so often clamor for the stage after reading or formal study, instead of applying to a Sufi to discover whether they are yet fit for further development. And whether their study has been along the right lines, or whether reading and familiarization with certain concepts has been adequate.

Jalaluddin Rumi speaks of the line toward Truth, leading to the dot which is Truth, in his Mathnawi:

The Knowledge of the Truth is a point and the wisdom of the Sufi a line

From the existence of the point is the being of a line.

CONFUSION OF BOTH THE SCHOLARS AND THE POPULARIZERS:

Scholars and popularizers alike, relying on observation or records of specific Sufi procedures (and trying to assess the Sufi development system) have lumped these together and imagined them to be constants. But this approach is ineffective. It renders both narrative and academic materials useless. The scholars and other outward observers do not discriminate between real and impoverished procedures, between essential and local or time-centered practices or concepts. They cannot, either, see the personal element, how the student may vary from time to time, in potential or attitude.

It is easy to see how this misunderstanding has arisen. The mentality and methods of scholasticism and linear thinking have been employed to approach something which is of a completely different nature.

THE SUFI GUIDE:

The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner. Those who say I am ready to learn, or I am not ready to learn are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise. Yet the aspirant must try, neither thinking that he is nothing, nor trying to sit on a throne. I found this couplet in the Persian text of Rumi’s Letters:

If you cannot sit on a throne like a king

Seize, like a tent-pitcher, the rope of the Royal tent.

The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: the Sufis are not merchants. Many Sufis are not guides. As with any other specialization, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.

A Sufi may be carrying out functions in the world which are not perceptible to others. He (or she) may be of a higher rank than a teacher and yet have no teaching mission.

The very concept that the teacher is the highest stage of human being is taken from somewhere other than Sufism. Sufis do not exist only to lead others to enlightenment; where they have a hierarchical function, this is for purposes other than teaching. Perhaps it is the never far distant human feeling of self-importance that assumes that the Sufi teacher is the greatest human being? If the assumption is that the individual is the most important thing there is, and that no other function than his or her well-being exists, then we can understand this unfounded assumption.

Some hold that the Sufi way is not distinct from that of Islam, but that it follows the esoteric meaning of the Qur’an, of which the exoteric meaning is in the overt text. Hence Ghazzali or Abu Hanifa (the founder of one of the major Islamic orthodox Schools) could be both Muslim and Sufi at the same time.

Some Sufi writers draw attention to the non-timebound nature of Sufism (before man was, we were) and none regards Sufi thought as absent from any legitimate religious framework.

There are many mystical passages in the Muslims holy book, as well as in the Traditions of the Prophet. One is We are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein; another, He is with you wherever you are; and He is in your own souls: you do not perceive Him."

Those are general statements; but Sufi exponents draw attention to Sura XVIII (verses 65f.) for a close analogy with Sufi teaching and teachers. In this chapter, a teacher with special knowledge (whom many call Al Khidr, the wandering guide) meets Moses and teaches him that there are meanings in life beyond appearances – a classical Sufi contention.

Moses asks to be taught the truth, but the man answers, You will not be able to have patience with me! Moses, however, persists, and undertakes to obey the stranger in everything.

They start on a journey, just as the Sufis call the following of the Path a journey, with the compact of obedience and patience, and that Moses will ask no questions.

First they come to a boat, which the teacher scuttles. Moses asks why he should do this, since it might drown the people in it. Truly, thou hast done a strange thing!

The guide replies, Did I not tell thee that thou canst have no patience with me?

The text continues:

Moses said, Rebuke me not for forgetting, nor grieve me by raising difficulties in my case.

Then they proceeded until, when they met a young man, he slew him. Moses said, Hast thou slain an innocent person who had slain none? Truly a foul thing hast thou done!

The teacher answered, Did I not tell thee that thou canst have no patience with me?

Moses again agreed to keep silent, adding that if he were to question any of his mentor’s acts in future, he could cast Moses aside.

Then they proceeded: until, when they came to the inhabitants of a town, they asked them for food, but they refused them hospitality. They found there a wall on the point of falling down but he set it up straight. Moses reproached his teacher with helping those who had been unkind, for he could not contain himself.

The mysterious teacher said, This is the parting between me and thee. Now will I tell the interpretation of that over which thou wast unable to hold patience.

He explained that the boat belonged to poor people. By rendering it unserviceable, sinking it below the water, he had ensured that an usurping king who was seizing all boats would not find it. When the tyrant had gone away, the poor men would be able to salvage their boat, and earn their living with it.

The youth, if spared, would have grown up to be a danger to others. As for the wall, it belonged to two youths, orphans, in the town. There was, beneath it, a buried treasure to which they were entitled. Their father had been a righteous man. So thy Lord desired that they should attain their age of full strength and get out their treasure ... I did it not of my own accord. Such is the interpretation of that over which thou wast unable to hold patience.

This metaphor conveys precisely the way in which the Sufi teacher carries on his function in life. Note that the disciple, if he is unable to keep up with his master, will have to be dismissed. However much he tries, he will remain at his own level.

Theologians might argue that Moses has to be an illuminate in order to carry out a prophetic function, and pass on divine commands relating to spiritual practices and worldly behavior, the essence of familiar religion. But such would only be those who accept mysticism. To many orthodox theologians in most religions, mysticism is anathema. As the Akhlaq-i-Mohsini has it:

The bird which has no knowledge of pure water

Has his beak in salt water all year round.

Pure water is a technical term, with a specific meaning among the Sufis.

When they hear or read this story, a proportion of people will always wonder, inwardly or otherwise, why they should trust a teacher to such an extent. Some will question whether they should trust at all. The Sufi’s answer to this is simply that, without such trust, no learning is possible. Husain Waiz Kashifi, in the Lights of Canopus says:

The person who has not seen the face of trust – has seen nothing

The person who has not found contentment – has found nothing.

Some writers have gone further in explaining. The human being, whether he realizes it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day. He trusts the floorboards not to collapse, the train not to crash, the surgeon not to kill him, and so on.

But, one might answer, we trust these people and these things because we have reason to believe that they will not let us down. But that, say the Sufi’s supporters, is exactly the position in Sufism. Only unthinking, heedless people fail to observe it.

Sufis, traditionally, dwell among those whom they teach, living good lives as people of probity, acting according to their words, fulfilling undertakings: until, as with the floorboards, the train or the surgeon, they have earned a sufficient degree of trust from those who come in contact with them. According to the nature of the individuals among whom their lot is cast, this time put in by the Sufis will vary. None of them complains if it is measured in decades – though the would-be learners may complain. The latter, like Moses, may lack patience when only this will overcome their suspiciousness. If the teacher does not dismiss them, they effectively dismiss themselves. One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts. Yet plenty of people, again perhaps because of self-flattery, follow those whom they do not entirely trust. To the Sufi, such people may be followers: they cannot, in that condition, be pupils.

NEED OF THE LEARNER TO LEARN HOW TO LEARN:

The Sufis have some striking allegories designed to indicate both the Path and the situation of humankind when ignorant of the Path. How, for instance, does the Sufi see the ordinary individual, trying to make his or her way through life?

One saga dealing with this view from another world is found in a succession of short tales about Mulla Nasrudin, playing the part of the human being who makes sense of the world – as we all do – while the reality is very different:

Nasrudin is a foolish youth, whose mother sends him to market to sell a bolt of cloth which she has woven. On the way to the town, Nasrudin meets another traveler, and they are soon deep in conversation. The young man’s words are so unrealistic that the other man realizes that he can fool him.

Give me that cloth, you don’t need it for yourself, do you? he says.

Nasrudin thinks that he is clever. Not so fast, friend. My mother told me to sell it, as she needs the money. We are poor folk, you know. It would not be a responsible act just to give it away.

Very well, says the man, I’ll give you twenty silver pieces for it. I haven’t got the money on me, but you can have it next time we meet.

Twenty