Sufism

Be Melting Snow

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Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street.
I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening.
We’re looking up at the sky.
My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.
It’s midnight.  The whole neighborhood is up and out
in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention. 

Lo, I am with you always means that when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There’s no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

– Jalal Al-Din Muhammad Rumi



There is a strong poetic element in the Sufi Tradition, and many Sufi philosophers have also be poets. Rumi is perhaps the most well-known Sufi poet.

 

Sufism | Through Love, Unio Mystica, Wayfaring

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“Sufism is a mystical path of love in which God, or Truth, is experienced as the Beloved.  The inner relationship of lover and Beloved is the core of the Sufi path.  Through love the seeker is taken to God.  The mystic seeks to realize Truth in this life and God reveals Himself within the hearts of those who love Him.  The mystical experience of God is a state of oneness with God.  This unio mystica is the goal of the traveller, or wayfarer, on the mystical path.”

– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufism: Transformation of the Heart

Sufism | Dhikr, Transcending I-Thou, alone to the Alone

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“As for the prayer of the heart, it is associated in Sufism with dhikr, or invocation of God’s Names.  This quintessential form of prayer begins with invocation of the tongue, then with the mind and with our imaginal faculty, and finally with and in the heart, where the Divine Spark has always resided… The dhikr is in the final analysis the act of God Himself within us.  In reality only God can utter His Name, and in the dhikr we become simply the instrument through which God utters His own sacred Name… In ordinary prayer men and women address God in an I-Thou relationship.  In the prayer that is intertwined with love, the I and the Thou melt into each other.  In contemplative prayer, the inner intellect or spirit, which is itself a Divine Spark to which Meister Eckhart refers when he says that there is in the soul something uncreated and uncreatable…is able to transcend the I-Thou dichotomy altogether.  This faculty is able to plunge into the Supreme Reality and, in drowning in the Ocean of Divinity, to know it.  It is to these realities that Plotinus was referring when he spoke of the flight of the alone to the Alone…As human beings, we have the ability to reach the state of extinction and annihilation and yet have consciousness that we are nothing in ourselves and that all being belongs to God.  We can reach a state of unitive consciousness prior to bifurcation into object and subject.”


– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth

Sufism | Benefits of Dhikr, Polishing the Heart of Its Rust

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“Invoking strengthens the heart and the body, puts inner and outer affairs in order, gladdens the heart and face, making the latter radiant.  Moreover, it procures sustenance and facilitates obtaining it.  It clothes the invoker with dignity; it inspires correct behavior in every affair.  Its permanence is one of the means of obtaining the love of God; it is one of the greatest gateways leading to that love.  Invoking causes the vigilance that leads to the station of spiritual virtue, wherein the servant adores God as if he saw Him with his very own eyes.  It causes one to turn to God often; for whoever turns to God by remembering Him frequently will eventually turn to Him in all his affairs.  Invoking brings closeness to the Lord and opens the door of gnosis within the heart.  It bestows on the servant the veneration and reverential fear of his Lord…The invocation is the nourishment of the soul just as food is the nourishment of the body.  Invoking polishes the heart of its rust, which is forgetfulness and the pursuit of its passions.”


– Ibn Ata Allah Al-Iskandari, The Key to Salvation and the Lamp of Souls

Sufism | Fana

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In the Sufi Tradition, the state of fana is sometimes described as self-extinction in God, and is thought to be achievable (by grace) through meditative Dhikr.



“Its beginning is only with the tongue, then comes invocation with the heart with effort; then comes invocation with the heart naturally; then comes possession of the heart by the Invoked and the effacement of the invoker.”

“Invocation is an inner reality in which the Invoked takes possession of the heart while the invoker is effaced and vanishes.  But it has three coverings, one closer to the kernel than the others.  The kernel as such is beyond the three coverings, yet the virtue of the coverings lies in their being the way to the kernel.”

“This is fana, that a man be extinguished from himself.”  





– Ibn Ata Allah Al-Iskandari, The Key to Salvation and the Lamp of Souls



“Know that there are four degrees of Remembrance (of God): The first is that it be with the tongue while the soul is inattentive.  The effect of this is weak, but it is still not without some effect, for the tongue that is busy with service is better than the tongue that is busy with foolishness or left in idleness.  The second is that it be in the soul, but not established firmly and dwelling (in it).  It is as though the soul must be constrained to do it, so that if there were no (conscious) effort and constraint, the soul would, from inattention and the whisperings of the self, revert to its normal nature.  The third is that in which the remembrance is resident, established, and dominant in the soul, so much so that there is no more need for importuning.  This is tremendous!  The fourth is that in which the Remembered – and that is God Most High – overwhelms the soul, not the remembrance.  There is a difference between him whose entire soul loves the Remembered and him who loves the Remembrance.  Rather, the perfection of that is that the remembrance and the awareness of the remembrance go from the soul, leaving the Remembered and nothing else… When one becomes immersed thus, one forgets oneself and all there is, save God Most High.  One arrives at the beginning of the way of mysticism.  This state is called by the Sufis ‘annihilation (of the self).’  It is also called ‘non-existence (of the self).’”  



– Al-Ghazzali, On the Remembrance of God Most High




“In contemplative prayer, the inner intellect or spirit, which is itself a Divine Spark to which Meister Eckhart refers when he says that there is in the soul something uncreated and uncreatable… is able to transcend the I-Thou dichotomy altogether.  This faculty is able to plunge into the Supreme Reality and, in drowning in the Ocean of Divinity, to know it.”  

“As human beings, we have the ability to reach the state of extinction and annihilation and yet have consciousness that we are nothing in ourselves and that all being belongs to God.  We can reach a state of unitive consciousness prior to bifurcation into object and subject.” 


– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth

Sufism | Unity and Multiplicity

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“The world appears to us as multiplicity, and the goal of the spiritual life is to ascend from this multiplicity to unity, to see the One in the many and the many integrated into the One. Now the doctrine of the oneness of Being does not negate the reality of multiplicity. Nor does it claim that God is the world and the world in its totality is God, a position held by pantheists. How could a metaphysics that speaks so categorically of the transcendence of God be accused of pantheism? What the Sufis assert is not that God is the world, but that the world is mysteriously plunged in God, to use a formulation of Frithjof Schuon. Existence is a manifestation of Being, and all existence issues from and belongs to Being in the same way that the rays of the sun are finally nothing but the sun.

Some Sufis and Islamic philosophers have interpreted the doctrine of the oneness of Being to mean that all levels of being come from the one Being, that all the rays of light emanate from the sun, while many Sufis claim that on the highest level of understanding there is in fact only the one and absolute Being. Viewed from within the sun, there is nothing but sun…”



– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth


I find the analogy of the Sun and the Sun’s rays to be helpful when thinking about unity and multiplicity in the context of the contemplative traditions. From the perspective of a ray of light, after it projects outward from the Sun, it can look around and see other “Sun-rooted” rays of light – the world of multiplicity. But from the perspective of the Sun, there is “Nothing But Sun.”

Unity and Multiplicity. Multiplicity and Unity.

The “Oneness of Being” is a core concept in much of philosophical Sufism.

Sufism | The Postmodern Situation, Psychological Fragmentation

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“We live in times of spiritual uncertainty and great contradictions. We witness signs of cultural collapse and long for a vision of hope. The situation for many in the postmodern era is that all religious truths seem to be relativized; no religion seems absolute anymore. In this situation, even a life of faith and morality is no assurance of salvation. We live with unnamed anxieties and guilt. An undercurrent of shame and unworthiness moves just beneath the surface of our busy lives. We try to find cosmic satisfaction in a lifestyle, a career, a self-image, or a romantic relationship. Some employ therapists to attain self-acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding…

Furthermore, there is no shared cultural myth, no unifying vision to bind us together with the wider society. The servitude to religious forms and structures is quickly disappearing, to be replaced only by a worship of the self or a compulsive escape from the self. The worship of the self conceals itself in many forms: fashion, fitness, career. The escape from the self is served by vast industries that more and more shape our lives: professional sports, alcohol and narcotics, gambling, mass media, and the entertainment of sex and violence.

…Furthermore, we exist in a psychologically fragmented state, a state of continuous inner conflicts among the parts of ourselves. We have lost the principle of unity within ourselves. We are not only psychological polytheists, worshipping gods of our own creation, we are ‘poly-selfists,’ because we have many selves and have not known our essential self.”


– Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart

 

The Guest House

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“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

Nothing Left of Me

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“In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, ‘Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.’

He says, ‘There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight.’

This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!

The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Completely become hearing and ear,
and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.”

Love

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“The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”




Rumi was a mystic and poet who wrote of the love of God and also of the mystical bond that can happen between two people. He married twice (after his first wife passed) and also wrote about his deep experience of friendship. He learned to see God in all things, and in all people. And yet there were those to which he had an unspoken deeper bond.

Is love and commitment to another part of some mystics’ quest?

I think, if it is, you just know. Maybe you were in each other all along.

A Sufi Initiation

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The following is a quote from The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, by Dale Allison.  In discussing the historicity of various gospel events (here, the transfiguration), Allison draws from analogous stories in other religions.  Here he recounts the experience of his personal friend:
 

"The foregoing testimonies intrigue me all the more because I personally know a man who claims to have seen a human being transfigured into light. This is not for me a foaftale, that is, it does not concern the proverbial friend-of-a-friend but comes to my ears from someone I know and have no reason to disbelieve (and who has refreshed my memory by kindly sharing with me his relevant journal entry).

In 1992 my friend John decided to seek initiation as a Sufi. The process involved having an audience with a Sufi master who was then making a tour of the States. The two men met in a small room for a short period of time. They sat face-to-face in lotus position. No words passed between them. But the occasion was memorable, for John relates that, after a bit, the master began to emit a light, which became brighter and brighter until it lit up the whole room, after which the luminescence gradually faded away, and the encounter was over."


– Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus



These type of "paranormal" events pop up in the mystic traditions with some regularity.  In the Hindu tradition, they are called siddhis.  What's interesting is that the mystics themselves don't attribute much importance to them.  Often they are even seen in a negative sense, a potential distraction from the real work to be done.

I don't know what to make of stories like these, but I do find them interesting to think about.  I think if I experienced something like this, I would take it as some type of confirmation that I was moving in the right direction.  

"The miraculous" is not the heart of mysticism, but it seems to be at least potentially related.