From Tyagi@HouseOfKaos.Abyss.com Tue Jan 18 03:34:53 1994
Subject: Sufism and sufism (Paper: Theory)

940115

Do what thou wilt
La ilaha illa 'Llah.


Theory of sufism
______________

Introduction

Herein please find a review of previous writers' materials regarding what I
shall now focus upon, sufism.  It is clear that there is a large contingent
that will support and attempt to define for us what the Islamic element of
sSufism is, and in this way I am not needed for that discussion.  For my part,
therefore, I shall attempt to more clearly set in relief what sufism is APART
>from Sufism.  For a general overview I urge the reader to refer to my model
that compares Esotericism (something which is covered by Usenet groups
like soc.religion.eastern, talk.religion.misc and alt.magick and mailgroups
such as Buddha-L, Taoism-L and Theologos), sufism and Sufism.

In essence I will be addressing that part of sSufism which uses the language
(e.g. the term 'sufi') but is not necessarily part of the social religious
tradition of Islam (the various Orders, like Naqshbandi, Mevlevi, etc.).
Below I examine what I have quoted from Osho and Shah, as they are the
most outspoken on the issue.  I would be grateful for reference to other
sufis who are NOT considered Muslim by some of the orthodoxy.  Thanks.


Sufism and 'Religion'

One of the more important contrasts made by authors such as Osho and Shah
is that between sufism and religion.   Osho says that sufism is *the* religion,
"the very heart, the innermost core, the very soul" of religion itself.  Shah
is not much different here.  He claims that formal religion is "a mere shell"
for the sufi, and that "when the human consciousness has penetrated beyond
this social framework", then the sufi "understands the real meaning of
religion".

Shah speaks about 'mystics' more often than does Osho.  He maintains that
'outer religion' is only a prelude to the 'special experience' which
constitutes sufism.  As he says, the sufi "uses religion and psychology to
pass beyond all this.  Having done so, he 'returns to the world,' to guide
others on the way."

Osho goes on at some length about the differences between 'the religious'
and the 'sectarian'.  This corresponds very wonderfully with Shah's
distinction between 'outer and inner religion'.  Both indicate similar
values and their concepts are almost perfectly parallel.  I may quote
much of Osho's final chapter in the future, yet here I would only mention
a few small bits as exemplary of his alignment with Shah on the point.
First I review something I've already quoted here in this mailgroup:

" Whenever a religion is alive, it is because Sufism is alive within it.
Whenever a religion is dead, it shows only that the spirit, the Sufi
spirit, has left it.  Now there is only a corpse, however decorated -
in philosophy, metaphysics, in dogmas, doctrines - but whenever
Sufism has left, religion stinks of death.  This has happened many
times.  This is happening already almost all over the world.  One has
to be aware of it, otherwise one can go on clinging to a dead corpse."


Osho's words shift and move.  In the beginning of his book he distinguishes
'religion' and 'sufism'.  Later he makes the exact same parallel between
the 'sectarian' and 'religious'.  The concepts are the same.  One may only 
be tripped up by his language (perhaps this was his intent).  Later on he
elaborates on how we can retain, encourage this 'aliveness' which is sufism:

"Sects are forms in the mind, just like footprints.  Yes, somebody was
there one day, but he is no more there.  And you go on worshipping those
forms.  You are born into those forms.  You are conditioned into those
forms, indoctrinated.  You become a sectarian.

"And don't think that you have become religious, otherwise you will
miss.  For religion to be there, you have to seek it on your own.  It is a
personal growth, a personal encounter with reality - face to face,
immediate and direct.  It has nothing to do with tradition, nothing to
do with the past.  You have to grow into it.  You have to allow it to
grow into you.

"Religion is a revolution, not a conformity.  It is not a conviction,
intellectually attained.  It is a conversion of your total being.  How
can you be born in a religion?  Of course, you can be born in an ideology.
You can learn a theology, words about God, theories about God, dogmas
and doctrines, but to know about God is not to know God.  The word 'God'
is not God.  And all the theologies together are nothing compared to a
single movement of encounter with the Divine - because then for the first
time, the spark, your inner light starts.  You start rising in a different
dimension.

"Religion is a personal search.  It is not part of society."


This last is possibly reminiscent of Shah's words:

"It is essential to grasp this sense of continuity of inner teaching, 
and also the belief in the evolution of society, if the Sufis are to be 
understood to any real extent."

Osho is a difficult teacher.  His words are rough.  He uses them awkwardly
at times, fluently at others.  He changes meanings, shifts and adapts to
the disciples he is addressing, like very many Masters.  Yet he is attempting
to show that there is a difference between the social tradition and the
process of awakening.  That the process of awakening leads to what Shah
would call 'the evolution of society'.  Osho does not say that the personal
search must take place outside of society, just that the sufi IS APART FROM
THAT SOCIETY.  This reminds me greatly of a maxim which Rahim repeated
to me in email:  'A sufi is in the world but not of it'.

This is what I hear the Masters of sufism saying.  It is not that we must be
separate from social religious tradition in order to discover the sufi path,
only that the tradition, the society itself, is not the personal journey.
The forms are the crucible in which that personal journey may occur, whether 
they be the Muslim 5 Pillars, the Buddhist 8-fold Path or the Christian
10 Commandments.   These are forms that may serve us, provide us with some
security, safety.  They may also stifle us, kill us, if we are unwary.  This is
perhaps the reason that some distinction is made between Islam and sufism.


Sufism and Islam

By contrasting sufism and Islam I wish to make it obvious that they are not
ALWAYS the same thing.  By 'Islam' I simply mean the social religious tradition
that identifies with this term.  Here we shall find more material that serves 
to aid us in differentiating between the outer shell and the inner core.

This is Shah:

"Sufism was based upon love, operated through a dynamic of love,
had its manifestation through ordinary human life, poetry and work.

"Because the Sufis recognized Islam as a manifestation of the essential upsurge
of transcendental teaching, there could be no interior conflict between Islam
and Sufism.  Sufism was taken to correspond to the inner reality of Islam,
as with the equivalent aspect of every other religion and genuine tradition."


What beauteous words!  Here Shah lays out not ONLY the relationship between
sufism and Islam, but elaborates profoundly on what makes Islam wonderful 
and perfect.  He is not saying that ALL of Islam is sufism or that sufism is
comprehended by Islam, but that the INNER REALITY of Islam is sufism and
that this inner reality has an EQUIVALENT in every other genuine tradition.
This is what MAKES a tradition 'genuine'.  This is the same as what Osho is
calling the 'life' or 'spirit' of a religion.  Both of them identify sufism
as the essential inner core of living religious tradition.  

In this way there is little to separate them from Esotericists, aside from 
their language and their perspective.  What I am calling 'Esotericists' are 
the myriad forms of this inner core.  The cores of Judaism, Taoism, Shinto 
are all particular instances of what Osho and Shah are calling 'sufism'.  

We can begin to see that what I shall call 'Sufism', that is, Islamic
sufism, is a particular KIND of sufism and compares very well with the
other esoteric (Shah's 'transcendental')  teachings.  Islamic sufism,
Sufism, has its own flavor, its own history, its own power, and this is
VERY DIFFERENT from the other kinds of sufism, the other inner cores of
living religions.  It is unique in its manifestation.  Of this there is no
question.  What lies at its HEART, however, is, according to many sufis,
not unique at all.

And in making this distinction I am placing Sufism alongSIDE the other
Esotericists as a particular, a "manifestation", as Shah puts it, "of
the essential upsurge of transcendental teaching."  As Shah describes it,
I imagine a sea serpent, writhing upon the waves of social traditions.
It moves downward and vanishes without trace into its Mystery.  It moves
upwards, into the social consciousness and becomes visible, manifesting
as a religious tradition, then perhaps diving, leaving, as Osho would say, 
a 'corpse', a shell, what Qabalists of the Hermetic path might call a 
'kleppah'.

In this empty vessel is no movement, no life, no sufism.  This is the danger
of tradition, that it cannot CONTAIN sufism, it cannot restrict it, hold it
like some caged animal.  No, it must continually remember it, just as in
Muslim zikr one remembers God.  This is why Osho goes to extremity in
regards Islam when he says:

"Sufism is not part of Islam; rather, on the contrary, Islam is part
of Sufism.  Sufism existed before Mohammed ever was born, and Sufism
will exist when Mohammed is completely forgotten.  Islams come
and go; religions take form and dissolve; Sufism abides, continues,
because it is not a dogma.  It is the very heart of being religious.

"You may not ever have heard of Sufism and you may be a Sufi - if you
are religious.  Krishna is a Sufi, and Christ too; Mahavir is a Sufi,
and Buddha too - and they never heard about the word, and they never
knew that anything like Sufism exists."


Osho is not identifying sufism with the shell.  He does not say that
Islamic sufism is the only sufism, yet quite the opposite.  And he says
this because he has seen the shells, seen the true spirituality after it
has become fortifications of lifelessness - dry husks now used to prop
up the weak and pompous.  

This is not to say that Islam is not alive.  Far from it.  Only the individual 
can decide if Islam is alive or not.  We cannot decide this and set it in stone
 
once and for all, because of the LIVING nature of sufism which may come and 
go as it chooses.  As it lives, so it may die, leaving that shell, that 
'kleppah'.  Osho warns of it when he writes:

"Sufism is always killed by religious people, so-called religious
people - because they cannot tolerate it; they cannot tolerate a man
asserting that he is God!  Their egos feel offended.  How can a man
be a God?  But when Al Hillaj says, 'I am God,' he is not saying, 'I am 
God and you are not'; he is not saying, 'I am God and these trees are 
not;'  he is not saying, 'I am God and these stones, rocks are not.'  
Asserting that 'I am God' he is asserting that the whole is divine, 
sacred.  Everything is divine."


And with that we have one of the more common expositions of the sufi
tradition, the divinity all, which I shall leave for later.  The focus
now I would have upon religion and its structure - sometimes alive
with sufism, sometimes dead, using the language, the labels, to fool
the unawares.


Society and the sufi

There is an important point to be made regarding the relationship
between the sufi and society.  They are not always amicable, these two.  
Perhaps unlike the strict monastic or sanyassin, the sufi will not
abandon society forever, yet even these have never defined themselves
as 'forever beyond the realm of society'.  Hermits are undertaking a
kind of practice.  When that practice is complete, then they establish
their place with society at large, whether it be on its outskirts or
directly within its center, as a mysterious fountain of sufism.

Shah begins to speak more generally about this when he quotes Rumi on 
the subject of 'the sufi':

"'Drunk without wine; sated without food; distraught;
  foodless and sleepless; a king beneath a humble cloak;
  a treasure within a ruin; not of air and earth; not of
  fire and water; a sea without bounds.  He has a hundred
  moons and skies and suns.  He is wise through universal
  truth - not a scholar from a book.'

"'Is he a man of religion?  No, he is far, far more: 'He is
beyond atheism and faith alike - what are merit and sin to
him?  He is hidden - seek him!'


And Shah moves on to say more and more liberal things about the sufi:

"The Sufis often start from a nonreligious viewpoint.  The answer,
they say, is within the mind of mankind.  It has to be liberated,
so that by self-knowledge the intuition becomes the guide to human
fulfillment.  The other way, the way of training, suppresses and
stills the intuition.  Humanity is turned into a conditioned animal
by non-Sufi systems, while being told that it is free and creative,
has a choice of thought and action.

"The Sufi is an individual who believes that by practicing alternate
detachment and identification with life, he becomes free.  He is a
mystic because he believes that he can become attuned to the purpose
of all life.  He is a practical man because he believes that this
process must take place within normal society.  And he must serve
society because he is a part of it.

"...In order to succeed in this endeavor, he must follow the methods
which have been devised by earlier masters, methods for slipping
through the complex of training which makes most people prisoners
of their environment and of the effect of their experiences....

"The Sufi life can be lived at any time, in any place, does not
require withdrawal from the world, or organized movements, or dogma.
It is coterminous with the existence of humanity.  It cannot,
therefore, accurately be termed an Eastern system.  It has profoundly
influenced both the East and the very bases of the Western civilization
in which many of us live - the mixture of Christian, Jewish, Moslem
and Near Eastern or Mediterranean heritage commonly called 'Western'."


Here we return to what for Shah is an essential characteristic of the sufi -
that she is not contained within particular social traditions, but may be
found within them; that she is not an Eastern or Western or Middle-Eastern
phenomenon, a product of an Eastern or Western or Middle-Eastern system
of training, but may be found within these; that she is not a sheepish
follower of the social system but the revolutonary element which serves
to RENEW it; she is the life-force of social systems just as she is hirself
the life-force.  

Shah does not go as far as Osho, however.  No, Osho is content to be the 
heretic, misunderstood in his extremity as he finally severs the cord 
between tradition and process:

"No tradition can understand Sufis.  They are always the outcasts,
thrown out of the society and the established pattern.  Because they
always bring the revolution with them.  They come like a storm, and they 
shake the very foundations of the established society, the dead society,
culture and civilization; the universities, the government, the church
-- all dead.  But the majority of people are also dead.

"Because the majority of people are also dead, a dead, established
society fits.  Once you become alive, once your life energy arises,
you will suddenly feel that you fit with existence, but you won't fit
with the society.  And I tell you: if you don't fit with the society, don't
bother about it, because ultimately it means nothing.  The only thing
that will be meaningful ultimately will be whether you fit with
existence or not."


Thus sufism isn't some static school which teaches doctrines to the
willing masses.  It is a vital core, a dyno, awakened within like a sun,
powering the revivification of social traditions and becoming their
Creators just, as it is taught, as God created Heaven and Earth.


Sufism and Scripture

Here I have found little in Shah which is revelatory, though I am slow
to understand him and his words sometimes pass beyond me as grand
generalizations which can be used to get anywhere.  Indeed, this may be
the mark of the sufi writings - that we may use them to get where we need
to.  Yet there is an important trap to be found when that sufism becomes
a social tradition, the writings become 'knowledge' and then we are told
to adhere to 'the writings and interpretations of scholars'.  

For the bulk of humanity this is no doubt important, yet for one who walks
the sufi path, it seems a different attitude is sometimes taken toward
knowledge, writings, and the teachings expressed in words.  Osho says
something of it when he writes of knowledge:

"Sufism is not a system of knowledge.  You cannot read about it.  Scriptures 
won't be of any help, teachers won't be of any help -- because they can 
explain, but explanation cannot become experience.  And it is almost 
always that just the opposite is the case: that explanations become 
barriers to experience.  Through explanations you start explaining things 
away.  They don't lead you into experience;  rather, they become substitutes.
That's how pundits, scholars are born.

"Sufism is not a knowledge: you cannot gather it from anywhere, from
somebody; you cannot borrow it.  It is not information.  No teacher can
teach it.  Truth cannot be taught -- it is an experience.  It is not a
knowledge: it is being.  It is not something that you learn: it is
something that you become.  Who can give it to you?  Only you.  Only
you can give it to yourself.  Only you can bring yourself to a point
when you know what Sufism is -- not by knowledge but by knowing.

"Always remember the difference between knowledge and knowing:
knowledge is a dead, accumulated thing; knowing is a constant 
movement.  Knowing is alive; knowledge is dead.  Knowing is part of
your being; knowledge is never part of your being.  Knowledge is just
part of your memory, and memory is nothing but a biological computer."


Once more we are given the model of the dead carcass (knowledge) and
the living, breathing body (wisdom), between the data of 'knowledge'
(Arabic - 'ilm) and the experience of 'knowing' (Arab. - ma'rifat;
Greek - gnosis).  While information may be a TOOL to come to this knowing, 
it is not the knowing itself.

This is an important distinction that all Esotericists who have released
their hold upon their own tradition have made: that the teachings are
a VEHICLE, a DEVICE, which may enable us to reach that state, a beingness
sometimes called 'gnosis', and that the sufi is one who has used the tools
in this way to reach hir essential presence.

As one has used this vehicle, the teachings, the texts, then one can
release them and perhaps see the value that others have placed within
different scriptures.  This is echoed, along with a repudiation of tradition,
in Shah's review of Sir Richard Burton's sufi classic: _The Tinkling of the
Camel Bell_:

"Then, if tradition is not true, what is truth?  What we think is truth is
not such at all.  This kind of truth is temperamental, changing....

"All mere theories, repetitious observances, are nothing....

"Truth cannot be found by the means which are generally used to seek it...

"The struggle to find truth comes partly, in its real form, through not
struggling at all."  


How identical to Taoist mysticism is this!!  

"This is the Sufi paradox which is contained in the next lines:

 'Enough to think that Truth can be; come sit we where the roses glow;
 'Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.'

"Even the meaning of faith itself has to be approached by the Sufi in
what seems to the ordinary person an elliptical manner.  Like the masters
before him, Burton approaches this by seeming paradox.  All faith, he says,
is both false and true.  'Truth is the shattered mirror strown in myraid
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 conditioning.
This false faith stands, 'and why?  Because man's silly fancies of his
youth disdain.'  This is precisely the thought of Rumi, when he asks when
the hearer will stop coveting the sweets of childhood."


What are these 'sweets of childhood' but the tradition into which we are
born and therefore cling like a mother even when we have grown and become
adult?  What are these 'sweets of childhood' but the words and forms of
our social religious tradition which have become our home, our prison
cell with which we separate ourselves from direct experience?  For the
sufi (those who release their tradition, perhaps floating within it, and
perhaps voyaging outside) scripture and forms are merely devices.  When
these devices have served, then they are abandoned until they once again
become useful, if they do, in interacting with others.

Osho compares the approach of the student and the disciple.  He contrasts 
understanding (a thing of the Heart, the whole) and knowledge (a thing of 
the Head, the intellect).  In this way he teaches precisely the same 
discernment between the dead structure which supports while we maneuver 
to the edge of the Nest, and the living, mobile being-experience which 
constitutes the Flight of the sufi:

"A teacher is one who teaches truth which cannot be taught.  He teaches
*about* truth.  He goes round and round.  He beats around the bush.  He
never hits the center.  And a student is one who is enquiring *about* God,
not desiring God; who has come to know, not to be; whose search is
intellectual, not total.  A student is trying to gather more knowledge;
he wants to become more knowledgeable.  He wants to accumulate more
information....

"...A teacher attracts students.  A Master attracts disciples.  A disciple
is not a student.  He has not come to know about God.  He has come to become
God, to be God.  He has not come for more information, he has come for *more
being*.  Let me repeat: a disciple asks how to gain more being, and a student
asks how to gain more knowledge.  He has come to the Master to *be*.  And
that is a totally different enquiry.  The dimension is altogether different."


Whether that Master be tree, stream, cloud or human, the disciple comes
in humble watchfulness, careful attentiveness, and finds within a reflection
of that beingness, until, slowly and slowly, or perhaps of a sudden, she comes 
to discover that beingness she watched manifesting as hir self.  

As Nicholson writes of gnosis:

"This knowledge comes by illumination, revelation, inspiration."


Further Exploration

I shall continue to explore that which shows itself to me to be 'sufism'.
Like Habibullah I see that the word means many things to many people,
and that some see 'sufi' as a label for an exalted state of very intense
beingness.  Yet as I spoke of earlier this year, I also see that what
separates Esotericists is often merely language.  The fragments of form
erect a sort of shield which prevents us from seeing the parallels, the
similarities, the SAMENESS that transcends culture, space and time.

So seemingly diverse individuals such as Rumi and Osho, Burton
and Dogen, Merton and Crowley coalesce into a very marvellous stew from 
which we may draw and create our own paths.  Not all of them identify 
themselves as 'sufis', yet for those who reside outside of one particular
tradition (sufis, not Sufis), this is precisely what we need.  There is a
certain advantage of taking the fruit as we need it, rather than relying
on the human Master.  It is more dangerous, yes, but it may prove to be
more exciting, and perhaps more intimate an encouter with ourselves,
with the divine, than we might ever experience otherwise.

I hope that such exploration continues to be welcome in this mailgroup,
that which caters to all tariqas.  It is, I think, a very important outlet
and melting pot.

----------------------------------------

The texts quoted from in this essay include:

>From _Journey Toward the Heart: Discourses on the Sufi Way_,
 by Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), Harper and Row, 1976.

_The Sufis_, by Nawab-Zada Sayed Idries Shal el-Hashimi, Grand Sheikh
 of the Sufis and eldest son of the Nawab of Sardana, Anchor Books, 1971.

_The Mystics of Islam_, by Reynold A. Nicholson, Arkana Books, 1989 
 (first publ. 1914).

-----------------------------------------

Muhammad rasulu 'Llah.
Love is the law

Haramullah