Sufism was first popularized for students of religious studies through a 1968 film, The Mystic’s Journey, by the scholar Huston Smith.
In keeping with the times, Smith depicted Sufis as exotic whirling dervishes, almost like something from the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour album cover.
This contributed to the Western myth of Sufis as itinerant mystics blissfully dancing through enchanted, far away lands.
While this depiction may not be entirely wrong, like most religious and spiritual traditions, Sufism is about real people with definite roots and different schools of belief.
Sufis emerged from Islamic orthodoxy. The word sufi (Arabic: mystic) is likely based on the root suf (wool), recalling the simple woolen garments worn by ascetics. The Sufi generally believes in a kind of natural pantheism, where creator and creation are seen as one unbroken whole. And the goal of the Sufi is to become totally immersed in this undivided oneness.
Sufism became an organized movement around the 7th and 8th centuries, mostly in reaction to the worldly Middle-Eastern Umayyad dynasty. The most publicized Dervish orders of Sufism arose in India around the 12th and 13th centuries. These emphasized ecstatic states and were criticized by some but remained influential into modern times.
Like any kind of religious experience, we can’t say too much about what a Sufi actually feels, what the numinous, inner light is like for them. But there’s no shortage of Sufi literature that might give us some kind of idea.
The following reveals Abul Cheir’s identification with all aspects of existence and his understanding of cosmic totality.1
| I am the mote from the sun, I am the sun’s round. I am the first light of dawn, the sighs of eve, the rustling of the branch, the roar of the sea. I am mast, tiller, skip, and vessel. I am the shoal upon which I sink. I am bird-catcher, bird and net. I am face and mirror, voice and echo. I am the living tree and the parrot of the branch. I am silence and thought, tongue and speech. I am the breath of the flute, the glimmer of stone, the shining of metal. I am the drunk and the grape, the winepress and tavern, the crystal of the cup. I am the candle and the moth that circles round it. I am doctor and illness, poison and cure. I am war and peace, battlefield and victory; village and conquerors, hordes and wall. I am the mortar and trowel, worker and plan, cornerstone and high tree, structure and ruin. I am the hart and the lion, the lamb and wolf. I am herdsman of all. I am the chain of being, the ring of all worlds, the ladder of creation, the rising and falling. I am what is and what is not. I am the soul inside All. |
Meanwhile, Alford Welch likens the Sufi’s quest for mystical union to the 14th-century Christian treatise, Theologia Germanica.2 Welch says that both types of mystics, Sufi and Christian, undero distinct phases in the pursuit of the ulitimate realization of love and ongoing God-awareness.
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But this comparison might be a bit forced. And, again, we can’t really know if Sufi and Christian mystics experience God in the same way. Certainly their respective conceptions of God differ. For the Sufi, God is everything. Whereas the Christian sees God in contrast to that which is “not from” or which has “rebelled against” God–i.e. Satan or evil.
So it would not be too surprising if their experiences of God, as they each understand it, differ too.
Theological debates aside, the essence of Sufism might best be expressed by the 13th-century and increasingly popular poet Jala ud-Din Rumi. Rumi’s verse can be found in most bookstores and his message prefigures Joseph Campbell’s dictum of “follow your bliss”:3
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Why are your lips dry when the cup is full? |
Sufi Links
Notes
1. I stumbled upon this passage at the University of Ottawa library sometime in the 1990s, before the birth of Earthpages.org. Unfortunately the complete reference is currently unavailable, although I’m still hoping to track it down.
2. Adapted from Alford T. Welch, “Islam” in John R. Hinnells (ed.) A New Handbook of Living Religions, Cambridge Mass: Blackwell and Penguin, 1997, p. 204.
3. Cited in T. Freke and P. Gandy, The Complete Guide to World Mysticism, London: Piatkus. 1998, p. 111.
Surfin’ with Sufis © Michael Clark.
Photos Jelebia and Rainbow over Rabat © Helen Clark.
Sufi-Dari Books
(An imprint of Sophia Perennis)
Announces the Publication of
The Quatrains of Rumi
(Beginning of Marketing Campaign: May 20, 2009):
Rubâ‘iyât-é
Jalâluddîn Muhammad Balkhî-Rumî
ISBN 978-1-59731-450-3; $25.95, £19.50
Translated by
Ibrâhîm W. Gamard
and
A. G. Rawân Farhâdî
COMPLETE TRANSLATION WITH PERSIAN TEXT,
ISLAMIC MYSTICAL COMMENTARY,
MANUAL OF TERMS, AND CONCORDANCE
The first complete English translation of the Quatrains — over 700 pages — based on the Persian of the original, complete, and uncorrupt Forûzânfar edition –
translated with close attention to Rumi’s idiomatic usage,
with the collaboration of scholar from Afghanistan,
whose native Persian remains close to Rumi’s own
The “version-makers” of the poetry of Jalâluddîn Rumî have helped to make him perhaps today’s most popular poet in the English language.
But they have not served his intended meaning with equal zeal,
often portraying him as a “universal” mystic who had somehow “transcended” Islam, even though his celebrated Mathnavi has been called “the Qur’an in the Persian tongue.” Ibrâhîm W. Gamard
and A. G. Rawân Farhâdi have labored to set the record straight,
and to demonstrate that Mawlana’s universality is inseparable
from his Islam — from the depth of his Islam.
For more information, contact Sufi-Dari Books/ Sophia Perennis at:
jameswetmore@mac.com
or info@sophiaperennis.com
Comment by Charles Upton — June 9, 2009 @ 1:39 pm |