Part of the Casswiki article series Religion
Sufism is an esoteric movement existing within the framework of Islam.
It is probable that parts of the Sufi tradition predate Mohammed and share sources with esoteric teachings existing in Eastern religions, Hellenic mystery schools and Christianity. The relationship between Sufism and mainstream Islam has been problematic throughout the ages and many Sufis have been sentenced to death as heretics. We could say that Sufism is the branch of the esoteric stream which has taken Islam as its platform and substrate and presents the esoteric through the culture and emotional flavor of the Middle East and Persia.
Maybe the greatest Sufi mystic was Ibn al Arabi, 1165-1240 CE. Another well-known Sufi mystic is Mowlana Rumi. The Persian classic Conference of the Birds by Attar is a classic work representing Sufi tradition.
Sufism exists within schools which each have a centuries long, unbroken succession of sheiks or masters. Much of the tradition is oral. Sufism, as any other esoteric discipline, aims at a direct personal apprehension of the divine. The Persian word Darvish means “sill of the door” and is used of Sufi mystics who stand, in figurative terms, at the door to enlightenment.
Following are some excerpts from the Sufi Path of Knowledge by William Chittick, a highly recommended overview of Sufi thought:
Because their science derives from divine opening and not discursive thought, it is intimately interrelated on all levels, though reason often fails to see the connections. In its root, the existence of the Cosmos is tied to the Being who is Necessary through Himself, hence each part of the each is an interconnecting link on a chain. When man begins to consider the science of the cosmos, he is taken from one thing to another because of the interrelationships. But in fact, this only happens in the science of the Folk of Allah. Their science does not follow the canon of those of the learned who know only the outward appearances of phenomena. The canon of the Folk of Allah ties together all parts of the cosmos, so they are taken from one thing to another, even if the scholar of outward appearances sees no relationship. This is knowledge of God… .
[…]
”How can I find God?” This question means: How can I remove the veils that prevent me from seeing God? We dwell now in the situation of seeing the Not He in all things. How can we also perceive the universe as He? We ourselves are included among the “things” of the universe. So “How can I find God?” also means: How can I remove those veils that prevent me from being God in that respect where the “He” must be affirmed. “Finding,” it needs to repeated, is never just epistemological. It is fundamentally ontological. Being precedes knowledge in God as in the world; nothing knows until it first exist.
[…]
But this much is relatively clear: The “precedent attributes” of God display their properties ever more clearly as one moves toward the Center, while the secondary and subsidiary attributes become stronger as one moves toward the periphery. Where is mercy? With Being, Light, Knowledge, Unity. Where is wrath? With nonexistence, darkness, ignorance, multiplicity, dispersion. The dispersive movement toward the periphery is a positive creative force. Without it, Light would not shine and the cosmos would not come into existence. The divine attributes manifest themselves in an undifferentiated mode (mujtnal) at the level of the intense light of the angels and in a boundlessly differentiated mode (taf@il) at the level of the sensory cosmos in its full spatial and temporal extension. But once this full outward manifestation is achieved, it is time for the unitive movement to take over, and an active and conscious participation in this movement is the exclusive prerogative of human beings.
[…]
It was said earlier that in “ethics” or assuming the character traits of God, which precisely is the Sufi path-equilibrium is everything. The divine names must be actualized in the proper relationships, the names of beauty preceding those of wrath, generosity dominating over justice, humility taking precedence over magnificence, and so on. The perfect equilibrium of the names is actualized by the perfect assumption of every trait in the form of which human beings were created. In a word, perfect equilibrium is to be the outward form of the name “Allah,” the Divine Presence. The person who achieves such a realization is known as perfect man (al-insdn al-kiimil).
[…]
Seeing Things as They Are. Perfect man alone is able to see all things in their proper places. He is the divine sage who has so thoroughly assimilated the Scale of the Law that he witnesses through his very nature the correct relationships among things. This discernment of relationships is the most difficult of all human tasks, because of the intrinsic ambiguity of existence. There is no absolute point of reference to which man can cling, since “None knows God but God.” Instead there are numerous “relatively absolute” standpoints in respect of which knowledge can be acquired. But some of these may lead to felicity, and some may not.
[…]
Ibn al- ‘Arabi’s deconstruction of all doctrinal absolutes must be grasped from the outset. That which attempts to describe the real must assume a delimited, defined, and relative standpoint. What is accepted from one point of view may have to be denied from a second point of view. The Essence alone is absolutely Real, but the Essence is forever beyond our grasp and understanding. Each standpoint in respect of which God and the cosmos are perceived becomes a “relative absolute” or a “presence” (@adra) from which certain conclusions can be drawn, conclusions which will be valid for that point of view. But Ibn al-‘Arabi is constantly changing his points of view, as is clearly indicated by the structure of many of his works, the Fusas in particular. Each of the divine wisdoms incarnated in each of twenty-seven prophets speaks in a unique language, thus throwing new light on the self-revelation of the Unknown.
[…]
Imagination understands in modes foreign to reason. As an intermediate reality standing between spirit and body, it perceives abstract ideas and spiritual beings in embodied form. Since in itself it is neither the one nor the other, it is intrinsically ambiguous and multivalent, and it can grasp the self-disclosure of God, which is He/not He. Reason demands to know the exact relationships in the context of either/or. But imagination perceives that self-disclosure can never be known with precision, since it manifests the Unknown Essence.
In the case of perfect man, spiritual realization has opened up the imagination to the actual vision of the embodiment of God when He discloses Himself in theophany. He does not know “how” God discloses Himself, but he sees Him doing so. He understands the truth of God’s similarity with all things through a Godgiven vision, seeing clearly that all things are neither/nor, both/and, but never either/or.
Ibn al Arabi has left a vast literary legacy which mostly consists of his direct, personal observations of higher worlds. As a documenter and explorer of worlds disclosed by mystical experience, al Arabi may be compared to Rudolf Steiner in more recent times.
Sufism has most probably been an important early influence on Gurdjieff. Sufism, mostly as represented by the works of Ibn al Arabi has also contributed many concepts to the FOTCM. Most important among these are the notion of the faces of God and perspicacity. We can in the above excerpts recognize echoes of esoteric concepts such as being, the ray of creation, the Law of Three, objectivity, all being one and so forth.